X-Files: Trust No One

by Tim Lebbon

  “Barney Milsap? Intimidated?”

  “He had something to say, but he seemed afraid to say it. And then he abruptly ended the interview.”

  “Given the kind of people the Milsaps are, do you think it’s possible there was no paranormal activity occurring in their house?”

  “After what Dr. Copper told us, that seems likely. They were just looking for attention.”

  “And the attention they got was Walsh and his TV show. It only makes sense that they’re worried about strange things happening in their house if those things weren’t happening before Walsh and his crew arrived.”

  “What about you, Mulder? Did you have any paranormal experiences?”

  “No. But maybe that’s because we aren’t the people meant to experience them.”

  * * * *

  FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

  REDDING, CALIFORNIA

  3:29 p.m.

  Agent Yolanda Kim led Mulder and Scully, each carrying a large cardboard box of videotapes, down a sparse corridor and through a door on the right. As she flipped on the lights, she said, “We’re not very high on the funding ladder here in Redding, which is why this will probably remind you of your old high school’s audio-visual room.”

  She was not exaggerating. There were two TVs, two VCRs, and some sound and editing equipment, all of which were arranged on a long counter that ran across the rear wall. Two tables and several chairs took up space in the center of the room, with another TV on one of the tables and more chairs at the rear counter.

  They placed the boxes on one of the tables.

  “The equipment isn’t complicated,” Agent Kim said. “If you have any questions or problems, I’ll be down the hall. And if you want coffee or snacks, the break room is next door.”

  Walsh had labeled all the tapes that included footage of Brandi Milsap’s death, but there were only a few. The rest contained video shot in every room of the Milsap house since the crew had set up their equipment two days ago. Mulder and Scully split up the tapes and used both TVs and VCRs at the same time.

  After watching for about fifteen minutes, Scully was the first to speak up. “Mulder, look at this.” She rewound the tape as Mulder left his chair and joined her, then turned up the volume. “Watch this.”

  It was a view of the Milsap kitchen. It was dark outside the window and the digital clock on the microwave read 1:17. Annie stood alone wearing a T-shirt and baggy pajama bottoms and dipping a tea bag into a steaming mug on the counter. She took the cup, turned and started to leave the kitchen as a heavyset woman in her fifties wearing a robe shuffled into the room, her slippers hissing across the tile floor. It was Sarah, Barney Milsap’s oldest child.

  “Can’t sleep?” Annie said quietly.

  “Insomnia,” the woman said. “I can never sleep. I need a snack.”

  Annie nodded and left the room as Sarah reached up and opened both doors of a cupboard at once. The contents—bags of potato chips, boxes of cookies, crackers, and cereal, a tin of candy, jars of nuts—flew out and rained down on Sarah in an explosion of clatter. She cried out in shock as she flailed her arms and stumbled backward, finally falling on her ass.

  The doors of the cupboard slammed shut with a bang, then flew open again. They flapped like broken shutters in a windstorm, moving so fast that they sounded almost like machine-gun fire.

  One of Sarah’s slippers came off as she crawled backward, screaming, away from the scattered bags, boxes, and jars. The lid had come off the tin and wrapped hard candies littered the floor.

  The cupboard doors slammed shut and did not open again.

  Annie ran into the room and went to Sarah’s side. A moment later, other members of the Milsap family joined them.

  “Thoughts, Mulder?”

  “Let’s see it again.”

  *** * *

  FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

  REDDING, CALIFORNIA

  4:31 p.m.

  Throughout the tapes, there were scattered incidents similar to the one in the kitchen.

  A chair sliding across a room... a bed shaking with visible help from no one... dresser drawers opening and closing... dishes thrown from the kitchen counter to the floor, where they shattered into pieces.

  “Are you seeing a pattern, Scully?”

  “Are you?”

  “I asked first.”

  “I’m... not sure. These incidents take place both day and night, no two have been exactly alike, and they look pretty convincing. The only consistent thing I’ve seen is the presence of Annie.”

