Chapter Text
My name is Robin Hathaway, and I’m a journalist. Granted, calling me a paranormal investigator fits more and more these days.
When I first began working for the International Network of Information - the INI for short - as Walt Winston’s assistant, I hadn’t expected much. Sure, the income was good, and the work was supposedly easy. I could even pursue my love of blogging on the side without having to worry about making sure my bills were paid.
The only issue I could find was just how ridiculous the job was. I’d worked hard to get my Bachelors in Communications to become a proper journalist. For my troubles, I was rewarded with the so-called joy of being a glorified babysitter. It was up to me to look after an absolute manchild pretending to be a paranormal investigator.
I wanted to roll my eyes at the thought. I probably did roll my eyes.
All that money for… that? You had to be kidding me. There was no way things could be that easy. That’s what I told myself back then.
Honestly, I wish I hadn’t jinxed myself sometimes.
Walt Winston, paranormal investigator extraordinaire, wasn’t pretending to film the supernatural. He was dead serious about his job, insisting he’d be the dead one otherwise.
At first, I thought he was crazy. He had to be, right?
I very quickly changed my mind the moment I saw a woman’s head rotate 180 degrees. Well, the ghost of a woman, anyways. The ghost of Everglade Manor, to be specific.
In the end, Walt was right, and I’d been so incredibly wrong. Ghosts were real, and they were dangerous. I almost died that day. More than once, even.
If it hadn’t been for Walt, I wouldn’t have survived. I was sure of that fact.
Then again, if it hadn’t been for me, I don’t think he would have survived either. Our work is dangerous, after all.
I wasn’t Walt’s first partner. That honor went to his dearly departed wife, Grace. They were the dream team, a real power couple. They likely still would have been if she hadn’t died saving him.
Walt was still grieving her loss, not that I could blame him. On days when he was too worn out from stress to offer his usual big, bright smile, he would ask me to sing for him. It was something his wife used to do, and now the task fell to me. After Walt had dubbed me Songbird for singing in the shower, it was the least I could do for him, to say nothing of him saving my life.
I may not have been Walt’s first partner, but I was determined to be his last.
I actually liked my job once I gave it a proper chance. I enjoyed solving paranormal mysteries. And, between you and me, I cared enough about Walt to make sure his eccentricities didn’t get him killed.
I was in for the long haul.
That surprised Walt when I first told him, though he appreciated having someone stick around. I think it surprised the higher ups at the INI even more. Walt’s old “babysitters” usually quit after a single job. Not me. How could I when there were people I could help while providing some interesting entertainment along the way?
I had only one complaint.
Now that things had settled down in the Middle of Nowhere, Kansas, I’d thought for sure we’d have a flood of requests to answer - either from people who genuinely needed his help or who simply wanted to call his bluff.
Instead, we were met with a steady stream of nothing. Not a single job to be done.
I was left spending my days lazily hanging around Walt’s office, half paying attention to my boss as he amused himself by spinning around in his chair and ignoring the stacks of paperwork on his desk.
I had my laptop set up in the corner of a room in a cute, little desk Walt had bought just for me. There, I spent my days searching for a clue that could recently lead to a job. I came across a handful of theories regarding the fog that came and went from our city of Stillgrand these past three years but nothing seemed plausible enough to actually consider.
I also saw my fair share of missing person reports. There were too many names to remember, but I couldn’t help but wonder if ghosts might have anything to do with any of their disappearances.
When I wasn’t doing that, I filled my time running the blog that got me into this career in the first place and browsing the Internet for anything else that looked remotely interesting. Sadly, there was nothing of note. Today was no different.
“Hey, Walt?” I asked, eyes still focused on my screen.
“Yes, Songbird?” Walt didn’t look up from the paperwork he was boredly flipping through.
“How long does it usually take to get more work?”
“Depends.” He shrugged lazily, setting a piece of paper down to scribble a signature on it before picking it back up. “Sometimes it doesn’t take very long at all.”
“And, other times, the wait drags on?” I offered with a sigh.
He gave me an overly energetic thumbs up. “Exactly that.”
I exhaled a sigh. “Don’t you ever go looking for work?”
Walt hummed a low, sad note to himself. “I used to, but the big boss got all huffy when I ‘stepped out of bounds’. So I stopped. Now they bring the work to me.”
I could easily imagine Walt making a nuisance of himself. It was hard not to laugh at the thought. Just another part of his charm, I supposed.
“Do you have a backlog of episodes built up or something?” I asked.
He nodded. “When work gets busy - and it will - you’ll wish you had more free time. We’ll have so many cases you can hardly stand it!”
“It’s just waiting for those bursts that’s the hard part,” I agreed.
“Exactly. But at least it gives me time to catch up on paperwork.”
I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. Walt was hardly doing any work at all. Mostly, he just looked at his papers from different angles, letting his eyes glaze over. Sometimes, his boss would be so lucky that Walt would actually finish filling out a paper and put it in a stack of other finished work. Sadly, those moments were few and far between.
I turned back to my computer with a small sigh. This wasn’t the job I dreamed of when getting my degree, but that didn’t change how I felt now. I loved my job. I just wished there was something I could do to break up the monotony, even just a little. Instead, all I could do was wait for more work to arrive.
I leaned back in my chair and exhaled what must have been my heaviest sigh yet.
Waiting was exhausting, but what else could I do? Surely someone out there had to have a case for us. It was frustrating that all we could do was hope some clients actually came to us.
Walt chuckled at my impatience and offered a warm smile.
“Patience, Songbird,” he said. “Good things come to those who wait.”
So he said, but he was just as impatient as me. He’d put aside pretending to work on paperwork for the time being in favor of fidgeting with the settings of his rolly chair, spinning in circles at times when the idea struck him as entertaining.
Walt was just as bored as I was, and I knew it. He was just better at amusing himself than I was.
Luckily, we didn’t have to wait much longer before a job finally found its way to us.
There was a knock at the door, followed by a woman’s voice: “Walt, you have work.”