The Wantland Files

by Lara Bernhardt

  The threat worked. “I don’t want you, Amber.” His voice wavered. “I’m breaking it off. I want you to go.”

  Amber recoiled as if punched in the gut. She heaved several deep breaths before she spoke. “I’ll go. But you can’t make me leave. I’m getting my own room. And charging it to your credit card.” Revenge burned in her eyes and wrath rolled off her in palpable waves as she whirled on her heel to go.

  Kimberly didn’t normally lash out. At least not at the still living. Perhaps Amber’s emotional state fueled her own. Or maybe she was truly concerned for Sterling’s safety. Whatever the reason, she couldn’t stop herself. “Et abiit, maleficus!” She hurled the words as the threat she meant them to be.

  Amber turned, her gaze on her perceived rival. “You cannot stop me. I will—”

  “Just try it. I know your weakness.” Kimberly’s lips twitched into a smile.

  Fear passed over Amber’s face. Then she smiled at Sterling. “I won’t be far when you change your mind. Call me.” The young woman sauntered from the dining hall.

  Kimberly crossed to the table with the daisy.

  Sterling opened his mouth. “I—”

  “Don’t call her.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You gave her a credit card?”

  He rubbed his temples. “Sometimes guys—”

  “I suggest you call immediately, report it stolen, and cancel it. Amber is probably at the front desk by now.”

  “Shit!” He yanked his phone out of one pocket and his wallet from another. “This isn’t how I expected our breakfast to play out.”

  “No doubt. You call. I’ll get coffee.”

  She left him at the table, filled a mug from the coffee urn, and added a little milk. His frantic voice told her he got through to someone. She flipped through the oatmeal packets. No plain. She glanced over her shoulder to find him watching her, apparently on hold. He smiled.

  Stale pastries, dried-out bread, soggy pancakes, and the burned, greasy remnants of a pan of bacon constituted this morning’s options. Not a single piece of fruit in sight. Ah, well. Who needs food anyway?

  “Sorry about that.” Sterling stood directly behind her.

  She jumped. “Don’t sneak up on me.”

  “Sorry. Wasn’t intentional.” He shook his head.

  “That’s okay. They don’t have anything I want to eat anyway.”

  The mischievous gleam returned to his eye. “Why don’t you come sit with me while I eat?”

  She gripped her coffee cup and accompanied him to the table, where he pulled a seat out for her. Her place was set with bowl and spoon. A plain packet of oatmeal leaned against the bowl. A carton of berries sat to the side. “How did you—”

  He held up a hand and indicated she sit, then settled into his own seat beside her. “That’s not all.” He reached inside his jacket pocket and with a flourish produced a packet of honey. Before she could say a word, he reached behind her ear and withdrew a little bottle of cinnamon.

  She gasped and accepted it. “This is . . . when . . . where did you . . . thank you so much.”

  His eyes crinkled into a smile. Not his usual self-satisfied smirk but a warm, genuine smile. “Just want you to know how much I appreciate you letting me be on your show this week. I have a good feeling about it. I know they’ll renew my show now.”

  “I hope so.” She meant it. Not just to get him out of her hair. She knew how stressful waiting for renewals could be.

  “Plus I need to thank you for helping with Amber. She’s really shown her true colors. What a psycho. She’s right, though, that our videos are trending.” He held his phone out to her. “Look. We’re generating so much buzz. The new one posted on The Wantland Files site has even more hits than the one I leaked. We are a viral sensation. I owe you so much more than a decent breakfast. You’re awesome.”

  Her cheeks grew hot. She was accustomed to people asking for her autograph and telling her how much they loved her show. But Sterling’s compliment made her squirm in her seat. “I’m glad you’re having fun. I’m going to make my oatmeal.”

  She scurried to the hot water dispenser, attempting to calm her breathing while the steaming water filled her bowl. She had to get a grip. If Rosie saw her like this, she would immediately know something was up. Kimberly could trust the woman to keep her confidences. But she also knew Rosie would flip out. Especially if she admitted Sterling had slept on her couch last night. Even though she was bursting to talk to someone, she needed to keep this to herself. Bad enough Amber had overheard and misinterpreted what Sterling had said. Still, she laughed to herself as she pictured the look on Rosie’s face if her friend ever found out.

