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.”
Loudly, he announced, “In my twenty years of investigating, I have never seen anything like this.”
“What’s next for you guys?”
“We go over the footage with a fine-tooth comb. Make sure there aren’t anomalies, some other reasonable explanation for this. Monitor the area. Wait to see if anything like this happens again. Are you sure you don’t get earthquakes here?”
Tina said, “If it was an earthquake, all the cars would have tipped over. There’d be more damage. This was localized.”