Help for the Haunted

by John Searles

  “But enough about that,” she added, looking at me with her glittery eyes. “What’s most important, Sylvie, is that I need you to promise you’ll never ever read these pages, even when the book is published. This reporter no longer has a good opinion of your father. And whoever’s fault that is—your dad’s, mine—I don’t want you going forward in life with disillusioned feelings about your own father, who loves you very much and would do anything for you.”

  “I promise,” I told her, meaning it. “I won’t read any of it. Not a single word.”

  “That’s my good girl.” She brushed back more hair, wiping her eyes too. “I knew I could count on you. And now, Sylvie, I need to ask your help with something else. Between what’s happened with Rose and now this book, your father is going to be pretty upset when he gets home. I’d like there to be one less thing that frustrates him.”

  We sat for a long moment, side by side, silent except for the sound of our breathing, the sounds of birds and squirrels all around. My mother did not need to say anything more; I knew what she was asking. Even though a sizable part of me wanted to refuse, another part—the part that wanted to please her, the part that felt so dogged about using my smarts to solve any problem—had already begun dissecting the matter. It took little time before arriving at the most obvious method. I stood and told my mother I’d be right back, before making my way into the house and down the basement stairs.

  When I tugged the string that dangled from the ceiling, the bare bulb came to life, illuminating the hatchet on the wall, the hulking bookshelf blocking the crawl space, my father’s desk in the center, and the empty area where my mother’s rocker had been before they lugged it upstairs for Penny. I went to the desk and pulled open a drawer. Those tarnished instruments lay inside, bound by a rubber band, same as they’d been so many years before. I removed the dental scaler and orthodontic pliers then used the pliers to bend the tip of the scaler until its shape resembled a hook. Next, I went to my mother’s knitting basket, grabbed a spool of yarn.

  When I got back outside, my mother was still on the steps, alternately turning more pages of Sam Heekin’s manuscript and looking up to observe what I was doing. Pushing off the plywood, staring into that dark well, I located Penny, facedown and floating in the water. I slipped my makeshift fishing line over the edge, lowering the scaler and moving it in a figure-eight motion. A hand, a sleeve, a strand of that strange red hair—I hoped to hook any such part of that doll. Twice I managed, but no sooner did I begin lifting than the weight of its waterlogged body became too much and Penny slipped free. Before the line broke or the hook came loose, I brought it up again—tripling the yarn, doubling the knots, testing to be sure things were secure. Dropping it down and circling once more, eventually I felt the gotcha feeling a fisherman must when something is on the hook. Carefully, I lifted. The closer the doll got to the surface, the louder the rainstorm sound of water gushing from its body. I kept tightening the line, winding it between my hand and elbow, until at last I was able to reach down and grab Penny.

  My mother had put aside Heekin’s manuscript by then and joined me at the well. She watched as I dropped the doll on the ground. Water pooled from its body, trailing in small rivulets around my mother’s slippers and my sneakers.

  “There,” I said, brushing my wet clothes. “That’s what you wanted.”

  She stared down at Penny—a few dead leaves in the doll’s hair, but otherwise no worse for wear. “Thank you, Sylvie. And I’m sorry too.”

  “Sorry?” I said.

  “Your sister was right. Your father and I—we used to keep you girls separate from our work, as much as possible. As time’s gone on, I’ve realized we failed at that.”

  The mention of Rose and the things she said before leaving only stirred the sadness and guilt I felt about her being gone. In an effort to change the subject I said, “Last night, you told me you didn’t believe them at first.”

  “Believe who?”

  “That couple in Ohio. The Entwistles. When I came to your room, you said you didn’t believe the things they claimed about the doll. What do you believe now?”

  My mother let out a heavy sigh, watching as still more water drained from Penny; it seemed the doll had soaked up a never-ending supply. “I felt badly for them,” she said. “That much was certain. But from the letters they sent, I had the sense they were simply a couple mourning the loss of their daughter, hoping for something to be true that was not. And I told your father as much.”

