To clarify my position on Mulder, the wording that she slaps his hands away "most nights" annoys me, because it suggests that he's touching her without permission or invitation all or almost all nights, and she's almost always slapping him away, and he doesn't get it. I mean, Mulder's an intelligent person, it seems like he would take this as a sign that they need to talk. 99% of your advances being rejected should suggest that there's something going on other than Scully deliberately being mean to him (which is the tone I get from his POV).

The combination of her slapping him away (yeah, I don't buy that she'd do that either) and the immediate sentence that follows, which is about his sexual fantasies about her, bothers me. It feels petty and somehow threatening, like he's getting back at her by fantasizing about her. This fantasy version of Scully can't refuse him.

Of course, in that paragraph I'm not sure if I'm supposed to understand that Mulder at some point stops making advances ("so he keeps his hands to himself"), or if this is ongoing, every night.

Were the roaming bands of evil children real? Or was that something Doggett or local folklore made up? By the end of the story, I don't really know whether Doggett's truly a bad guy here.