  He nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, exactly.”

  “You don’t believe Walsh’s story?”

  “What he told us may be true, but I don’t think he’s telling us everything.”

  “Are you suggesting that Annie is responsible for the activity in the house?”

  “If it wasn’t happening before the TV crew arrived, then somebody in that crew must be making it happen.”

  “I’d like to know how. Everything we’ve seen has looked pretty convincing. If Annie’s doing it, she’s fooled me.”

  “I want to see the tape of the death again, the one trained on the other end of the dining room. And the one we haven’t gotten to yet—the kitchen at the same time.”

  They slipped the tapes into the VCRs and synched them up.

  The first tape was shot by a camera mounted in a corner of the dining room that was behind Brandi and Tony and provided a view of the kitchen doorway near the opposite corner. The other tape showed a view of the doorway from the other side, in the kitchen.

  In the first tape, while everyone stood around the table chatting and laughing in the minutes before Brandi Milsap’s death, Annie stood alone in the doorway that led into the kitchen, talking to no one. Her shoulder leaned against the doorjamb, arms folded across her chest, completely motionless as she stared.

  “She stands like that for a long time without moving,” Mulder said.

  “And she never takes her eyes off of Tony and Brandi.”

  Annie’s face remained expressionless for some time, then it slowly changed. The inner tips of her eyebrows rose above her eyes, tense, giving her a sad expression for a moment. Then her face tightened and she dropped her head abruptly, reached up and covered her mouth with her right hand. She spun around and disappeared into the kitchen.

  They turned to the other TV. The kitchen was empty.

  Mulder rewound the tape until he could see Annie standing in the doorway from behind. When he replayed it, Annie remained in the door only for a few seconds. Then she simply disappeared.

  “He’s altered the tape,” Scully said.

  “A hail Mary pass. He didn’t have time to do even a halfway convincing job, so he slapped this together quickly and hoped we wouldn’t notice. Whatever Annie was doing in the kitchen when Brandi’s heart went off like a firecracker, Brody Walsh does not want us to see it.”

  “You think she has some kind of... ability?”

  “Yeah. The ability to turn a pretty ridiculous little TV show into a big hit.”

  * * * *

  MILSAP RESIDENCE

  5:12 p.m.

  Tony Barbieri answered the door when Mulder and Scully returned to the Milsap house. When he saw them, he stepped back and pulled the door all the way open so they could enter.

  “We need to speak to Brody,” Mulder said as they went inside.

  “He’s around here somewhere,” Tony said, closing the door.

  Mulder turned to him. “Tony, tell me about your friend Annie.”

  “Annie? What about her?”

  Mulder noticed that Tony had the same kind of deer-in-the-headlights look that Annie had given him earlier on the back porch. They seemed to have general discomfort in common.

  He said, “You told me you live in the same building and she got you this job. How long have you known her?”

  “Not long, really. I moved into the building, uh... seven months ago. That’s when I met her.”

 
“What’s the relationship been like?” Mulder said.

  “Well, like I said, we’re just friends.”

  “I know, but I mean, what kind of... well... Scully?”

  “She pays a lot of attention to you, doesn’t she?” Scully said.

  Tony arched a brow. “What?”

  “She gives you little gifts, does a lot of favors for you, maybe cooks meals for you. Isn’t that right?”

  He looked as if he felt the need to apologize for something, but he didn’t know what it was. “Uh... yeah, but... I don’t understand these questions.”

  “Tony, do you have any other female friends? Any women you know who, since you met Annie, have gotten ill, maybe? Or injured?”

  The tension left his face slowly. “Uh, well, not a friend, but... yeah. A few weeks after I moved in. Nina. She lived across the hall. She had a... a stroke.”

  “An elderly woman?” Scully said.

  “No. She was in her twenties. A dancer. Well... a stripper.”

  “Had she been sick?” Mulder said.

  “No. In fact, I’d just seen her that night. Her car wouldn’t start, so she called me and asked for a ride home from work.”

  “You’d become friends?”

