Page 10 of How to Fake a Haunting

When Callum returned that evening, Beatrix and I were in her room, making our way through a pile of books.

She appeared unscathed in the wake of the accident; by her account, she’d fallen asleep upon leaving the Elms and had only woken after the crash.

Still, I’d spent every one of the last three nights spending as much time with her as possible.

Over duck-watching and library-book hunting, Bea had opened up and burrowed into me, displaying both a resilience beyond her years and a fierce need for the security I provided.

As I read, I kept looking over to her, tracing the cleft in her chin, tucking wisps of hair behind her ears, and marveling at the gray-gold of her eyes.

The sky was an obfuscous shade of sage, tinged copper around the edges.

The first fat drops of rain splattered against the pollen-dusted windows.

The smell of petrichor came in through the retractable screen, drifting up from across the yard where, one hour earlier, Adelaide and I had packed up the ladder after our first day of preparations.

The last thing we did before she left was to glue felt pieces to the underside of the rungs to muffle the hollow-sounding thwunk the ladder made when retracted.

My muscles ached from our efforts. Building the closet organizer and hauling plywood through the attic’s trapdoor had been no small task, and by the time we’d trudged through the woods and back to our cars, I’d been lightheaded with exhaustion.

But the prospect of our efforts paying off, of seeing the plan put into motion that very evening, had kept me going.

Now, anticipation and optimism were replaced by incredulity at our hubris, as well as a sick sort of dread brought on by Callum’s return.

Waiting while he entered the house felt like listening to some storybook villain stomping through a castle: Each step brought a fresh wave of panic crashing into the shores of my heart.

Bea tensed beside me, and though I continued reading, I felt she was attuned to the sound beneath the words—the hum of the garage door opening, the stomping, the creaking door, and now, the heaving breathing coming from the bottom of the stairs.

“The animals lead her out of Toadstool Forest to a cozy burrow,” I read.

“It’s dark in the Witch’s Garden now, and Eleanor is tired, but she misses her mother.

” I turned the page, and the door to the kitchen crashed open.

A nervous tic animated Bea’s lips, and I could see her trying to reconcile the emotions churning within her.

Over the last few years, Callum had made what he thought was a good show of playing the interested father, distracting Bea from his bloodshot eyes and the stench of vodka that hung around him like a shroud with over-the-top antics and no small amount of ice cream.

But the older Beatrix got, the less these displays concealed her father’s increasingly bizarre behaviors.

Going to sleep earlier than she did, eating bags of the same fast food I prohibited, and disappearing outdoors to puff on e-cigarettes and slur into the phone (or down to the basement to swig from the handle of grain vodka he kept hidden beneath his rarely used workbench) had all accumulated to produce in Bea a notable air of distress.

Though my heart ached for Beatrix, allowing Cal his five-minute performance of paying attention to his daughter was less detrimental than the alternative. If I tried to bar Cal from seeing her, the drunken fireworks would upset Bea far more than Cal’s droopy eyelids or jerky movements.

Tonight, however, Cal didn’t even bother coming to Bea’s room.

I heard him stumbling around the kitchen.

A moment later, the knocking began. After the Home Depot trip, Adelaide and I had recorded twenty minutes of rapping our knuckles against the drywall on one of the digital voice recorders she’d purchased.

These things have about fifty hours of battery time, Adelaide had said.

Eventually, we’ll use those hours to our advantage, but for now, we keep it simple.

I forced myself to continue reading as I listened, grateful that Bea had picked a book I could practically recite. Aside from the knocking, the downstairs had gone silent.

I tried to picture Callum’s reaction. Was he standing in the kitchen, one hand in a McDonald’s bag, trying to determine if the noise was real or if he was hearing things? Another sound came then, a low grumble of thunder. Followed quickly by a streak of lightning across the greenish sky.

Bea pressed against me. “I’m scared of the storm.” She cocked her head. “And what’s that knocking?”

I stroked her hair. “Probably a loose board somewhere in the house. And it’s okay, honey.

Remember the Little Blue Truck book? Thunderstorms mean the thirsty plants are getting a nice long drink.

” Anxiety welled in my chest all the same.

