Page 3 of How to Fake a Haunting

I flexed my fingers to quell their shaking.

In the intermittent glow of the streetlamps coming through the car windows, Callum looked ill, his sweat-sheened skin a sallow color, his eyes more bloodshot than I’d ever seen them.

He was breathing heavily, jaw clenched, and the muscles in his arms twitched as if he were cold, despite the jacket.

I spun in my seat; Beatrix’s eyes were half closed. Praying she would fall asleep, I turned back around and swallowed. “Please, Cal. Pull over and let me drive.”

Callum glared. “Will you stop this?” he slurred. “I’m fine. We’re already halfway home.”

I forced myself to breathe. I needed to stay calm. “Pull over,” I said flatly. “I’m not asking. I mean it.” Callum didn’t respond.

The rain was still a drizzle, but the night was foggy, dangerously so.

I squirmed in my seat. My fear was a rising tide of arctic waters, numbing me.

“You’re drunk,” I said. There was something in my voice now, a preface to hysteria.

“I told you what would happen if you kept drinking.” Despite the growing terror, these lines sounded scripted.

Then again, I’d been repeating them—some taken verbatim from therapists—for as long as I could remember.

“I’m not—” he started, but I cut him off.

“Not what? Not drunk? Not that drunk? Not doing anything differently than you’ve done since Beatrix was born?

Since we got married? You’re right, you’re not doing anything differently.

That’s what’s so exhausting. But I am. I told you there’d come a time when I reached my limit, and I have.

You shouldn’t be around your daughter like this.

In fact, why don’t you keep right on driving after you drop us off, since, you know, you’re so fine.

” Sarcasm dripped from my words. “Don’t stop until you get to Monty’s. Let him help you in your hour of need.”

Callum’s expression hardened. “I have to work tomorrow.”

“No shit,” I said, matter-of-fact. “Because it’s Tuesday, Callum, a night on which normal people don’t get shit-faced.”

“Give it a rest, would you?” He shifted back and forth in his seat, the movement making me nervous. He wasn’t focused on the road, on seeing the road through the fog.

“I won’t. Pull over, Callum.” Anxiety swirled through my stomach, the same anxiety I’d gotten in the face of empty promises and passing years, ever since his behavior had stopped affecting just me and started affecting Beatrix, putting her in danger.

I rubbed my temples, where a headache was blooming, and thought of Bea behind me, nuzzling her koala. The dam broke.

“I can’t do this anymore.”

Callum shot me a look, jerking the steering wheel in the process. The car lurched over the line, and I yelped. He straightened the wheel and returned his gaze to the road. “What do you mean?” His voice was slurred and whiny. It set my teeth on edge.

“This.” I waved my hand at him. “All of this. You know you have a problem. How many times have you said you’ll get the number for the Employee Assistance Program from your boss or go to a meeting? That you’re going to change? A hundred? Five hundred? But you never do.”

The car sped up. Callum’s jaw tightened.

“Slow down,” I begged.

“Not another word about my driving,” he growled. “What do you mean, you can’t do this? So what, you want a divorce? You’re done with me? With us?”

“There is no us!” My tone teetered between a frenzied whisper and outright ferocity.

I didn’t dare turn around to see if Bea was still awake.

The idea of her listening to this hurt my heart.

But I couldn’t stop. This was too long coming.

“There is no us,” I repeated. “There’s me and Beatrix. And there’s you and your booze.”

Callum accelerated again. The Subaru swerved like a wind-battered ship. A whimper escaped me. “Callum, stop it. Slow down. Please. You can’t even see.”

We were on a winding back road not far from Bellevue Avenue.

Somewhere to our left was Seaview Terrace, a privately owned mansion never acquired by the Preservation Society that had fallen into tragic disrepair.

Seaview was buttressed by a massive iron gate, but I couldn’t see it.

I couldn’t see anything. There was only the blinding, billowing fog.

“There’s no us?” Callum asked. It wasn’t a question but a challenge. “Just you and Beatrix? You’re fucking kidding me, right? She’s my daughter too. You think I don’t care about her?” The car swerved again, and I reached for the wheel. Callum batted my hand away.

“How dare you say I don’t care?” he said.

He sounded even drunker in his distress, and this spurred my terror.

“How fucking dare you? There’s not a person on earth who could fault me for what I did tonight.

I didn’t do anything. You think letting loose after work, at my parents’ charitable gala, makes me a monster? You’re deluded. Insane.”

