Page 23 of How to Fake a Haunting

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?