Was a storm a blessing on the first night of the staged haunting, or a curse?

Would the weather heighten Cal’s disorientation, or would it hide the sounds?

As if in response to my worries, the next round of knock-knock-knocks reached our ears.

“How about I let you watch a show with your headphones for a few minutes while I talk to Daddy?” I asked. “That way you won’t hear the thunder. How does that sound?”

Bea nodded, her cherubic face eager. I swallowed a pang of guilt that threatened to choke me.

I never stuck Bea in front of the iPad before bed, not only because I thought the blue light screwed with her sleep cycle, but because it was our routine to spend that time together.

One night won’t hurt. Better to keep her away from whatever is about to go down.

I worked my way out from under Bea’s covers.

Another knock-knock-knock-knock came, followed by Cal’s confused shout: “What the hell is that?”

I hurried to retrieve the iPad from the top of the bureau along with Bea’s noise-canceling headphones. After setting her up with a show about an underwater unicorn I hoped was low-key and soothing, I went—in conjunction with two more booms of thunder—to find Callum in the kitchen.

What struck me was not that he was pressed against the wall, head cocked, mouth scrunched, clearly bewildered by the knocking coming from somewhere in the ceiling, but how incredibly shit-faced he looked.

He swayed—the continuous movement nearly imperceptible to the untrained eye—and his eyes roved in two different directions at once.

He licked his lips, the movement so spasmodic and involuntary it seemed to be tethering him to reality, to the present.

When I walked all the way into the kitchen, Callum jumped, but the jerk of his body was off by a beat, the quintessential delayed reaction of a drunk.

Lightning flashed in the kitchen window, followed by an ear-splitting blast of thunder, and Callum actually whimpered.

The knocking—and this was the first time I was hearing it up close through the walls—sounded both echoey and spectral, as if the noise was simultaneously floating around us and uncannily close.

“Cal?” I said, afraid to startle him again, which was absurd, for wasn’t that the goal? “Cal? What’s going on?” He appeared so out of sorts that it was easier than I’d anticipated to act as if I had no idea what was happening.

“Do you hear that?” His voice was strained. “That knocking. It’s in the walls. It’s been going on for ten minutes now, and it’s driving me nuts!” At least that’s what I thought he said. What came out was far more garbled, his words alien and distorted.

And utterly, undeniably scared.

I narrowed my eyes. “All I hear is thunder.” As if we were actors, and I’d delivered the inciting line, more thunder erupted. The rain had turned from a steady onslaught to violent, driving sheets. The walls of the house strained against the force of the wind.

Still, Callum remained on the far side of the kitchen, his head mere inches from a photo collage I had made one year after Bea was born.

It showed the three of us at various milestones: a trip to the ice-cream parlor after Bea had been sick, a day at the park in spring, a visit to the zoo for her birthday, Bea dressed as Raggedy Ann for Halloween.

I heard the knocking beneath the pelting rain and Callum’s muttering, but I continued to focus on his face.

“Are you okay?” I filled my voice with concern.

“Why don’t you go lie down? I’ve got to get Bea to bed soon, despite this.

” I gestured at the window to indicate the weather.

Cal swayed on his feet, and the knocking came again.

He pressed his hands over his ears. He looked dreadful, pale-faced and perspiring.

The plan was working almost too well for the first night.

We were supposed to gear up to bigger things.

Start small. Build momentum. When he sobered up tomorrow, would he be suspicious?

Cal clutched his stomach and looked as if he were about to be sick. His eyes watered, and his skin shone with an almost translucent patina.

I was about to ask if he needed the sink when a crack of thunder as loud as dynamite detonated around us like the hammering of an implacable god.

I never got the words out. Because in addition to the thunder and the knocking, the thoughts swirling around my head and Callum’s pathetic, plaintive whimpering, another sound burst through the kitchen like a scream.

A nasal, disembodied voice, and acoustic guitars as loud as sirens.

Minor chords off-key and off-kilter, and a cascade of drums like a runaway heartbeat.

I felt the blood drain from my face. What’s going on? Neither Adelaide nor I had planned this. This sudden, thunderous explosion of song was not a part of our haunting.