How to Fake a Haunting, page 25
The cycle started again: mangled ghost rising from the mirror behind the couch, Lady Macbeth floating in from the kitchen. This time, however, they were joined by the shadow from the staircase. It lumbered through the living room, using its blunt instrument against the walls to hold itself steady.
I bent at the waist, pressing my face between my knees, desperate for the feel of the fabric against my cheeks, the smell of the denim, anything to bring me back to reality. It didn’t matter. Rain fell. Thunder rumbled. Ghosts wandered, returned, wandered, floated, and crawled again. The massive tree branch protruded through the open frame like a monstrous hand hoping to snag hood or hair.
The accoutrements from Callum’s short-lived séance were still glued to the ceiling, wax hanging down in stalactites. Dark shapes burst from a hollow in the tree branch, and I stared, dumbfounded anew, as bats swooped among the candles and selenite spears. I’d read once that humans could not naturally hear their sounds, but I could hear these bats, their demonic clicks and chilling squeaks as unnerving as the mournful cry of the tortured ghost that was once again sinking into the floor of my living room. Everything—colors, sounds, smells, the tacky feel of blood dripping down my arm—was turned up to eleven, augmented and amplified by the merry-go-round progression of the specters.
A groan came from beside me, and I turned to find Callum curled into himself, rocking back and forth on his heels. Do something, I wanted to shout. Don’t just stand there. But I, too, was rooted to the spot.
I opened my mouth and closed it, opened it again, closed it. I wanted to collapse, to give in to the madness threatening to consume me, to drop to the floor and scream. This wasn’t supposed to happen. How was it happening? At first, I thought another sound was joining the cacophony, but then I realized that the voice, Adelaide’s voice, was in my head:
What do you say? Shall we turn this place into a motherfucking haunted house?
Had I done this? Introduced a toxicity, a negative energy, or at least added to what was already here? If we’d never staged the haunting, would any of this have happened? Had I opened a portal, given the ghosts a way to come in?
But then there was a noise, an actual noise, not another accusation or question in my head. Loud enough to discern through the rain and the thunder, the bats and the wails, the moans and the scraping of the staircase specter’s object against the wall. It was heavy. Lumbering. Like Frankenstein’s monster in an old black-and-white movie.
Footsteps.
In the bedroom upstairs.
Chapter 48
The footsteps traveled across the upstairs bedroom. Through the hallway. Down the staircase. Into the kitchen. The other three apparitions continued their well-trod movements, but I could no longer pay attention. I could only stare toward the hallway, dreading what was about to emerge from it.
And then the dread, the terror, became too much, and I was sidestepping along the wall one tentative shuffle at a time. When I was halfway to the playroom—and the door to the outside world—I looked back. Callum’s eyes were on the yawning doorframe; he’d yet to notice my sideways progression. When I reached the French doors, I found the floor beneath the single step into the playroom with the ball of my right foot, unwilling to turn my back on the mind-bending spectacle in the living room, a tableau I felt no human brain should be forced to imagine let alone experience.
The footsteps had stopped on the other side of the wall between hall and living room. Whatever was out there, it was waiting. I reached out and took hold of the once-glass-fronted door, but Lady Macbeth whooshed through, so close I felt the frigid air of her encompass the right side of my body. She didn’t slow, just continued on to the deck and down the stairs. I reached back out to grab the door. I slowly pulled the open door to me; it met its mate with an audible click.
Two things happened in the wake of that click: Callum jerked his head in my direction, and the fourth and final specter took the final two stomps it needed to reach the living room.
“What are you doing?” Callum yelled. His eyes had a desperate, disbelieving look I had never seen before, not even at his worst, not even when he’d done the unspeakable, hitting the gate outside Seaview Terrace, abandoning Beatrix. And maybe that was the cause of all this, that we’d both done unspeakable things and were paying for them. And surely, to lay eyes on the thing that had just walked into the living room could only be called divine retribution.
