Thanks to The X-Files Time Line
At an Easter egg hunt, two mothers, Ellen
and Martha, talk. It is a perfect event, but they are
unhappy that Jenny showed up with her son. She is from the
other side of town, and they don't like her. Martha's
daughter wanders off a bit as she looks for Easter egg and
is frightened by a crow and then by Jenny. At night, Martha
talks with her husband on the phone - he is on a trip and
Martha wants him to come home a day early to be with his
daughter. Later she sees the crow in her living room, a
mirror shatters and she screams.
Mulder and Scully are conducting
surveillance in a red-light district of Washington DC. There
is some kind of mystery woman - six women were seen with her
at the Dirty Dames club, but each disappeared. Scully
dislikes the round-the-clock exposure to the underbelly of
society. Mulder is called away to FBI HQ, leaving Scully
behind. Skinner assigns Mulder to look into the case of
Martha's disappearance two weeks earlier. Ravens are
involved, which are mythological symbols. Mulder arrives at
the home of Martha and Howard and meets the sheriff, Phil,
who is Ellen's husband. The whole town is very concerned.
There was no ransom note or evidence. The daughter,
Michelle, mentioned a raven. Mulder finds scratches on the
mantel that might be talon scratches, as well as the broken
mirrors. When Howard was straightening up he found Martha's
birth control pills, ordered off the Internet. He thinks she
was having an affair because he had a vasectomy some years
earlier. He also found an old-looking door key in her things
that he doesn't recognize. He thinks that whoever she is
with, they don't want to be found.
Ellen is putting out missing person flyers
when she sees a raven and Jenny talks with her, displaying
hostility. When Jenny leaves, Ellen sees a reflection of
something in the window of a nearby car and the glass
shatters. Mulder recalls that in folklore, ravens are
companions of evil, and mirrors are considers items of
enchantment. He dines with Ellen and Phil and they also
offer that he spend the night with them. They sit down to
dinner when Mulder's phone rings. It is Scully, still on the
stakeout - no mystery woman has appeared. Howard and his
daughter are also eating. Michelle is unhappy because her
mother is gone. She sees a raven outside the window. Howard
goes outside to investigate and finds several ravens pecking
at the ground - it is Martha's body, buried in the ground.
Her body has claw marks on it. Mulder and the sheriff agree
that Howard didn't kill her. Ellen arrives and tells about
seeing the reflection in the car window, but when she
turned, there was nothing there. If this is a spiritual
creature summoned to kill Martha, who called it? Did Martha
have enemies? Mulder and Phil goes to see Jenny, who is a
waitress. Jenny thinks that Martha was "so above the rest of
us." They don't think she killed Martha, but Mulder thinks
Jenny lied about having been home all evening the night
Martha died.
Scully calls and complains again, but
notices that the same van with "Jesus Saves" painted on it
return to the intersection that she saw earlier. Mulder
wants her help on an autopsy, but she puts him off to check
out the van. Ellen is sweeping the floor and finds a key
like the one found in Martha's things. A raven flies into
her home. She picks up her daughter and runs. Two mirrors
shatter. She hides in a closet until her husband arrives.
Ellen tells Mulder that the creature came back and chased
her. That night, Phil slips out of the house and goes to a
local motel. He enters cabin six and Jenny meets him there -
they are having an affair. He wants to stop but she isn't
interested. The motel has mirrors in the ceiling.
Mulder gets up in the morning to find that
Ellen has fixed eggs benedict for breakfast and has
laundered Mulder's shirt. Phil is apparently out on a call,
she says. She asks if Mulder has a significant other. "Not
in the widely understood meaning of that term," he says.
Phil arrives home. Mulder tell Phil he slept well, only
waking up once, when Phil went out. The autopsy says Martha
was pregnant. Mulder is suspicious about Phil. At the motel,
Jenny is getting dressed, talking with her son on the phone.
A raven is at the window - several are on the fence. The
ceiling mirrors shatter and the creature attacks Jenny.
Later, authorities are at the motel crime scene. Phil
confesses the he was having affairs with both Martha and
Jenny, but he left Jenny sleeping. Jenny and Martha knew
about each other but Ellen didn't. He wanted a divorce but
Ellen got pregnant with Katie. Mulder still thinks it was an
entity summoned. Phil wonders if he is the cause and doesn't
even know about it.
At home, Ellen puts Katie down for a nap,
draws a bath for herself and finds a scratch on her neck.
She remembers struggling with the creature. Mulder arrives
at the home but doesn't find Ellen immediately. Scully calls
- she is free - she solved the case. They arrested a male
cross-dresser. The six missing prostitutes are in a halfway
house for recovering prostitutes. He dresses up as a
prostitute to make the prostitutes feel at ease while he
convinces them to seek help. He was sort of a wolf in
sheep's clothing - or a sheep in wolf's clothing. That makes
Mulder think. He knocks on the closed bathroom door. Ellen
tells him to go away. Mulder tells her that Phil is in
custody, suspected of murder. Mulder notes that Ellen went
out after breakfast and wants to know where she went. "It
can't be me," she says. When she opens the door, it is the
monster. It attacks Mulder, dragging him into the bathroom
and holding his head in the bathtub, but when it sees its
reflection in the water it leaves. Mulder gets out of the
tub to find Ellen naked, huddled on the floor.
Ellen is in a sanatorium. She won't see
Phil. Doctor says she has some kind of split personality.
Mulder notes that some alternate personalities display
things like high blood pressure that other personalities
don't have. Ellen's alternate personality appears to be more
extreme. Mulder thinks she found out about Phil's affairs
and did what she did to protect her family. Ellen still sees
ravens.