Page 27 of How to Fake a Haunting

The counterthought came a moment later: If you go sprinting out of here to escape the flies, it will ruin everything! Callum’s the one who needs to be scared, not you. And certainly not Beatrix.

I forced myself to look away from the growing horde so I could concentrate, working desperately to decide what to do.

The first step still had to be to get Bea out of the house.

I couldn’t pretend not to see the flies if Bea was standing right beside me, witnessing the horror.

So, get Bea out, then figure out how to play things with Callum.

I walked quickly but calmly to the base of the stairs and called up, “Bea, are you dressed? Want to play in Pinecone House while I pack the car?”

Her reply was instant . . . and music to my ears: a mad dash for the stairs. A moment later and she was before me, and I had to commit to this impromptu plan.

“But isn’t it raining?”

Shit. “Uh, yes, but if you get right up into your fort and shut the door, you’ll be fine. In fact, I bet it’ll be extra cozy.”

“Okay!” She looked up at me, eyes gleaming. “Do you wanna play Favorite Thing?”

“Oh, um, not right now, sweetheart. But how about a different game? How about I bet you can’t walk through the kitchen, into the playroom, and onto the deck with your eyes closed and your ears plugged,” I challenged, speaking so close to her my lips brushed her ear.

“Sure I can!” she exclaimed.

“Okay, then. Let’s go!” I scooped her up by the armpits and carried her quickly along the route I’d set forth. Callum remained with his back to us as we passed the living room, still oblivious to the flies. In the playroom, I yanked the slider open and shooed Bea onto the deck.

“Stay away from the broken rail,” I warned, nodding at the safe path toward the stairs. When she reached them, I said loudly, in case Callum was listening, “Five minutes in the fort, then we’re off to Papa and Gram’s.”

She sprinted through the rain, and I closed the slider door.

I turned toward the kitchen, my heart sinking; the number of flies had grown.

The buzzing was a sick, savage grating against my skull.

Black bodies and papery veined wings marred every inch of the crisp white paint.

The buzzing was so unnerving and disordered it was otherworldly.

Flies buzzed past my face, crawled over my neck.

Hadn’t Adelaide said she’d purchased a thousand?

This seemed ten times that number, maybe more.

My fingers itched to grab my phone, to check if I’d somehow texted Adelaide by mistake.

If not, why had she unleashed the flies when we were still in the house?

I could only hope Bea didn’t decide she needed me for some made-up game or to push her on the swings.

I couldn’t leave before Callum discovered the descending plague, could I?

I might as well hold a sign above my head with the words I’m Behind the Flies in neon, blinking lights.

But he hadn’t noticed them yet. I blinked and wiped perspiration from my hairline. The sound of the flies crept over me, filling my ears. I had made the snap decision to grab Bea’s overnight bag and make a run for it when a disgusted shout came from the living room.

“Ugh, Jesus Christ! What the hell is this?”

There was a clatter, as if Cal had jumped from the couch in such a frenzy that the controller had gone flying. I heard him rush across the room and fling open a window.

“Get out of here. Get out! Lainey! Lainey! You need to get in here! And check on Beatrix!”

He actually thought of Bea, I thought as I ran to the living room. Well, the flies were like something out of the Old Testament; hell might as well have frozen over.

I skidded to a halt before rounding the wall between the living room and the foyer.

Interacting with Callum after he’d seen Adelaide’s “ghost” had been tough, but acting as if I didn’t see ten thousand flies covering the walls, the furniture, the mantel, was on another level.

I swallowed, preparing myself for what I was about to do, not even remotely confident it was the right move, terrified, actually, that the idea was too brazen, that it would undermine everything that had come before it.

Serial killer confidence, I reminded myself. That’s what I’m supposed to have. Serial killer confidence and an earnest prayer that Callum was drunk. I took a breath and walked into the living room.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “What’s going on?

” I made a show of looking around while keeping my face neutral.

There were fewer flies here than in the kitchen, or maybe it was just that the room was bigger?

“Why do I have to check on Bea? Is she hurt?” I curled my toes against the unbearable, unholy buzz as a fly whizzed past my ears.

Callum stared at me from the middle of the living room, slack-jawed and horrified. A fly crawled over his cheek; several more dotted his forearms. When the fly on his cheek inched toward his mouth, he lost it, sputtering and slapping as if he were being assailed by wasps.

“What is it?” I asked again. “What happened?” I closed my mouth tightly after speaking. The flies were definitely less dense here, though they still pinwheeled and dive-bombed through the air.

“What is it?” Callum’s voice was a siren. “Are you blind? Look at the fucking flies!” He reached for his cell, but it was still dead. Disgusted, he chucked the phone onto his chair.

I did look, but not at the flies. I looked at the glass next to the couch. To my eternal relief, it was empty. The vodka bottle was beside the coffee table, which meant he’d already had a refill.

“I don’t see any flies,” I said. I made a show of scanning the room.

A fly grazed Callum’s cheek again, and he batted at it so hard, he smacked himself in the face.

My own face contorted, and suddenly, I was no longer acting.