Callum had not been wrong to call it a corpse. Though its face was as shimmery and undefined as all the others, its flesh was a pallid, putrid green. Rigid limbs kept it upright, and tattered clothes clung to its frame. I couldn’t see its mouth, but somehow I knew it hung open around a bloated tongue and too-prominent teeth.
Though its clothes rippled and swelled like a disturbed sea, I could tell, the way I could tell Lady Macbeth wore some sort of hood, that this corpse specter was clothed in a burial suit. I glimpsed a desiccated flower hanging from its pocket square the way you might catch sight of a clump of seaweed as it tumbled through a wave.
Revulsion turned my muscles to lead. My brain went blank with fear. And then the undead thing lurched forward, one hand reaching out for Callum. Callum screamed and tried to scramble away, but it wasn’t just the corpse; the other three ghosts were each engaged in their circuitous routes. The one from the staircase was on Callum’s left, the mangled wraith on his right. By the time he decided he should take his chances with the wraith, and dived in that direction, the corpse specter was on him.
The thing was roughly the same size as Callum, but instantly he was covered by it, as if the aura of death and rot swirling around the corpse was corporeal, obscuring Callum as effectively as if he were beneath a king-size blanket or a grizzly bear. He crumpled against the living room wall, struggling against his assailant. The thing pummeled him, went for his neck. When I caught sight of Callum’s face, his eyes appeared to be covered with blood and what looked like a mixture of phlegm and vomit.
I shouted for Callum, but the sound was lost to the driving rain and rolling thunder, and to the bats, which flapped and dived crazily. More objects shot up to the ceiling and hung like vines—terra-cotta planters, the coffee table, a lamp without its shade, remotes, and coasters. The lights, however, were back on, showcasing the never-ending procession of ghosts that floated and lumbered around us. Three twangy guitar notes rang out, and then the band’s singer was wailing from the walls, the sound rattling the French doors in their frame. I grabbed the ice-cold knob. Despite my terror, I had to do something, had to try to help Callum.
I pushed. The door didn’t budge. Lady Macbeth floated through the jagged shards of glass, the crisscrossing sash bars, as if to mock me. I pushed again and again, batting at the knob, but to no avail.
Callum writhed on the floor, his eyes squeezed shut. The corpse specter gnashed and flailed on top of him. It grabbed his wrists, and even through the music I heard the snap, like a brittle branch cracking beneath a boot. Callum howled and tried to grab for his wrist, but the putrid thing lowered itself onto him again.
I let go of the door and backed against the wall. The house took up Callum’s howls, and the squeaking chorus of bats rose to a crescendo. Over it all, I could hear Callum. My husband. The husband I’d started all of this to get rid of. To divorce and keep away from Beatrix. I could hear his horrified cries devolve into words, anguished and accusatory:
“Why? Why is this happening?”
I sank to the floor and hugged my knees. I ducked my head, and closed my eyes.
Then, finally, I screamed.
Chapter 49
Someone was shaking me. I screamed again and raised my arms, my eyes flying open. Morgan Tallow stood over me, her face etched with concern.
“Lainey! Are you all right?” Morgan’s voice was shocked, but I couldn’t focus on her question. Could only look around me in a panic. Where was Callum? Where was the corpse specter? The music had stopped, as had the rain, but the sky was still an unnatural gray. I leaned forward and peered through the doors into the living room. The ghosts were gone. All of them. Joe was helping Callum to his feet.
“Did you see them?” I asked. “The ghosts?”
Morgan shook her head. “No, but we heard you screaming. Joe wanted to call the police. I told him that was a ridiculous suggestion. Seeing as you were expecting us, I thought it would be okay to let ourselves in and see if we could help. We got to the door there”—she pointed to the living room entrance—“and we saw your husband. He was waving his hands at something, but we couldn’t see it.” She looked up. “We did see the bats, but I don’t think that’s what he was fighting.”
