The screams are coming from the bathroom downstairs.
In half a heartbeat I’m up, I’m down the hallway, I’m shouting my daughter’s name and feeling it echo against the reverberations of their shrieks and my pounding heart. I ignore the pain in my ankle as it twists, my socks slipping on the stairs, my mind overflowing with flashes of men breaking in through windows. My fist reaches the locked door before I do, my own mother’s voice shrill in my throat: “Emily! Are you all right? Open up this instant or—”
The swing of a creaky hinge drowns out my threat and reveals the sullen expression of my daughter, Emily, with a coterie of appropriately shame-faced fourteen-year-old girls behind her.
“We’re sorry, Mrs. Maison,” one of them offers, her light tone suggesting that no issue in her short life hasn’t been rectified by way of polite apology.
I ignore her. This can be her first.
“Girls,” I start firmly, my heart rate slowing as I note all five are safe and accounted for. “Why on earth were you screaming?”
The silence that follows is predictable. I allow it to last exactly ten seconds before my next line: “Now, unless you would like me to call your parents…”
Emily releases an exaggerated sigh, disdain lacing her every word. “It was a game, Mom.”
“What kind of game requires you to lock the bathroom door?”
“We weren’t—”
“Are you doing drugs?” I ask sharply, knowing full well they’re not. Emily’s friends were carefully vetted. They’re mostly the daughters of donors or local businessmen who endorsed her father during his last election. But an accusation so far out of left field will disorient them. Suggesting an outlandish lie often forces out the truth. See, I do learn something during my husband’s debates.
“Mom, no, we—”
“We were doing a Tiktok trend,” a baby-faced brunette squeaks before finding herself on the receiving end of a powerful glare from Emily. Squeaky cowers and falls back in on herself, nervously pulling a braided pigtail. I suppress a smile at my daughter’s clear command of her little clique. A born TriDelt chapter president.
“Is this ‘trend’ one of those inappropriate dances? Emily, your father—”
“No, Mom, oh my god. You just go into the bathroom, turn off all the lights and say this stupid phrase in the mirror. It’s supposed to be, like, scary, but…” her eyes find Squeaky again, drilling into the girl’s downturned head like she’ll find oil between the plaits. “It’s just a joke.”
A strawberry blonde whispers in Emily’s ear, and a giggle escapes from someone’s sticky, lipgloss-lacquered mouth. The energy starts to shift into a familiar primal pattern. The teens have sensed prey, and it’s wearing pigtails.
My own interest in this hunt is waning. The adrenaline that prepared me to battle any would-be kidnapper fades, replaced by a weariness that can only be solved by submerging my entire body in warm water. I never should’ve agreed to this sleepover during Polina’s night off, especially with Mark away at a reelection fundraiser. Not that he would’ve been much help with the girls anyway.
I exhale, and note with some surprise at how similar my sighs sound to those of my daughter. “Since you’re already in the bathroom, start brushing your teeth. Bed in twenty minutes. No later.”
A delightfully believable chorus of “yes ma’ams” follows me as I retreat to the upstairs master bathroom, pausing at the front door to reconfirm our house’s security system remains active. It does, soothing me with its blinking green light.
Normally Polina would’ve already drawn my bath and lit some candles for my evening ritual, but even housekeepers get a sick day for their father’s funeral. I’m not a monster.
Naturally, my husband’s opponents disagree. A few months ago some researcher dug up my investment portfolio and noted its correlation to my husband’s voting record. Unflattering photos circulated next to headlines reading “TRADWIFE TRADES: Congressman Maison (R-SC-04) and wife profit BIG TIME from first term.”
Mark wasn’t concerned about the electoral impact. “Our constituents don’t understand the stock market well enough to know what ‘insider trading’ means,” he chuckled reassuringly, and he was right: the swirl faded after a few days with no change in the polls. So it ultimately wasn’t important that I also don’t know what ‘insider trading’ means. I hadn’t realized he was purchasing stocks in my name.
Lowering the lights, I derobe and ease myself gently into the water. The hiss of heat against my skin elicits a gasp, but I recline and relish the few moments of peace before reaching for my phone.
