How to Fake a Haunting, page 11
My gaze flicked from one of Joe’s eyes to the other. Now that I’d heard what had happened, I thought the left eye might be the glass one, but it was impossible to be sure. “My god,” I breathed. “How terrible. Joe, I’m so sorry.”
He waved his hand. “It’s all good. Like I said, this was years ago.”
“Now he says the scariest thing in any house we’re called to is him,” Morgan joked. She brushed light fingertips along the corner of her husband’s left eye.
So I was right about which one was the glass one. Still, it was remarkable how unnoticeable it was.
“How’d they do it?” Adelaide asked. “How’d they make the glass explode?” I froze. Would the Tallows think it strange Adelaide wanted to know?
But Joe merely smiled. “Morgan figured it out. Tell ’em, hon.”
“While Joe was in the hospital, the couple swore what had happened was the work of the poltergeist,” Morgan said. “I went back, desperate for answers. While I was taking EVP readings in the basement, I came across a package for a glassworks company in the recycling bin. After googling the company—and seeing their most popular product—I figured out what they had done pretty quickly.”
“Gotta hand it to them for originality.” I was surprised to see that Joe looked like he actually meant this. “Turns out, the husband had inserted a Prince Rupert’s drop into a boba straw. One of those extra-fat straws, you know? For bubble tea? When I bent the straw’s top portion, the drop exploded, along with the drinking glass, giving a pretty darn convincing impression of paranormal activity. Well, I imagine it would have looked convincing, if I hadn’t been losing my eye at that exact moment.”
Adelaide looked too appreciative of the hoax, and I kicked her under the table. She rearranged her expression into one of sympathy.
“Anyhow, that was our most impressive ‘fake haunting,’” Morgan said.
“Though there’ve been plenty more along the way,” Joe added. “Morgan usually has a feeling from the first call of how legitimate they’re going to be.”
“Yeah?” Adelaide asked. There was something in her voice I didn’t like. She glanced at me long enough to smile widely, as if to broadcast that what was coming next was entirely innocent, a real spur-of-the-moment idea.
“Joe, Morgan, this has all been so fascinating, but could I turn the tables a bit? Could I ask . . . What’s your professional opinion about this place? Any ghosts?”
Chapter 20
I forced myself not to react. What the hell was Adelaide doing? Why turn the Tallows’ attention to the house when we’d been getting all we needed from a good old-fashioned discussion?
Morgan looked around, but not before fixing me with a discerning stare.
I don’t need to believe in the supernatural to know this woman has razor-sharp powers of perception. She knows we’re not being straight with her. She knows things aren’t what they seem.
“This house?” Morgan asked.
“Yeah, you know, just for fun,” Adelaide said.
“Oh, I don’t think—” I started, but Adelaide cut me off.
“We wanted to learn more about ghosts and the supernatural. Why not see Joe and Morgan in action?” She turned to face them. “I mean, if that’s okay. I’m sure lots of houses have psychic energy, right? And, if there’s nothing like that here, at least we’ll get to see how all your fancy equipment works.”
Adelaide turned back to me. I could practically see the gears turning in her head. “Think, Lainey,” she said. “If we did want to incorporate anything into our programming—I’m not saying ghost tours, but maybe the history of spiritualism as it relates to the Gilded Age, or something along those lines—it would be great to have a modern benchmark to work up to.”
Adelaide’s gaze had turned penetrating, entreating me not to mess this up. So, she wanted to get Joe and Morgan moving around the house, operating their equipment, in order to generate ideas with which to haunt Callum later? I supposed we did need new concepts. While I could scratch out Callum’s face in framed photographs easily enough, I couldn’t exactly slide a Prince Rupert’s drop into a straw. No matter how badly I wanted Callum out of the house, out of my life, I didn’t want anyone losing an eye.
“Okay,” I relented. I tried to smile at Morgan but feared it came out a little pained. “As long as you have your equipment with you and everything, it would be nice to see how one of your investigations plays out.”