  “Then why did we go there?”

  “At first, they wrote to say that in its own strange way the doll had brought hope back into their lives. But over time, they reported that her presence seemed to be responsible for disruptive occurrences.”

  “What sort of occurrences?” I asked, thinking only of the ones in our lives.

  Again, my mother sighed. She never liked talking about this sort of topic as much as my father, and I worried she might cut it short. But she continued, “Broken dishes. A shattered mirror. A fire in the store below their apartment. More than any of those things, however, they described a pervasive, off-kilter feeling that plagued their home. Eventually, your father convinced me that we should visit and help them if we could. But from the very moment we watched you girls drive off to the movies, I had the same impression as when reading the Entwistles’ letters: this was a couple struggling with overwhelming grief. At first, that opinion was based solely on those feelings I get. But the details of their lives confirmed it. Their daughter had been dead nearly three years, and yet, when the Entwistles showed us the girl’s bedroom, it was just as she left it, right down to her barrettes on the nightstand and her dirty play clothes in the hamper. Most nights, Mrs. Entwistle informed us, she slept right there in the twin bed with her daughter’s doll cradled in her arms, rather than in her own bed with her husband.”

  “So were they lying to you and Dad about the things they claimed Penny did?”

  “Not lying exactly. What they were doing, I believe, was sharing with us a kind of truth they had created for themselves. In some ways, it’s not so different from what many people do in this world. Their truth was a story that they had woven together in the years after their heartbreaking loss—one they kept adding to, seizing any scrap of evidence to support their belief. You’ll see as you get older, Sylvie, even if the examples aren’t so extreme, there are times when it is easier to fool yourself than swallow some jagged piece of reality. Does that make sense?”

  I nodded. “What about—” I paused, wanting to finish with: the snapped limbs on my horses, the doll missing from the rocker that night, the way it had of turning up in your bed. But I held off, asking instead, “What about the broken dishes and the shattered mirror? What about the fire?”

  My mother could not explain those things with any certainty, she said, except to tell me that it was not so unusual for objects to break. As for the fire downstairs, Drackett’s Used Goods looked more than a little cluttered when she glanced in the window. “All those ancient things crammed inside probably made for a fire hazard.”

  At last, the water letting from the doll’s body had slowed. My mind was full of more questions, but I brought up one in particular. “When we knocked on the door, Dad had a scratch on his hand that was bleeding. What happened?”

  “That’s probably the least mysterious thing of all. Mr. Entwistle was showing your father pieces of the broken mirror that he kept in a plastic bag. Your dad cut himself. Simple as that.”

  “I see,” I told her.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Sylvie.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes. I bet you’re wondering why, if I did not believe the things they said about Penny, did I go along with your father and remove her from their home?”

  She was right, that had been on my mind.

  “Whether or not I believed them was beside the point. Getting the doll out of
their home was what they wanted, and it seemed like the most sensible—the most kind—thing to do in order to help them move on. Besides, your father believed what they said. That’s happened many times, in fact. He sees things a certain way that I do not. When we prayed with them, he felt strongly that a door had been opened inside that apartment. For that reason, he asked me to keep the doll away from anyone else until we got home. He especially didn’t want either of you near her—” My mother stopped. “Near it, as your sister pointed out. I suppose I should break that habit at least.”

  This time, the mention of Rose led me to try and picture her at that moment, in the passenger seat for a change, while my father sat at the wheel. I imagined the thick silence between them as they sped north toward the New York border and that school beyond. Maybe she was right, I thought. Maybe any place would be better for her than our house, considering how strange things had become.

  Keeping my eyes on the doll, while digesting the things my mother had said about how harmless it was, I couldn’t help but tell her, “I still don’t like the idea of having Penny around. I don’t like seeing it in your rocker. And however it happens, I don’t like it ending up in your bed. Plus, I don’t like that its picture was in the paper. Kids in school, people in town, they all know what’s going on here, Mom. And knocking down our mailbox and trash cans is their way of showing us they don’t like it.”