My Tiktok profile contains no personal details beyond a relatively believable AI-generated stock image of a young man and the bio, “Chase, Boca Raton. 16. Water polo 🏊 and Jesus ✝️.” Chase follows a few accounts: pro athletes, Turning Point USA, random influencers famous for mouthing lyrics to popular songs while pouting at the camera.
And, of course, “emmymayy2012.”
Chase is among my daughters five thousand followers; he has no followers himself, except bots and some probable catfish who will never appreciate the irony. Emily never followed him back, or even noticed him, which only proves why I need Chase. If she’s not paying attention, her mother will.
The first video on my feed is from fifteen minutes ago. The screen shows only a pitch black room, but when I increase my brightness I make out shadowy shapes pushing each other as they issue breathy whispers in between hushed laughter.
“Caroline, that’s my foot–”
“I’m sorrryyyyyy it’s so small in here. Emily, your bathroom is so tiny—”
I recognize the note of irritation in my daughter’s voice from behind the camera. “It’s just the front hallway guest bathroom. We have, like, five more.”
A giggle. “So we could each have our own bathroom? Why don’t we split up and try it? See who Mary chooses?”
Another girl interjects. “We have to do it together. It’s stronger that way. Madison, do you have the lighter?”
A spark ignites, casting a glow on the girls surrounding the phone.
“Hunter will kill me if he finds out I took that.”
“And if you tell your parents he has it, they’ll kill him. Problem solved.” Emily points the camera at the mirror, capturing all five of their round, feverish faces. “Ready? Remember the words.”
“Wait, y’all.” This interruption comes at an octave higher than the rest. Squeaky. She’s positioned just beyond the mirror’s left edge; only a sliver of her face is visible. “Are we sure about this? Pastor Jacob—”
“What, do you have, like, a crush on him or something?” The question is laced with a poison only teenagers know the recipe for. Peals of laughter crescendo. I wonder how I hadn’t heard the girls before the screaming started.
“N-No, it’s just, the Bible talks about summoning demons and how it’s, like, a sin.”
Watching now, I remember why I insisted Emily befriend this girl. Her father is a prominent Evangelical deacon who’d donated a sizable sum during Mark’s last race.
“Bloody Mary isn’t a demon, though. She’s the ghost of a woman who killed her baby—”
“You said her name!”
“Shhhhh it doesn’t matter, you have to say the whole thing three times for it to work. Okay. Everyone ready?”
Squeaky doesn’t protest again.
“On the count of three. One, two—”
A harmony of girlish voices recites the words together like a prayer. “Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Blood Mary, you killed your baby, you killed your baby, you killed your baby—”
A beat. The girls wait expectantly, their breaths quickening in anticipation, perpetually on the verge of more giggles. A few slip through, met with another “Shhhh” before, so fast I almost miss it, the candle flickers and a now-familiar bloodcurdling scream crackles through the speaker, followed by the clatter of Emily dropping her phone on the sink before the video ends and starts replaying on a loop.
I open up the comments to see what kind of traction it’s gotten so far. Squeaky might be annoyingly sanctimonious for a fourteen-year-old, but Mark relies heavily on Christian turnout, and it would only take one critical comment from her father about our family encouraging “demonic acts” to keep his congregation home on election day. This video needs to be deleted, immediately. Before Mark’s campaign manager Ryan—who also almost certainly stalks our daughter—sees it.
Making a mental note to give Squeaky extra pancakes at breakfast tomorrow, I scroll through the replies. They’re mostly shock emojis and “omfg it worked??” posted by school friends alongside “fake” or “obvious AI” from internet strangers. One comment, “who is in the costume? lmao,” catches my attention.
My finger taps back to the video. A laugh, a hush, the candle flickering and—I pause. Rewind. Rewatch, slowly this time. Laugh, hush, flicker, and—
It’s a trick of the light, an effect of the flame. A sixth person appears in the mirror, emerging from the pixelated darkness: a woman, towering over the girls, her perversely bare chest reaching the top of Squeaky’s head. Pallid skin hangs loosely over her emaciated limbs, but pulls tight across her bloated stomach; her raw-boned hands rest on its curve. Protectively, almost lovingly, she fingers the gaping wound that slices straight through her abdomen.
The specific contours of her face remain shrouded in shadow, save for a slight smile, the upturned corners of her mouth oozing inky black blood.
