“Via Negativa” is episode seven of season eight of The X-Files.
A man asleep in a car is woken up by someone knocking on his window. It seems the first is on a stakeout and the second, his partner, has just woken him up. The house they were watching now has its front door open. Heading over, they see bloody footprints leading inside and, in one room, everyone is dead in bed, their heads split open. There’s a sound and the partner heads to check. There’s a man with an axe behind him. The first man hears shots, then finds his partner dead the same way as the others. The man with the axe has a third eye in his forehead and lifts the axe to strike.
Doggett is woken up by Scully calling him; Skinner has a situation. There’s an agent dead. Odd; there were two agents. The agent was surveilling a religious cult in Pittsburgh. The followers are dead and they need to determine what happened. Scully can’t make it; something has come up. She says she’s fine. Scully is calling from a hospital, so perhaps that’s not entirely true.
At the scene, Skinner explains to Doggett that this was routine surveillance. The agent who was asleep in his car, James Leeds, is still in the car. Which was locked from the inside. Doggett says the killing couldn’t have happened there; there’s not enough room to swing a weapon. Leeds’s gun is still holstered. The key is in the ignition. It looked like Leeds fell asleep. Doggett thinks this is weird.
Skinner says it gets weirder. All 20 followers in the house are dead the same way. Only one member of the cult is missing, the leader, Anthony Tipet. A convicted murderer who claimed he’d found God. Skinner didn’t think this was an apocalyptic cult. The bodies are being tested for drugs. They can’t locate Leeds’s partner; he wasn’t staying in the same hotel. Doggett knows the man; he has a condo in Pittsburgh as he’s from the city. They head to the condo and find the door chained from the inside. The agent is dead in bed. Even though it looked like he was killed in the house.
Skinner and Doggett head to a briefing for Kersh and others. Skinner explains that Tipet believed a drug, Tabernanthe iboga, could be used to get closer to God using the via negativa, the negative way. Skinner suggests that maybe Tipet succeeded in his attempt to have his consciousness leave his body. Kersh asks if that explanation came from Scully. Doggett replies Scully has yet to come to a conclusion. Outside the office, Doggett tells Skinner he didn’t appreciate an X-Files angle being brought up without warning.
Tipet finds a phone and a homeless man asks him for change; Tipet scares him away. He calls someone called Andre, who leaves the phone to go to tape. Tipet claims Andre did this. After the call, Andre starts cutting his forehead.
The coroner’s report says everyone was killed with an axe. But not one that matches any known make or model. Doggett has found a ceremonial axe, used to cleave the skull of unbelievers, in writings the cult was required to read. However, the axe is on permanent display in the Calcutta Museum. Doggett thinks Scully should be investigating. Skinner says Scully is taking personal time and prevents him from calling.
The homeless man who spoke to Tipet wakes to find Tipet with a third eye. He’s swallowed by the ground and the axe swung at his head. Skinner arrives at Doggett’s to tell him about this. Doggett doesn’t think Tipet’s spirit is going around killing people. And, if he’s looking for God, why is he killing people? Good question. Doggett wants something concrete and they have; the log from the payphone shows a call to an Andre Bormanis, convicted for dealing drugs and a man who served time with Tipet.
Bormanis has a cross cut in his forehead when they arrive. He says he isn’t doing anything illegal; the hallucinogen Tipet used is a way to plumb the depths of the soul. No-one else had the strength to take it. The cross is for protection.
Doggett meets the Lone Gunmen for the first time. This goes surprisingly well. It looks like Tipet doesn’t want to kill people, but the drug has caused problems. And Doggett gets his convictions about the non-existence of the supernatural shaken rather badly.