Page 30 of How to Fake a Haunting

I jerked away from the peephole, falling to the side and rolling over the plywood, stifling a scream that felt less like it was struggling to escape my lungs than that it was engulfing my entire body.

Despite my efforts, a strangled cry exploded up the scratchy corridor of my throat.

What the hell was that? And why didn’t it have a face?

Had there really been blood on its hands, or had I imagined it, squinting through the peephole as I’d been?

My questions were interrupted by the fact that I was dangerously close to a gap between the plywood and the nearest joist. I threw my hands out and pressed them flat against the wood, earning a needle-sharp splinter for my troubles.

Still, the tactic worked, and I avoided falling through the joists.

My problems weren’t over, however; as I struggled to quell the yammering of my heart, a door slammed somewhere beneath me.

I shot to my feet and darted across the attic, making it to the trapdoor quicker than I thought possible.

If that was Callum downstairs, or someone with him, I needed to get out of this attic, and fast. I dropped to the top of the organizer shelves.

After pulling the trapdoor back in place, I fell to the floor of the closet like a stone.

I had climbed to my feet and was starting to feign interest in the dresses and sweaters hanging from Bea’s closet when footsteps pounded across the upstairs hallway. A moment later, the door swung open.

Adelaide stood before me.

“Jesus,” I said. “It’s you.”

Her smile widened. “Who were you expecting? Jeff Goldblum from The Fly?”

“Seriously, Adelaide, it’s not funny.” I paused, and for the first time, it occurred to me that what I’d seen between her and Todd had been brand new, maybe even the first time, and that in the next moment, she’d tell me all about it. “Why didn’t you answer the phone when I called?” I asked.

Her expression wavered. “I was busy.”

“Oh?” I saw she was wearing a loose-fitting black sweatshirt. Its large hood hung down her back. The figure from the mirror flashed before me, and I narrowed my eyes. “Were you in Cal’s bathroom?”

She scrunched up her face. “Yes. I mean, no. Not really. I popped in and out of all the rooms looking for you.” She took a few steps toward me. “I got your voicemail. What were you talking about? Something about too many flies?”

“Yes, there were too many flies!” I exploded, aware that I was jumping to anger before giving her a chance to explain herself.

About Todd, about the flies. And not just anger but fear, after what had happened in the attic.

“There were too many flies, and you funneled them into the vents when Beatrix and I were still home! What the hell were you thinking?”

She huffed out a breath. “You texted me! You told me Callum wasn’t golfing and to go ahead with Flypocalypse earlier than planned!”

I yanked out my phone and opened my texts app. There was the message I’d drafted, still unsent.

“No, I didn’t, Adelaide, it’s right—”

She didn’t wait for me to finish. “And secondly, Critter Depot isn’t in the habit of sending their customers more product than what they paid for. I ordered a thousand flies. A thousand flies is what I got, and what I released.”

I shook my head emphatically. “Uh-uh. No way. It was fucking biblical. They were everywhere, Adelaide. Everywhere. And I didn’t text you! You’re lucky I got Beatrix out when I did. Why would you do that? You promised you wouldn’t do anything that’d put her in danger.”

Adelaide dug her phone from her sweatshirt pocket.

“I’ll show you the goddamn text,” she said, jabbing at the screen.

Her expression turned disbelieving. “It was right here. There was a text from you, I fucking swear it. I even sent a reply, just to confirm, but I don’t see that one either. What the hell is going on here?”

I glared at her from across Bea’s room, my mind racing.

What the hell was her angle? “Is this like the Echo?” I asked suddenly.

“Did you decide to go rogue to make things more dramatic? No way this was a spur-of-the-moment idea. It was a horrible fucking idea, since I had to pretend I didn’t see ten thousand flies crawling over every surface of my house!

By some goddamn miracle, I managed to get out of there before they started crawling on me. ”

It was Adelaide’s turn to shake her head. “There’s no way there were ten thousand. It’s not possible.” Her dismissive tone made me want to throttle her. “You must have gotten caught up in the drama of it—fighting with Callum, trying to shield Beatrix from everything.”

