Help for the Haunted: A Novel

by John Searles

  “You could write about what’s going on at home with your sister now that things have, well, changed for you both.”

  Rose refuses to bother with grocery shopping except when Cora is scheduled to come by with her clipboard. Most nights, we eat Popsicles for dinner. Potato chips for breakfast. Mayonnaise smeared on bread in the middle of the night. . .

  “Or you could just open the book and see what memories come.”

  To give the illusion that I was at least considering his suggestions, I turned to the first page and gazed at it, picturing the loopy cursive of that girl: A boy kissed me in his car on Friday night for so long the windows steamed up. . . . My best friend slept over on Saturday and we watched The Breakfast Club on video. . . . I spent Sunday practicing cartwheels for cheerleading tryouts. . . .

  Somewhere in the middle of her happy life, I heard Boshoff. “Sylvie, the final bell rang. Did you not hear it? You know, on account of your ear?”

  My ear. I looked up from the blank page, my expression blank too. “I heard it. I was just, I don’t know, thinking about what I’d write.”

  “Well, good. I’m glad it’s got you thinking. I hope you’ll give it a try.”

  Although I had no intention of doing so, I told him I would before sliding the diary into my father’s tote. It used to be that he carried his notes in that bag when he and my mother went on their trips, but I’d been using it to haul my books around since so many break-ins had led me to abandon my locker. High school may not have been the challenge I hoped for, but it certainly was louder. Slamming lockers. Shrill bells. The roar that filled the halls at the end of the day. Any other student stepping out of Boshoff’s office into the stampede risked getting shoved against the wall. Not me. As usual, the crowd parted to make room.

  Normally, after last bell, I walked against the foot traffic to the rear exit and out onto the winding path through the woods, past the distant hum of the highway and along the fence behind Watt’s Poultry Farm toward home. Today, though, my sister was picking me up to go shopping for school clothes at a place everyone in Maryland seemed to have been except us: the Mondawmin shopping mall. She never would have arranged the excursion if Cora hadn’t shown up on a rainy Monday weeks before. When I stepped into the house that afternoon, I’d been thinking only of peeling off my wet clothes and taking a hot shower. Instead, I found a light-skinned black woman waiting on the sofa in the living room, gazing up at the wooden cross on our wall. In her pressed skirt and blouse, she looked too together to be someone who had come in search of help from my parents. And yet, I decided that’s what she was.

  “They’re . . .” I said, my heart kicking into a speedy ticktock, “ . . . they’re not here.”

  “Oh, hello,” she said, glossy lips parting into a smile when she saw me. “Who’s not here?”

  “My mother and father. You must not have heard, but—”

  “I know that. I came to see you, Sylvie.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Cora. Cora Daley. From Maryland Child Protective Services.” Her smile froze as she took me in. “No need to look so worried. I just want to check in on you. That’s all.”

  Had our previous caseworker, a man whose primary focus had been studying for his real-estate agent exam rather than me, mentioned that another person would come in his place? I remembered talk of interest rates, square footage, appraisals, though I’d lost track of the rest. “What happened to Norman? And how did you get in?”

  “Norman is no longer working with you. I am. And your sister let me inside. I was waiting in the driveway when she got home. Poor thing was wet just like you. She went upstairs to change. I didn’t have an umbrella, but I used this clipboard to cover my head. So long as my hair stays dry, I’m a happy camper. My mom’s the same way. Don’t mess with our hair and don’t make us break a nail. Then we’re happy.”

  As she rambled, I studied her hair, yanked into a bun, and her long nails, perfectly manicured. Her clothes looked so creaseless and new that I would not have been surprised to see a price tag poking out from a sleeve. I noticed down by her ankle what looked to be a small dolphin tattoo—or was it a shark? Despite her efforts, Cora Daley looked too young for the job, not much older than my sister, in fact.

  “Do you want to change into dry clothes, then we can chat, Sylvie?”

  Yes, I wanted to change. No, I did not want to chat. “I’m okay if you just want to get started.”

