The X-Files (1993–…): Season 7, Episode 7 - Orison - full transcript

Five years have passed since Scully escaped from Donnie Pfaster, an obsessed death fetishist. When Reverend Orison helps the madman escape from prison he immediately turns to the one that got away...Scully.

God's love will set us free.
And I believe...
if I pray for that love...
if I get down on my knees...
and allow God to enter my hardened, lonely, miserable heart
and change me through and through...
that miracle... will come.
Now, who here believes that with me?
Do you?
- Do you? - Yes, sir, I believe it.
Do you?
Well, believe... because God's love is not just some slogan.
It's a promise... straight to you from the Lord Almighty himself.
A promise paid for with the blood of his only begotten son,
Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
All you have to do... is believe.
Amen!
God's love will set you free.
Now, doesn't that just lift up your heart and make you want to say "Glory! Amen!"?
Glory! Amen!
Join with me. Allow the spirit of Jesus Christ
to show you the way up to our heavenly Father.
Glory! Amen!
Let God's love free you from your prison and deliver you to his side in Heaven.
Glory! Amen!
Praise his name. Praise his holy love. Glory! Amen!
Glory! Amen!
- Glory! Amen! - Glory! Amen!
Glory. Amen. Glory. Amen.
Glory. Amen. Glory. Amen...
Do you believe that, Donnie? God loves a sack of crap like you?
The Bible says.
The Bible says you kill women, out their pinkies, you get to burn in hell.
- You listening to me? - Glory. Amen.
God's got a place for you, all right, you sick puke.
Then where's that leave you?
Sorry. It's not good enough for the Illinois penal system.
My hands! My hands!
Life without chance of parole for the premeditated and sadistic sexual murders
of five Twin Cities women in 1994.
Donald Addie Pfaster.
You two put this man away.
Yeah. Someone forgot to throw away the key.
That's another story. We have to apprehend this man.
We'd use your help in understanding who it is we're after.
Donnie Pfaster is a death fetishist.
A collector of bone and flesh, toenails and hair.
- It's what floats his boat, gets him off. - He's a sick man.
We found women's fingers in his freezer. He liked to eat them with peas and carrots.
- So it's just women he's after? - Just women.
Five years in here thinking about that. He's worked up quite an appetite.
I happen to know you two agents have a thing for the supernatural.
The circumstances of the escape...
There is nothing supernatural about this man.
Donnie Pfaster is just plain evil.
Case closed.
You didn't look at the file, did you?
- A man escaped from prison. - Not a man. Donnie Pfaster.
He didn't just escape. He walked out of a maximum-security facility
and no one seems to know how.
- Isn't that why we're here? - That's why I'm here.
I don't know about you.
Why are you here?
- Go home, Scully. - Mulder, this case doesn't bother me.
The man abducted you.
Donnie Pfaster did a number on your head like I've never seen. It's OK to... walk away.
Mulder, that man does things to people that no one should ever have to think about.
It's not a question of if I should stay. I don't have a choice.
So let's get to work.
Well, this isn't the first incident.
Two prisoners have escaped from facilities in neighbouring states over the past year.
At 6.06 this morning Donnie Pfaster made it three.
6.06?
What's so supernatural about that?
Dozens of witnesses, guards and staff, and no one seems to remember anything.
They didn't know they were missing.
- Were they apprehended? - They haven't been seen again.
I already told the warden everything I know... everything I saw that day.
Yes, but I'm still a little confused. Maybe you could go over it again.
- I'm a Christian man. - Then you'll tell me the truth.
Yeah. But I got no idea about Donnie Pfaster... or how he broke out.
You and Donnie were in the garment shop at the time he disappeared.
It wasn't just me. There was a lot of us.
Yeah, but you had something happen. You had an incident.
Yeah. Something like that.
You cried out to the guards that you'd cut your hands.
My fingers, man. I saw them all cutoff.
- Others saw them, too. - I felt them cut off.
- How do you explain that? - God works in mysterious ways, brother.
Glory. Amen.
Glory. Amen.
Glory. Amen.
Posthypnotic suggestion. Did you see him?
Did I see him raise his foot? Yes. I saw that.
Programmed behaviour, prompted by suggestion -
a rhythmic motion of the hands, producing an unconscious act in a conscious state.
Doesn't work on you.
- I know what hypnosis is. - Group hypnosis.
If you're suggesting Donnie escaped from prison
using a technique from a Vegas lounge act, I'd think again.
Mesmer was able to hypnotize entire audiences.
So, how would Donnie have acquired this ability?
I'm not saying that it was Donnie.
- Then who? - Three inmates missing from three prisons.
One man has had possible contact with each of those cons. The prison chaplain.
"Glory. Amen."
Not God, the chaplain.
Scully, what?
That song, can you hear that?
Barely.
I haven't heard it since high school. That's the second time in the last hour.
