An investigation follows, bringing Mulder and Scully to Dr. Wieder's house.

Mulder anticipates that Scully will ask why they are here. Scully retorts that she would ask how this is relevant to their work with the X-files, which are ordinarily somewhat more bizarre than suburban death. Mulder notes that the family apparently saw or heard nothing during the father-in-law's supposed suicide.

Moreover, if he hanged himself, who wrote the bloody message? And shouldn't a doctor be able to spell?

Mulder further observes that dirt can be a powerful component of "hexcraft," especially when it's molded into a human shape. Scully responds with a halfhearted sarcasm that dissolves into vagueness.

Elsewhere, the landlady of a low-rent residence is mopping the hallway. Detecting an odor, she knocks on the door of a tenant, Mr. Peattie. He is a middle-aged man with a lean, weather-beaten face and longish hair. She tells him he's not supposed to be cooking.

"That smell like something you want to eat?" he says in a gravelly voice. He tersely tells her he's making medicine, and offers her something for her aching back. She accepts a poultice from him, and leaves.

In his room, we now see, there are many concoctions, with a small effigy of a person hanging as an ominous centerpiece.

In a more modern laboratory, Scully is looking through a microscope. She's detected a methane and sulfur compound. Mulder, who just walked in, tells her it's graveyard dirt, "one of the most powerful hexing elements" and "not stuff you want to be on the wrong side of."

Scully says the father-in-law turns out to have had kuru, that rare insanity-causing disease related to mad cow syndrome that tribespeople in New Guinea used to contract from eating brains. Thus he slit his own throat and hanged himself in his madness. It's suicide, says Scully. No question.

Unless the maddening disease was inflicted upon him, through the use of hexed dirt, ripostes Mulder.

Evening at the capacious Wieder house. The doctor's wife is disturbed to see a family photo's missing. Dr. Wieder is calmly rational, saying the police must have taken it for their investigation. He also tells her that her dad was ill, with a progressive dementia, according to the FBI report.

But there's another dirt pile in the bed. And Peattey's nearby, effigy in hand. The wife falls. She's choking, and her face breaks out in painful bloating.

"Call 911," the doctor shouts to his daughter. And in the mist above their swimming pool, we see a thin man's shadow or silhouette.

The hospital. The wife's in intensive care. She has a rare tropical disease unheard of in the Bay Area.

Mulder says someone orchestrated this with folk magic. The doctor pontificates that modern medicine is more powerful than "a pile of dirt." He goes off to look at X-rays. But they distress him. His wife's condition is lousy.

Peattey enters the X-ray room and mumbles menacingly. There is tension. The doctor asks who he is, what he wants, why this is all happening. The intruder says the name "Lynette Peattey," cryptically, then leaves.

Dr. Wieder consults his patient files, but finds no such person. He asks a technician to check for "Jane Does" --anonymous female patients -- of whom he's had three in the past two years. One such file turns up a band, perhaps something worn on the wrist, and it says "theef" on it, strangely enough.

Peattey's apartment. He is muttering to himself, seemingly expressing affection for someone now gone. Hearing footsteps, he opens the door, and finds his landlady. She's eager for more of the back medicine. She also notes the powerful "stinky" smell in his apartment. He says "stinky's good."

Mulder and Scully go to an alternative medicine shop. The female proprietor welcomes them, noting that many people are dissatisfied with their HMO providers. But when the agents pull out some graveyard dirt she tells them to put it away since she doesn’t know what they intend with the potent "goopher dust."

They say they're investigating a murder, and she tells them that such dust can bring misfortune when spread on or near a person. Indeed, it can cause specific diseases, if combined with an effigy, rose thorns, relevant photos and a spell.

The person who did this, she further explains, is probably "charmed," having a source of magic power that stems from some object that's important to him. "Unless you can separate him from his charm, you're out of luck," she informs helpfully.

The hospital. Peattey is in a snack area, enthused to see that popcorn is available from a vending machine. A young man in a white coat, noting Peattey's slow wit, tells him he has to put money in the machine, and then put the popcorn in the microwave oven.

Peattey is enthralled by the microwave. "I heard tell of such a thing. It's a true wonder," he murmurs, and then goes on to describe radiation as "God's own glow." Then he sees Dr. Wieder pass in the hallway.