Perhaps I’d underestimated my daughter. I hadn’t believed Emily capable of sophisticated editing, but the masses clearly do. The comments continue: “Did you use Capcut to edit the ghost in?” and “lmao everyone is so gullible. It’s a filter.”
At the bottom reads the final comment, from a user named bl00dymaryx3. It’s three words:
“coming coming coming.”
My heartrate spikes. Their profile is entirely blank: no videos or followers, no picture. Someone must’ve watched Emily’s video and created this spoof account for the express purpose of taunting her, threatening her. Illegals, pedophiles, any mentally ill liberal with a grudge against my husband might note the five teen girls in our house. They could be tracking Mark. They would know he’s attending a fundraiser.
The steaming water is suddenly frigid. Shivering, I rise and nearly slip, splashing water all over the marble floor.
Only when I see the dark puddles forming at my feet do I realize: it’s not water.
The liquid sloshing in the tub, glazing my body and cascading in rivulets down my thighs, runs blood red. My mouth drops open and a metallic taste pushes past my lips, forcefully flowing onto my tongue. I choke on it as I scream.
“Mom? You okay?” Emily’s call drifts up the stairs, her checking on me this time. There’s a note of concern in her voice, but it hasn’t yet crossed the threshold to fear. Even in her question, there’s an assumption that everything is fine. In Emily’s life, everything has always been fine.
“Mom?” Her silhouette darkens the doorway before she flips a switch, illuminating the bathroom. “Do you…want a towel?”
My body freezes as I realize what she’s witnessing: her mother, naked, kneeling in a pool of blood.
No, not blood.
The light shines off pure, clean, soapy water.
“Sorry, honey,” I reach for an explanation and my robe. “The bathtub had a…spider.” I change the subject before she can doubt this, reestablishing my authority now that I’m more covered. “Emily Carolina Maison, you need to delete that video.”
Her eyes widen with an innocence that probably works a treat with Mark. “What video?
“Don’t be cute. Your little trend. There will be absolutely no more sleepovers in this house if—”
“God, Mom, okay.” Her tone tells me she regrets coming upstairs to verify my safety. At least the daughter of a dead mother can post whatever she wants. “But…” now she squints, assessing me. “How did you see it?”
“See what?”
“The video.”
I can blame Ryan. I can always blame Ryan. That’s what Mark pays him for.
“Ryan sent it to me. You know he…keeps tabs on us.”
Emily’s eyes roll as she slams the door behind her.
I cinch my robe tighter, chastising myself for losing control. The special effects in Emily’s video put strange ideas in my head. That, combined with the darkness of my bathroom—well, clearly I need rest.
Polina’s absence means my bed remains unmade, but a wave of exhaustion washes away my capacity to care. Once I’m under the sheets, curled around the body pillow that replaced Mark after he moved to his own room down the hall, sleep finds me easily.
Staying asleep, however, is another matter.
A jangling clangor of bells, composed to startle all who hear it, shocks me awake at about four in the morning. Groggily my hand finds my phone and, eyes still closed to its brightness, I answer.
“Hello?”
“What in the ever-loving fuck are you doing?” a nasal voice hisses. My eyes fly open, but I already know the caller.
“I’m sleeping, Ryan.”
“Oh, sleeping? Want to tell me who is posting from your public fucking Facebook, then?”
“What?” I pull myself up, flicking on the lamp light. “What are you talking about?”
“Jesus Christ, open Facebook. Now.”
My fingers clumsily find the app. My page reads like a Hallmark card. I never share anything without pre-approval from Mark’s social media consultants, which means the digital archive of my life is mostly sanitized family photos and bland holiday greetings.
Except for the most recent post. It’s an album, added minutes ago. The first image is actually a video. It autoplays and I hear my own voice projected by a microphone:
The greatest blessing of my life, of Mark’s life, is our daughter Emily. I heard her heartbeat six weeks into my pregnancy and knew that it was my responsibility, as a mother, to keep her safe in my womb. It is ultimately all of our responsibility to keep the unborn safe— to protect the sanctity of life from the moment of conception. This is why I’m so proud that my husband’s voting record is 100% pro-life—
“Ryan, it’s just the speech I gave at the Patriotic Women of Faith’s annual luncheon last year. Why—”
I can almost hear the way he’s clenching his phone as a placeholder for my throat. “Keep. Fucking. Clicking.”