  She returned to the table and found Sterling yawning widely. “What did we get last night? Three hours of sleep? I have a newfound respect for you. Takes real grit to keep at this season after season.”

  She added the honey and cinnamon to her oatmeal, incredulous she was enjoying her favorite breakfast away from home. She knew he wouldn’t be able to handle the rigorous demands of the schedule, but his admission surprised her.

  “I’m also impressed I haven’t figured out your secrets yet. Or at least not all of them. There’s not an illusionist alive that can fool me for long. I see through everything. I figure you’re just acting your bits. Quite good, I must admit. Did I get the capsicum thing right? Is that how you make yourself sweat?”

  She swirled her oatmeal and said nothing.

  “Do your cameramen doctor the footage prior to the review? That would make sense. But what about the little guy? Drew? He keeps drawing pictures that seem to support your claims and even match the footage. Did you tell the mom to have him draw those?”

  As much as she wanted to enjoy the oatmeal, her appetite faded. “There’s no trick. Nothing to figure out.”

  “Come on. I thought we were sort of friends now. Can’t you let me in on it?”

  She swallowed and lowered her spoon. How did he manage to irritate her so badly just as she was starting to like him? Or at least, not actively dislike him. “There is no trick. No one is in on anything. We just investigate and capture what happens.”

  “Uh-huh. Okay.” He dug his fork into a stack of pancakes. “I thought maybe we could collaborate. You let me in on what you plan to ‘find,’ and I’ll have my explanation worked out in advance, too. No surprises that way.”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to find until I see it on our recordings. You saw how we work. I’m unclear why you think you’re missing out on something. We investigate, and I use my abilities to resolve any hauntings we encounter. And I’m good. People invite me to come because they know I won’t fail. And because they’re tired of the skepticism of people like you. Do you know how many people I have to turn down? Thousands. Every day. How can you continue to deny the existence of anything supernatural when so many people report experiences they can’t explain?”

  “I have never once seen actual proof of anything supernatural.”

  “What about last night? You saw how the spirit affected me, even if you couldn’t see it yourself.”

  “I saw you suffer some sort of seizure and convince yourself of an encounter with a ghost rather than admit to needing medical help.”

  “I can’t believe you won’t acknowledge it. You even felt her. You said so. You felt her brush past you.”

  “I felt a gust of wind. Open window? Open door? Wind blowing through a house isn’t proof of supernatural activity.”

  “But it is. No wind blew through the house. No windows were open. It was nearly freezing last night. The gust of air was room temperature. Surely you noticed that. And can acknowledge wind would’ve been cold.”

  “So maybe someone on your crew turned on a fan.”

  “Wow. Okay. And here I thought we were starting to work together. I see that’s not the case. Thank you for the oatmeal, Mr. Wakefield. I truly appreciate it. I will see you at the Williams house for the footage review.” She picked up her bowl,
intending to finish it alone in her room.

  He grabbed her arm. “Mr. Wakefield again? Don’t go. Are you so insecure that you can’t have a discussion with someone who disagrees with you?”

  “This isn’t a discussion. This is you continuing to tell me I’m a fraud. And you’ll believe anything, no matter how much of a stretch, rather than accept what truly happened.”

  “I could say exactly the same thing. You’re telling me I’m wrong. And as far as I’m concerned, you’ll believe anything, no matter how preposterous, rather than the simplest explanation. I believe in applying Occam’s razor. Your conclusions rely on so many untestable variables, they simply cannot be sustained.”

  “Danielle saw the ghost of her grandmother’s deceased cat. Repeatedly. I feel a presence in the house. We’ve caught disturbances on camera and will probably see more evidence in the footage from last night. Even a three-year-old presented us with his version of evidence. And helped us determine a second entity in the house. For the life of me, I can’t understand why you refuse to acknowledge this is the simplest explanation. To me, it’s as easy as one plus one equals two.”