“Normally, I would ask a series of questions,” Morgan said, sounding somewhat perplexed. “You know, age of the house, its current condition, any previous inhabitants or on-site deaths, what had happened to make the current inhabitants think it was haunted.” She looked around. “The house is fairly new?”
“It’s six years old,” I responded.
“You built it?”
“Yes.”
“From a professional perspective, if someone asked me to run an investigation on a six-year house with only one set of inhabitants, I’d decline, as all tests would likely turn out negative,” Morgan said.
Even as she said it, I saw her squirm beneath Adelaide’s penetrating gaze.
“But since it’s to see the equipment in action and to”—she stared hard at me—“further our working relationship, I’m happy to oblige. Joe, hon, want to grab everything out of the car?”
Ten minutes—and one clandestine text to Callum ensuring he was still at work—later, and the living room was full of various bags and camera cases. An hour after that, Joe was compiling spreadsheets of data from digital thermometers and Geiger counters. Morgan sat across from him on the couch, cataloging files. She’d recorded several minutes of audio in each room, as well as video footage while standing in front of every reflective surface in the house.
“Joe and I will review everything in the studio,” Morgan said, and shrugged. “But that’s basically it. If we were to find anything in the data we collected today, we’d give you a call and schedule a time to return.”
Joe finished zipping the laptop into a briefcase. “Did you ladies see everything you needed to see?” he asked.
How do I know if I saw what I needed to see when I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking for in the first place?
Adelaide wasn’t so indecisive. “Yes, thank you. So interesting. Lainey and I have a lot to talk about.” She stared at me pointedly. “Don’t you think we could sell Kathy on an exhibition featuring spiritualism throughout the Gilded Age? We could highlight the progression in ghost-hunting tools from the mid-nineteenth to the early twenty-first century.”
I nodded dutifully, but even if I’d wanted to come clean to the Tallows now, the afternoon had left me exhausted. I wanted everyone—even Adelaide—to leave so I could lie down for a few minutes before picking up Beatrix.
“Yes,” I forced myself to say when Adelaide continued to stare. “Thank you, Joe, Morgan. I guess we’ll be in touch with any additional questions.”
Joe shouldered a duffel bag and the briefcase before reaching for Morgan’s hand. “And we’ll be in touch with you if Morgan finds anything unusual in your files.” His tone was jokey, but I guessed he was making fun of the fact that Adelaide and I had convinced him and his wife to investigate a house even we didn’t believe was haunted.
We offered to help with the bags, but Joe declined, so Adelaide and I walked the two of them to the front porch. We smiled from the doorway as Joe loaded up their car, and waved as they pulled out of the driveway. Between the Tallows and their equipment, and Todd’s Wildlife Extraction Services truck, it was a good thing there were so many trees between us and the neighbors. I could imagine their puzzled glances, the questions, the Something odd’s going on over at the Taylor place comments. This was the last time, I thought. The last time I let Adelaide bring someone else into this.
When the Mazda had disappeared down the street, I closed the door and walked to the living room, where I collapsed onto the couch. Adelaide sat opposite me, tucking her feet beneath her.
“I told you I wouldn’t steer us wrong,” she said.
I gave her a weary, befuddled look. “Aside from learning the Tallows aren’t the money-hungry hucksters I’d always thought them to be—and hearing about their awful loss—I don’t see how that was the lesson in how to fake a haunting you wanted it to be.”
Adelaide gaped at me. “Of course it was! I can mess with the frequency of the transistor radio Cal uses on the golf course. And that thing Morgan said about people feeling like they’re being suffocated by a heavy blanket? I could pull Cal’s comforter off him while he’s sleeping, soak it with water, wring it out a bit, and lay it back on top of him. He’ll wake up freezing and anxious from all that extra weight on his chest.”
I started to interject, but Adelaide was on a roll. “And the stuff about children’s toys moving around the house? That’s genius. How have I not tapped into the entire subgenre of creepy kids in general? But the best thing we learned today? I mean, come on, do I even have to say it?”
She stopped her rambling and looked at me. “Do I?” she asked.
