How to Fake a Haunting, page 12
I put a hand to my chest, making a show of realizing that Cal was—somehow—trying to implicate me, and pitched my tone to contain a suitable amount of outrage. “What the hell does that mean, ‘Something has been going on here’? I just got back from Bea’s lesson, which was stressful as hell, in case you were wondering.”
Amazingly, this broke through Callum’s fixation with recent events, and he scoffed. “I still can’t believe you let her ride a horse when she doesn’t know how to ride a bike.”
Inside my rib cage, poisonous petals unfurled. “Do you have a broken leg I can’t see?” I growled. “You could teach her to ride a bike, you know. And what do you think, I made our daughter skip her favorite part of the week so I could hide in the goddamn fireplace and move the furniture a couple of inches every time you turned your back?”
I sneered, and something inside me recognized the ugliness I felt and that I was reveling in, warned me not to give in to it, not to give in to the stress. But give in I did. “That’s crazy,” I said, my tone full of all the vehemence I felt toward him, that I’d felt growing like a weed the past six years. “You understand that, right? That that’s absolutely fucking insane?”
“I know how it sounds, but it’s true.”
I looked around. “News flash, Callum, everything is—”
“I know, everything’s back to normal. So it must not have happened, right? I’ve lost it? I’m—”
“You’re drunk, Cal. That’s what you are. You’re drunk, and I’m going outside with Bea. Why don’t you do something productive like fix the deck rail instead of standing here staring at the furniture like it owes you money?” I stormed out, and when I returned almost two hours later—the afternoon had remained warm enough for Bea and me to restring some of the pinecones that had fallen from the clubhouse rafters—Callum was passed out in bed.
While Bea was in the tub, I climbed to the top of the closet organizer and peeked into the attic, ready to call out to Adelaide if I saw her. But she was gone, leaving behind no trace.
The following evening, Beatrix and I went out with my parents for pizza. I’d texted Callum, offering to bring him home a couple of slices—old habits die hard—but he hadn’t responded. When we got home, he was in his room, shades drawn, lights out. There wasn’t even an empty glass on the bedside table. I figured Adelaide had taken the night off—Lord knew she probably needed it—and I gave Bea a quick bath and got her into her pajamas, read her a handful of books, and got her to sleep relatively early.
I usually stayed in bed with Beatrix, watching movies on the iPad or reading on my Kindle. It’d been ages since I’d ventured into the living room to join Callum in front of the television. Even when he was sober, Callum wasn’t big on movies or TV series, as he tended to fall asleep within minutes of choosing something to watch. I’d had the brilliant idea a few months back to attempt to watch something while ignoring Callum passed out on the couch beside me, but it was impossible to hear through his snoring.
Tonight, there was nothing stopping me from claiming the living room as my own. I checked on Bea and grabbed a pint of ice cream before crashing on the couch. Clicking through the latest Netflix offerings, I felt unexpectedly carefree.
Adelaide had warned me to stay away from horror movies, but Callum was dead to the world, and not watching one felt like a wasted opportunity. While I still felt Adelaide owed me an apology, I didn’t like that we were fighting. Maybe if I found something in one of these horror films that we could use, it might reopen the channels of communication between us. It was worth a try. I scrolled through the seemingly endless options parading across the screen.
At first, when the thump came, I thought a trailer for one of the movies had started. But when the thump was followed by a grating shriek, like metal on glass—as if someone were dragging iron across a mirror deep enough to carve out strips—I knew it was coming from inside the house.
Then came the bloodcurdling scream, and my entire body went weightless with terror.
Chapter 22
I shot up from the couch, my mind a chaotic screen of static in my fear for Bea. But then the scream came again, and I realized it was Callum.
After taking the stairs two at a time, I skidded down the hall and flung open the bedroom door. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. Callum appeared to be in bed, the blankets a tangled mess. Beyond the bed, the windows were open. The bright-white lights of the solar-powered deck rails floated in the blackness like tiny spaceships. I turned my attention back to the bed.
