Page 48 of How to Fake a Haunting

Callum kneeled before the coffee table, a large piece of paper spread out before him on the light oak wood.

It took me a moment to realize it was a stretch of easel paper from the roll in Beatrix’s playroom.

He had a fat black Sharpie in one hand and was frantically scrawling letters onto the paper while squinting at something on his iPhone, copying something from a web page.

Arranged in a circle around him were the candles I’d returned to the island two hours earlier, along with a collection of stones—mostly smooth, round gems like bloodstone and carnelian, but a few chunks of citrine and spears of selenite—from Beatrix’s fairy garden.

As I watched, Callum wrote the letters of the alphabet, stretched out across two lines and slightly curving, as if the letters were following the shape of a rainbow, thirteen per line.

He scribbled numbers one through nine, followed by a zero, at the bottom of the page, then lifted his hand to the top left corner.

He wrote “Yes,” then moved to the top right corner: “No.” Then, to the bottom of the page: “Goodbye.”

I should have realized what he was doing sooner, but it was so unexpected, so disconcerting, that I didn’t figure it out until he’d finished.

“A Ouija board?” I said, incredulous. “A fucking Ouija board? Callum, are you out of your goddamn mind?”

He glared. “Do you have a better idea?”

I gawked at him. “Um, yes. Yes, I absolutely have a better idea. How about we don’t fucking summon back the ghosts who have seemingly departed? What could you possibly hope to accomplish with this?” I waved wildly at his ridiculous art project.

Callum recapped the Sharpie and gripped the edge of the table. “What are you hoping to accomplish by bringing strangers into our home and asking them to solve our problems?”

“They’re not strangers!” I exclaimed. “They’re specialists. And I thought—”

“You thought,” Callum echoed, his voice thick with sarcasm. “You thought it was no big deal to broadcast our marital problems to, oh, I don’t know, the entire world?”

I leaned against the wall. “What the hell are you talking about? Broadcast our problems to the world? How do you get that from me asking the Tallows to come here?”

“They’re ghost hunters, Lainey. With a YouTube channel. And we have actual fucking ghosts! You can’t tell me they won’t use us to make themselves famous. And at what cost?”

I closed my eyes, unable to believe the narcissistic nonsense coming out of Callum’s mouth but unsurprised by his shortsightedness. “If you want to believe the Tallows are going to exploit us, be my guest, but I think we’re in a pretty desperate situation and should take all the help we can get.”

I didn’t add—couldn’t add, not without admitting to the staged haunting—that, contrary to what I’d thought about the Tallows for years, I didn’t believe they’d mine our story for subscribers.

Irrefutable proof of the supernatural seemed like it would strengthen Morgan’s resolve as well as her and Joe’s connection.

I wasn’t sure what I would do when the Tallows got here and potential details of their previous visit, of what Adelaide and I had done, came to light, but I would deal with that when the time came.

Nodding at Callum’s makeshift spirit board, I slid onto the end of the couch and crossed my arms in front of my chest.

“Let’s see it, then,” I challenged. “Let’s see your brilliant plan to speak to ghosts.” I was being flippant, but a chill passed through me.

“Fine,” Callum said, but he already looked less confident.

He picked up a lighter and lit the candles, rearranged the stones, and stared expectantly, as if he expected the “board” to flutter up from the table and shoot across the room, maybe burst into flames and fill the fireplace with crackling energy.

“I need a . . .” Callum searched for the name of the small heart-shaped piece of wood that was supposed to travel around the board revealing messages.

“Planchette,” I finished dryly.

“Yes!” He jumped up from the table and disappeared. When he returned a minute later, he was holding a small clear glass.

“You would use a shot glass,” I mumbled, but he ignored me and held it over the board.

“Where am I supposed to put it?” he asked.

I shrugged, and he shot me a desperate look. “For Christ’s sake, Lainey, can you please look it up on your phone. I’m not asking you to participate in the séance, but a quick Google search isn’t going to kill you.”

