Page 45 of How to Fake a Haunting

After traveling no more than a few feet, I stopped, staring at the place across the lawn where the menace from the foyer had traveled after walking off the deck.

Was the ground out there further disturbed, or was it my imagination?

Was the soil more disrupted than before?

It was hard to tell with only the pale circle of lantern light and a waning crescent moon to see by.

I pulled my gaze from the tree line and forced myself to keep walking.

I spread the tent at the center of a small area banked by massive oaks; between them, I would be far away from where Lady Macbeth—as I’d been calling her in my head due to the constant scrubbing of her blood-drenched hands—kept traveling to dig in the dirt.

She’s digging awfully close to where something else is buried. The thought came unbidden, and I forced it away. I couldn’t think like that now, entertaining madness and dredging up the past. Besides, I had a tent to pitch—and a phone call to make—before it got any later.

I worked as quickly as I could, relieved Callum hadn’t followed.

At one point, I thought I heard something scrabbling around by the arborvitae, but by then I had finished with the tent and was throwing my sleeping bag inside it.

An animal, I told myself. A racoon or an opossum.

I crawled in, holding the lantern, and zipped the front flap closed.

The second I was ensconced within the tent, I realized being inside was no better than being out in the dark, open yard.

The lantern threw abstract shadows on the walls, and the night seemed to press in on me, the silence so loud I felt certain I wouldn’t hear anything coming, let alone see it.

I took a deep breath and pulled out my phone, keeping my eyes on the zipper in case it decided to start moving, then searched for the number I’d saved two weeks ago with zero expectation of ever dialing it.

It was after midnight, but Morgan Tallow answered after only two rings. “Lainey? What’s going on? I saw your number and . . . Is everything okay?”

I was silent. What should I say? The house is overrun with ghosts? I need you to come here and perform some sort of exorcism? Ultimately, I went with something simpler: “About the mirrors . . . Morgan, you were right.”

There was a gasp followed by silence.

“Are you there?” I asked.

“I’m sorry. I’m here.”

I filled her in on what had happened, and was about to beg her and Joe to come, when I realized there was something else that needed to be said.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Morgan. I should have believed you. Or, if not believed you, then at least not been such a jerk. I should have listened to what you had to say.”

Morgan sighed, but it was a sigh of understanding, not disapproval or frustration, as if she’d heard apologies like this before.

“Remember how I told you my connection with the supernatural is personal, so I don’t fault anyone for their skepticism?

It’s okay.” She said it again, the kindness in her voice making me want to cry. “It’s okay. What do you need us to do?”

“I need you to come here!” I exclaimed. I had thought that part would be obvious.

“Right. Okay. Where are you and your husband now?”

“I’m in a tent in the backyard. Callum is . . . I’m not sure where he is.”

“And your daughter?”

“She’s with my parents, at their house on the other side of town.” Of course Morgan wouldn’t know why Beatrix was there, wouldn’t know everything that’d happened in the last few days, or even the state of my marriage that had prefaced this awful evening.

“Okay, that’s good. You need to keep her there. Do not bring your daughter into that house. Especially after Joe and I get there to do, well, whatever it is that we end up needing to do.”

“So you’ll come?” Those three words belied the flooding well of desperation inside me.

I had kept it together in the garage in front of Callum, but inside my house right now was proof of the supernatural, and I didn’t know how to deal with it.

I needed Joe and Morgan if I was going to get rid of these things, if I was going to protect Beatrix.

“We’ll come,” Morgan said slowly, but there was a catch in her voice I didn’t like. “But we can’t get there until tomorrow afternoon. We’re at my in-laws’ in New York, but we’re driving home in the morning. We can be at your place by three, four at the latest.”

“Okay.” That was good, or at least better than I’d expected. “Okay, tomorrow afternoon is fine. But what should we do until you get here?”

“From what you’ve told me, it doesn’t sound like the ghosts are dangerous. In fact, it sounds like they might not interact with you at all. If they’re engaging in the same actions over and over again, that’s good. There may be some sort of residual haunting going on.”

“Residual haunting? What the hell is that?”

“Well”—Morgan sounded less sure of herself now—“I don’t want to speculate. I’ll know more when I get there. But I think it would be okay for you and Callum to venture into the house tomorrow and see the state of things. The ghosts might quiet down overnight. They may disappear altogether.”

“They could do that?” That sounded too good to be true. I figured any ghost worth its salt wouldn’t leave until it got what it wanted or told the house’s inhabitants something they didn’t want to hear. Wasn’t that how these things worked in books and movies?

“Whatever you do,” Morgan cautioned, “be careful. We’ll be there as soon as we can. I promise.” I heard muffled words, as if she were covering the mouthpiece to speak to someone else. She came back on the line. “And Lainey? Joe made a good point. Until we get there, stay away from the mirrors.”

“There aren’t any left,” I said, but she had already hung up.

I placed my phone beside the lantern and looked around.

How the hell was I supposed to sleep? I pushed ghosts and mirrors from my mind, reasoning there was nothing I could do to fix this until Joe and Morgan arrived tomorrow, but the thoughts still swirled like mist, blotting out patience and reason.

I had convinced myself to at least lie down when a noise came from outside.

A shuffling sound, hushed but gritty, like something dragging in the dirt.

I held my breath and doused the lantern, plunging the tent into darkness.

I tried not to succumb to terror as outside, someone approached the tent.

I grabbed the knife and flicked open the blade.

It was incredibly sharp, purchased for use in place of the small hatchets or machetes some hikers liked to carry.

But what good would even the sharpest knife be against a ghost?

The dragging footfalls grew closer, stopping in front of the tent.

Seconds passed. The figure stood, motionless. I realized I could hear somebody breathing. “Callum? Is that you?”

“Yeah,” he huffed, “it’s me. Come on, Lainey, let me in.”

The fear went out of me like the tide, only to be replaced with a rushing tsunami of rage. I stabbed the lantern back on and unzipped the tent. “What. The. Fuck. Callum. No.”

He was holding a garden rake, one of the metal ones with widely spaced tines. His face was utterly bloodless in the LEDs’ glow.

“Lainey,” he said in a breathless whisper, and it was only then I realized, in the lull of my own fear, how terrified Callum sounded. Freshly terrified, not the lingering fright from earlier, as if something had driven him toward me, pursuing him in the dark.

“Lainey,” he said again, the terror in that whisper chilling the blood in my veins. “You’ve got to let me in. The ghost. The ghost from the foyer mirror . . . I can hear her.”