  My mother fell quiet before telling me, “At the moment, there’s nothing we can do about what people out there think. But we can do something about Penny. And whatever the truth about the doll, at the very least we can put it someplace where you won’t have to see it. Someplace where, no matter what anyone believes, it will seem incapable of doing harm.” She got up and walked toward Rose’s old rabbit cage, where Mr. Knothead once lived, twitching his wet nose, devouring the endless carrots my sister fed him, dropping his stinky pellet turds through the metal bars to the lawn beneath. It was not so terribly big, that cage. Not so terribly heavy, either. That’s something I learned when my mother detached and slid it out from the wooden stand, then asked me to give her a hand. Together, we wedged our fingers between the bars and carried it across the lawn, up the stoop, inside the house, and down to the basement. The most out of the way spot, we decided after some discussion, was atop that hulking bookshelf by the crawl space. We steadied the cage up there, and then my mother disappeared up the stairs, returning with Penny in her arms. After placing the doll’s wet body inside, she closed the door and fastened the latch, letting out a breath.

  “Tell me, Sylvie. Does that make you feel better?”

  The sight of Penny shut away behind those metal bars should have done something to alter my feelings. But looking at the thing on the other side—leaves gone from its hair, bracelet twisted tight around its wrist, candy-cane legs crossed daintily over each other, smiling just the same—the truth was, I felt no different. Still, I knew what my mother wanted to hear, so I opened my mouth to give her the right answer.

  Just as the phone had interrupted my mother earlier, it released a shrill ring from upstairs at that moment, interrupting me as well. The sound startled us both. And this time, it kept ringing well past the point when the machine should have picked up. My mother sighed. “The tape must be full. I should probably get the phone, in case your father is trying to reach us from the road.”

  She walked to the string dangling from the lightbulb. She was about to give it a tug when she stopped. “I was just thinking,” she said, “about when I was a girl. During long nights on the farm, I used to sometimes feel scared sleeping in my room. When that happened, my father used to leave the light on for me. He said it would be harder to imagine bad things happening when there was light to see by. I think the same applies here. Let’s leave this one on. How does that sound?”

  As that phone rang and rang above our heads, I looked up at the rafters and felt an odd sense of alarm. But I told my mother her suggestion sounded like a good idea, and with that, she let go of the string, leaving the light burning in the basement as the two of us headed up the stairs.

  Back in the kitchen, with the door shut behind us, I plopped down at the table and began flipping through that swatch book while my mother picked up the phone. The Paisley Party. The Bloomsbury House. The Littlest Stars. Each of the patterns had a clever name, and the day my mother brought the book home she asked which design best matched the person I was. I’d been unable to choose then, and all these months later, still none seemed right.

  “I’m sorry,” I heard her say into the phone. “But I’ll have to ask you to call back when my husband is home. He handles that sort of thing. Thank you.” When she hung up, my mother looked to see what I was doing at the table, asking if I’d found anything close.

  “Not yet,” I said, just as the phone rang once more. The sound caused us both to groan, and our groans caused us both to laugh.

  “I understand now the way a receptionist must feel,” my mother sighed, before answering again. There was a long pause, and then, in a voice that sounded cooler, less polite than on the previous call, she asked, “At a pay phone where? Mars Market? I see. You’re quite close actually.”

  The Purple Parade. The Stars and Stripes. The Milky Way. I kept flipping, searching for the perfect pattern.

  “Well, I suppose it would be okay. I can’t promise I’ll be of much help, though. It doesn’t work that way. Besides, my husband is not here and normally he—” She paused, then continued, “If you take a left out of the lot onto Holabird Avenue, you’ll come to an intersection. There, you take a right. Well, no, actually. Not a right. You know something? It’s funny, I don’t often drive the route myself, so I’m not the best source of directions. Tell you what, ask someone there. Since our street is easy to miss, I will walk to the end of the lane and meet you. Okay then, Mr. Lynch.”

