“Theef” is episode fourteen of season seven of The X-Files.
In Marin County, California, a family arrive home at a nice house. Dr. Robert Wieder, the father, has just received an award. He invites his father-in-law, Dr. Irving Thalbro, to stay the night. Irving accepts. Irving turns down his covers to find a humanoid shape in dirt on his bed. There’s a man behind him. Wieder wakes up in the night as a motion sensor has gone off. He heads downstairs and sees Irving. When he touches Irving, the latter’s body swings around. Irving is suspended from the ceiling with his throat cut and ‘Theef’ has been written on the wall in his blood.
Mulder asks Scully what she thinks the word means. She thinks it means ‘thief.’ But who is the thief? Scully has a question; well, many. Mulder thinks it’s ‘Why are they here?’ Scully might have used that but rather, how is this an X-file? Mulder says that Irving’s throat was cut but his family didn’t see or hear anything. Suspicion would fall on them, but they called it in. There’s no evidence they killed Irving and, if Irving killed himself, who wrote on the wall? Scully admits this isn’t an open and shut case, but that doesn’t make it an X-file. Mulder has something that does. The dirt in Irving’s bed. A very powerful component in hexcraft as well as the pattern it was originally arranged in. A curse; murder magic. Scully will accept that; it jibes with the evidence. They speak to the family. Irving had no enemies and Wieder knows of none either.
At a room rental place in Foster City, a woman is cleaning the carpet. She then knocks on the door of a tenant, Peattie, and tells him he isn’t supposed to be cooking. Peattie, the man from earlier, answers the door and asks if it smells like something she’d want to eat. It’s medicine. Peattie offers a poultice for the woman’s back, then gets back to making a poppet. One of several. One is hanging from a wire.
Scully is looking at something in a microscope when Mulder enters. The dirt was graveyard dirt; conjure dust. One of the most powerful hexing elements, for good or evil. Scully has discovered something too. Irving had kuru. The disease New Guinea tribesmen get from eating the brains of their relatives. Practically speaking, it doesn’t exist anymore. Yet Irving clearly shows signs of it. It makes you crazy, crazy enough to slit your own throat and hang yourself. Scully thinks Irving killed himself. Mulder thinks he was given the disease.
Mrs Wieder notices a family photo missing from a frame. Peattie is in the house. Wieder thinks the police must have taken the photograph. Peattie is placing Mrs Wieder’s head, taken from the photo, in a poppet. Wieder is reassuring his wife when he turns down the bed and there’s another figure in dirt. Mrs Wieder collapses, suffering from something very rapidly.
Mulder and Scully arrive at the medical centre and speak to Dr Wieder. He tells them the disease his wife has. Mulder hasn’t heard of it but guesses it’s rare. Scully says yes. Unheard of in San Francisco. Maybe in central Africa. Mulder tells Wieder someone is using folk magic against Wieder. Not Baba Yaga and gypsies. More Cletic and Native American. Mulder tells the doctor that treatments won’t make a difference. Wieder isn’t convinced.
Wieder is looking at his wife’s X-rays; ‘Theef’ is written on them all. Peattie is behind him and tells him the truth always hurts. Wieder wants to know what the other wants. Lynette Peattie. Wider asks what makes him a thief. Peattie says he’s a smart man; he will figure it out.
Wieder checks to see if he treated anyone with that name, then moves onto Jane Does. There were three. In the file of one is a small piece of embroidered fabric. Including the phrase ‘theef.’
Wieder is being blamed by Peattie for the death of the latter’s daughter. It’s hard to muster up much sympathy for Peattie, though, as the doctor is being unjustly blamed.