“Elegy” is episode twenty-two of season four of The X-Files.
The episode opens at Angie’s Midnight Bowl in Washington, D.C., and one man is cleaning up as another is carefully putting the shoes away. The first tells the second, Harold, to go home. Harold says he isn’t done yet. The other tells Harold he should have gone home already and it’s not so difficult, quickly putting the shoes away. Harold gets upset and yells that he’s not done yet. The other tells him that it’s past Harold’s bedtime and the doctors will be worried. He did a good job; now go home.
After Harold goes, one of the lanes starts racking. The man presses the reset button and a ball returns. There’s what looks like blood on it. He heads down the lane and sees blood where the pins are. Looking up, he sees a grey woman entangled in the mechanism, trying to say something. The man goes to call the police, but two cars are already pulling up outside. He runs out to tell them there’s a woman in the building, bleeding. However, the police have been called out to a murder, a young woman with her throat slit. The same woman he saw inside.
Mulder is looking at the lane’s mechanism with the first man, the owner, Angelo Pintero, when Scully joins them. The mechanism is damaged, which would only happen if considerable weight was put on it. Pintero explains he saw a woman caught in the machinery with her throat cut and blood pooling. Both body and blood were gone when he returned. It was the same woman as the one in the parking lot. Scully doesn’t seem impressed. Pintero says he’s not making this up; he saw the look on Scully’s face. Mulder asks for a soda.
When Pintero leaves, Mulder asks Scully what that look is. She thinks that by now he’d know exactly what that look is. Mulder says this is the third reported sighting and there have been three murders. Each time, the victim appeared near the crime scene, trying to communicate. Pintero returns with the drink, which Mulder pours under the pins. ‘She is Me’ is written there.
Mulder and Scully attend a briefing by a detective on the murders. Mulder whispers something to Scully and the detective, Hudak, asks if Mulder has something to share. He does; the FBI model will not work in this case. What about the bowling alley lead? Calling it a fetch or a wraith probably doesn’t help. He also asks if ‘She is Me’ has any meaning. The detective says no. There was a 911 call where those words were said, though. Not by the victim; her larynx had been severed and she couldn’t say anything. Hudak will give Mulder the number; he can follow up.
The number leads to New Haven Psychiatric Centre. The residents are asked, but none seems to know anything useful. One of them is, however, Harold. Mulder wants to talk to him. Scully is looking at the crime scene photos afterwards; she has noticed that rings have been changed to different fingers on each. It could be an obsessive-compulsive disorder. Mulder doesn’t think the killer is in the centre, but he thinks the person who made the call is, Harold. Harold doesn’t react much until Mulder asks if he has ever seen a ghost. Then, he gets upset.
Harold suffers from the disorder Scully mentioned, as well as atypical autism. Mulder is sure he’s the person who made the phone call, not the killer. Harold is at the centre voluntarily and can come and go as he pleases. Scully suffers a nosebleed whilst she and Mulder are talking. She goes to the washroom to clean up and, after looking down, looks up and sees ‘She is Me’ written in blood on the mirror. Then hears something and finds a grey young woman with her throat slit. Mulder asks if she’s okay and the ghost and the message disappear. He tells her there’s been another murder, half a block away.
The woman is the same one Scully saw, though she doesn’t share this. The ring has been switched as well. She’s been dead less than an hour, but this doesn’t rule out Harold, as he somehow got out of the centre. Mulder thinks they should find him. Scully wants to go and get checked up.
Harold is seeing the ghosts of the dead and Scully goes to the hospital to get her tumour checked on, then sees the FBI therapist. Mulder’s theory about why certain people are able to see the ghosts of the dead does not make her happy.