I do, and my limbs immediately seize up. My phone jumps out of my hands, throwing itself off the edge of the bed. From the floor I hear Ryan’s tinny interrogation continue.
“Is it real? That medical document?”
Bile surging into my mouth blocks my reply.
“Did you get a fucking abortion?”
Picking up my phone with trembling hands, I zoom into the uploaded scan titled “After Clinic Report.” My maiden name is listed at the top, under the letterhead of the incredibly discreet doctor I had sourced from one of my sorority sisters. Below it reads the painstakingly factual patient procedural summary: voluntary termination of pregnancy.
My mind races, attempting to rationalize the image before me. I’d booked a flight to a big anonymous city and told everyone I was visiting cousins. Declined using insurance. Paid in cash. Swore my sorority sister to secrecy. She was northern, more progressive than the other TriDelts. She’d disaffiliated the following year when our chapter held an event called “Grand Old Party: Make it Rain for McCain.”
I’d met Mark at that mixer. Forgot all about the boy who got me in trouble. Two years later I was a senior, planning my wedding and utterly confident that no one would ever hear a word about my little trip out of state.
Until now.
“Are you fucking with me? Tell me: do you not like being a congressman’s wife? Do you not like your big country mansion and botox appointments and limitless shopping trips? Did you post this to sabotage Mark’s reelection?”
“Does he know?” I hate the fearful quiver in my voice.
Ryan’s response is cold but, despite his best efforts, comforting. “I haven’t mentioned it yet. Mark’s giving a speech in the morning; he can’t be losing sleep over whatever the fuck is going on with you.” Sometimes I’m certain that if his politics permitted, Ryan would much rather be on Mark’s arm instead of his right hand.
“Okay. Okay.” I inhale deeply. “The document, it’s not…it’s not real. It’s some kind of forgery. I’ve been hacked. I’m deleting it right now.”
“Right now?”
“Yes. Yes. They’re deleted.”
“Thank you. Now change your fucking password.”
As soon as he hangs up, my phone resets to its lockscreen, where I can see I have one hidden notification. I type in my passcode to view it, dreading the possibility of a probing Facebook message from some hawk-eyed acquaintance: “Sugar, did you mean to post that?”
But it’s not from Facebook. It’s from Tiktok.
Bl00dymaryx3 started following you.
The air dissipates from my lungs and I find I can’t refill them. Each intake of breath becomes more rapid and shallow as I attempt to parse mere coincidence from legitimate threats. Is this person the one who hacked my Facebook? How did they get my medical records? Could it be multiple people all working together, some dark network of tech terrorists?
No, no. I’m spiraling. None of this makes sense. My Tiktok isn’t connected to my Facebook. It isn’t even connected to my name. My hands cup my face. Their coolness against my flushed cheeks anchors me back to reality. I consider calling Mark, but I’d have to explain everything. Calling Ryan requires groveling. Calling the police means neighbors catching highly visible red-and-blue lights flashing in our driveway on a Saturday night, the girls’ mothers coming to pick them up early. By Monday, the plains will be positively flooded with gossip and exaggerations and speculations about Congressman Maison’s hysterical wife.
That won’t do. Not during an election year. Whether or not I enjoy being married to Mark depends on the day, but Ryan’s accusations inadvertently uncovered an ultimate truth. I do like being a congressman’s wife.
Rousing myself, I step lightly down the hall and peek into Emily’s room. Five blanketed bodies are divided between the canopied queen bed, a loveseat and our spare air mattress. The rhythm of their gentle, even breathing steadies mine. A quick trip downstairs to visit our blinking green alarm soothes me further. Dipping into Mark’s office, I grab my Macbook and change my Facebook password. After her friends leave, I’ll encourage Emily to make her Tiktok private. It won’t go well, I know, but withholding her allowance should do the trick.
I spend a few minutes scrolling mindlessly, using the mundanity of pregnancy announcements and political commentary to numb me before bed. An ad for a bloody mary cocktail mix appears alongside my feed, and the corners of my mouth jerk up. There’s solace in the knowledge that our phones are always listening. At least someone is.
