“Invocation” is episode five of season eight of The X-Files.
There’s a fair on at Webster Elementary School in Dexter, Oklahoma. A boy on the swings, Billy, is calling for his pregnant mother to watch him. She isn’t paying attention but someone else is. When the mother turns around, Billy is gone, and the watcher drops his backpack.
Ten years later, the mother arrives at the same school to be told by her second son, Josh, that she’s wanted. The principal says he’s been trying to call her. Billy is on the swing. He is identical to how he was 10 years earlier.
At Dexter Community Hospital, Scully is examining Billy whilst Doggett is talking to the sheriff. The sheriff confirms that it’s Billy, but how can that be? Doggett doesn’t know. The sheriff says nobody saw Billy return, and he hasn’t said a word since. They have got lots of case files, but never even had a suspect.
Scully enters; Billy is a healthy 7-year-old boy. Who was born 17 years ago. Billy’s parents want to take him home but Doggett says not yet. He takes something in and tries to get Billy to talk, so they can catch the man who did this. In exchange for a name, he offers Billy his backpack. Billy’s mother is not impressed with this.
Scully isn’t pleased either. Doggett says he knows the horror stories of child abductions; Scully tells him this is a biological impossibility. That’s Scully’s area, according to Doggett; Doggett just wants to catch the person who took Billy. Doggett is ignoring the fact that Billy hasn’t aged in ten years.
Billy is taken home, but the family dog is very disturbed by Billy and Josh does too.
At the hospital, Scully tells Doggett that she spoke to Billy’s doctors and looked at his charts. Billy is the same boy that was taken ten years ago. Exactly the same. There are no changes. Doggett asks how can that be possible. He’s told it can’t be. Scully mentions similar cases, such as alien abductions; Doggett isn’t impressed. Scully isn’t saying she can explain this, but it’s definitely not normal.
Doggett is interested in Ronald Purnell, who was detained, questioned and then dismissed when Billy disappeared. Purnell is the watcher. Doggett has got access to Purnell’s juvenile records. His sealed records that he isn’t supposed to have. Scully tells him he’s breaking the law. Doggett is willing to do whatever it takes to catch the guy responsible.
Billy is tucked into bed, but gets up when his mother leaves. His parents are talking; his father is disturbed by Billy. Billy has a large knife and is heading into Josh’s room. Perhaps the father is right to be disturbed.
Doggett heads to speak to Purnell. He asks if Purnell remembers Billy. Purnell eventually says he does. Doggett wonders if Billy will remember him too. They can go see Billy, see what he says. Purnell asks where. Anywhere Purnell wants. Purnell thinks Doggett isn’t making much sense.
Billy’s mother can’t find him in his room. She finds Josh in bed, a bloody knife stuck in the bed next to him, with Billy watching.
The sheriff tells Doggett and Scully that the blood on the knife is Billy’s blood. Neither boy had an injury. The father has never seen the knife before. He’s not a hunter and it’s a knife only suited to cleaning animals. Or killing people. Scully thinks Billy should be removed to an institution. He’s not a normal child. Doggett disagrees; he thinks the knife is an attempt to communicate. Scully wants to know what the message could possibly be. There’s also a symbol on the knife’s hilt. The sheriff says it’s weird; a police psychic they called in came up with the same symbol. And Scully remembers Billy was drawing it.
Doggett is treating this like a normal child abduction case, despite the fact that it very clearly isn’t. He may have personal reasons. However, both him and Scully may have a point.