Status: Complete

In Over My Head

4/5

Twenty-four minutes past eleven PM, Jay and Grant emerged from the house looking sort of disappointed. Steve, Tango, and I were still in the van, half-frozen but functional and, strictly in my case, pissed as hell.

Steve wanted nothing to do with me, apparently. I’d had a mental battle with myself over whether I should try to salvage our friendship - pros: we could take trips to Boston, he could share his candy with me, I could save his ass from spiders, et cetera. Cons - nonexistent, other than maybe the fact that people would still think we were dating, but I could deal with it if it meant being on speaking terms with him again - and the second I’d worked up enough courage, I’d actually tried to initiate conversation with him.

“So, Steve. How’re things?”

It seemed like a fairly benign question, to me. Not too abrasive, not too assuming. Just a step ahead of the generic “how are you” that everyone secretly hates because, chances are, the askers don’t actually care. I actually cared, which is why I took the more friendly road, and I’m not freaking kidding when I say that I expected a decent response.

I didn’t get one. He’d looked at me, blinked, and looked away. No words were spoken and, instead of rectifying the situation between us, it seemed to massacre it even further. I’d sat there awkwardly for a minute, mouth hanging open, not quite sure whether I should repeat the question or bitch him out. I did neither, and instead turned in my folding chair so that I had my back completely toward him. Tango looked up at me sympathetically from his spot outside but didn’t say anything, either. I slouched against the desk and simmered until Jay and Grant came out to give us our assignments. When Grant leaned into the van, I was about ready to kick someone in the teeth.

“Alright, guys.” He said, “We didn’t have much luck with anything paranormal. We debunked a couple of claims, but there are still some we can’t figure out. Maybe you’ll have better luck.”
“There’s really no point in sending you in in pairs.” Jay said, and I stared at him in horror.

There was no way in hell I was going to spend four hours wandering around in the dark, pretending to be friendly and professional toward Steve, who obviously would’ve been content if I was gutted by a poltergeist, or something. Jay didn’t pay any attention to me.

“So, Steve, Carling, Tango,” He continued, “You guys can head in and see if you catch anything. Start out in the basement and work your way up.”

If the cameras hadn’t been rolling, I would’ve flat-out refused like a little bitch, but, since they were, I kept my mouth shut and clambered down out of the van, K2, EMF gage, and flashlight in hand, to stand obediently next to Tango. Before heading into the house, I shot a quick glare at Jay and Grant, only to find them laughing and waving me on like they’d planned this whole thing on purpose. Bastards.

Fine. You know what? Fine.

If they were going to be little shits about the whole thing, I’d show them. I’d be the best damn paranormal investigator they’d ever seen. I’d probably be writhing with discomfort on the inside, but they wouldn’t see it. I made a great show of leaping onto Tango’s back, because that’s exactly what I would’ve done if I hadn’t been completely miserable and starting to lose my mind. Normal Carling - who had never slept with Steve because she was way too much of a professional for inter-workplace relationships - would saunter into haunted buildings with a K2 strapped to her belt and her head held high. It felt pretty good to pretend, actually.

“They want us to start in the basement.” Steve said, and made for the rickety stairs through the door at the end of the hallway. I saw his flashlight beam sweep across the doorframe in search of spiders before he went through it. Part of me wanted to offer to go first like I had back when we were friends, but the bigger, meaner part hoped that something huge and hairy with thousands of legs dropped right down the back of his stupid shirt.

Tango hoisted me a little higher on his back and dashed down the stairs, which I couldn’t actually see. I had terrible mental flashes of him missing a step and sending the two of us tumbling to our deaths, and clung to him like a frightened lemur, or something. My knees shook a little when he let me down. Everything smelled like dirt, but I was happy to be alive.

“I think you jostled my insides.” I said faintly, just as the two-man camera crew stepped off the stairs and swung their lenses around to face us.

“You’ll live.” Tango said cheerily, shrugging and rummaging in his pocket for his flashlight.