  The name caused me to look up. I shut the book and waited as she said good-bye. The moment she put down the phone, I repeated: “Mr. Lynch?”

  “That’s right. I’m not sure you remember, but we met him and his daughter a few years back in Ocala.”

  Even after so much time, the memory of that night lived vividly in my mind. I heard the apprehension in my voice when I asked, “What does he want?”

  “Well, he’s been the persistent one I was referring to earlier. Calling for days on end, in fact. Now, apparently, he’s turned up right here in town. Says his daughter is having troubles again, worse than before, actually.”

  I could still see him calling into the bushes. I could still hear her snarling. I remembered the girl’s strange silence as her mouth moved up and down like a marionette’s beneath the lights of that parking lot. “Maybe you should have told him no.”

  “Sylvie, that doesn’t sound very Christian of you.”

  She was right. But I kept going anyway. “Just because he decides to show up in Dundalk does not mean you’re obligated to drop everything and walk to the end of the street to pray over her.”

  By then, my mother was about to exit the kitchen. She stopped in the doorway, took a breath, and said, “A prayer does not cost a person anything, Sylvie. Remember that. Now I cannot guarantee I’ll be of any help this time, but taking a few moments out of my day to at least try, well, it’s no great burden. So I’m going to change my clothes and meet them.”

  In the middle of that book there was an entire section of white swatches that I’d flipped through before. While I listened to the creak of floorboards upstairs as my mother got ready, I turned to them again. The Whitest Clouds. The Whitest Seashells. The Whitest Cotton. I studied each until my mother returned downstairs. Her hair had been swept up into pins once more. Silver crosses dotted her ears; another cross hung around her neck. She wore one of her many gray dresses.

  “Did you always dress that way?” I couldn’t help but ask.

  My mother tilted her head, fidgeting with the back of one of those crucifix earrings. “
No. Some years ago, your father suggested it. He thought it best that we present a consistent version of ourselves to the world when we’re working.”

  Not quite beneath my breath, a word slipped out: “Costumes.”

  “Pardon?”

  The way she said it gave me the sense that she genuinely had not heard. I looked up at her and tried explaining, “Those dresses. That jewelry. Dad’s brown suits and yellow shirts. They’re like costumes.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s one way to look at it, Sylvie. For me, it’s simply easier not having to wonder what to put on. There’s no time wasted shopping or standing in front of my closet debating—neither of which I care to do. Anyway, I hope to be back home in a bit. After that, let’s try to salvage what’s left of the day and do something fun.”

  Once she said good-bye, I went back to flipping through those swatches, listening to her move down the hall, the front door opening and closing. All those patterns did nothing to take my mind off where she was going. When I couldn’t stand my curiosity a second longer, I shoved the book aside and stood from the table.

  Outside, I caught up with my mother just as she started down the lane. When we arrived at the corner, a van was already parked there, emergency flashers blinking away.

  The Forgotten Followers: A Ministry—those words were painted on the side, under a thick coat of grime. Someone had doodled on the muck too. I made out a stick-figure animal, headless, with an endlessly twirling tail, and random letters and numbers in a helter-skelter pattern: M, A, Z, 6, 13.

  As we drew near, Albert Lynch gave a hesitant wave from the driver’s seat. Something about the sight of him sent a peculiar shudder through my body. My mother didn’t give even a hint of uneasiness, however, so I just followed along. The man’s smooth, babyish skin—a detail I remembered from that night in the parking lot—looked the same. But he sported a pair of bug-eyed glasses now, and a wispy mustache had sprouted above his lip. That night in Florida, Lynch had been wearing a baseball hat. Without it, I could see his bald head, so shiny it seemed polished.