  Tony frowned as his eyes moved back and forth between them. He spoke slowly, preoccupied with the workings of his own thoughts. “Just neighbors. She said she was desperate and had my number, so she called me.”

  “If you weren’t close,” Scully said, “why did she have your number?”

  “Right after I moved in, she introduced herself, said she liked to know her neighbors. She lived alone and sometimes, she said, guys would try to follow her home from work. She didn’t want to have to wait for the cops if something happened, so she gave me her number and asked for mine.”

  “Seems a little forward for a new neighbor,” Scully said.

  “Yeah, that’s what Annie thought. Anyway, I brought Nina home from work and went into her apartment because she insisted on giving me some money for gas. And that night... she died.” He turned to Mulder. “Why is this important?”

  “Is that the only one you can think of?” Mulder said. “Any other female friends have... problems?”

  Tony’s eyes slowly turned toward the doorway of the dining room where he had watched Brandi die.

  To Scully, Mulder said, “I think he’s doing the math.”

  “Can you tell us where Annie is right now, Tony?” Scully said.

  “Brody said she was upstairs sleeping because she didn’t feel well.”

  “We’ve been gone for more than three hours,” Scully said. “She’s still up there?”

  He shrugged. “Far as I know.”

  “Thanks, Tony,” Mulder said, then he and Scully went upstairs.

  She led the way to the bedroom and knocked on the door. “Annie? It’s Agents Scully and Mulder. We need to speak to you.”

  There were no sounds in the bedroom. Scully opened the door.

  Strands of sunlight bled through the tree branches outside the window. The room was a mess and smelled heavily of perfume. A dressing table had been cleared, and perfume bottles and makeup and the contents of an open jewelry box were scattered over the floor around it. A web of cracks ran through the dressing table’s large mirror. A straight-back chair lay on its side. Some of the drawers of a dresser were open and one side of the dresser had been pulled away from the wall by more than a foot. A framed poster lay on the floor in front of the closet door on which it had been hanging.

  Annie lay fully clothed in the center of the neatly made queen bed with her back to them. Her glasses were on the pillow behind her head.

  “Annie,” Scully said, hurrying to the bed. She placed the glasses on a night stand, put a hand on the young woman’s arm and shook her gently.

  Annie did not stir or make a sound.

  Repeating her name loudly, Scully rolled her onto her back. When Annie remained unresponsive, Scully brushed a fingertip over the lashes of one closed eye. The eyelid did not twitch. “She’s been drugged. There’s a syringe on the night stand.”

  “See if you can wake—”

  A toilet flushed on the other side of the closet door. It wasn’t a closet.

  Mulder drew his weapon and leveled it at the bathroom door.

  It opened and Brody Walsh stepped out. He lifted both hands, smiled sheepishly, and said, “It’s only me.”

  Mulder lowered his gun, but he didn’t put it away.

  “I told you she was sick,” Walsh said, nodding toward Annie on the bed.

  “She’s been drugged, Mr. Walsh,” Scully said. “Would you happen to know anything about that?”

  He looked at Scully, bent over Annie, checking her eyes, gently shaking her, and said, “Uh... what are you doing?”

  “Trying to revive her.”

  Walsh lunged for the bed, saying, “Don’t do that!”

  “Freeze!” Mulder shouted, raising his gun again.

  Walsh lurched to a halt and lifted his hands. He looked terrified. “You don’t understand—it’s a big mistake to wake her up. I mean, it could be dangerous.”

  Holding the gun on Walsh, Mulder slowly made his way around the foot of the bed. “Has she been getting unpredictable, Brody? Hard to control?”

  Walsh’s eyes darted back and forth between Mulder moving around the bed and Scully trying to revive Annie. Finally, he said, “Whuh-what are you talking about?”

  “Annie is the reason that every house you investigate is haunted, isn’t that right? She’s the reason every episode includes footage of paranormal activity, isn’t she? She allows you to fake the whole thing so perfectly that even the people whose homes you investigate don’t know they’re being fooled. How did you find her, Brody?”