The mattress was shaking, the entire bed rattling in its frame, and from it came a quiet, breathless keening.
“Callum?” I called softly.
“Is it out there?” He sounded desperate.
“Is what out where?” I looked around. What had Adelaide done? Like the windows, Callum’s closet was open. “What’s going on?”
“Is it out there?” he asked again.
“There’s nothing out here.” I didn’t have to feign my irritation.
Callum flung the covers back, and I stifled a gasp. He looked positively haunted—gaunt-eyed, sallow-skinned, his face streaked with tears. “I woke up,” he explained shakily. “Something . . . there was something in my closet.” His voice rose in pitch. “It was some sort of demon. A goddamned monster.”
“Beatrix is sleeping,” I hissed. “Keep your voice down.”
“I don’t care that she’s sleeping!” Callum shouted, jumping out of bed with surprising speed. “If there’s a monster in the house, we need to get her out of here.”
I sucked in a breath. This is it. The most important performance you’ve had to give thus far. I raised both hands and smacked Callum in the chest, stopping him in his tracks. “Knock it the hell off. Do you hear yourself? Are you really about to wake up our child right now, babbling about monsters? Have you lost your fucking mind?”
Cal threw my hands off him and stalked toward the closet. He flipped the light on and examined the closet’s interior as if expecting something to jump out.
“What is it you think you saw?”
“A ghoul. A demon. I don’t know. It was terrifying. White face. Sunken eyes.”
I gestured at the door to the bathroom through which a strip of mirror was visible. “Are you sure you didn’t see yourself?”
Callum shot me a look of incredulity and betrayal. “Asshole,” he whispered. “You dumb, self-righteous asshole. I’m standing here telling you that something was in our house, and you’re too stubborn to listen.” He dropped to his knees and searched under the bed.
I looked across the room to the open window. Adelaide wasn’t kidding about adopting the recklessness of a serial killer who snatched his victims in plain sight. From what I could gather, she’d come down from the attic dressed like some grave-worn wraith, stood in Cal’s closet, scared the shit out of him, and disappeared out the window while Callum quaked and unraveled not five feet away.
I drew closer to the window and peered out. Adelaide had gotten away with it, telescopic ladder and all. I squinted and thought I could make out a flash of movement circling the pool fence by the garden. Adelaide, maybe, heading for the woods.
“You left the windows open,” I pointed out, turning back to Callum. “Maybe something got in? Like a raccoon? You said it had dark eyes. If you woke up from a deep sleep and saw it, maybe you got confused?”
Callum’s expression was thunderous. “A fucking racoon? Do you think I’m a moron?” He was screaming now, and my vision tunneled, shrinking down to him and only him, eliminating the open windows, the dark night sky, the yawning closet.
“You’re going to wake Bea—” I started, but it was too late.
From the other room, Beatrix cried out, “Mommy!”
My darkened vision yawned back open, prisms of white light exploding at the corners, so all-consuming was my rage. “Prick,” I spat. “Selfish asshole.” Even as I said it, I knew my brain had buried the fact of Adelaide’s trick; I was not acting, not playing a part. I meant every word, was ready to end him, to punish him for his reaction to something I had helped to orchestrate, the haunting allowing me to express the rage I’d kept bottled and carefully shelved for far too long.
“Worthless piece of shit,” I continued. “You are the monster. Don’t you see that? You are the one I need to protect Beatrix from, not some figment of your damaged imagination. It was bad enough when you were just a drunk, but now you’ve dragged us into the darkness with you. You’re seeing shit in the shadows. Hearing noises. Smelling things. Imagining the furniture moving and the temperature dropping. You’re sick, Callum. You need help. You’re—”
Beatrix called out again. I sputtered, “Shut the windows. Go to bed. I wish I didn’t have to hear another sound from you ever again, but at the very least, don’t let me hear your fucking voice before morning.”
I slammed Cal’s door and rushed down the hall to Bea’s room, taking her in my arms the way I had when she was a baby. “It’s okay, love. It’s okay. Daddy had a bad dream, that’s all.”