Another surge of anger coursed through me. “I know what I saw.” And speaking of seeing things . . . “Why are you even here right now?”

Her eyebrows rose. “Why do you think? To help you clean up. I told you, I got your voicemail.”

“I saw you.” Fucking Todd, I thought but didn’t say. “In Cal’s bathroom. Through your own little peephole, ironically. What was on your face? Your hands?”

Adelaide gave me a look that I imagined Callum was used to seeing on my own face lately: incredulity bordering on concern. She reached into the pocket of her sweatshirt and held out a strange, reflective object. “Is that what you’re talking about?” she asked.

I opened my mouth but nothing came out.

“It’s a mirror mask,” Adelaide explained. “I got the idea from my cousin. She wears something similar when she deejays.” Adelaide held it up, and I shuddered. It was angular, entirely reflective, almost bovine in its angles. Was this what I’d seen from the peephole?

“I figured I’d wear this mask—like I wear all black—whenever I come inside. If Callum ever saw me, he wouldn’t see my face, and it wouldn’t be game over for the haunting.”

I thought of Bea’s words the night Adelaide had hidden in Callum’s closet: She didn’t have a face! Well, she did, but it was funny and hard to see, like a mirror inside a mirror. I fucking knew Adelaide had let herself be seen that night.

“What about your hands?” I pressed. “Why was there blood on them?”

She looked at me strangely again and turned her hands over, first one way, then the other. “There was nothing on my hands.”

“Fine,” I said, attributing what I’d seen to squinting through the peephole for too long, like the random bursts of shapes and colors you experience when rubbing your eyes.

Or . . . could it have been some sort of stress-induced hallucination?

Was it possible I’d only thought I’d seen blood, like the night I’d shattered the soap dispenser in Callum’s bathroom?

“Why didn’t you tell me you had a direct line of sight into the house?

” I asked so that I wouldn’t have to ponder whether I was going crazy any longer.

“I can see into a linen closet,” Adelaide said dryly. “That hardly counts as spying. And even if it did, it’s a strange thing to get mad at me for, seeing as spying is what you’ve asked me to do from day one.”

“Well, maybe I don’t want you to do it anymore.” The words were out of my mouth too fast. “It’s just—”

“Just what?” There was challenge in Adelaide’s eyes. I dare you, those eyes seemed to say. I dare you to keep going. To say the words that will end this for me, for you.

But I didn’t care. Maybe we needed to end this.

At the thought of all our efforts to drive Callum out going to waste, rage unfurled its poisonous petals along the walls of my stomach and up my throat.

Rage that I consistently swallowed down and let fester while showing the world a smile, while playing the part of the dutiful wife to a husband who did nothing but make things worse.

I knew I was about to unload on Adelaide, but I couldn’t stop myself.

“It’s just that you’re not fooling me, Adelaide,” I said, my tone thick with venom.

“I’m not an idiot. You said you wanted Flypocalypse to be like something out of The Amityville Horror, so I know you purchased more larvae than you said you did.

They weren’t even soldier flies. Not all of them, anyway.

Remember black soldier flies, the ones you said didn’t carry diseases?

Now I can only hope the house doesn’t need to be fumigated or that Bea doesn’t get sick! ”

I shuddered despite my anger, remembering the feel of the flies’ legs on my skin, their bodies—both heavy and strangely weightless at the same time—crashing into my face as I ran down the hallway. “Who does that?” I demanded. “Who goes from offering to help to making things worse?”

“I am helping!” Adelaide shouted, her tone somehow both defensive and bewildered. “At least, I’m trying to. I didn’t release extra flies, and I don’t know what happened to the text, but it was there.”

“Stop lying!” I shouted back, breathing hard, my eyes so wide I thought they’d pop from my head. Why had Callum’s haunting morphed into something different from when we’d started out? Why did it suddenly feel as if I were being haunted too?

When I’d gotten my breathing somewhat under control, I looked at Adelaide. “I saw you,” I said.

“Yeah, you keep saying that.”

“No,” I said, eyes boring into her until she met my gaze. “I saw you . . . with Todd.”