“The Gift” is episode eleven of season eight of The X-Files.
A woman is screaming as a man is approaching her. An unseen man enters the house, which has a symbol painted on the door in blood, and shoots the apparent attacker, then leaves the house and gets in his car. It’s Mulder.
Doggett is in his car, remembering conversations he had with Scully about Mulder’s illness and saying Doggett would find him. He arrives at the sheriff’s station in Squamash, where the sheriff, Kurt Frey, greets him. Doggett explains that Mulder came up in spring looking for a missing woman, Marie Hangemuhl. Frey says Marie was not exactly missing and Mulder wasn’t exactly investigating. She never left the house; her sister became excited over nothing. Doggett says his interest is in Mulder, not the case, as he’s disappeared. Did Mulder have a personal connection here? Frey thinks not. Phone records show that Mulder returned to Squamash a week before he disappeared.
The first stop is the Hangemuhls’ house. The husband, Paul, is going off on one until Frey reassures him that Doggett is investigating Mulder. Marie had told her sister she was going to disappear. Paul says they had a fight, that’s all, she was going to leave. Marie agrees. Mulder had believed that something was coming to the house and perhaps still is. In the present. Doggett asks if they saw Mulder again. No, he never came back. Doggett says that according to records he did. Doggett also notices something and asks if it’s a dialysis machine. It is; Marie is sick. Paul insists that there’s nothing to the case, just stories, an old Indian folk legend about a creature that lives out in the woods. One that was coming to eat Marie, according to Mulder.
As Doggett and the sheriff leave, Doggett asks if either of the Hangemuhls own a gun. No; why? Doggett saw three holes that had been plastered over. Possibly gunshot holes. Doggett returns to Washington and searches Mulder’s apartment, eventually finding a gun under the sink.
It looks like a grave is being exhumed in Squamash, on the orders of the sheriff. Only it lacks a gravestone; just a symbol laid out in rocks that matches the one at the beginning.
Doggett is at the FBI’s firearms unit when Skinner arrives. Doggett asks if Skinner was aware Mulder had a second gun. Yes; a Walther PPK (a gun associated with James Bond) in an ankle holster. Doggett found it hidden under Mulder’s sink with three rounds missing. Three shots were fired in a house and Mulder never filed a report on the case or one on shooting his weapon. His report showed he was in Washington; his phone records showed he was in Pennsylvania. The gun has blowback; Mulder shot someone at close range. Skinner isn’t happy with Doggett’s line of questioning and suggests he asks Scully. Doggett can’t; Scully signed off on the reports. Skinner says if Doggett takes this to the OPR, it could cost Scully her job. Doggett isn’t taking it to the OPR; he’s taking it to Skinner.
The sheriff leads a group of armed men with dogs to a cabin. He says that whoever inside has two minutes to bring it out or they come in. A woman comes out; when questioned, she says it’s dead. Frey disagrees; it’s here. She lied to them. A man runs away, but is caught and bundled into an improvised cell on the back of a truck.
Skinner and Doggett arrive at the sheriff’s, which is empty. Then Frey arrives; he says he was out hunting and turned off his radio. He’s asked about the death certificate he filed at the county seat for an unidentified transient. A local woman found a body in the woods; no suspect, no motives. Days after Mulder saw the Hangemuhls. They want to know where the body is buried.
In the now-empty grave the sheriff dug up. Which Doggett thinks the sheriff must have done after Doggett spoke to him. Doggett jumps down and finds a tunnel dug away from the coffin. Skinner asks, if the body was unidentified, why the stones were left on the grave.
Paul Hangemuhl is painting the same symbol on his door in chicken blood when the sheriff arrives, along with their prisoner. It’s time.
Mulder definitely shot someone, but it also seems like they didn’t remain dead. Doggett is determined to find out why Mulder did what he did. He can’t ask Scully, because she’s implicated, so Scully doesn’t appear at all.