  “Well, all right then.” Cora glanced at the damp papers on her clipboard. Her hands shook ever so slightly, and I wondered if being inside our house made her nervous. “Let’s see. There are plenty of questions my supervisors tell me I’m supposed to ask. But the most obvious one that comes to mind is not on here.” She looked up, flashing her warm brown eyes. “I’m wondering if that’s what you wore to school today?”

  Standing before her, dripping in my capris and T-shirt and flip-flops, what answer could I give but yes?

  “If you don’t mind me saying, Sylvie, those don’t seem like the most appropriate clothes. Especially on a day like today.”

  “I guess we don’t pay attention to weather reports around here lately.”

  “Well, I am going to have a talk with your sister about that. As well as the missed doctor’s appointments for your ear that I see noted here on these pages.”

  Good luck, I wanted to say.

  As I waited in front of school, weeks after that rainy Monday, dressed in nearly the same outfit and shivering in the cool October air, I looked over at a smoking area tucked beneath an overhang. Ratty couches and recliners were scattered so haphazardly it might have been mistaken for a rummage sale if not for the derelict students flopped on the furniture, squeezing in a last smoke. I’d seen most of them coming and going from Boshoff’s office too, their clothes a kind of uniform: hoodies, thermals, ripped jeans, pentagrams and 666’s doodled on their knuckles.

  “Hey, Wednesday, you see something you like?”

  This question came from Brian Waldrup, a freshman who lived in the golf course development, when he caught me staring. Brian was not the only person at school to call me by that name: Wednesday Addams. I reached into my father’s tote and pulled out the diary, if only to look like I was doing something. As I stared at that empty first page again, I wondered what memories would come if I allowed myself to break my father’s rule.

  “You know what?” Brian said. He had folded up his recliner and was making his way closer. When he reached me, I felt his breath, skunky with tobacco, against my good ear. He paused, and I thought of so many things I wished he’d say: I see you leaving Boshoff’s office too. Are you okay? Or, I remember the homemade paper hearts you handed out on Valentine’s Day in first grade. You gave me two because I’d broken my arm and you felt bad. Or even, I know what happened to your parents—we all do—and I hope at the trial this spring the jury puts that psycho, Albert Lynch, behind bars. Instead, he asked, “What did your parents keep in the basement?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t lie, Wednesday. Gomez and Morticia wouldn’t approve.”

  “I’m not lying. There’s nothing down there.”

  Impossible as it seemed, Brian came closer still, his tight body pressing into mine as he whispered, “You’re lying. Just like they did. And you know what else? Your mom got what she deserved. Your father too. Right now, the two of them are burning in hell.”

  That might sound like the worst thing a person could say, but I tried not to feel bothered. It was a lesson I used to get every Sunday, when my family still went to Mass in the gym at Saint Bartholomew’s Catholic School, where we arrived early and sat in the front pew at the edge of the three-point line. As we followed along with Father Coffey in the epistle—my sister and me in Sunday dresses that I loved but she hated—whispers came from the pews behind us. Even if I didn’t hear what was being said, I understood that it had to do with us, the Mason family, and our presence in that makeshift church.

  I smiled at Brian Waldrup
. After all, despite those symbols and devil numbers drawn in pen on his knuckles, he was just a kid my age whose mother picked him up from school in her Volvo every afternoon. I had seen them rolling out of the parking lot on their way to that pretty yellow house on the golf course, where I imagined her sliding a roast or chicken into the oven most nights, flipping pancakes or scrambling eggs most mornings. Thinking of the differences between Brian’s life and my own made it less difficult to smile because I was reminded how harmless he was. And when I finished smiling, I tucked the diary back into my father’s tote and headed toward Rose’s enormous red truck rolling up the drive at last, AC/DC screeching from her speakers.

  “Boo!” Brian yelled as he watched me walk away.

