Play nice, p.18
Play Nice, page 18
part #1 of 2025 Series
“What’d ya see?” Daffy asked.
“An art house film called Cannibal Dinner Party.”
They’d both rolled their eyes. Horror wasn’t the genre of choice among the Barneses, for obvious reasons.
“I don’t know how you could sit through that garbage,” Leda said.
“Kyle likes them,” I’d said, spritzing some perfume to combat the scent of ammonia. “It’s not so bad. They’re fun.”
“I never understood those movies,” Daphne said. “I can’t suspend my disbelief. Like, a bunch of stupid teenagers are, like, there are rumored to be murderous cannibals or ghosts or whatever over there, we should go! Why would anyone do that?”
“Curiosity. Excitement,” I’d said. “I’d go.”
I remember how they looked at me. Like I was crazy. I shrugged and left the bathroom, understanding there was a fundamental difference between us. Some people jump out of airplanes, some people backpack alone across Europe, some people climb Mount Everest, some people swim with sharks, some people idiot hot strangers they meet on the street, some people do heroin, chase a high because they know what it’s worth, despite the danger. And some people sit around thinking, I would never.
Yes, the house scares me. But nothing scares me as much as the idea that I might become one of those tragic, boring, would-never people.
So I pack up my hotel room, drop some things off in my storage unit, and take an Uber all the way to New Jersey. I put it on Dad’s account. I hope he sees where I went.
* * *
—
There’s a package waiting on the doorstep when I get to Edgewood.
I take it inside and open it, my back to the wall with the frowning face.
It’s the copy of Mom’s book I ordered. It’s somehow in even worse condition than the copy she left me. The spine cracked, cover frayed. The pages are yellow, and it smells—top note of vomit, base note of BO.
I sit at the dining table and flip through the book, looking for the place where I left off. But I can’t concentrate, can’t focus with the frowning face behind me. I can feel it looking at me.
I change into my painting shorts and T-shirt and then get out my putty knife and some Spackle. I patch the deep gashes in the wall, trying not to think about what made them. Who made them.
I ruin my manicure in the process.
The utility sink in the garage would be useful to wash off my putty knife and scrub the Spackle currently crusting on my cuticles, but I refuse to go back in there after the mouse massacre. I wash my hands in the kitchen sink instead.
I catch a whiff of something rancid, follow my nose to the fridge.
I open it to find guts.
Purple gore.
Jelly. The jar is on its side, lid off. Smeared all over, spotted with fuzzy white mold.
I slam the door shut.
My eyes find the bread on the counter. It’s also covered in mold, so much it’s practically bursting out of the plastic.
It is horrifically humid, but even still, this is a freakish amount of mold. And without Dad, there’s no one to call to clean this up on my behalf.
I tie a bandanna around my face to cover my nose and mouth, and then I toss the bread into a garbage bag, reluctantly move on to the fridge. I turn on some music while I scrub, but it doesn’t make the experience any more tolerable. Moldy, sticky, disgusting. I ruin two sponges and go through an entire bottle of lemon-scented Lysol. The fridge now legitimately sparkles, but as far as I’m concerned, it’ll never be clean again.
When I finish up in the kitchen, I take a long shower. The water temperature fluctuates between piping hot and freezing cold. There’s no comfort to be found, even after I towel off and get dressed and sit on the couch. I’m sweating, then I’m shivering, so I get a blanket, then I’m sweating again.
The humidity reaches its breaking point, and it starts to pour. I get up to close the sliding doors. I pause to watch the rain, listen to the meaty drops pound against the house. It almost conceals the sound. The long dragging footsteps. Almost.
I’m too afraid to turn around.
My eyes peel wide, won’t blink. My neck is stiff. Head stuck. The only part of me that moves are my lips, my teeth, my jaw—they tremble and chatter.
I stare straight ahead at my own reflection in the sliding glass doors. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice something else. A silhouette. A shadow beyond me, in the room behind me.
I know this shadow is too big to belong to me, to be mine. And its shape…my brain can’t quite make sense of it.
There’s a flash of lightning, followed by a low rumble of thunder, and in its wake comes quiet. An eerie silence.
I finally turn, slowly, to face the other side of the room.
There’s no one there. Nothing. Except for the book, which is still on the table. Though in a different spot on the table. Maybe. I’m not sure where I left it. I don’t remember.
I walk over and pick it up. It falls open to a section I haven’t read before.
This copy isn’t annotated by my mother.
But it is annotated.
* * *
Father Bernard had given me a list of contacts to reach out to, to further inspect the house and corroborate his assessment of demonic possession.
The first call I made was to a team of paranormal investigators out of Baltimore. They agreed to take the case if I paid for their travel. I borrowed the money from my sister, not telling her what it was for. I was embarrassed, ashamed—which was made all the worse when the team arrived a month after my initial call. Four men with an excessive amount of “equipment,” with muddy boots they didn’t bother to remove.
They trampled through the house, holding up their devices, their toys.
“Well, there’s definitely something here,” one of the men said, pulling up his jeans. “Strongest in that downstairs bedroom. It’s not aggressive enough to be demonic, in my opinion.”
“What do you mean, ‘aggressive’?”
“Demons scratch, bite, gouge. Growl, snarl. It’s more targeted. Demons, they generally possess people, not places.”
WEAR ANY SKIN
WANT HOUSE SKIN
“But Father Bernard said—”
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.”
25
I fall asleep reading, and when I wake up it’s dark. It’s night.
The house is different at night. Or maybe it’s just harder to be brave in the dark.
I grab the vape I bought before I left the city, my phone, and my wallet, slip on my shoes, and walk over to Austin’s.
It’s no longer raining, but there’s a dampness in the air, and it stinks of summer-ripe earth. Grass and mushrooms and geraniums and dirt.
I call Austin.
“Hey,” he says.
“I’m coming over. Okay?”
“Okay.” He hangs up first, which I don’t like.
“Look who’s back in the neighborhood,” he says, meeting me at the end of his driveway a minute later.
I hit my vape, exhale into the space between us.
“Do what you want, but those things will destroy your lungs,” he says, pointing to the vape.
“Appreciate your concern,” I say, hitting it again.
He tosses his car keys up and catches them in the other hand. “Let me buy you some disco fries.”
“My Prince Charming. My knight in shining armor.”
“All right. I’ll throw in a milkshake.”
* * *
—
It’s a rare occasion that I don’t want to think or talk about myself, but tonight is one of those rare occasions. Instead, I ask Austin questions about himself. He shares and I listen. Really listen.
His father’s death was unexpected and hard. His older brothers are overachievers, both jerks but in different ways. His mother was diagnosed with MS when he was a sophomore in college. He’s got an insane amount of student debt that he’s doing his best to chip away at. He’s had two long-term girlfriends—one in high school and one in his early twenties who he thought he’d end up with. They lived together. He was the one to call it off, which he claims is worse because now he has to live with wondering if he did the right thing. She just got married to a guy in his second year of residency.
After they broke up, Austin moved in with his mom.
“It’s not easy to meet people when you live with your mom,” he says, shrugging, then sucking down the last of his milkshake.
Maybe, but women don’t care. It’s a confidence issue. Charlie Manson didn’t own property, and he was only five foot two. But he had charisma. And good hair.
I think I might think about Charlie Manson too much.
“Are you on the apps?” I ask him, stabbing at a soggy fry.
“I was,” he says. “It’s demoralizing. Are you?”
“God no,” I say, laughing. “I have no trouble meeting people.”
The way he looks at me, I understand that he’s sincerely invested in whatever this is between us. It’d be so much simpler if he wasn’t.
