Page 24 of How to Fake a Haunting

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.

I jogged up the porch stairs and plucked it from the doorframe.

Examining the envelope told me nothing. It was unaddressed, a plain expanse of pale blue, and unsealed.

Probably a local business that went door-to-door, getting eyes on their gutter-cleaning services or low landscape prices by tricking homeowners into believing they’d received a personal letter.

Still, I pulled the single piece of paper from inside and unfolded it.

I know everything. What you’re doing. What you’re going to do. What you did.

The question is: How much is my silence worth?

I read the words three times before dropping the paper, only breaking free from my shock when a breeze threatened to take it, and I had to stamp down with my foot to keep it from blowing away. I bent to retrieve the paper, my fingers trembling. Then I read it again.