She flips on the light and we see it right away. The wall of her front hallway is coated in a childlike scrawl. Circles and marks come together to make faces forming a column of eyes, nose, mouth, followed by another nose beneath and a set of eyes below that, then a nose, a mouth. A correctly oriented face followed by an inversion of that face, and again.
Connie’s brow furrows. She turns to James and says the obvious. “What is this?”
“What do you mean? I didn’t do that,” James says.
My breathing becomes quick, and I find the sofa to sit down. “It has to be,” I say. I feel as if I might throw up or pass out. I hear the ringing drone, but I’m not in the house so I tell myself it’s in my head.
James sits down beside me, his head in his hands. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“It’s like that drawing in your bedroom. Why are you doing it, James? You did this before we went to dinner? Why? You fucked up my wall,” Connie says.
James stands and snaps at Connie, “I don’t make those drawings in our house, Connie, and I didn’t make this one either. Jesus Christ!” He slams back down on the cushion beside me, and my stomach jerks.
Connie says, “I really do hope that’s true. I invited you here. I hope you’re not fucking with me, because that would be sick, James. If it’s not you, then I’m phoning the police. Last chance to own up.” She waits a moment, but James says nothing. “Okay … Shit,” she says as if she wishes it were James who did it. “Fuck, that means someone was in my house?” She lets out a frustrated cry and punches a number into her phone, heading for the kitchen.
“We’re doomed,” I say to James. “Whatever this thing is, it’s inside of us now. We can’t shake it.”
James refuses to respond. He takes out his own phone and goes to the wall to take pictures. I watch him and wish he’d say something, but his anger has stuffed him so full, the words can’t get out. Finally, the sobs pulse out of me, like an artery opened. I pull myself into a ball and hide my face in the corner of Connie’s couch, squeezing a pillow with all my might.
Connie returns to the living room. “The police said they’ll be over to take a look.” She doesn’t comfort me or wait for me to stop crying. “I’m sorry, guys. I can’t stay here tonight. I’m going to call my cousin to see if I can go there.”
“I’m so sorry,” I wrench out through uneven breaths. “We’re going.” I stop myself. “Or we can stay until the police get here if you want.”
“Stay.” I look up at her. I don’t understand how she’s able to be so calm. Rather than fear or anger, I see the confusion in her face, a lack of understanding, and it’s clear that Connie hadn’t believed until now. Connie had listened to my stories, but she thought none of it could be as real as I said. “What the fuck,” she keeps exhaling on repeat. She still thinks she might find an answer.
64
CONNIE FROWNS WHILE we wait for the police to arrive. Two patrolmen show up, but one is the cop with the furrow of scar down his cheek. He catches sight of me on the couch. “You’re the neighbors of that missing guy.”
“That’s right,” I say, weary.
“What are you doing here?”
Julie senses hostility. She stands, trying to protect me. “We were staying with Connie for the night.”
“Is that right? Your husband really attracts trouble, huh?” He winks at Julie. “Maybe time for an upgrade.”
I look for a wedding ring. I don’t find one. “I think that’s enough, Officer,” I say, stepping forward.
He holds a hand up. “It’s all in good fun.” He turns back to his partner. They take photos. They write down the chain of events as Connie relays them. I wait for Connie to mention the drawings in our home. She keeps silent on this front, though.
“Always best to lock your house, Ms. Abbatacola,” the officer reminds her.
“Lesson learned.” Connie bites her upper lip. She holds the door open. The cops exit. When she shuts the door, she triple-checks the lock and the dead bolt.
We exchange apologies again.
“I want to get out of here. I’m sorry to kick you out.” Our bags sit by the door. I don’t know when Connie retrieved them.
“Please don’t apologize,” Julie says. “Clearly, we’re to blame.”
We drive the short distance home. I feel the dread crowd between us.
I go inside. Julie pulls out glasses. She runs the tap. “The not knowing is paralyzing.”
She sits down at the table with me. She takes a sip. I see blossoms of algae floating in the water. A scummy layer coats the glass. Julie gags. She runs to the sink. She throws up what she’s just swallowed. “What was that?” she gasps. “What did I drink?”
I stand back. I inspect Julie’s glass. “It looked normal before you drank out of it.”
Julie freezes. I can tell she’s searching her brain for something. “Bad behavior heralds ruin,” Julie whispers. I ask her to repeat herself. “Bad behavior heralds ruin. I’ve been reading up on hauntings. If a spirit knows you’ve been doing bad things, they’ll have a harder time leaving you alone. They want your bad energy out of their space.”
“Oh my God. You’re reading a book about ghosts like it’s fact?”
“We’re going to make lists,” Julie says. “Of all the bad we’ve done and all the bad this house has done back to us. We’re going to track this thing. We’re going to hunt it down, intrigue it, and rip it out of here.”
Julie starts taping pieces of paper to the wall. She sticks a black stripe of gaff tape through the middle of the sheets. Two rows. “I’ll write all the ways I’ve screwed up above the tape. You write yours below, and in the second row, we’ll write all of the weird shit that’s happened to us or that we’ve seen or heard or felt.”
She hands me a permanent marker. She starts writing.
“I don’t think I can keep straight what’s happened to you or me. At this point, my experiences are yours.”
“Write that down.” Julie turns back to the wall. She scribbles furiously.
65
WE ARE SILENT, recording all of our sins and grievances, until I look back to see what James writes and I freeze. James is scrawling, like he thinks he’s writing something, but all I see are wavy lines of nonsensical script.
“James!” He pauses and looks at me, tucks his top lip around his teeth, pulling his face longer. I haven’t seen him do this before, and it makes his face strange, unfamiliar to me. “What are you doing?”
“Writing down what I’ve done and what I’ve seen, like you said.”
I look at his marks and then at the way the lids have pulled back around his eyes, trying to get him to see what I see, and then I realize that maybe it’s me. Maybe it’s me that’s seeing what he is doing as wrong, and I panic. “Those are words?”
James stands up straighter, caps his marker. “They are.”
“Are my words also words?”
James looks at the wall and nods. “Yep.”