“But . . . but . . .” She could hardly talk for all her sniffling. “What did Daddy dream?”
“Don’t worry, love. It wasn’t real.”
“But Mommy, I had a dream too. I saw something. I saw it there.” She pointed at the dresser mirror, which was angled toward her closet.
Goddamn it, Adelaide! How could you have let Bea see you? “I promise you, my love, there’s nothing to worry about.”
“But I saw a woman. Her hands were red. And she didn’t have a face! Well, she did, but it was funny and hard to see, like a mirror inside a mirror.”
Was Adelaide holding something that was red? A flashlight, maybe? “Why didn’t you call out for me when you saw it? I would’ve come right in.”
Bea rubbed at her eyes. “I did call for you, just now. I was scared. Her face was there, and then it wasn’t. It went all shimmery.” There was more, but I couldn’t understand it, Bea’s words reduced to chest-hitching sobs.
I stroked her face and rocked her. She was so adamant, so frightened; I didn’t dare challenge her story a second time. But she couldn’t have called for me right after seeing Adelaide because by the time Beatrix yelled out, Adelaide was already gone, her dark form disappearing around the garden. I looked across Bea’s room to the mirror. The string of fairy lights around it looked like unlit fireflies against the frame.
I stroked Bea’s cheeks until her breathing calmed. Eventually, she fell asleep in my arms, and I nestled her onto her pillow and tucked her in. I stared at her tousled hair and the way her eyelashes fanned out beneath her closed eyes like tiny butterfly wings and vowed to ream out Adelaide for letting herself be seen.
But Adelaide wasn’t here, a voice in my head whispered. She was already gone. And yet, Beatrix insisted there’d been something in the mirror.
In four years, no dream had ever followed my daughter into the waking world, no fabrication of such a nature had ever fallen from her lips. Which left only one real question . . .
What the hell had Beatrix seen?
Chapter 23
Each morning the rest of that week, I woke to the sounds of Callum in the driveway discovering yet another dead animal around his truck. On Tuesday, he scraped the mangled remains of a racoon from his grille and stared at it, dumbstruck, before going to the shed for a shovel to wrench it out. On Wednesday, the fat brown body of a woodchuck was wedged against his windshield. Again, Callum stared as I peered around a curtain in my office. I could see him trying to work out whether there were any associated memories that would explain the woodchuck’s carcass and coming up empty-handed. On Thursday, another animal in the grille, this time a bloody mess of once-white feathers; I knew it was a seagull, but I didn’t think there was enough left of it for Callum to come to that conclusion.
On Friday, I jolted awake the moment I heard the trill of Callum’s alarm through the wall. As I lay in bed, listening to the sounds of the shower, I thought back to the night Adelaide had hidden in Cal’s closet. I’d confronted her at work the next day, insisting I was no longer mad about the Tallows but wanting to know how she’d gone about getting Callum to lose his shit. She’d admitted to donning a ghoulish costume and makeup but was distracted throughout our conversation, answering texts on her phone with a strange little smile. The one time she looked up and gave me her full attention was when she insisted there’d have been no way Beatrix could have seen her.
“I stood in Cal’s closet after sneaking in,” she’d said. “He was sweating and whimpering in his sleep, so I knew freaking him out was going to be a cinch.” She shrugged. “I whispered his name until he woke up. While he lost his mind and hid under the covers like a toddler, I shot across the room and disappeared down the ladder. And that was that.”
“But Bea saw you,” I’d said again. “Were you holding something red? Maybe a flashlight?”
“I wasn’t holding anything. And I swear I wasn’t in her room that night. I never went up to the attic. It was probably a run-of-the-mill nightmare. Kids dream weird shit all the time.”
In the end, I was forced to concede that Adelaide was probably right. Still, I didn’t like it. Bea was feeling the effects of the haunting even with me doing everything I could to shield her from them. Soon, I told myself. Soon this will be over, and Bea and I will be free.