“Of course I will.” I said, salvaging what little of my dignity remained. “Are we recording?” The camera guy nodded wordlessly, at which point I lit my flashlight and fished in my back pocket for an EVP recorder. I was about to inwardly celebrate my ingenuity at having thought up the idea before Steve when I glanced up and noticed that he did, in fact, already have his recorder out. He looked at me blankly until I stuffed mine back into my pocket.

“Steve, Tango, and Carling in the basement.” He intoned, looking away. I made a face at the back of his head and settled for an EMF sweep instead, re-adopting my badass professional paranormal investigator persona and heading off to another corner of the room, determined expression plastered across my face.

“EMF readings aren’t anything remarkable.” I said evenly, all the while wishing I could go peel that blank look right off Steve’s stupid five o’clock shadowed face. “I’ve got a base of point one, point zero. There’s a point two, over here.”

I kept my eyes on the scanner, but mentally raged.

Not my fucking fault… Grow a set and maybe actually talk to me every once in a while… Wasn’t like anything happened… Acting like we had sex, or something… Stupid useless drama, and he can’t even…

“Damn it, Carling, can you stop fucking moving?”

I threw the figurative brake on my train of thought and looked up from the EMF scanner to see the camera fixed on me. I cast a glare over at Steve, who had been the one to yell at me and who was also standing frozen in the middle of the floor, not looking at me. I shifted my attention to Tango. He held one hand up in the universal “don’t shoot” gesture and pressed the pointer finger of his other hand to his lips. I narrowed my eyes at the dirt floor and listened hard. Sure enough, there was a rustling, scuffly noise coming from the furthest corner of the basement that I had previously been too involved in my mental rampage to notice, and the way Steve was shaking his head clearly stated that he’d been trying to get my attention for a while. The rustling stopped.

“My bad, Steve.” I spat, then moved in the direction of the noise, EMF scanner and flashlight held out. “Hello? Is there anyone here with us? My name is Carling Hale. I’m not here to hurt you or upset you in any way. I’d only like to talk, if you’d like to come forward and join me. The black box I have in my hand will show me that you’re here if you come close enough. I’d like to meet you.”

The basement was silent, and I kept my eyes glued to the screen on the EMF gage, ignoring the feeling of eyes on my back. I knew they weren’t Tango’s. I was about to turn around and bitch Steve out for being a creep when, without warning, my base reading of point one jumped to a point four and continued to climb; point six, point nine, one point two, two point zero.

“Tango.” I hissed excitedly. He was instantly standing just behind my left shoulder, staring intently at the numbers, which were now holding steady at a tidy three point zero. Steve approached, too, even though he hadn’t been invited, the dick. “EMF readings are going insane.” I narrated, because the camera wouldn’t be able to focus in on the numbers on the scanner’s screen. “I think I’ve hit some kind of field.”

“Did it spike?” Steve asked, craning his neck to see the gage, which I was intentionally tilting away from him.

It was a perfectly legitimate question, and I should’ve answered it accordingly, but my professional exterior slipped momentarily, and I was seized by the desire to be irrational and childish. I turned my back on him completely and answered with a short “no”. Tango stifled a snort of shocked laughter, and I was immaturely satisfied.

The numbers on my scanner were still holding at three point zero, and I swept my eyes around for some sort of source.

“There aren’t any exposed wires,” I mumbled aloud when the beam from Tango’s flashlight joined mine on the ceiling. “I don’t see anything.”

“Do you feel like you’re being watched?” Tango whispered, massaging the back of his neck uneasily.

“I did a minute ago, but I thought it was Steve.” I said honestly. No one laughed, but I heard Steve let out an exasperated sigh from across the room.

“What’s your EMF doing?” He said, and I decided to be professional again, mostly because I didn’t want Jay to see the film from this investigation and rip me a new one later, but partly because I sort of felt bad.

