Page 49 of How to Fake a Haunting

I turned so slowly I thought my heart would stop by the time I faced whatever was behind me.

It wasn’t a shadow, but I could see why Callum might have thought that; the figure was shadowy, as if light and dark fought within it.

But it was a mirror-forged figure like the others, its face unknowable and ever-shifting, rising from behind the couch like a dark creature from an ancient sea.

I scrabbled backward to get away with it, but my retreat was stopped by the stone fireplace. “How?” I managed. “Where did it come from?” Even in my terror, I could see the guilt on Callum’s face. “Callum?” I gasped. “What’s back there? What’s behind the couch?”

“The mirror,” he said, his voice monotone. “The one from the attic.”

“What?” I cried. Tears of shock and terror streamed from my eyes. “Why?”

He grimaced. There were tears on his face too.

“After what happened with Beatrix, when she got hurt, I thought that mirror might have something to do with what was going on. It felt, responsible, somehow. Or, if not responsible, then like it knew something. Like the mirror was cursed. I only wanted to drink that night after I looked into its frame. I brought it down here. I meant to throw it away but . . .”

“But what?” I whispered. I hadn’t taken my eyes off the figure.

I had the sense that, beneath the undulating visage, it was trying to move its invisible mouth.

It appeared to be in pain and was hunched and trembling.

No, not trembling; it was rocking on its feet, as if it’d seen something it hadn’t wanted to see.

“I got drunk and forgot. I slid it behind the couch so I wouldn’t have to look at it.”

As if in response, the specter opened a mouth we couldn’t see and unleashed a wail of agony that shook the room.

I shrank back, smelling gasoline and the unmistakable stench of alcohol and something else, something that I hoped wasn’t burning flesh.

The specter lurched forward, dragging one leg behind it.

It winked out of sight for a second, as if being called back to its own world, but then reappeared and lurched forward, passing so close to where we were pressed against the fireplace that I could have trailed my fingers along its flickering body.

It cried out a second time and fell to the floor, where it continued its progression across the room, dragging itself like a coyote whose back legs had been run over by a truck.

“What’s happening?” Callum croaked from beside me.

I couldn’t speak. I was too gobsmacked by the horror.

What were these ghosts, these mind-boggling, world-reshaping things?

Was Callum right, and the mirror was cursed?

Was there another world from which the beings were escaping?

And why, somewhere deep inside my skull, did I feel as if they weren’t as “other” as I wished them to be?

Why did I feel like they lit up the same part of my brain that processed memory and dreams?

Why did I feel like I’d always known them and always would?

There was Lady Macbeth scrubbing her hands over a sink.

There was the specter on the stairs with the long, blunt object in its hand.

The “corpse ghost” that Callum had seen.

And now this. This mangled, tortured wraith.

I felt like my brain was breaking. Seeing them was like watching a corpse rise from a slab after a jolt of electricity.

The creature dragged its mangled body to within a few feet of the French doors before it stopped, laying down its head.

With its last bit of strength, it stretched its arms out, reaching for something, for someone.

I watched its skin and the fabric of its clothes swirl and dissipate—like storm clouds, like smoke—without blinking, my eyes watering with shock and fear.

The apparition’s body sank through the floorboards and disappeared.

The lights flickered on and then bled back out to darkness at the same time the hunched and tortured ghost rose again from the back of the couch.

It crept forward, dragging its leg, following the same path forward, emitting the same agonized wail as before.

As I stared, movement on my right caught my eye.

Lady Macbeth loomed in the doorframe, wringing her bloodstained hands.

She passed the mangled ghost on her way to the broken slider as the room filled with the smell of alcohol and charred flesh.

She floated onto the deck at the same moment the mangled ghost sank into the floorboards.

The cycle started again: mangled ghost rising from the mirror behind the couch, Lady Macbeth floating in from the kitchen. This time, however, they were joined by the shadow from the staircase. It lumbered through the living room, using its blunt instrument against the walls to hold itself steady.

I bent at the waist, pressing my face between my knees, desperate for the feel of the fabric against my cheeks, the smell of the denim, anything to bring me back to reality.

It didn’t matter. Rain fell. Thunder rumbled.

Ghosts wandered, returned, wandered, floated, and crawled again.

The massive tree branch protruded through the open frame like a monstrous hand hoping to snag hood or hair.

The accoutrements from Callum’s short-lived séance were still glued to the ceiling, wax hanging down in stalactites.

Dark shapes burst from a hollow in the tree branch, and I stared, dumbfounded anew, as bats swooped among the candles and selenite spears.

I’d read once that humans could not naturally hear their sounds, but I could hear these bats, their demonic clicks and chilling squeaks as unnerving as the mournful cry of the tortured ghost that was once again sinking into the floor of my living room.

Everything—colors, sounds, smells, the tacky feel of blood dripping down my arm—was turned up to eleven, augmented and amplified by the merry-go-round progression of the specters.

A groan came from beside me, and I turned to find Callum curled into himself, rocking back and forth on his heels. Do something, I wanted to shout. Don’t just stand there. But I, too, was rooted to the spot.

I opened my mouth and closed it, opened it again, closed it.

I wanted to collapse, to give in to the madness threatening to consume me, to drop to the floor and scream.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. How was it happening?

At first, I thought another sound was joining the cacophony, but then I realized that the voice, Adelaide’s voice, was in my head:

What do you say? Shall we turn this place into a motherfucking haunted house?

Had I done this? Introduced a toxicity, a negative energy, or at least added to what was already here? If we’d never staged the haunting, would any of this have happened? Had I opened a portal, given the ghosts a way to come in?

But then there was a noise, an actual noise, not another accusation or question in my head.

Loud enough to discern through the rain and the thunder, the bats and the wails, the moans and the scraping of the staircase specter’s object against the wall.

It was heavy. Lumbering. Like Frankenstein’s monster in an old black-and-white movie.

Footsteps.

In the bedroom upstairs.