The shower turned off. Drawers opened and closed. Cal’s footsteps sounded on the stairs. A minute later, the garage door groaned beneath me. He never could just walk out the side door; he had to leave the house in the loudest way possible, despite not parking in the garage in the spring and summer. So predictable, the sounds of a marriage, the little nuances and idiosyncrasies of one’s partner going about their day. In another life, another version of this one, I might’ve met the culmination of Cal’s morning routine with a shared cup of coffee in the kitchen. Instead, I was waiting for him to open his car door and kick-start a scene that’d be at home in some backwoods horror movie.
I jumped up from the daybed, crept to the far window, and peeked over the sill. For several moments, nothing happened, and then Callum strolled out into the quiet haze of the morning, his shoulders slumped and his head hung low.
He gave the vehicle a wide berth, puffing his e-cigarette and staring at the grille as if something might jump out of it. Then, satisfied that the grille was clear, he fished his keys from his pocket and climbed into the cab.
I held my breath. Three seconds passed. Then another three. The driver’s-side door burst open, and Callum fell out onto the pavement. His chest heaved as he scrambled backward, crab-walking away from the car. I tried to adjust my position, but I couldn’t see inside the truck. I’d have to imagine the decapitated deer head perched on the front seat with its black, unseeing eyes, its fur ruined by whatever collision, bullet, arrow, or disease had killed it. If Todd-the-wildlife-guy had told Adelaide how the deer met its end, Adelaide hadn’t shared that information with me. And if Callum came to me with the carnage, I needed only to accuse him of getting into yet another accident caused by his drinking. The dichotomy between Callum’s memories and the horror of the deer head would hopefully increase his sense of reality disintegrating beneath him.
Callum managed to get to his feet and sprint away from the truck. If I strained my neck, forehead pressing into the glass, I could see him in the dewy grass of the silent backyard. He stared at the driveway, still breathing hard. I looked at my phone. He had about two minutes to make a decision before he was late for work. I waited for the squaring of the shoulders, the set of the jaw. Waited for Callum to march into the shed, as he’d done three days prior, and return with shovel and garbage bag. Instead, his lips formed the words Fuck this shit. He moved close enough to the car to slam the door before disappearing back into the garage.
I then heard all the noises of that morning but in reverse: garage door shutting, footsteps on the stairs, across the hall, and into Cal’s room, drawers opening and closing, the spray of the shower. Finally, I heard the squeak of the mattress as Cal’s body returned to it, heard the rustling of the sheets, then Callum’s voice, muffled, but loud enough to hear the shakiness and uncertainty in every word:
“Steve, yeah, it’s Callum, I must’ve come down with something. I’m not coming in today. Okay . . . okay . . . yup, got it. Yeah, hopefully I’ll see you tomorrow, but for now, I’m . . . I’m in a bad way. No, don’t call to check in. I’m going back to bed.”
Callum’s phone clattered to his nightstand. I picked up my own phone, opened my messages app, and sent off a quick note to Adelaide before returning to bed:
Operation Bambi = success
I lay there for almost an hour, thinking of all the progress we’d made in the last two weeks: the dead animals, the moving furniture, Callum’s call to the heating company that’d been met with apathy and derision, the ghost that’d appeared to him in the night. At this rate, Callum would be gone before we’d gotten too far into summer.
It was only when I was drifting off to sleep that something occurred to me, sending a jolt of anxiety through my body that rendered sleep all but impossible. In all of Adelaide’s explanations for how she’d pulled off her ghost-in-the-closet trick, she’d never relayed the source of the metal-on-glass sound I’d heard right before Callum screamed.
I dropped Bea at school and was pulling into the driveway when I remembered that Callum had called in to work. Goddammit. No way I was working from home with him here. I’d get what I needed and get the hell out.
But Callum’s car was gone. Maybe he’d gone in to work after all? Or gone somewhere to dispose of the deer head? I refrained from opening the garage in case he was sleeping upstairs, and walked toward the front door instead. I was halfway up the walkway when I saw the flash of blue, an envelope, in the jamb of the front door.