The car swerved again. My eyes locked on the dashboard. He was going fifty-eight. Now sixty. The speed limit was twenty-five. “Callum,” I said desperately, “please.” A vein pulsed in his temple. The fog swirled like a living creature. The wheels shuddered on the uneven road.

Callum’s next words were remarkably clear: “I know you want Beatrix for yourself. Well, I’ve got news for you.

You can file for divorce—I can’t keep you from doing that—but you’ll never get full custody of Bea.

Never. There’s nothing you have on me, no matter what you think, that would make me an unfit parent in the eyes of a judge. Nothing.”

The fog was so thick, the car going so fast, I was certain we’d left the surface of the earth and were floating, careening through the clouds.

Callum’s final words cut like glass: “You’ll get Bea over my dead body.

Remember that, Lainey. Over my dead body.

” The vaporous air shifted. Our untethered ascent ceased.

We plunged back down to earth. Directly before us, the towering gate of Seaview Terrace materialized through the fog.

There was a violent collision and an explosion of glass, the sound like sanity bending.

There wasn’t breath to scream or time to duck, only the taste of glass, the smell of sky rolling in unfettered, the absence of color.

I needed to turn, to see Beatrix, even as the impact was happening.

The deadly sharp finials of the gate protruded through the windshield.

They reached for me like skeletal fingers.

They stretched, iron points like spectral tongues intent on tasting skin. The longest one had sliced into the car and past my seat. I tried to turn, to see if it had reached Beatrix, but I was pinned in place by finials on either side.

In a burst of adrenaline, I reached below me for the handle that would adjust my seat’s position on its track.

My fingers grazed it. I strained forward, the gate’s deadly points so close that my cheek brushed against the one on my left.

Finally, I’d inched forward enough to wrap my fingers around the handle.

I yanked, sending the seat backward, giving me just enough room to release my belt.

I flung myself over the middle console and thrashed my way into the back seat.

Bea was okay. She was unhurt. The longest finial had come within inches of her chest. When she saw me, her shocked expression gave way to sobs.

“You’re okay, baby, you’re okay.” I scrambled to her, releasing her restraints and checking for injuries.

It occurred to me after a moment that I could hear nothing beyond my own manic yammering and Bea’s sobs.

There was not a sound from Callum. Desperate to get out of the car—what if one of the finials had punctured the engine?

—I pressed Bea to my stomach and vaulted out.

Bea wrapped her legs around me like a tiny, terrified chimpanzee.

Once clear of the wreckage, I picked my way through the glass to the driver’s-side window.

“Callum?” I called. “Callum? Are you okay?”

No answer. I peered into the front window. The driver’s seat was empty. Callum wasn’t there.

I jumped back, blinking against the terror that was darkening my vision. Where was he? Had he been ejected from the car? We’d hit the gate hard, but not that hard, had we?

I heard footsteps and strained to listen, then started after them, following in what I thought was the right direction. After several seconds, Callum’s form appeared through the fog like a ghost.

“Where are you going?” I called, my voice drenched in incredulity.

His response was muted and made no sense: “There was a crash. Yes. You will? Okay. Yes. I’m running out of here now. I think they’re okay.”

“I know there was a crash,” I said. Was he in shock? Why was he walking so fast? “Callum, wait.” I caught up enough to see that he was holding his cell phone to his ear. Darting forward, I grabbed the sleeve of his suit jacket. One arm of it had been torn into strips.

“Did you call an ambulance?” I asked. “How long did they say? Bea’s all right, but she still needs to be looked at.”

He gave me a wild, wavering glance before turning away. “I have to go.”

“Huh? What do you mean? Go where?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he lowered his head and jogged away.

“Callum!” I shouted. Beatrix stiffened and whimpered. I pulled her against me more tightly. “Callum! Where are you going?” The sound of his footfalls quickened. I tried to follow, but Bea’s cries increased, and I stopped, my head reeling, nausea roiling through me.

“Callum!” I called a final time, but he was gone. I turned toward the weak beam of the headlights. I had to find my phone, which was no longer in my pocket. I walked, the crunch of glass beneath my feet keeping tempo with the stuttering of my heart.

Once, before we reached the car, I turned back and thought I saw him, a dark figure cut into the surface of a silvery tableau. But it was just a disturbance in the mist, or else a psychosomatic projection of my betrayal, my disbelief and disgust turning shadows into specters.

Callum had left, encouraged to flee by whoever was on the other end of the phone.

We were alone. There was only the gutted corpse of the nearby mansion and an endless sky of invisible stars.

With rage smoldering in my stomach, I carried my daughter along the glass-flecked road, back to the splintered, smoking wreckage of our lives.