Gary said, “Ben, I know this is personal, but I have to ask, what’s it like being married to a werewolf?”
I was outed. Ben wasn’t. We looked at each other. With great interest, I waited for the answer. He pressed his lips in a wry smile, filled with everything he might say. What he did say when he looked back at Gary was, “It’s a howling good time, I suppose.”
Ben tried to wink at me. It looked kind of leering. I winced and shook my head. There were groans all the way around.
Tina gave Ben a narrow-eyed, suspicious look, like the one she wore at New Moon the other night, and like when she looked at me, as if she knew something, or at least suspected something. I really needed to talk to her privately.
The film crew asked Ben to wait in the van and had me get back in the car so they could film me stepping out and walking up to shake hands with Gary and company—twice. That was reality TV for you.
Gary filmed an opening narration while Matt and I taped my own introduction.
Gary spoke at his camera in the no-nonsense, explanatory tone his viewers had come to know and love. “The house was originally built by George Flint, a silver miner who struck it rich. He raised a family here, but they had a lot of tragedy in this house. One daughter died of pneumonia. A son was trampled by a horse right outside, about where the streetlight is now. The ghost stories started almost immediately.”
My own narration was a little different. And, I could admit, a little more sensationalist. “I’m here at Flint House, the house that kills people. Or maybe it’s just haunted. Or maybe it’s just stories. I’m here at the special invitation of Gary Janson of Paradox PI. I get to tag along while the crew tapes a show, and we’ll see if anything happens, and maybe get some insight into the world of paranormal investigation.”
We trooped into the house next. The interior was as sadly faded as the outside. It gave the impression that it had been beautiful, once: dark red carpeting, now worn down and threadbare; wood paneling gone black with age; peeling wallpaper; wires hanging out of holes where light fixtures should be. No evidence remained that this used to be anyone’s home.
It took a couple of hours to film the gang setting up all their equipment. Jules did a lot of the on-camera work, although a couple of off-camera assistants helped. Tina did her usual posing. Gary discussed timing with one of the show’s tech guys.
It all looked so much more tidy on the finished episodes.
I had my own thing going, following Gary around with a microphone, asking, “What’s this do? What’s this do? Why are you doing this?” Patient guy, was Gary.
Jules, not so much. “We’re not going to get anything with her babbling on,” he muttered. “We’re likely to scare off anything that’s here.”
I overheard and couldn’t help but comment. The cameras and my microphone were picking all this up for posterity, which pleased me immensely. “What? You’re afraid of scaring the house that kills people?”
“Would you stop calling it that?” he said, scowling.
“Am I going to offend it?”
“You might. If this place is haunted, nobody really knows why. Was there an original triggering event, unfinished business of the original owners? Or has the negative energy built up over the years? But if there is a presence here, you don’t want to aggravate it, do you?”
I shrugged. “We want to see some activity, right? Maybe we do want to rile it up a little.” Though based on what was happening in my own life right now, I ought to be a little more careful. I ought to be walking on eggshells.
And I really shouldn’t be standing in a house with a reputation for killing people. I suddenly wanted to step outside for some air.
All the monitors, heat sensors, cameras, and microphones were in place. We retreated to the Paradox PI van, set up in grand cinematic CIA glory. Banks of TV monitors relayed what the cameras showed us. Speakers hissed and cracked with static—background noise inside the house. But wouldn’t it be cool if chains started rattling and a voice moaned? Jules sat at the far end, headphones crammed over his ears, staring intently at a monitor. Tina sat nearby, a little less intent, gaze flicking from one screen to another. Gary sat with me. A smaller camera mounted in the interior recorded all.
As we approached midnight, my own show started broadcasting live. Which meant I got to watch everyone sitting around staring at monitors, and I had to describe it in a way that made it sound interesting. I whispered and hoped it came out sounding spooky and cool. During quiet moments, Matt could switch to my prerecorded interviews with the team to avoid dead air, then come back to the live broadcast if—when—anything happened.