She held out her hand, and I took it. “Was it the ghosts you told me about on the phone last night? The two that emerged when the mirrors exploded?”
“There are four now,” I said. “And, no offense, but you weren’t exactly right about them not being dangerous.” I looked over Morgan’s shoulder to where Joe was leading Callum down the hall and toward the kitchen. “I think the corpse specter was trying to kill him.”
“Corpse specter?” Morgan frowned, her eyebrows furrowing. “Why don’t we go into the kitchen? You can catch us up with everything that’s been going on.”
Five minutes later, we were seated around the table much the way Adelaide and I had sat with Joe and Morgan three weeks earlier.
“So,” Morgan said, “these ghosts emerged last night along with”—she looked at the broken windows, the shattered remains of mirror—“an explosion of glass?”
I nodded, but my stomach churned with anxiety. To say all this started last night with the broken glass was the understatement of the century.
“Was there anything that prefaced the breaking glass?” Joe asked. “Any noises or changes in temperature?”
“Yes,” Callum said, perking up. He had an ice pack on what was hopefully only a sprained wrist. Morgan had wrapped a piece of gauze and a large bandage around the cut along my forearm.
“I was holding a pint glass,” Callum continued, “and it exploded in my hand. It was like, I bent the straw to take a sip, and the fucking thing burst into a thousand fucking pieces.”
Joe and Morgan exchanged a look.
Shit, shit, shit, shit! “Yeah,” I said, “about that . . .”
But Callum went on talking. “There were lots of things before last night too. Knocking in the walls. Strange smells. Furniture moving. Flies by the thousands.”
“Is this why you called us, Lainey?” Morgan asked. “Back in May?”
Callum looked confused. “You called them in May? But you didn’t believe me about the house being haunted. You didn’t believe any of it until last night.”
I picked at a corner of the bandage. What the hell should I say? There was no way out of this now, not to mention that I didn’t want the Tallows basing their plan to help us on a foundation of lies.
“Yeah, um.” I bared my teeth in a pained, sheepish grimace. “I didn’t believe you because I caused it.” Now all three of them tilted their heads at me, bewildered.
“You caused it?” Morgan asked. “The ghosts?”
“Not them. But everything before it. Well, almost everything,” I clarified.
Callum’s eyes were still wide. He looked confused, but as I watched, realization dawned, and his eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?” he demanded.
Wishing the house would engage in some useful haunting activity and open up a sinkhole next to the table that I could jump through, I sighed and started talking.
“Everything up until the shower rained blood last night and the mirrors and windows exploded? It wasn’t a poltergeist or demonic activity. It was me. Or, more accurately, it was me working through Adelaide.” I looked at Callum. “If I couldn’t divorce you without giving up fifty percent custody of Bea, I figured it was worth a shot haunting you out of the house.”
All the bewilderment and curiosity curdled on his face. I watched as he worked to make sense of what I’d told him, thinking through events, recalling incidents in a different light. “No,” he said after a moment. “No, that’s not possible.”
“It is possible,” I said. “Way more possible than the nightmare that’s been going on around us.” I gestured at the ceiling. “The knocking in your bedroom? Recorders in the attic. The creepy sounds and music? Same. The rancid smells were stink bombs Adelaide cooked up. The ghoul in your closet was Adelaide after a particularly successful makeup tutorial.”
I contorted my face into that half-apologetic, sheepish grimace again. “Adelaide was in and out of this house a hundred times over the last month, courtesy of a felt-lined retractable ladder and your perpetual drunkenness, which made her all but invisible.”
“No, no, no.” Callum was shaking his head now. “No. There’s no way.” He brought his hands up to his face, then winced as the movement tweaked his injured wrist. “The candles shooting up to the ceiling?” he asked.
“Before last night, the candles shot to the ceiling because Adelaide and I glued magnets to the bottoms of them.”
“And the teddy bears?”
“Adelaide and I were hiding in the house that night. We staged them, propped them up. The bears were recordable; Adelaide set them to play creepy sound effects from a Halloween YouTube channel.”