  Still eyeing Annie on the bed and looking ready to run out of the room, Walsh spoke haltingly. “She used to babysit for us. My ex-wife and me. Aiden and Emma loved her. Our kids. They used to tell me that she entertained them by doing magic tricks. Making things move around and float in the air. I didn’t think much of it. They were just little kids. But then I found out their mother had installed a couple of nanny cams in the house, so I watched some of the video, and... sure enough. That’s what Annie was doing.”

  “And you’ve been using her ever since, right?”

  “Using her? She’s well paid. The thing is, she’s not, uh... very stable.”

  “And I bet she’s been even less stable since she met Tony Barbieri, right?”

  Walsh dropped his hands and his shoulders sagged as he nodded. “Yes. Tony. He’s all she’s been able to talk about since he moved into her building. I had to give him a job just to keep her happy.”

  Mulder stood at the foot of the bed and lowered his weapon. “Did she intend to kill Brandi Milsap?”

  “No. That’s the thing, see, she’s been losing control of it ever since Tony came along. Sometimes she even does it in her sleep. It scares the hell out of me. These days, I’m afraid to be around her. What happened with Brandi... no, it wasn’t intentional, and she’s been very upset about it. She tried to stop herself.”

  Mulder said, “That’s why she went into the kitchen, to stop herself. That’s the part of the video you cut out. You didn’t want us to know because you were afraid she’d be taken away from you and your show would be left high and dry.”

  Creases cut into Walsh’s tan forehead as he nodded heavily. “That’s why I’ve been carrying around a tranquilizer. Just in case. And it’s a good thing because today I needed it. She just... well, she lost it. She did this,” he said, waving his hands at the mess in the room. “She didn’t do it consciously. She wasn’t even trying.”

  “What did you give her?” Scully said.

  “It was, uh... midazolam, I think.”

  “You think?”

  “I-I’m not sure I’m pronouncing it correctly, but that’s what I gave her, yes.”

  “If you can’t pronounce it,” Scully said, “it’s a good idea not to inject i
t. She’s not coming around. Mulder, can you get my medical bag out of the car? I have ammonia inhalants in there.”

  He holstered his weapon and said to Walsh, “Come with me.”

  “Gladly,” Walsh said, hurrying after Mulder.

  Rushing down the stairs, Mulder heard voices coming from the dining room. He went out the front door, down the porch steps, and through the yard.

  “What do you know about Annie?” Mulder said as they hurried across the gravel.

  “Lonely, socially awkward, a little neurotic.”

  “And how much do you know about her ability?” Mulder said.

  “When we started, she’d move some furniture, make doors open and close, that sort of thing. But she could only do a little at a time because it drained her. She told me back then that she didn’t use it very often. She’d play little tricks on people she didn’t like, or entertain children. Like mine.”

  Mulder went to the passenger side of the car and opened the rear door.

  “But while she worked for me, she got better at it. And stronger. She started breaking things without meaning to. Glass stuff at first, but then a chair, a door.”

  Leaning into the back seat, Mulder took Scully’s medical bag from the floorboard, then stood and closed the door.

  Walsh said, “In one house—the show never aired—she accidentally killed the family’s cat. That’s when I started getting worried. Now I’m... scared.”

  As they headed back toward the house, Mulder heard a rattling sound and stopped walking to listen. It was coming from the house.

  “What’s that noise?” Walsh said.

  It grew steadily louder. Mulder looked at the upstairs window. A patch of the blue sky was reflected in the pane, which was trembling.

  “I think it’s the house,” Mulder said before he burst into a run through the gate, across the yard, and onto the porch.

  Someone inside screamed before he reached the front door. And then something inside exploded.

  * * * *

  Scully brought a glass of water from the bathroom to the bed and was going to sprinkle some on Annie’s face, but the shaking started before she got that far. She thought, for a moment, that it was an earthquake. The windowpanes shuddered and a mobile of barnyard animals hanging from the ceiling in a corner jittered and swayed.