“I’m in the Paradox PI command center looking at about a dozen TV monitors and waiting for something to happen. What? Can’t say. My expectations are completely open. Gary—you guys normally film the stakeout here in the van all night?”
We spoke in hushed voices. “You never know when something’s going to pop up, so, yeah. We tape it all and do a ton of editing.”
“Now, this may sound boring to you all at home, but it’s actually pretty exciting. There really is this sense that anything can happen. Would you say it’s like this every time, or does it get boring after a while?”
“It doesn’t really get boring, per se. We do this because we love it. We always hope we’ll get some good activity. But I’ll admit, we’ve staked out places that we’re pretty sure aren’t haunted—there’s a cat making noise, or some kind of electrical effect. In those cases we just want to get some evidence of what’s really going on, something we can show the owner to say, look, nothing’s here.”
“What do you think we’ll find tonight?”
He blew out a breath and shook his head, a gesture indicating that all bets were off. “I hesitate to make any guesses.”
“You’re preempting us,” Jules complained at one point. “This isn’t going to air on our show for a month.”
“Are you kidding?” I said. “All my listeners are going to be dying to watch your show to see what this really looks like. Your ratings will triple.”
“You have that many listeners?” Gary said.
“Er . . . maybe?” Actually, I probably exaggerated a bit. The ratings of a cult radio show like mine didn’t amount to much against a popular cable show like theirs. But I knew after listening to all this, I’d want to watch the show.
Nothing happened. I had a schedule to keep. I could sit here and make observations, such as how much patience it took to be a real paranormal investigator, and prompt the crew for comments for maybe twenty minutes before this all become intolerably boring. So, before then, I’d head out to my own van and take a few calls to shake things up a little.
I was glancing at my watch, thinking, Just another minute, but Gary and I had been reduced to trading war stories. I had resisted bringing up my one and only ghostly encounter, because it was personal, and it wasn’t even a ghost, not the way they defined ghosts. When you sensed the spirit of your dead best friend hovering, looking out for you in times of crisis or uncertainty—that was just wishful thinking, wasn’t it? Even when a professional medium tells you it isn’t your imagination.
I wondered if they knew a way to summon T.J.’s ghost to tell Peter what had really happened to him. A good old-fashioned séance, like the kind Harry Houdini liked to debunk.
“You guys do séances, right?” I said. “I was just thinking about the Harry Houdini episode you did. Trying to contact him.”
The three exchanged glances, sharing an inside joke shorthand like I’d seen them do before. Brows raised, I waited for an explanation.
Gary said, “We don’t do traditional séances—”
“Depends on what you call traditional séances, there, mate,” Jules said.
“What if I want to talk to a specific dead person?” I said.
“Because you saw how well the Houdini episode worked out,” Tina said.
Jules leaned forward and pointed his hand like he was going to start an argument wi
th Tina, who had a “bring it on” look in her eyes, but Gary gestured and they both calmed down.
“While there’ve been lots of documented incidents that suggest communication with the Other Side”—he really did say it like it had capital letters—“is possible, it’s not as simple as making a phone call.”
I said, “Oh, I don’t want to make a phone call, I just want—”
“Did you hear that?” Tina said, straightening, her eyes growing round.
We went silent, and a beat later, a noise came over the speakers, a series of thumps like a body rolling down the stairs. Everyone leaned toward the monitors. Jules cranked up the volume on a piece of equipment.
But I watched Tina. Because none of us had heard anything before she asked the question. There hadn’t been anything. So—had she heard it before it happened?
Matt came over my own headset, his voice tense, hushed. Scared, even. “That came through on the broadcast, Kitty. Everyone heard it.”
Okay. Cool. I didn’t say anything. I cringed inwardly at the silence, anathema on the radio. But this wasn’t a talk show anymore, this was drama, and we all waited to see what would happen next.