  “Except the evidence you cite isn’t real. Those things are all circumstantial at best and imaginary at worst. That’s not objective evidence. Your equation is null.”

  “Why did you want to be on my show if you think I’m such an idiot?”

  “Whoa. I didn’t say you’re an idiot. Sit back down. Please. Finish your oatmeal. We can agree to disagree.”

  She sat but continued to seethe.

  Sterling cut another bite of pancake. “I didn’t mean to offend you. I think you’re a brilliant woman.”

  “You have a funny way of showing it.” She spooned another bite of oatmeal.

  “Brilliant minds clash sometimes. I wouldn’t bother trying to talk to you if I didn’t think you were smart.” He grinned, sending her stomach fluttering again. “Now eat. You need your strength today.”

  22

  Kimberly slumped in her chair at the Williamses’ dining table. Her crew sat at the dining table, as well, wearing headphones, engrossed in footage analysis. She wanted to skip to the two exciting scenes at the end of the night, but that could leave evidence undiscovered. They needed to watch and listen to every moment. They’d encountered a couple of potentials—shadows and sounds and blips on the recordings—but ultimately ruled out supernatural causes.

  Rosie still hadn’t shown, much to her irritation. Her stylist wasn’t required until a couple of hours before the investigation. But normally Rosie came during the day anyway. She knew her friend enjoyed keeping up with the investigation but also liked to think she came to spend time with her.

  Of all the days not to show, why today? All the way to the Williamses’ home, she’d pictured Rosie reading her emotional state on her face and dragging her off to the trailer to talk. And once there, the woman wouldn’t relent until she’d pulled all the juicy details out of her.

  Where was she? And for that matter, where was Sterling? When she’d left him sitting in the dining room, he’d nearly finished eating. So why wasn’t he here? All that talk about looking forward to analyzing footage must have been a lie.

  Or did he run into Amber after Kimberly left? Did the woman manage to lure him back to the bedroom? That would be so typical. She shouldn’t have left him alone. She understood the power of a succubus. Sterling didn’t even acknowledge their existence. What if Amber got to him? Or what if he resisted, and she turned violent? The woman had seethed when Sterling had rejected her. Kimberly stood up and paced, no longer bored.

  Where was Rosie? She needed to talk, needed calming tea, needed—

  “Kimmy.” Michael gestured her over. “We’ve got something.”

  She turned to the computer, glad for something to distract her thoughts.

  The front door opened. She turned on her heel, hoping Sterling would walk through. So she could relax that he was safe. Not because she felt a small pang of jealousy whenever she thought of him with Amber. She couldn’t afford the distraction of jealousy.

  Danielle bustled into the house, lugging a wailing Josh in a baby seat in one hand and clutching Drew with the other. The baby seat banged into her leg every few steps. Drew nearly tripped her in his haste to bolt to his train track. The young mom looked even more exhausted than she had the previous day.

  “Good morning,” Kimberly greeted the worn-out woman with as much smile as she could muster while the baby shrieked.

  “How did it go last night?” Danielle asked, dropping the baby seat onto the couch. “Please tell me Felix is gone and we can sleep here tonight.”

  “Well . . .” Not sure how to answer and distracted by the baby’s cries, she looked to Michael for help.

  Michael took the baby seat and passed it to Elise, who lifted the crying baby and rocked him until he quieted.

  Finally, she could think. At least a bit. Lack of sleep and a raging headache still clouded her thoughts. She led Danielle to the dining table. “I made some great progress last night. We haven’t finished reviewing the footage yet, but Michael was about to show me something.”

  “So Felix isn’t gone?”

  “Not yet. I’m convinced, however, that another entity may be the real root of the disturbance here.”

  “Two ghosts to get rid of? Great.”

  “I know it sounds like a setback rather than progress. But this is good. We have to determine the root cause to know how to clear it.” She rested a hand on Danielle’s shoulder and smiled.

  The woman burst into tears, talking through snot and heaving sobs.

