Page 29 of Play Nice

He held up a hand, the rudest way to interrupt a person. “He referred you to us for a second opinion. Priests, they only deal in exorcisms. We deal with all supernatural interferences. If you only eat chicken, everything is chicken.”

The rest of his crew was already packing up.

“If it isn’t…a demon, then what is it?”

“Poltergeist. Restless ghost that forgets it was ever human. They’re more mischievous than malignant,” he said, patting my arm and staring at my chest. “This is good news. You don’t want a demon, trust me.”

“It doesn’t feel mischievous. It feels like…like it wants to isolate me. Make me feel alone. And insane.”

NEVER ALONE

ALWAYS

HOME

Hearing myself say it out loud, I realized I could be talking about my ex-husband and not whatever was living in my house. I wondered if I was projecting.

“Yeah, well,” the guy said, shrugging.

“What do I do about a poltergeist?”

“We could take care of it for you…” He went on to quote me his services for thirty-five hundred dollars.

When I told him I didn’t have that kind of money, he suggested I take out a loan.

“You don’t want to put your daughters at risk, do you?” he asked.

“I thought you said it wasn’t malignant?”

He shrugged again. “Still. Demons are more violent, but poltergeists are known to make physical contact. Yank hair, pull out your chair, things like that.”

“I’ll have to think about it.”

He gave me his card. “Call me. For anything.”

With a wink, he was gone.

The next names on the list were an older married couple from Maine, along with their son-in-law and another AV club–type lackey.

They brought video cameras, and when I told them I would prefer it if they didn’t film, they bristled.

They’d planned on interviewing me and my daughters, on filming inside the house, the entire excursion.

They were putting together a documentary about themselves, about their adventures in ghost hunting.

They hadn’t mentioned on the phone that their visit, their “services,” were offered in exchange for this.

Permission to film, to be recorded, to open myself up to public scrutiny.

I was already under the thumb of my ex-husband, whose constant criticisms of me and my parenting had put me in such a state of anxiety and paranoia that it seemed particularly cruel for me to have ended up in yet another situation where I was being interrogated.

Questioned about something I knew to be true.

Put on trial for my behavior, my choices, my beliefs.

I initially refused, knowing any footage they shot could be used against me, but eventually I relented. They were at my doorstep, and I was desperate.

I gave them permission, signed a waiver. I was explicit in my instruction for them not to talk to my daughters, who I’d sequestered in the upstairs bedroom with a promise of a trip to the mall if they didn’t come out for an hour.

It didn’t matter. Cici left the room to use the bathroom, and the husband interviewed her upstairs while I was downstairs with the wife, explaining the laughter I’d heard the first night in the house.

“It’s obviously living in this room,” the woman said, shuddering as we walked into Cici’s bedroom. “Ooh boy. It doesn’t like that I’m here.”

She started to retch.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“It doesn’t want me here!” she screamed. Her eyes bulged, turning from green to yellow, then they rolled over white. She stuck her tongue out at me. It seemed to extend too far, beyond what was humanly possible.

I backed out of the room, and she followed me, tongue wagging.

She started to laugh, and it sounded just like the laughter I’d heard that first night. The laughter I’d just been describing.

Her son-in-law was filming the whole time.

Thankfully, due to a series of lawsuits and scandals that plagued the couple in the months and years following their visit, this footage and Cici’s brief interview were never released. My ex did manage to get ahold of it, to show in court.

“Hi,” the husband said, catching Cici in the hall while she was on her way to the bathroom.

That upstairs hallway is dark without the lights on, and Cici emerged from the darkness wearing a blue dress with ribbons, one she picked out at Goodwill.

She was blissfully unaware of the resemblance it bore to the ensemble of The Shining ’s Grady sisters, something I’m sure was not lost on either the social workers or the judge.

She narrowed her eyes at the strange man in front of her. “Who are you?”

“I’m here to help,” he said.

“No, you’re not,” she said. “Why do you smell bad?”

She was born with a sensitive nose and blunt mouth.

“Like rotten eggs,” she said.

He turned to the camera, to the AV kid. “Sulfur.”

“You should leave,” she said, approaching the bathroom door.

“Why’s that, sweetheart?” he asked.

“Don’t call me sweetheart,” she said coldly. “Did you hear me? You should leave now .”

“I’m sorry. Why should I leave now?”

“Because it doesn’t like you. Because if you stay here, it’ll come out and get you. When you see it, you’ll wish you didn’t. Then you’ll be sorry.”

She gave a devious little half smile, one I recognized—she’d given me the same look a thousand times. But to anyone else, it could be interpreted as villainous. A sign that she was corrupted by the evil in the house. Or, according to my ex, by me.

She went into the bathroom and slammed the door in the camera’s face.

LEAVE AND COME BACK NEVER BUT STILL I LOOK INSIDE THEIR HEADS AND DRINK THE GOOD THOUGHTS OUT

“Go away,” she said through the door. “Bye!”

The footage intersects as the wife runs up the stairs and out the front door. Then both cameras cut to static.

They left with what they came for, and I was left with nothing. Less than nothing. They used me.

After they drove off back to Maine, I brought my daughters to the mall as promised and allowed them each to pick out a reward for their cooperation.

Elle chose a book from Barnes & Noble, Dee chose nothing, and Cici chose an expensive pair of earrings from Macy’s.

Once I’d made good on my bribe, I took them to the food court, where we split two plates of chicken teriyaki, and I told them the truth.

“That’s why we’re going to church?” Dee asked.

“It’s a precaution,” I said.

“I don’t think the house is haunted,” Elle said, crossing her arms over her chest.

I knew she would tell her father eventually. She was loyal to him. She resented me because I was there, because I was the one raising them. If I’d begged, maybe I could have bought myself some time. Delayed the inevitable.

Or I could have gone on lying, but I was exhausted, and I’d already kept so much from them.

How do you prepare your daughters for the world? How do you protect them?

Do you tell them every ugly truth so that they understand? So that they know what to expect?

Or do you fill their heads with dreams and hope for the best? Hope that they want more for themselves and don’t settle for the way the world is, that they demand it to be better, and maybe because of that it will be?

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Cici said, bending her plastic fork.

“What do you mean?” I asked her.

She shrugged. “It’s happy with us, but it didn’t like those people.”

YES

Her sisters looked at her. She ignored them.

“Does it…talk to you?” I asked her.

She rolled her eyes. “Not your business.”

“It is my business.”

“Whatever. Never mind,” she said, shifting in her seat. I knew the harder I pressed, the more she’d hold back. She was stubborn in that way. So I let it go. I took the girls home.

Later, when I said good night to Cici, I sat at the foot of her bed for a while, waiting for her to tell me more about the presence in the house that she seemed to have some connection to. That she knew, as I did, was real.

“Elle’s gonna tell Dad,” she said, after about twenty minutes had passed. “He’ll be mad.”

“I know.”

“He wants us to live with him. But it wants us to stay.”

“What’s ‘ it ’?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “ Shh. It’s listening. It’s here.”

“Cici. This is serious.”

She started to giggle. This wild, erratic giggling that I’d never heard out of her before. “I’m the favorite,” she said. She suddenly stopped her giggling and looked at me, now gravely serious. “I’m its favorite.”