I think if it was a make-out song, it'd be ruined for ever now, huh?
Looking for something to eat?
- Me? - How about today's special?
- You aren't a narc, are ya? - No.
- You're looking at my hands. - You need a buff and polish.
What are you? A freak?
I... I just got out of prison.
Hey, Missy. Leave the customers alone!
I'll do it for free.
You just got out of prison, and you want to give me a manicure?
I'll even do your cuticles.
You receive the Lord's grace and this is your thanks?
What?
Who do you think got you out of prison?
I don't care. I'm busy right now.
The grace of God got you out, and it's the only thing that will keep you out.
- I thought you were kidding. - He's chosen you, Donnie.
Later.
- You called them on me. - No.
- Then do something. - I have a car.
- We aren't going to make it to the car. - It's within his power.
Glory. Amen.
Glory. Amen.
- Was he here? - Well, um... we're trying to determine that.
- Did you see him? - Well, that's a good question.
We thought we saw something, but apparently we didn't.
We got a call about a possible sighting of the suspect.
- Well, something happened here, huh? - A guy got hit by a car.
Prison chaplain, it turns out. A Reverend Orison.
Paramedics took him to the hospital. He's in bad shape.
Excuse me, uh, could you turn that up, please?
Yeah.
You're lucky to be alive, Reverend Orison.
- Who are you? - Special Agent Dana Scully.
Believe in the Lord, Agent Scully. He believes in you.
That's nice. My partner and I are more concerned with several disappearances
from maximum-security facilities that involve you.
Don't be concerned. God has them.
What do you mean?
Reverend?
- You're a believer, aren't you? - This has nothing to do with me.
It has everything to do with you. You have faith... have had faith.
You hear him calling you, but you're unsure what to do.
It's not exactly a long shot, sir.
You stand as you do now, neither here nor there.
Longing, but afraid. Waiting for a sign.
When the signs are everywhere.
What happened to the inmates, sir?
Everything has a reason, Scout.
Everything on God's earth.
Every moment of every day, the Devil waits for but an instant.
As it is, it has always been.
The Devil's instant is our eternity.
The good reverend. How do you do? Or maybe I should say "How do you do it?"
His is the word. I am but the messenger who delivers it.
Well, this delivery arrived a little late.
A little late and a little cold, as a matter of fact.
I thought you'd want to see it.
- What is this? - Blood of the Lamb, Reverend.
The handiwork of Mr Donnie Pfaster - a young girl he picked up at the bus stop.
- Oh, Lord. - Where is he, Reverend?
He took my car.
- She wasn't supposed to die. - No, Donnie was supposed to die.
You were supposed to kill him. That's why you freed him.
God knows you're capable of it.
Reverend Orison is really Robert Gailen Orison,
convicted in of first-degree murder. Served 22 years in Soledad.
God spoke to me. He told me to look after Donnie.
When God spoke to you, Reverend,
did he happen to mention where Donnie was headed?
- Where are you going, Mulder? - To prove that man's a liar.
How do you prove that somebody isn't being directed by God?
- You don't believe that it happens? - God is a spectator. He reads box scores.
- I don't believe that. - You think God directs that man? To kill?
Donnie isn't dead. We don't know that the other inmates who escaped are dead.
So what? You think that God directs him to... let the prisoners out to kill?
No. But I believe that the reverend believes what he's saying.
- That it's God working through him. - Well, plenty of nutbags do.
Has he ever spoken to you?
- I'm trying not to take offense. - What did he say?
Mulder, I have heard that song three times now.
That may not mean anything to you, but it does to me.
- What does it mean? - I never thought about it before.
It never meant anything, until yesterday when it made me remember something.
What?
When I was 13, my father was stationed in San Diego.
I was listening to that song when my mother came in
and told me that my Sunday-school teacher had been killed.
Oh.
He'd been murdered in his front yard.
And that's the first time that I ever felt that there was real evil in the world.
Mulder, Reverend Orison called me "Scout".
The same name my Sunday-school teacher called me.
Donnie Pfaster escaped from prison at 6.06 a.m.
That's the same time that I woke up yesterday morning
when my power went out.
So what do you think that God is telling you?
All right. Come with me, Scout. I'll show you how the reverend talks to God.
Police are involved in a manhunt for a prisoner who escaped
in Marion, Illinois.
He was last seen driving a green Chevrolet Impala with a black landau top.
He is described as six-feet tall, medium build...
It's a cerebral oedema.
A swelling of the brain.
A trauma not uncommon with this kind of accident.
Except this isn't accidental. The cause, as it was stated to me, is self-inflicted.
There's a small hole in the skull which allows oxygen into the brain cavity.
The reverend has three times the normal blood volume pumping through his brain.
- And he did this himself? - Yeah.
He probably did it when he first got into prison.
- When he learned how to use its powers. - Its powers?