“It’s down to a two point four. Steadily declining.” The numbers dropped to zero without warning, and I stared around in the dark. “The field’s gone. I’ve got nothing, now. Steve, Tango, it’s completely gone.”

“What the hell?” Tango said, gazing around the room like he thought he’d actually see something. Steve sat down on the last step of the staircase and fiddled with his EVP recorder. I leaned back against one of the basement walls and completely tuned myself out of the session, bored with the whole thing and preoccupied with how pissed I still was. I crossed my arms over my chest and stared at the exposed wooden beams of the basement ceiling.

There was an odd noise, sort of the faint thump that happens when something light is thrown pretty hard, which startled me out of my sulking. I stared through the dark with wide eyes, waiting for Steve and Tango to jump up and go about investigating. To my surprise, Tango was staring at me with raised eyebrows. I looked away from him and caught sight of Steve, hatless, hands balled into fists, a glare like one I’d never seen in my life twisted into his face. His TAPS cap was on the floor a few feet to the left of him, and I realized with a start that the noise had probably come from him throwing it.

“Jesus Christ, Carling. If you’re just going to stand there looking pissed off at the world, maybe you should just fucking get the hell out.” He said. I stared in shock for a minute, not entirely sure how to respond. Tango looked horrified.

After a minute or so, I was able to stop choking in surprise and find my voice. Much to my horror, it was pitchy, at least two octaves higher than I wanted it to be.

“Me? Me?” I clenched my flashlight into my fist and advanced a step. “I don’t know, Steve. Maybe you should think about going, yourself, since it’s so difficult for you to be anywhere near me these days.”

“Oh, don’t even start it.” He said.

“Hey, guys, c’mon.” Tango said, moving into the rapidly decreasing space between Steve and I, his hands held out like a mediator in a barside brawl.

“Why shouldn’t I, Steve?”

“Because we’re on a goddamn investigation.” He snatched his hat up from the floor and rammed it back onto his head.

“Y’know what? You’re exactly right. Maybe we should deal with this some other time when you’re not being forced to talk to me. Oh, wait, that’s right, you don’t talk to me unless you’re forced into it. How could I have been so stupid?” I crossed my arms over my chest again and stood glaring.

“Oh, so that’s what this is about?” He said, reminding me of every fight every couple has ever had in the history of the world. This bugged me even more because, in case anyone had forgotten, we weren’t a couple. The thought made me want to vomit.

“Yeah, Steve. That’s what this is about.”

“I’m not talking about it now, Hale. I’m not going to do it.”

“So, what, we’re just going to go on acting like we never knew each other? Is that it?” I took a step back toward my wall and Steve just looked at me for a minute. Tango stared at his shoes.

“I never asked for it, Hale.” Steve said, shaking his head.

“And I did?”

The question dropped like a sack full of rocks. The basement was silent except for the sound guy shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Steve wasn’t even looking at me anymore, and I didn’t even care. I turned my back to him and walked into the furthest, darkest corner of the basement and crouched down with my feet on the floor and my back against the wall.

“My EMF’s flat.” I said plainly. Nobody else said anything.

-x-


I was exempt from analysis the following day, and instead spent the time asleep. I’d never slept so deeply or for so long. When I finally woke, I was curled in on myself underneath all the heavy blankets and pillows of the hotel bed. Glancing at the clock, I realized that it was nearly three-thirty in the afternoon. I’d been asleep for ten hours, and I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d slept more for more than four.

Instead of getting up and drinking a cup of black coffee as per usual, I only rolled onto my other side and stared out the second story window of my hotel room. After the investigation, all I wanted to do was keep to myself and hide under a mountain of pillows until everyone forgot this entire fiasco. After a minute or two of quiet sulking, I slept again, more to escape the embarrassment than anything else.

I woke up again around five-thirty PM to a dull thudding on my hotel room door. Jay and Grant had made sure to steer clear of me after witnessing the whole basement incident via mini DV. Nothing had changed with Steve, which wasn’t much of a surprise. If anything, I expected the situation to get worse. Ruling those three out, Tango was the only other person it could possibly have been, and it was for this reason that I didn’t even bother getting out of bed.

