The Roulet House¶
The Roulet House is an isolated, abandoned Victorian-style house at 118 Benefit Street in Exeter, Rhode Island, where the task force wakes up hungover on Inauguration Day, 1993, and uncovers a double murder, a hidden intruder and a water supply that gives them hallucinations.
| Type | Location |
| Aliases | 118 Benefit Street; Roulet estate; the Rhode Island house; mailbox 118; the murder house |
| Region | Exeter, Rhode Island |
| Owners | Margaret Roulet and Mr. Roulet |
| First appearance | Roulet Estate 01 |
Description¶
The house is old, brick-heavy and poorly insulated, cold enough that the agents can see their breath indoors. Several of its rooms have fireplaces, and a search turns up no way into the attic. One window stands open with birds' nests in it. There is no power (Kurt concludes it is cut off at the street) and the taps are dry. A barn stands in the yard, and a driveway of about fifty feet winds around some trees to a forest road. A river runs through the woods. Andre puts the nearest significant town about two hours away on foot along a winding dirt road, or about an hour of hiking as the crow flies, and Pawtucket an hour and twenty-one minutes away (Roulet Estate 01, Roulet Estate 02).
The mailbox at the road reads 118. The owners' name is not spoken in Roulet Estate 01. In Roulet Estate 02, Andre recaps that the letter that brought the team came from a Keely Network contact whose friend Margaret Roulet had vanished after reporting "visitations" (Roulet Estate 02). The name is spelled both "Roulet" and "Roulette" in the episode.
Notable places within¶
- Living room. A television, a huge rack of VHS tapes and the combination-locked steel door of the weapons closet (Roulet Estate 01).
- Library. Shelves of books on aliens, some Scientology literature, and a partly coded handwritten notebook logging Grey sightings, lights over the house, lost time and feelings of being watched, ending in the fall of 1992. Andrew judges that the owners were a husband and wife who both believed in aliens, the wife more devoutly (Roulet Estate 01).
- Bedroom. Open suitcases and a safe that Kurt cracks, finding only the wedding photos. The bedroom doors have locks fitted on the inside (Roulet Estate 01, Roulet Estate 02).
- Kitchen, larder and a disused guest room (Roulet Estate 01).
- Roulet Basement. A dirt-floored cellar with a water heater, amateur wiring, a pile of broken appliances and a trash pit in which two bodies are buried (Roulet Estate 02).
- Barn. Locked with a bike lock, which the agents cut. It holds a riding lawnmower (the exact model Kurt owns at home), gardening supplies and a huge pile of crushed plastic water bottles (Roulet Estate 02).
- Hidden Attic Lair. Reached only through the secretly modified chimneys (Roulet Estate 02).
History of events there¶
Roulet Estate 01. The four agents wake on Inauguration Day, 1993, scattered through the dusty living room, with no memory of the night before. They find Diane asleep under a blanket in the back seat of their car, and a bald monk camped out in front with a frying pan of Spam. Kurt and the Biz glimpse a grey-faced figure peeking over the roof. Later a naked, spindly sniper in the woods shoots at the agents with a VSS rifle, hitting Huell in the shin and Andrew in the face; Andrew shrugs the shot off. The car's battery is missing and its phone is dead. Kurt hammers on the floor beside the steel door for about forty-five minutes and loses a minute of time, while Andrew glimpses a low streak of brilliant light through the trees. Andrew squeezes under the door and finds the weapons closet stripped bare (Roulet Estate 01).
Roulet Estate 02. Searching the basement for cutters, Kurt hallucinates veiny hands and a Vietnamese prison guard and empties his gun into the hole. What he shot is a withered human hand in a sleeve, wearing a ring that matches the one in the wedding photos. Further digging turns up parts of two bodies, too deteriorated to show a cause of death, with signs that something caustic was poured into the pit. A grey figure drives off in the agents' car. After a trip to the clown mansion to use a phone, Kurt lights a fire that fills the room with smoke and reveals notches inside the chimney, leading him and Andrew into the attic lair. A local officer confirms "that's two corpses", and a taxi takes the monk away to Pawtucket (Roulet Estate 02).
Roulet Estate 03. The agents are still at the house, still somewhat hungover and woozy from the water, when a young officer reports that their stolen car has been seen at a Brooks pharmacy in a town about 25 miles away. The siege there ends the mystery of the "alien", who proves to be a man in a mask, linked to the lair by beta blockers (Roulet Estate 03). The episodes never explain who killed the Roulets or when.
Inhabitants¶
- Margaret Roulet, identified by her ring as one of the bodies in the basement.
- Mr. Roulet, presumably the second body, though the episodes never confirm it. Andre describes "the gentleman of the house" as a firearms collector.
- The Roulet Intruder, who lived in the attic for at least a year.