The doctor takes his daughter in to see Mrs. Wieder. His wife's better, because of his sophisticated treatment, but still needs to be checked out with the CAT scan. He reassures his wife that the machine gives off no more radiation than a standard dental X-ray. They stick her in the big machine.

Meanwhile, Peattey tosses the popcorn bag aside and sticks an effigy in the microwave.

The CAT scan is in progress, with the machine making an odd knocking noise. Then a technician notices Mrs. W's feet kicking wildly. They pull her out, but it's too late. She's a deep-fried corpse.

Mulder and Scully visit the doctor, who's understandably upset. They encourage him not to withhold information, especially since "theef" was found carved onto his wife's blackened chest.

He tells them about his visit from the mysterious Peattey, a story that opens into the sad tale of one Lynette Peattey, a.k.a. Jane Doe. She was a tragic victim in a bus rollover accident, in worse shape than the others. Terrible blood loss. Agony. Triage. Her death was only a matter of time. He gave her lots of morphine, easing her pain but also shortening her life by perhaps 20 minutes. It was a "a fair trade," he says.

Mulder points out that Lynette's father -- Mr. P -- doesn't agree, and feeling robbed of his family, is now trying to take away Dr. W's family, one by one. Lucy Wieder is in danger, but Mulder has an idea.

The agents visit Lynette's grave in a potter's field. While bulldozers exhume the remains, Scully reports the little info available on the girl -- basically, she was from Appalachia and her father once refused to let her get a polio inoculation.

Mulder believes removing her body from this field, taking it from the Bay Area to (for example) Quantico, will deprive Mr. P of his talismanic power.

The coffin is opened. But the body is not there.

The Peattey residence. The landlady enters his apartment, believing he's not there. Then she sees a human shape beneath the sheets. She starts to apologize but then pulls back the sheets. It's a skeleton.

And Peattey is there in the apartment. He's behind the landlady.

Mulder and Scully, meanwhile, have surrendered to the inevitable power of hexcraft and are preparing to get the doctor and his daughter out of town. Scully drives off to the Sequoia National Forest with the endangered ones, unaware that the sinister Mr. P is watching.

Mulder hears a news report about a 56-year-old woman who's suddenly contracted a flesh-eating bacterial disease -- the hapless landlady.

We next see Mulder bursting into Peattey's darkened apartment with gun and flashlight. He finds Lynette's skeleton, but the head is gone.

Mulder calls and says he's on the way, since Peattey may know what's been scripted.

Peattey breaks the window of Scully's car. Scully hears this and pulls her gun. But Peattey's already gotten his hands on Scully's ID and a piece of hair. He speaks an incantation and drives nails into an effigy's eyes.

Inside the cabin, Scully crumples in pain. She can't see and her pupils in fact have a whitish color. When the cabin door bursts open, she fires blindly. Peattey comes and takes her gun away. The endangered remnant of the Wieder family watches in horror from the upstairs balcony.

Peattey ascends the stairs, noting for the benefit of those trapped in the building that there's no back door. Dr. W waves a stick at him, all the while trying to defend his actions in the treatment of Lynette. Peattey is unimpressed.

Lucy cries. Dr. W says he shall defend his daughter. Peattey, perhaps having some vague sympathy for Lucy, sticks a knife into an effigy's chest -- and it's the doctor himself, not the distraught Lucy, who feels the horrible pain.

Mulder drives up, gets out of his car, sees the broken window of Scully's car, and reaches for an effigy.

Peattey's about to finish off the doctor, when shots ring out. Scully has fired. Her sight is back, since the whitish contact lenses are no longer in her eyes. Mulder enters.

While the daughter sobs off camera, the agents scrutinize an effigy. They show no particular interest in the doctor's condition.

A hospital room. Mulder tells Scully the Lynette skeleton's been shipped back to West Virginia. Scully ponders ethical issues. She herself would have made the same call as Dr. W in treating Lynette, but now perhaps it's "not so clear-cut." Mulder asks if it's because she now believes Peattey could saved his daughter, but Scully walks away enigmatically.

Whose hospital room is this? We now see it's Peattey's. He's lying asleep in the bed, with a tube sticking out of his mouth.