I groaned, sinking farther into the pillows. “Yes, you have to say it, because I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Her eyebrows raised, then furrowed. She looked flummoxed I hadn’t reached the same conclusions she had. “The Prince Rupert’s drops, obviously. If one of those drops was enough to fool two people who’ve seen it all over the last ten years, it will be more than enough to freak the shit out of Callum.”
I sat up, blinking at Adelaide. “Did you somehow miss the rest of Morgan and Joe’s story?”
Adelaide’s look of disbelief didn’t waver.
“I can’t believe I have to voice this, but we cannot initiate an explosion of glass in my house, whether it will give off Poltergeist vibes or not. Did you not hear what happened to Joe? He lost an eye!”
Adelaide waved a hand. “That hoaxer dude probably didn’t think things through. But if you and I plan everything down to the last detail, we can make it go off without a hitch.”
I forced myself to take a breath. Adelaide had given up weeks of her life to stage this haunting. She was probably desperate to speed things up. Still, was she really suggesting we detonate a tiny glass bomb in my kitchen?
“We cannot use a Prince Rupert’s drop to scare Callum,” I said, relieved to hear the evenness in my tone. “I have to protect Beatrix. Bringing her into this haunting in any way would mean the end no longer justifies the means. As much as I want to protect her from Callum, I also don’t want her to witness him blowing off half his face or several fingers, or for Callum to get seriously hurt. There are plenty of other things we can—”
“But we have to—”
“No, Adelaide! Just, no.”
“Maybe if we put a handful of boba straws in your cabinet now, Callum will get used to seeing them. That way, if you change your mind—”
I jumped up, exhaustion morphing from lethargy and a desire to be left alone into a blistering migraine and all-out rage. What was she not understanding here?
But even as that rage roiled through me, another part of me understood her ambition. When Adelaide had first proposed the haunting, I never believed it would work. Not really. I’d only agreed to it as a distraction from my problems as opposed to having any real hope that it would result in Callum leaving. But now that we were in the thick of things, I felt differently. Very differently. We’d accomplished so much in a few short weeks. We could pull this off, and we could probably pull it off faster if we went with an impossible-to-ignore type of stunt like the one Adelaide was proposing. Despite this, I still couldn’t get over my fear, or my anger.
“I’m not going to change my mind,” I said. “In a way, I wish I could, or that the Tallows had given us another viable option, but I’m still pissed you set up a meeting with them in the first place, no matter how well you think it went. You’re making decisions without me, and it’s not cool, Adelaide. It’s my house—my family—that these things affect. I’m not letting you bring your fucked-up Paranormal Activity vision anywhere near my daughter.”
I took a breath, but it didn’t calm the anger and confusion shooting through my blood and churning my stomach. I threw a hand in the direction of the door. “I’ve got to pick up Bea soon. You should go. I’ve got to clear my head of this fucking haunting for five goddamn minutes, and I—”
I was about to say more, but Adelaide stood. Without a word, she turned and walked across the living room. I heard her clear the foyer and open the front door, slamming it behind her as she left the house. The silence that followed was pronounced, amplifying my confusion as to whether I’d done the right thing in being so dismissive.
I stared into the black mirror of the television screen until my eyes burned and my brain buzzed, with no idea what to do next.
Chapter 21
Adelaide didn’t call or text for several days, and I was grateful not to have to pretend I wasn’t still mad. She was so stubborn, so convinced that her way was the only way. Serves her right, thinking she could bring the Tallows in without consequences. I distracted myself by going about my days, taking care of Bea, tiptoeing around Callum, and throwing myself into my work. It helped that Adelaide was assigned to a project that required her to be away from Preservation Society headquarters. Outside project notwithstanding, Adelaide still was hard at work on the haunting.
A grating shriek rang up from the stairwell every morning when Callum left for work, fulfilling some stage of things to which I hadn’t yet been made privy. The walls and ceilings thumped with strange noises, and rancid smells wafted from the rafters. I managed to shield Beatrix from most of these “symptoms” with well-timed trips out to Pinecone House to play. The screen-free audio player I’d recently purchased was essential too; on it, she could choose a selection of stories, music, and educational content.