After a tense moment, the talking started.
“You recorded it?” Gary said.
Jules flipped a couple of switches, peering at the equipment through his glasses. “Yeah, of course.”
“There’s nothing on the cameras,” Tina said, checking all the monitors. “I was looking right at the staircase, there was nothing.”
“So nothing fell. Nothing’s out of place.” Another manic search of all the screens.
I asked Tina, “What did you hear?”
“What do you mean, what did I hear?” She pointed at the speaker. “That thudding. Like something falling over on the stairs. You all heard it.”
“No, I mean before you said anything. What did you hear that made you ask if we’d heard it? Because I know I have better hearing than anyone here, and I didn’t hear anything before you spoke.”
Now everyone was looking at her.
“Tina has good hearing,” Gary said after a moment.
“Not as good as mine,” I said, my smile a bit toothy. A bit lupine. “She’s not a werewolf.”
Gary said, “Tina? Did you actually hear it before it happened?”
The ratings hound in me was jumping up and down. Had I scooped a story here? Was I about to expose one of the Paradox PI crew as actually being paranormal herself? Clairvoyant or something? How cool would that be? I still needed to ask her about what she saw when she looked at me, at Ben.
But Tina was stricken, looking back and forth between her colleagues and shrinking as far as she could against the wall of the van.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe I saw something on the monitors. Whatever made the noise, I must have seen it. We’ll go over the footage later. It’ll be there.”
But we’d all been looking at the monitors. Nobody saw anything.
“Can we talk about this later?” she said, almost shrill.
Another thumping came over the speakers, drawing us back to the task at hand. It sounded like the first noise, a rapid, arrhythmic series of hollow thumps, like something falling, or like a herd of children running downstairs.
“Shit,” Jules murmured. The hairs on the back of my head stood up. I quelled an instinct to run.
“Do random, unidentifiable noises like this happen often?” I whispered to Gary.
Slowly, he shook his head. “It never happens like this.”
It came louder, and closer, if that was possible, rattling the speakers. Still, nothing appeared on the monitors. No visible source in the house was producing the noises. In defiance of the laws of physics, these noises seemed to come from nowhere.
The thudding grew louder again, until the van started vibrating, like now the children were running on our roof. I could feel it in my bones.
“Is it an earthquake?” Jules said. “Maybe it’s not the house at all.”
“Does Colorado get earthquakes?” Gary asked. His voice was taut, anxious.
“Sort of,” I said. “Little tiny ones. You can’t actually feel them.”
“I’ve lived in LA for ten years,” Tina said. “This isn’t an earthquake.”
Something odd occurred to me. “What if it’s just the speakers?”
“What?” Jules said.
“The speakers. Unplug the speakers.”
Jules and Tina were still gawking at me like I’d sprouted a second head, so I lunged over them and pulled at the speaker units mounted above the bank of monitors. Custom jobbies, wires looped into the back of them.
Of course, either way, pulling the wires would stop the noise. Right?
We still didn’t see anything on the monitors, which were bouncing on their shelves now. The noise had changed to a steady pounding, like someone was beating on the van. This wasn’t happening on the house—this was happening right here.
I almost had to shout. “The other option is to go into the house and see if this is going on in there, too,” I said, growing exasperated. I was ready to pile out of the van myself, one way or the other.
When no one said anything, I yanked the wires.
The beating, pounding, thudding noise stopped.
We all held our breaths, waiting for it to start again.
Jules’s shoulders slumped. He grabbed the speaker out of my hand. “Don’t tell me that was an equipment malfunction? Christ.”
In the midst of grumbling, I paused, nostrils flaring. I smelled something. It pinged a memory, but I couldn’t quite catch it. Something recent. Something bad, dangerous—
Sulfur and fire. Brimstone. Attack in the forest. In the back of my brain, Wolf howled.
I bit back a growl and lunged for the door.
