Page 8 of How to Fake a Haunting

Adelaide and I looked up at the trapdoor. The rectangular sheet of wood was painted white to match the ceiling, its surface smooth and unblemished.

Adelaide eyed the plastic dollhouse again. “Got anything sturdier than this”—she poked the dollhouse with her shoe—“and potentially stackable?”

I tried to picture the biggest items in Bea’s playroom. A rocking horse? An easel? I frowned. “I don’t think there’s anything sturdy enough for you to stand on.”

Adelaide stepped back, looking the closet up and down.

She’s going out of her way to help. You can’t be completely useless.

“I’ve got it,” I said, excited to have come up with something.

“I know I’m not supposed to change my behavior, like, watching horror movies and stuff, but I’ve been complaining about the lack of storage space in Bea’s room since before she was born.

I’ll get a closet organizer. One that can double as a step stool to access the trapdoor.

Cal will never realize it has a purpose beyond me finally having a system for keeping track of Bea’s clothes. ”

“Great,” Adelaide said. “I’ll add it to the list.”

“What list?”

“The list of things we’re getting at Home Depot after we see how much of a disaster it is up there.”

She strode from the room, and I heard her jog down the stairs. Half a minute later, she returned, holding a chair from the kitchen, and maneuvered it into the closet.

“Here we go,” Adelaide said, looking more uncertain than I’d seen her since unveiling this crazy haunting business three days prior.

I wanted to reassure her, but I didn’t know what to expect either; I’d stored all the holiday decorations, unused exercise equipment, old books, and other bric-a-brac in the basement.

Adelaide shook herself and smiled. “Well, beam me up, then, as they say.” She pushed up on the trapdoor until the wood lifted, then whisked it over to one side. Gripping the longer sides of the rectangular opening, Adelaide pulled herself up.

The kitchen chair wasn’t high enough. I grabbed Adelaide’s left ankle and hoisted her up the last few feet.

When she had disappeared into the hole, first one foot then the other, a sense of disassociation settled over me.

This experience was so strange, so different from any other I’d had in my house, that I felt I was no longer me.

I am not Lainey Taylor; I am a stranger, in this house and to myself.

Before the feeling could cleave me in two, I stacked one of the small chairs from Bea’s art table across the room onto the one from the kitchen, and climbed on top of it.

In another moment, I was crouched beside Adelaide, the open trapdoor yawning beneath us—the dim, arid attic stretching away, toward the opposite end of the house.

We were each perched on one of the dizzyingly narrow ceiling joists that extended horizontally across the space.

The room was haphazardly insulated and broken up by random pieces of plywood laid over select sections of joists.

From the back wall at the center of the space, dingy light splayed out from a small hole between a wooden beam and the roof.

“This is worse than I thought.”

“It’s an attic, Lain. It’s pretty much exactly how I imagined it.”

Adelaide tested her height against that of the slanted ceiling and found she could stand without ducking, unless she were to move to one of the corners, where the eaves met the floor.

The joists were sturdy enough, and she traveled across two before coming to the first section bolstered by plywood.

I followed hesitantly to the attic’s center.

“This isn’t so bad,” Adelaide said. She raised her eyebrows twice, as if daring me to agree.

“If you say so.” I shivered, despite the lack of chill in the air.

The attic was dangerous—an unlucky accident waiting to happen—but more than that, it was creepy.

The color was off, as if I were viewing everything from beneath a soot-colored veil or through the gauzy haze of twilight after a storm.

And the air wasn’t just still; it seemed immovable.

I had the distinct feeling that if I were to hoist a ceiling fan up here, it would refuse to function, the blades whirring uselessly, the air not only too heavy but too stubborn—too ornery—to be coaxed into a breeze.

Adelaide, on the other hand, appeared elated. “All right,” she said, rubbing her hands together. She pulled out her phone and snapped a few photos. “We could definitely use some more pieces of plywood up here. I’ll add them to the list.”

“Have you decided that the first ‘stage’ will be the knocking?” I asked. “And are we using an iPad to play the sounds?”

“The less high-tech we go, the better. Even if we bought an iPad specifically for this and didn’t pair it with any other cloud or devices, I’d be too worried it’d get random notifications.”

“So, a voice recorder, then?”

“A few of them. I can space out the knockings on the various devices so that they play at different times above different rooms.” Adelaide reached the mosaic-stone chimney and broke into laughter.

I jerked my head up from where I’d been inspecting a piece of torn insulation. “What’s so funny?”

“I want to leave as little as I can up here between visits, and whatever I do leave, I’ll need to hide as best as possible.

But if I’m going to be creeping from board to board, hitting play on whatever recorder is closest to Callum at any given movement, it’d be nice to have some slippers.

If I match the color to the insulation, I can leave them in plain view.

Even if Cal got suspicious and stuck his head up here, he wouldn’t know what he was seeing. ”

She laughed again, full-throated and infectious, and I shook my head, half amused, half bewildered.

“You’re unbelievable,” I said. “I mean, I can’t believe how cheerful you are about all this.

Maybe cheerful isn’t the right word, since I know you wish we didn’t have to resort to this.

But . . . low-key excited? Keen to take on the challenge? ”

Adelaide had been making her way to the far side of the space, but at this, she stopped and regarded me. “It’s nice to be doing something concrete for you for once. Something besides listening and offering useless advice.”

“Your advice is never useless,” I said.

“It’s never worked, has it?” she challenged. “In my defense, neither have any of the suggestions from the Al-Anon groups or your therapists.” She raised an eyebrow and gestured for me to join her by the chimney.

I made my way over joists and plywood. “Still,” I said, “I can’t believe you’re willing to do this.”

“Oh, please.” She sounded bored, but I detected something beneath the boredom. “You know my last few relationships have been shit,” she elaborated. “Work keeps me busy and fulfilled, but what else would I be doing right now if I wasn’t helping you?”

“What about the ER nurse? Aren’t things going well between you two?”

“We broke up.”

“What? When? You were still together last week.”

“I ended things three days ago. Conflicting personalities on top of conflicting schedules.”

I winced. “Sorry.”

She waved a hand. “Not the point. I want to help you with Callum. I want to help you help yourself. Does that make sense?”

My cheeks grew warm, not only in response to the things Adelaide was saying but also because she had the ability to say them at all. Thank her! Tell her how much you appreciate her! You suck at showing your emotions.

Intellectually, I knew this. The same way I knew nothing in life was helped by rigidity or a false sense of control, that life did not fit into neat little boxes of “good” or “bad.” I reminded myself of this often, but lately I’d found myself discussing Callum with Adelaide, dissecting him with the sterility of a mortician, and this development worried me.

My relationship seemed to have turned “bad” in my mind, keeping me from having any actual feelings about what was happening, my reactions as stunted as if I were relaying something I’d heard about on the news.

Callum had become a problem to solve, not a human being with whom I’d shared my life for the last six years and with whom I needed to find a path forward, one way or another.

My inability to express gratitude to Adelaide was similar: My responses to what we were doing were devoid of emotion.

Only with Bea did I find myself truly feeling things anymore.

Unless, of course, the emotion I was experiencing was rage.

Where Callum was involved, I had more than enough of that to go around.

Still, Adelaide was going above and beyond for me, was promising to continue going above and beyond in the coming weeks, maybe even months. I needed to tell her how I felt.

The sound of tires crunching over the driveway cut through the strange, heavy air and the lack of color, as well as the cavernous void created by all my myriad inadequacies.

“Shit!” I cried, my anxiety over thanking Adelaide displaced by all-consuming panic. “It’s Cal! He must’ve come home early!”