Page 50 of How to Fake a Haunting

The footsteps traveled across the upstairs bedroom. Through the hallway. Down the staircase. Into the kitchen. The other three apparitions continued their well-trod movements, but I could no longer pay attention. I could only stare toward the hallway, dreading what was about to emerge from it.

And then the dread, the terror, became too much, and I was sidestepping along the wall one tentative shuffle at a time.

When I was halfway to the playroom—and the door to the outside world—I looked back.

Callum’s eyes were on the yawning doorframe; he’d yet to notice my sideways progression.

When I reached the French doors, I found the floor beneath the single step into the playroom with the ball of my right foot, unwilling to turn my back on the mind-bending spectacle in the living room, a tableau I felt no human brain should be forced to imagine let alone experience.

The footsteps had stopped on the other side of the wall between hall and living room.

Whatever was out there, it was waiting. I reached out and took hold of the once-glass-fronted door, but Lady Macbeth whooshed through, so close I felt the frigid air of her encompass the right side of my body.

She didn’t slow, just continued on to the deck and down the stairs.

I reached back out to grab the door. I slowly pulled the open door to me; it met its mate with an audible click.

Two things happened in the wake of that click: Callum jerked his head in my direction, and the fourth and final specter took the final two stomps it needed to reach the living room.

“What are you doing?” Callum yelled. His eyes had a desperate, disbelieving look I had never seen before, not even at his worst, not even when he’d done the unspeakable, hitting the gate outside Seaview Terrace, abandoning Beatrix.

And maybe that was the cause of all this, that we’d both done unspeakable things and were paying for them.

And surely, to lay eyes on the thing that had just walked into the living room could only be called divine retribution.

Callum had not been wrong to call it a corpse.

Though its face was as shimmery and undefined as all the others, its flesh was a pallid, putrid green.

Rigid limbs kept it upright, and tattered clothes clung to its frame.

I couldn’t see its mouth, but somehow I knew it hung open around a bloated tongue and too-prominent teeth.

Though its clothes rippled and swelled like a disturbed sea, I could tell, the way I could tell Lady Macbeth wore some sort of hood, that this corpse specter was clothed in a burial suit.

I glimpsed a desiccated flower hanging from its pocket square the way you might catch sight of a clump of seaweed as it tumbled through a wave.

Revulsion turned my muscles to lead. My brain went blank with fear.

And then the undead thing lurched forward, one hand reaching out for Callum.

Callum screamed and tried to scramble away, but it wasn’t just the corpse; the other three ghosts were each engaged in their circuitous routes.

The one from the staircase was on Callum’s left, the mangled wraith on his right.

By the time he decided he should take his chances with the wraith, and dived in that direction, the corpse specter was on him.

The thing was roughly the same size as Callum, but instantly he was covered by it, as if the aura of death and rot swirling around the corpse was corporeal, obscuring Callum as effectively as if he were beneath a king-size blanket or a grizzly bear.

He crumpled against the living room wall, struggling against his assailant.

The thing pummeled him, went for his neck.

When I caught sight of Callum’s face, his eyes appeared to be covered with blood and what looked like a mixture of phlegm and vomit.

I shouted for Callum, but the sound was lost to the driving rain and rolling thunder, and to the bats, which flapped and dived crazily.

More objects shot up to the ceiling and hung like vines—terra-cotta planters, the coffee table, a lamp without its shade, remotes, and coasters.

The lights, however, were back on, showcasing the never-ending procession of ghosts that floated and lumbered around us.

Three twangy guitar notes rang out, and then the band’s singer was wailing from the walls, the sound rattling the French doors in their frame.

I grabbed the ice-cold knob. Despite my terror, I had to do something, had to try to help Callum.

I pushed. The door didn’t budge. Lady Macbeth floated through the jagged shards of glass, the crisscrossing sash bars, as if to mock me. I pushed again and again, batting at the knob, but to no avail.

Callum writhed on the floor, his eyes squeezed shut.

The corpse specter gnashed and flailed on top of him.

It grabbed his wrists, and even through the music I heard the snap, like a brittle branch cracking beneath a boot.

Callum howled and tried to grab for his wrist, but the putrid thing lowered itself onto him again.

I let go of the door and backed against the wall.

The house took up Callum’s howls, and the squeaking chorus of bats rose to a crescendo.

Over it all, I could hear Callum. My husband.

The husband I’d started all of this to get rid of.

To divorce and keep away from Beatrix. I could hear his horrified cries devolve into words, anguished and accusatory:

“Why? Why is this happening?”

I sank to the floor and hugged my knees. I ducked my head, and closed my eyes.

Then, finally, I screamed.