“Hey—”
The van tipped over.
Chaos rocked us, objects falling, monitors smashing, bodies tumbling. People shouted, cried out with surprise. I wrapped my arms around my head, over the headset I was still wearing. Then movement stopped. We ended up sprawled on the van’s side, picking ourselves out of the mess of shelving and gear that had been stored there.
I didn’t wait. I could move, I didn’t hurt, except for the panic and anger burning in my gut. I lunged for the back door, shoved it open, and spilled out.
The van was on its side, in the middle of the street. The windshield had smashed, spreading sparkling pebbles of glass across the asphalt. The metal side looked slightly crumpled, as if there’d been a collision. One of the tires was spinning slowly.
Matt and Ben were jumping out of the KNOB van and sprinting toward me. Something in me identified them as friend, so I ignored them. Shoulders tight, hackles stiff, I circled, looking for the enemy, waiting for the thing to attack again.
“Kitty?” Ben caught my body language and looked around with me, searching.
It was here, I knew it was, I could smell it. Any minute it would pounce. I couldn’t talk. All I had in my throat were growls. Wolf stared out of my eyes.
Ben held my arm, took a scent. His grip tightened. “You smell that?”
“Yeah,” I said.
The three investigators had picked themselves out of the van, brushed themselves off, and looked each other over, cursing.
The exterior cameramen, along with the crew, was coming toward us in a hesitating panic. Jules yelled at one of the camera guys, “What did this? What did you guys see?”
“Nothing,” one of them said. “There was nothing there, it just fell over.”
Gary looked at me. “Is she okay? Is she in shock?”
“No. Nothing like that,” Ben said.
A minute ticked on and nothing happened. The panic faded. Wolf crept away, and I was fully me again. Blinking, I shook my head and looked around. We were standing in the middle of the road, staring at the wreckage of the van. This felt like the aftermath of a car accident. Which it kind of was.
A pair of cameras focused on us, capturing e
very moment for the show. I was still broadcasting, as well. This was going to end up making a pretty good episode for both of us.
But this was far, far too personal for me to be thinking of that.
“Is everyone okay?” I said.
“Cuts and bruises,” Gary said. “What the hell was that?”
“Full-on poltergeist, I’d say,” Jules announced, sounding excited.
“But why us and not the house?” Gary said.
“Didn’t like us looking at it? She really did tick it off. I dunno.” His accent had gotten thicker. He started picking through the wreckage for something. “I’ve got to get some readings. EMF, temperature, infrared. This is unbelievable. Where is everything?” No one moved to help him. The rest of us were standing around, shell-shocked. Waiting for the second round, possibly.
“What do you know about this?” Tina said. She was rubbing her arms, obviously chilled, looking around like she expected something to drop out of the sky. “You act like you know something.”
I didn’t know. It was just the smell, the same prickling on my skin I’d felt the other night. But it was gone now. Only a lingering scent remained. I said, “This is about me, it’s not about the house. There’s something after me.”
“Now that’s a story I want to hear,” Gary said.
I chuckled. “Got a few hours?”
“Will somebody please help me with this?” Jules demanded, still digging through the wreckage for equipment.
Matt called out, “Kitty, you’re still on the air. You’ve got five minutes.”
Shit. The KNOB van was still upright. I wondered how long that would last.
I adjusted the microphone on my headset and moved away from the group to pull myself together and get my show back on track. Not that this was getting off track—I’d been waiting for something exciting to happen, hadn’t I? Anything more exciting than this and I’d be done for the night. I wondered how this was sounding to my audience.
“Right, okay. What just happened? I believe, in paranormal-investigation parlance, we’ve just seen some activity. Yeah, right. The freaking van tipped over, and we don’t know what did it. If you watch Paradox PI when this episode airs, you can check it out, because they caught it all on camera and I imagine it looks pretty good. Hey, Gary—tell me again you’ve never seen anything like this.”