We went through half a dozen more instances, and with each revelation, Callum grew angrier and more incredulous. Finally, his head jerked up, something like an epiphany on his face.
“What about the glass exploding in my hand? That happened before the mirrors!”
I felt Joe and Morgan’s eyes on me. Yes, their expressions said. Tell us how that happened. “It’s called a Prince Rupert’s drop,” I said haltingly. “A type of toughened glass bead. I put it in your straw. When you bent the straw, the bead exploded, which broke your glass.”
At Callum’s stunned expression, the dark thing inside me that reveled in hurting him reared its ugly head. I wasn’t alone in my feelings; Callum looked like he was going jump across the table and choke me.
“You,” he spat, “and your friend from work have been . . . haunting me? Making me think that I was crazy?”
I scoffed defensively. “And you’ve been drinking yourself to death, to insanity, in front of our daughter,” I shot back.
Callum’s expression twisted with resentment. He’d thought Joe and Morgan were going to sensationalize our story, had wanted to stick to ghosts in the mirrors rather than reveal the skeletons in our closets. But the idea that the ghosts weren’t random, couldn’t be attributed to a haunted artifact or building a house on a Native American burial ground, was gaining traction with every passing hour. There was a reason we were being haunted, and Joe and Morgan wouldn’t be able to help us until we took the whole picture into consideration.
“I wish I were surprised,” Callum said. “I wish I were mad. I am mad. I’m fucking livid. But I can’t possibly care more about you and that psycho-bitch’s crazy plan to haunt me than about your far worse, far more selfish betrayal.”
He shook his head, staring hard at me, as if trying to find the reasons for my actions somewhere on my body. “You started this, Lainey.” He spun on Joe and Morgan. “You’re here to discover the big mystery? The reason our house is full of destructive, evil energy? Why don’t you ask her how she can sit here with a straight face and say she needed to haunt me out of my own house when she had an abortion and kept it a secret?” He lunged at me. “How dare you turn me into the villain? This isn’t my fault!”
As he spoke, I’d been growing lightheaded, rage climbing up my throat like ivy, making it hard to breathe. But with this last sentence, my vision sharpened with laser-focus precision. “It is your fault,” I said, too raw and tired and fearful to hold back. “Your drinking must have been like an open invitation for all things evil to come into this house.”
“Maybe we should—” Joe started, but Callum interrupted.
“My drinking,” he said, incredulous. “You think my drinking is the problem, something that, oh, I don’t know, eighty percent or more of people everywhere do on a regular basis, but your abortion has nothing to do with the ghosts crawling all over this place?”
Morgan tried to temper the shock with which she turned on me, but I still saw it there, in the parting of her mouth and the way her eyes creased as if she were in pain. Every detail from the story she’d told me about wanting a child and delivering a stillborn baby rushed back to me, and I hung my head.
“It was my choice,” I stammered. “And I didn’t make it because I don’t like being a mother.” I made it because you are not a good father, I thought but didn’t say. Insulting him wouldn’t help; I needed to steer the conversation back to the quartet of ghosts in the house if we were going to make any sort of progress. But first, I needed to try to explain.
“I didn’t have an abortion because I don’t like being a mother,” I repeated, “but because Beatrix has always felt like a blessing I didn’t fully deserve. When I got pregnant again, I was terrified. Whether or not I deserved Bea, I had her; why would I upset that sacred balance? Why would I take away a single resource or divert my attention from her for even a second when my greatest purpose in life was to be her mother . . . hers and hers alone?”
Callum didn’t say anything. Joe shifted in his chair, looking uncomfortable. But Morgan reached out and took my hand.
“There is a lot to unpack here,” she said, her tone patient. “Resentments. Secrets. Broken dreams and unrealized expectations. But I think we can help you.” She looked across the table to Joe, and he nodded. Then she pushed back in her chair and looked down the hall. “The first mirror’s down there?” she asked.