When I still didn’t move, he dispersed with another “Please!” and I let out a groan and pulled out my phone, more because he was obviously not going to start without consulting the infinite wisdom of the internet.

It was almost two thirty, and I wanted to finish as much cleaning as possible before the Tallows arrived.

“G,” I said a moment later. “It says to start with the planchette on the letter G.”

Callum placed the glass over the center of the makeshift board, and I waited, biting my tongue to keep from saying something sarcastic. When he spoke, his voice was a great deal more authoritative than I expected.

“I’m speaking to the spirits who were here last night. Who”—he paused—“escaped from the mirrors. Who are you, and what do you want?”

I almost said, They’re the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, come to warn you about your drinking, but I held my tongue.

Already, something seemed to be happening.

The air felt charged, or else I was still on edge from the events of last night, my body primed for the slightest provocation.

Callum spoke again. “To the ghosts who were here last night, tell us why you came. What is it you want us to know?”

The house persisted in its silence. But .

. . why did it suddenly seem too silent?

I looked at the mantel to find that the clock there had stopped.

Had that just happened, or had I forgotten to replace the battery?

Outside the broken bay window, the air was absent of the birdsong I’d heard all day as I carried garbage bags of glass out to the bin.

“Stop, Callum,” I said, half because the strange, layered silence unnerved me, and half because nothing was happening and I wanted to go back to preparing for Joe and Morgan’s arrival.

“I’m not stopping,” Callum said through gritted teeth.

A spark ignited in my stomach, and the rage that lived there rose up in my throat and caused my mouth to fill with heat.

“Give it to me,” I spat, scooting across the couch and snatching the planchette.

“We’re not doing this!” I got my fingers under one side of the paper and pulled, but Callum had taken hold of the other.

The paper ripped apart in one long, smooth tear.

Instantly, the sky outside faded from piercing blue to a sinister gunmetal gray.

Clouds like the arched eyebrows of angry gods surrounded the property at the top of the tree line.

A moment later, the sky broke open and rain pummeled the earth.

Puddles formed beneath the broken windows where I’d so recently swept up the glass.

The temperature inside the room dropped to what had to be close to freezing, but as I wrapped my arms around myself, things went from bad to worse.

Thunder rumbled above us. I’d never heard thunder so loud.

A second later, lightning streaked the sky.

It pierced a tree alongside the house, which split.

I screamed, fear shooting out from my core in every direction.

One half of the large elm remained upright as if to protest the onslaught.

The other half rushed toward us, both horribly fast and in agonizing slow motion.

The thick bark of the trunk helped slow its progression, and at the last moment, the split trunk caught.

It hung there, suspended at a ninety-degree angle to the ground.

One large branch, however, was lost to gravity and kept plummeting.

It punched through the already shattered bay window, cracking the frame and sending the remaining glass shards flying.

Callum and I both ducked. I felt a sliver of glass whiz by my forearm and looked down to see blood.

My ears were ringing. The rain kept coming. And something was happening on the coffee table. The candles wobbled as if alive. The wobbling grew more pronounced, and then the candles toppled over and shot to the ceiling. Hot wax sprayed across the room. Callum and I yelped and covered our faces.

We stayed like that for what felt like eternity, thunder rumbling and wind whipping through the house. Finally, the wind died down. The rain decreased from a deluge to a steady patter.

“Is it over?” I asked, and jumped to a stand. As I did, Callum’s gaze flicked past me and to the wall. At first, he appeared confused, watching something behind me with unwavering intensity. But then his eyes grew wide as he pushed himself off the couch and stumbled backward.

“What?” I asked, afraid to turn.

Callum’s eyes grew wider. He pointed. “The-there,” he choked out. “Th-the shadows. The shadow.” He tried to take another step back and almost stumbled over the hearth. “It’s alive,” he said, “and it’s escaping.”