  Kimberly couldn’t understand a word of it. Michael shrugged at the look she threw him. Okay, she’d talked Michael down from inconsolable crying jags. Usually when a boyfriend had dumped him. She could do this.

  She patted the woman’s back. “I’m sure it’s not that bad.”

  Danielle sucked in a breath. For a moment, Kimberly thought her words had worked. The young mom seemed to be collecting herself. Just as she smiled, the woman melted down completely, sobs racking her body.

  “Oh, God. I made it worse. Michael, do something.”

  Her director threw his hands up in the air. “I don’t know a thing about women.”

  Baby Josh joined in the wailing. “Guys, I think her crying scared him. Can you get her to stop?” Elise asked.

  She glared at her research assistant. “I tried. You saw what happened.”

  Rosie stepped through the front door, carrying a bag from what appeared to be a boutique. Her stylist had gone shopping? Was that where she’d been? Before she could ask why, Rosie took one look at the situation and raced to Danielle’s side. “Divorce? What?”

  Apparently Rosie understood incoherent blubbering fluently. She nodded as Danielle started all over, occasionally interjecting words of encouragement like, “He wouldn’t really divorce you over this,” and “He didn’t mean it. You’re both exhausted and stressed,” and “All men are pigs.”

  Josh continued to wail. Danielle wiped her eyes, breathing in ragged gasps. “I . . . think . . . he’s hungry.”

  Rosie took Josh. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to come to the trailer and feed your baby. I’ll make some relaxing tea and light some candles. You need to relax. Put that husband of yours out of your mind for a while. Drew can stay here and play for a bit.”

  Danielle allowed herself to be led from the room.

  Rosie looked back at her. “We need to talk, Kimberly. Soon.”

  She recognized that look. Her stylist’s eyes brimmed with gossip. No telling what she’d heard. This was the most drama Kimberly had experienced during her entire three-year run.

  Her ears rang in the silence that engulfed the house after Danielle and Josh’s departure. She shook her head to clear it. Her crew stared back, shell-shocked.

  “Okay.” She smoothed her hair and clutched her crystal. “Michael, you were about to show me something?”

  “Right.
Yes. Stan? TJ? Did one of you get some of that?”

  Both men flashed thumbs-ups.

  “Good. Let’s show her what we found.” He steered Kimberly in front of TJ’s monitor, where she stood in front of the crib.

  “The rattle! Did you get something from that?”

  “We’ve determined you definitely heard the rattle, both times you noticed noise. We isolated those segments of the recording and compared the sounds to the rattling you produced with the toy. Same thing.”

  TJ played the clips for her, then pulled up the sound recordings. They were, as Michael said, identical in frequency and fluctuation.

  “Did we catch anything visual? Anything around the crib when we heard the sounds?”

  TJ shook his head. “No, unfortunately not.”

  “And the FLIR didn’t catch anything, either,” Stan said before she could ask.

  “No manifestations after we left the room? That makes me think the entity truly wanted to communicate with me. But what was it trying to tell us?”

  TJ played the footage of her during the EVP. The rattle seemed to be a response to her question, “Do you like the children?”

  A shiver ran down her spine. “I’m more convinced than ever this entity has some interest in the children. I just can’t see how the cat figures into it.”

  “You’ll sort it out. You always do,” Michael said. “We only caught the end of your encounter in the toddler’s room. Because you didn’t wait for us.” He gave her his angry look.

  “But someone recorded part of it?”

  TJ nodded. “I looked for you after getting fresh batteries. Found you and started recording. You kind of looked like you were in a trance, so I didn’t want to disturb you. At first nothing happened. You just sat on the bed. But I kept panning the room. Watch this.”

  The eager look on his face told her how excited he was to share his finding with her. When he hit “Play,” the image swung from where she sat cross-legged on the toddler bed to the closet door. Back and forth. Back and forth. The grainy images still struck her as creepy, even after years of working with them. The camera moved to sweep across the room again, then jerked back to focus on the closet. The door crept open several inches.