“Go away.” I croaked, pulling the blankets up over my head.

“Hale, come on. You’ve been in there all day.” Tango called back, still banging his fist against the door.

“Too tired, Tango. Go away.” I said. The banging stopped. I buried my face in my pillow and sighed, wanting to drift back into dreamless sleep where people could be mad at me all they wanted and it would be okay because I wouldn’t know about it.

My hotel room door flew open and before I could even react, the blankets were being pulled out of my grasp. I clutched my knees up into my chest and moaned in protest after opening my eyes to see Tango with a room key in one hand and a pair of my jeans in the other.

“Get out of bed.” He said, throwing the jeans out across the foot of the bed.

“Nah.” I said sleepily, groping around for the heavy hotel comforter. Tango snatched it further out of my reach, then simply pushed it onto the floor.

“You know, down at the front desk, I just told them I’d lost my key and gave them your room number instead of mine. They gave me a key, no questions asked. That’s pretty dangerous.” I opened one eye to see him dumping coffee into a filter and filling the coffee pot with water. He looked over at me and said, “You drink this stuff black? That’s nasty, man.”

“Tango, why are you here?” I said, sitting up and pushing my mess of tangled hair out of my face. “And where did you get my jeans?”

“They were on the floor. And I’m here because this whole thing is fucking ridiculous.” He crossed his arms and leaned back against the kitchenette counter. I shot him a glare and lay back down, turning on my side so that my back was to him.

“See, that’s exactly what I’m talking about.”

“Dave Tango, I’m tired.” I said plainly.

“That’s impossible. You’ve been in bed twelve hours.” The edge of the bed sank, and I turned my head to see that he had sat down, cup of coffee in hand. “Drink this, please.”

I grudgingly sat up and took the mug from him. I held it in my right hand and scrubbed at my face with my left. Tango chuckled and shook his head.

“You look like shit.” He said, grinning wide.

I was going to retaliate with some remark about his stupid pageboy cap or dumb earrings or something, but at the last second, I just let my shoulders sag and took a rather large sip of my coffee.

“Maybe that’s why I’m friends with you.” I said, smoothing a hand over my hair. “Because I know you’ll be honest with me.”

He shrugged and smiled. I thumped my forehead down on his shoulder and he reached around to pat my back awkwardly. “Tango, did I fuck everything up?”

“Maybe.” He said, and my head bobbed with his shrug. “Seriously, Carling, you were kind of a bitch to Steve.”

“I know.” I said miserably.

“But I don’t know if that means you messed everything up forever. Steve’s a pretty decent guy. He was pissed last night, but I think he’ll come around at some point. You should figure it out with him.”

“Can’t you talk to him for me?”

“No way.” He shook me off and stood up, hands held up, palms out. “This isn’t my fight. Dave Tango is not getting involved.”

“Fifty bucks, Tango.”

“No.” He shook his head and smiled with raised eyebrows. “Figure that shit out on your own. And you should probably get up. We have to film a behind the scenes segment in -” He glanced at the clock on my bedside table. “Forty-five minutes.”

I choked on my coffee. “What?”

“I don’t know. I guess the producers wanted to feature us doing some everyday stuff in some upcoming episode.”

“Son of a bitch.” I said, leaping out of bed and rifling through my suitcase, coffee still in hand. “TAPS gear or street clothes?”

“Street clothes.”

“Fine. Get out.” He backed toward the door and I followed.

“You’re going to brush your hair, right?”

“Fuck you, Tango.” I held the door open and he backed out into the hallway.

“I don’t know. The ‘just rolled out of bed’ look isn’t really your thing, I don’t think.”

“Good-bye, Tango.”

I let the door swing shut and rushed to take a shower, argument and recent events utterly (blessedly) forgotten.
♠ ♠ ♠
Just to prove I'm still alive. It's been awhile.
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