Upon returning to my ensuite, I notice the water from last evening’s “bloodbath” still gleams on the tile. Polina returns later today, thank God. I dial the lights to full brightness and admire my reflection in the vanity. I’m not as cute as the college girl Mark met, but a few tasteful lifts and tucks have ensured I continue to resemble my teenage daughter more than I do my mother.
Of course, no procedure could ever wholly remove my mother. She was the last true Southern belle, known for keeping her hair high and standards higher. She had a talent for deploying her genteel Charleston accent to soften the scathing criticisms she laid at others feet. “That girl will go with anyone, bless her big heart,” she tittered once, in reference to a classmate of mine who’d been absent a few months. “And now, she’s got herself a big belly, too.”
I close my eyes and splash my face, lowering to the sink for a more thorough rinse. The water pipes out hot. Too hot. Still bent, I twist the knobs to lower the heat, but it only seems to get hotter, actually scalding as it hits my skin. I balk, my head snapping back, striking the tap on the way up.
For a moment, I think my head must be bleeding – that the impact of the metal sliced open my scalp. But even a gushing wound isn’t enough to fill the entire basin of the sink, which now overflows with bubbling crimson syrup so thick it clogs the drain and slops over the sides, drenching my slippers and staining the bathmat.
My hand flies to my mouth to prevent another scream and again I taste salted iron, look down to find it greasing my palms. Frantically I swipe at the steam on the mirror only to sully it further, leaving rusty streaks behind – obscuring something just behind me.
Shaking, I use the corner of my robe to swab away the residue.
My own unblinking eyes bulge back at me. To any reasonable observer I might be wearing a face mask, a concoction made of beetroot or tomato juice. Through the buzzing in my brain I contemplate the potential skincare properties of blood. Excellent for collagen production, I’ll tell the ladies at luncheon. My Korean aesthetician uses her own. It’s best straight from the vein.
A bubble of a laugh gets stuck in my throat. Surely I’m concussed, and this is all some visual impairment. An injury-induced hallucination that’s got me seeing double.
Because another face hovers next to mine.
A woman’s visage, smiling, her teeth bared, rivulets of blood flowing through their gaps.
She rests her chin upon my shoulder, as my mother would after doing my makeup for debutante balls. Spindly pale arms wrap around my ribcage, crushing the air from my chest. My eyes squeeze shut against her milky white gaze, her tear ducts streaming blood and coating her cheeks. Gore paints her lips as they part against my ear, wheezing with menacing sibilance:
“You killed your baby, you killed your baby, you killed your baby…”
“No,” comes my strangled, airless cry. “I didn’t, I didn’t, I’d never hurt Emily.”
“Not her not her not her” she drawls, her exhalation acrid. “Try again.”
“I didn’t.” I feel a trickle of warmth between my legs, dribbling down my inner thighs. “I didn’t —I didn’t kill anything, I didn’t. It was a medical procedure.”
Skeletal appendages crawl up my waist, lingering along my collarbone, tenderly tracing the hollow crevices, playing with the blood there as if it’s finger paint. “That’s right that’s right that’s right…”
Vomit rises up my esophagus alongside pleading desperation. “I was young. I had no choice—”
“But you did you did you did.” Her rasp intensifies, as though it’s no longer hers alone, but a thousand hissing serpents writhing around me. The whispering becomes harsher, less a susurration and more a chant, booming, echoing against the mirror, the marble, my bones.
“You had a choice. You had a choice. You had a choice.”
Long, sharp nails trail along my neck, pausing at my larynx.
“So why deny others, deny deny deny…”
“I don’t—”
My denial devolves into an animal whine as she takes a single talon and languidly slices my throat. I collapse facedown in the water flooding the bathroom.
It’s crystalline. Entirely translucent. Clear like a conscience.
The only blood is my own and it sprays from my neck, muddying and mixing with the water as my wheezing, guttural respirations create insignificant little ripples.
My vision goes black. My hypocrisy swirls rosy pink.
Jamie Sheasley (she/her) has never seen a ghost – not one she can recall, anyway – but she loves writing about them. When she’s not writing, Jamie can be found hiking, swimming in the sea, or exploring her beloved homes of Philadelphia, PA and Dublin, Ireland.
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