One afternoon, however, Callum cornered Bea and demanded to know if she’d been moving a teddy bear around the house to mess with him. Confused, Bea shook her head, but Callum complained about the bear the rest of the weekend and demanded that Bea keep her toys where they belonged, resulting in an epic, if out-of-character, tantrum from Bea in which she threw everything off every shelf in the playroom.
It was odd knowing Adelaide was around, skulking around corners, jumping from joist to joist in her fuzzy slippers. I couldn’t decide if I was touched by her commitment or annoyed she wasn’t giving me any space. Still, I had to hand it to her; she was preternaturally good at sneaking around the house, orchestrating all manner of creepy happenings.
One evening, several days after the meeting with Joe and Morgan, Bea and I came home to an ice-cold house. Bea reacted to the inconvenience of the chill uncharacteristically and, in light of my fatigue after work, intolerably, whining and stomping her feet, doing everything she could to push my buttons. Callum was camped out on the couch under a blanket, drink in hand, on the phone with the heating company.
I was worried they’d send a service person out, but whoever answered must have heard the slur in Cal’s words. He broke into a stream of curses when they hung up on him and lurched down the hall, blanket dragging behind him. He spent the rest of the night in his room, tipping from drunkenness into full-on annihilation, if the overall timbre of chaos and mayhem was any indication.
The next evening, knock-knock-knocks sounded from behind the walls, and the creepy twang of a guitar drifted down from the ceiling. Beatrix commented on neither the music nor her father’s absence, but was moody and sullen, and though I went to bed when she did, I woke short-tempered and foggy-headed. By the time Beatrix and I made our way to the kitchen for breakfast, Callum had already left for work.
The night after that, having returned from taking Beatrix to her horseback riding lesson—during which she was so irritable her pony picked up on the negative energy and nearly threw her—I found Callum in the living room again. There was no glass in sight, but he was clearly drunk, standing at the room’s center and staring into corners like a man in a dream, shaking his head and talking to himself.
“Things keep moving,” he said, his tone incredulous. “The furniture. The couch. The tables. The tilt of the television. When I got home, everything was slightly off-kilter. Three inches or so. Maybe four. I went to make a drink, but I had to go down in the basement for the extra case of seltzer, and when I came back, everything was worse. Six inches off. Maybe seven. The couch was so far away from the television, it was actually sticking out past the doorway there. I am not making this up. It was obvious. Obvious.”
Though this was the exact reaction from Cal that Adelaide and I had wanted, I was annoyed by the intrusion of his words, and grateful Bea had asked to play in Pinecone House rather than coming straight inside. “Ohhhhkay,” I said, pretending to examine the location of the couch.
“I took a shower to clear my head,” Callum continued. “I thought, you’re out of it, Cal. In need of a reset. When I came into the living room again, everything was back to normal. Not one goddamn thing out of place.”
He scrubbed the side of his head, as if trying to wash away the memories of the bewildering afternoon. “Then my boss called, so I went outside to talk to him. When I came back, everything had moved six inches in the opposite direction.”
He gestured toward the TV, and while his mouth was pinched and his shoulders were hunched, his eyes held no anger, only fear.
I glanced out the kitchen window. Bea was there, climbing the slide into her clubhouse. “Remember when I asked you if you thought the booze was messing with your head?” I started, “Do you think—”
“That has nothing to do with it!” Callum exploded. “You’re not listening! Something has been going on here.”
His words hung in the air. I waited, but he remained silent. I’d seen enough movies to know how deliciously reversed our roles were here. It was always the wife whose fears were being downplayed, the husband almost willfully ignorant to her observations: I don’t know what you’re talking about . . . Nothing’s going on here . . . Everything’s fine . . . Perhaps you should lie down, you’re not making any sense . . . You’re hysterical. Hormonal. You’re acting crazy. Or, in our case: Of course I haven’t had anything to drink, it must be you.