There's a theory that at this point in human evolution
our mental capabilities are limited by inadequate blood supply.
Centuries ago, in the Peruvian Andes, holy men used to remove parts of their skulls
to increase blood volume. Or drill small holes.
This hole in his head enables Reverend Orison to help these prisoners escape?
The practitioners of this found that they could perform certain mental tricks.
One of which they called "stopping the world".
Nobody can do that. I don't care how many holes they have.
But maybe they can alter perception,
creating a disparate reality which they project through hypnosis.
But why? I mean, even if he could, why?
Donnie is serving a life sentence, without possibility of parole.
That's the final judgment of society.
But not in the eyes of God. Or in the eyes of a man who thinks he's God's tool.
Well, if Reverend Orison meant to kill Donnie Pfaster, then why is he still alive?
Maybe he unleashed something he couldn't control.
Maybe he thought he was opening the door of perception,
but then, unwittingly, he... opened the gates of hell.
- What? - Glory. Amen.
Glory. Amen.
Glory. Amen.
- Are you Donald? - Yes.
I'm from Tip Top Gentlemen's Service.
- This isn't your place, is it? - No. Why?
Cos I was coming up and got stopped by the landlord, like it's any of his business.
He told me some Reverend Orison lives here.
- Now, you ain't no preacher, are you? - No.
Good. They always like the weirdest things.
You know what I mean?
- You OK? - Yes.
Something you want to say?
Love your hair.
What are you doin'?
- Is your hair chemically treated? - My hair?
- I don't know which product to use. - No, you're not using no product.
My hair's clean. If you're gonna be weird about it, I ought to leave.
I'm being a gentleman.
Well, he a gentleman and get me a towel. I'm gonna get outta here.
It's a wig.
They lied to me.
You lied to me!
Where did he go?
Marshal?
- Marshal? - What?
The prisoner. The man you were guarding. What happened to him?
He's gone, Scully. 80's the marshal's gun.
You didn't see him?
Let's go, Scully.
- What is it? - What does this mean?
- Did you tell him? - No, I only told you.
He must have... overheard us when we were talking in the hallway.
- I didn't mention the name of the song. - You did.
No, I'm sure I didn't, Mulder.
Well... maybe this was meant for you.
"Don't look any further."
"Whosoever sheddeth man's blood...
by man shall his blood be shed."
- What are you doing? - Taking you home.
The wicked... will be punished.
Pray for God's love, Donnie.
Find the humility in yourself to allow God into your heart.
All you have to do is believe.
Repent. You'll feel God's love come to show you the way to his heavenly kingdom.
- Are you sorry for what you've done? - You...
- What did you say? - Never... no... no...
- Why are you crying? - I can't... I can't...
Beg his forgiveness for what you did.
For what you did to all those poor, helpless girls.
My violence is always waiting... for an instant.
For when his back is turned.
You can see it now.
Are you crying for your sins? Or for yourself?
No, Reverend. I cry for you...
because you cannot kill me.
You know, it's funny, when all is said and done, there's...
not much mystery in murder.
And for that I owe you an apology, Mulder.
What do you mean?
Well, you were right. I was looking too hard for connections that weren't there.
Orison was a murderer, plain and simple.
He liberated prisoners so he could bring them here, pass judgment.
I guess in his own twisted way he was making good with his god.
"Glory. Amen." Let's go home, Scully.
You know. Donnie Pfaster placed the call to the police that led us out here.
It's like he's begging us to hunt him down.
This X-file is over... lying dead there in a grave he dug himself.
Let's let the US Marshals take over from here.
Don't look any further, Scully.
Fox Mulder. Leave a message after the...
Agent Mulder, Marshal Joe Daddo in Marion.
Just talked to a call girl who ID'd Donnie as an attacker.
Claims Pfaster got upset when she was wearing a red wig.
Upset she wasn't a redhead. This mean anything to you? Appreciate a call back.
Go back to hell!
- Who does your nails, girly girl? - Let me go!
The only reason you're alive is because I asked the judge for life!
The only reason is because we didn't kill you when we could!
You're the one that got away.
- You're all I think about. - I'm a federal agent.
You do anything to me and they will not give you a break this time.
I'm going to run you a bath.
Now be good, and don't cause me any problems.
Put 'em up!
Did he hurt you?
- Excuse me. - Yeah. Sure.
If you want to pack some things, we can get out of here.
Yeah.
You can't judge yourself.
- Maybe I don't have to. - The Bible allows for vengeance.
But the law doesn't.
The way I see it... he didn't give you a choice.
And my report will reflect that... in case you're worried.
Donnie Pfaster would have surely killed again if given the chance.
He was evil, Mulder.
I'm sure about that without a doubt. But there's one thing that I'm not sure of.
- What's that? - Who was at work in me?
Or what?
What made me...
What made me pull the trigger?
You mean, if it was God?
I mean... what if it wasn't?
I made this!