Page 18 of How to Fake a Haunting
Phoenix Plumbing and Heating was a little over an hour away from Newport, which lessened my anxiety over our plan to speak to Adelaide’s “acquaintance.” Chris Matheson had close-cropped sandy-blond hair and a large tattoo of a phoenix on the back of his head.
We’d agreed I’d go by “Theresa Cotes” in front of Chris; Rhode Island—hell, New England—was small, and it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility Chris knew one of the Taylors.
Still, I liked that the tattoo was so conspicuous; I would have remembered if Callum had ever mentioned a dude with fiery wings stretching across half his head.
Chris shook Adelaide’s hand, then mine. “So, Theresa,” he said, nodding for us to join him at his desk at the back of the shop, “Adelaide gave me a call. My old man used to be her grandmother’s plumber; did she tell you that?
Anyway, Adelaide said you two are working on a little science project of sorts? ”
“Not a science project,” Adelaide jumped in.
“We’re aspiring directors, working on a film about a haunted house.
” And she launched into a monologue about everything we’d “shot” thus far, turning the stunts we’d pulled on Callum into detailed descriptions of supposed horror movie scenes.
She even managed to include an anecdote about freaking out one of our “actors” with a decapitated rabbit’s head.
Chris perked up. “Right on, this sounds awesome! Have you guys ever entered the Lovecraft Film Festival in Providence?”
“No,” Adelaide and I said in unison.
“But we’re hoping to with this film,” I added.
“Right on,” Chris said again, nodding. “So, how can I help?”
Adelaide leaned forward in her chair. “We need you to tell us how to run pigs’ blood through the water line so it comes out of the showerhead.”
Chris stared back and forth between us for several seconds before booming with laughter. “Pigs’ blood, huh?” He laughed harder. “Going full Carrie, then? I like it.”
Adelaide smiled, but I could tell she was already irritated, wanting Chris to get on with it.
Adelaide hated small talk and grew impatient easily.
It was actually something Kathy had suggested Adelaide work on to better her relationships with the collections managers and conservators with whom we worked.
It was . . . a work in progress, at best.
“Pigs’ blood, cows’ blood, whatever we can get from the butcher shop,” Adelaide said. “Can you tell us how to do it?”
Chris’s expression turned serious. “Why not shoot it with special effects? Add blood capsules to the showerhead that will burst when hit with hot water.”
That actually sounded like it could work. But Adelaide was shaking her head.
“It can’t be capsules. It has to be the real thing. Look like blood. Taste like blood.”
Chris frowned. “Taste like blood? Why?”
Too far, Adelaide.
But she was two steps ahead, as usual. “Our actors, they’ve agreed to be kept in the dark for a lot of the scenes. We’re trying to elicit the most organic responses from them as possible.” She smiled. “You know, like with the rabbit head.”
I tried to catch Adelaide’s eye, to shoot her a look of warning, but she kept her gaze on the plumber.
Chris’s frown deepened. “It would be a pretty complicated process.”
“We’re not afraid of complicated,” said Adelaide.
Chris sighed. “No, I mean, complicated to the point of impossible. Hypothetically, it could be done. Hypothetically, pretty much anything can be done. But in reality, it wouldn’t work.”
“Why not?” Adelaide challenged.
“For starters, you’d have to plumb the blood into your water line, and whether that’s city or well water, I mean, how would you even do that?
You couldn’t. Not without getting arrested for tampering with the city’s water or corrupting your well.
Here, look.” He grabbed a notepad and pen and drew a diagram.
“Even if you got blood into the water line, you wouldn’t get straight blood from the nozzle.
It would mix with hot and cold water from the individual lines and be diluted by the time it came out.
You’d go to all that work to not even come close to the desired effect.
Then there’s the water pressure. You wouldn’t be able to keep the eighteen or twenty pounds of water pressure you needed in order to—”
“All right, all right, we get it.” Adelaide’s eyes flashed with annoyance.
She shot me a look, and I could tell she was still working through every little thing Chris had said, searching for a hole she could pry open.
I squinted at his diagram but couldn’t make sense of it; he’d labeled things, but his handwriting was terrible.
“So,” Adelaide said a moment later, “there’s no way to get into the hot water heater and fill that with blood? Even if it was temporary, wouldn’t that make the shower run as red—and as hot—as we wanted?”
It was Chris’s turn to look annoyed. No, not annoyed. Angry. “Listen,” he said, “there’s no way to do this short of something that will irrevocably demolish your system.” He ran his hands over his head and leaned back in his chair.
“I don’t want to sound like a dick,” he continued, “but I can’t let you walk out of here thinking you might be able to finagle something by messing around with shit in your basement.
I went through five hundred seventy-six hours of training at a state-approved program and had to pass the journeyman plumbing license exam to do what I do.
“Most women”—he paused and corrected himself—“most laypeople, don’t know the difference between a gas line and a water line. I don’t want you getting carbon monoxide poisoning because you did something stupid, you get what I’m saying?”
“We get it,” Adelaide said, because Chris was waiting for a response. The smile pasted on her face looked more like a grimace. “Thanks for your time and the expertise and all that.” She stood. “I guess we’ll have to look into the fake blood capsules after all.”
Chris walked us out, insisting we could call him with additional questions. “Let me know when your movie is done,” he said, all traces of his patronizing manner gone. “And good luck with the festival. I’ll look for you. Maybe you can give me a shout-out in the credits.” He winked.
Adelaide’s grip on my arm grew tighter as she pulled me out of the shop.