It was as if a switch had flipped, a switch that meant I no longer remembered Callum wasn’t losing it, that he was reacting to something I was responsible for having set in motion.

The Are you fucking crazy? look I gave him could have convinced a hungry bear to think twice before pulling down a bird feeder.

Without warning, Cal turned and sprinted from the room. I took off after him, making a conscious effort not to swat flies as I rushed up the stairs in case he turned around. I caught up to him at the door to his bedroom. He tried to shut it, but I shoved my way inside.

There were hardly any flies here, which would make gaslighting him even easier. I walked across the room and looked out; through the tiny window of Pinecone House, I could just make out Beatrix.

“Now do you see there’s something going on in this house?” Callum shouted.

I whirled back around to face him. “What the fuck are you talking about?” I gestured across the room. “What the hell is wrong with you? We’re back on the whole ‘There’s a ghost in my closet’ bullshit?”

“There was a ghost in my closet!” Callum roared.

“Riiight!” I shouted back. “And now there are flies in the living room? News flash, Callum, you’re the only person seeing these things. Odors, cold spots, noises, ghosts . . . no one has smelled or felt or heard these things but you!”

Callum’s mouth dropped open, and I resisted the sudden, wild urge to punch him. Rage was building, noxious and all-consuming, making it hard to keep my thoughts straight.

“You think I’m making this up?” Callum asked, incredulous.

He laughed, sounding unhinged and manic.

I recalled something Adelaide had said to me on the phone earlier: How do you think the haunting is going overall?

How far away are we from him completely losing his shit?

Callum was one intake form away from the psych unit.

“Tell me, Lainey,” he continued, “Miss Fucking Perfect. Miss Always Right. How in the fuck do I make up this many flies?”

I spun in every direction and gesticulated wildly. “There are no flies, Callum!” I screamed. “You’ve completely lost your mind.”

He shook his head, his eyes closed, swatting the air around his head even when flies weren’t in his immediate vicinity. “I’ve been telling you for weeks.” His voice was quiet now. “Maybe a month! This house is fucking haunted.”

“Oh, shut up. Shut the fuck up. Can you please, for once in your life, act like an adult? The house is not haunted! In fact, our house being haunted is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.

We built it, remember? How do you propose our house became haunted?

There’s no cursed burial ground or body beneath the floorboards,” I added, echoing something I’d said to Adelaide when she’d conceptualized the haunting.

I gestured between myself and Callum. “There’s only us. ”

Callum mumbled something that sounded like, “Maybe that’s enough.” The idea that I was somehow contributing to the fucked-up energy in this house made the rage-fire inside me blaze all the brighter.

“If there were flies here,” I said, my voice dangerously low, “it’d be because of something you did.

Did you buy a bag of grinders for your golf buddies and leave them in the garage?

” My voice was hoarse from all the yelling, and I lowered it further, feeling my expression twist, turning as ugly as the rage in my heart.

“Or maybe you drove shit-faced and hit something worse than a wrought iron fence. Perhaps there’s a body in the basement? ”

I hadn’t planned on saying this, but when I did, Callum’s face went pale, his eyes full of something like understanding, like recognition, of perhaps the dreadful sense of possibility.

Adelaide’s idea to stuff Cal’s grate full of roadkill every morning had paid off, albeit a bit differently than we’d expected.

I turned toward the door. “I’ve got to go.

Have fun playing video games by yourself in between your drunken hallucinations. ”

“Wait,” Callum said, suddenly panicked. “You can’t leave me here.

I can’t stay in the house with these—” He cast a worried glance toward the door.

The flies’ elongated bodies wove in and out along the woodwork.

Though I could have sworn that some of them, many of them, didn’t look like the pictures of the black soldier flies Adelaide had shown me.

“Yes, I can,” I said to Callum. “And that’s exactly what I’m doing.

My parents are expecting Beatrix, remember?

” I eyed Callum, and the words were on my tongue, but I couldn’t speak them.

Not yet. Even with Adelaide’s little stunt today, we hadn’t gone far enough, hadn’t pushed Callum past the breaking point, and so I didn’t dare say, Why don’t you go to a hotel?

Anything a judge could take as grounds for abandonment, Callum had to come to on his own.

“Goodbye, Callum.”

I pushed past him and out the door. Callum followed me down the stairs, swatting flies and pleading.

I didn’t stop, didn’t look back. Didn’t even, in that moment at least, wonder how in the hell Adelaide and I would get rid of all these goddamned flies.

There’d be no “plucking them out of the air, mid-flight,” as Adelaide had prophesized.

But that was a later-problem. The now-problem was to get out of this house. And away from Callum.

I didn’t even stop when Callum said, “Please, Lainey, you’ve got to help me.

I swear to you. I swear it. Something really isn’t right with the house.

The house is haunted. You’ve got to help.

I’ll go to an AA meeting. I’ll get my boss to send me to an EAP program.

Or outpatient counseling. Don’t leave. Don’t take Beatrix. Don’t leave!”

His words devolved into a chant that stayed with me as I collected Bea from Pinecone House, and we walked to the car: The house is haunted. The house is haunted. The house is haunted.

As long as you’re there, I thought, it will be.