  When Rose came to a stop, I opened the truck door and climbed inside. Since she’d hacked off her hair again a second time last winter, it had grown back long and wild, black as mine still, but with a reddish hue that hadn’t been there before. Rose liked to keep the windows down and let the strands whip around her, so that when she came to a stop she had to pull the mess away from her face.

  “Hey,” she said from behind her tangled hair.

  “Boo!” Brian called from the curb, waving his hands and jumping up and down.

  “What’s his problem?” my sister asked as her pale, broad face made an appearance, dark eyes blinking.

  “He’s trying to scare me.”

  She made a pfft sound, then leaned over and gave him the finger. My sister flipped people off like nobody else: thrusting her arm, popping that middle digit fast and flashy as a switchblade. “Butt-holes like him are the second reason I hated this school.”

  “What was the first?”

  “Food sucked. Teachers blew. And I hated homework.”

  That’s three, I thought but didn’t say since she had moved on to yelling at Brian.

  “Step in front of my truck so I can squash your balls!”

  “Boo!”

  “Is that the only word in your vocabulary, you moron?”

  In a quiet voice, I said, “Just go. It’s easier to ignore him, Rose.”

  She turned back to me. “Sylvie, if we don’t stand up to him and all the rest, they’ll never leave us alone. Never.”

  “Maybe so. But right now, I’d rather go to the mall.”

  Rose blew out a breath and gave it some thought before letting it go. “Guess it’s Dinky-Dick’s lucky day. Otherwise, I’d get out and pummel him.” She popped her middle finger one last time before slamming on the gas.

  “Boo!” Brian shouted as our giant tires squealed. “Boo! Boo! Boo!”

  He kept at it, like a ghost haunting an abandoned house on a hill. If you believe in ghosts. I did and I didn’t. But mostly, I did.

  Nine months. That’s how long my mother and father had been dead.

  And yet, despite what I told Brian, those things my parents kept in the basement—things so many people in Dundalk wondered about whenever they laid eyes on my sister and me—they were down there still.

  Chapter 3

  The Shhhh . . .

  An hour—that’s how long we spent roaming the echoing corridors of the mall, riding the escalators in a daze brought on by the bright lights and smells of chocolate chip cookies and cinnamon. There was so much to take in that Rose didn’t even walk ahead of me the way she usually did. She was the more attractive sister, with a taller, more athletic body and what people call a handsome face on a girl. I caught men giving her a once-over as we passed, but Rose ignored them. As we wandered, I had a happy feeling for the first time in a long while, because our lives felt almost normal.

  At JCPenney, the catalogs we had known for so many years, since our mother once shopped only from those pages, sprang to life before our eyes. In the Junior Miss department, I stopped to feel a knee-length black dress with a cinched waist and narrow collar. I liked the dress but worried it looked like one Wednesday Addams might wear, which would only encourage the Brian Waldrups of the world.

  As it turned out, my opinion on that outfit was unimportant. Rose led me to a clearance rack in the back and told me to have fun choosing. The clothes there consisted of a hodgepodge of flared cords and snap-up shirts I had no interest in wearing. The moment my sister wandered away, I wandered too. No sooner had I found another rack when she appeared again and asked what I thought I was doing, then ordered me to wait in the dressing room while she picked my clothes. Considering the bickering we’d done about her driving on the way there (too fast, too much attention to the radio, too much wind through the windows, too much lane changing, not enough signaling), I didn’t want to stir up more trouble. I went to a booth and stripped down to my underwear and bra, which fit too tightly after months of not buying anything new.

  I was good at waiting. Last winter I had done a lot of it, lying in my hospital bed and listening to the footfalls of nurses in the hall, the tinny laugh tracks of sitcoms drifting from other patients’ rooms, pages crackling over loudspeakers. And hearing, without having to listen for it, the unending sound that filled my ear. “It’s like the noise inside a seashell,” I told the doctors, “or when someone is telling you to shush.”

  Shhhh . . .

  Not Rose. Not Uncle Howie. Not Father Coffey. Not anyone I knew. Other than a nurse or doctor or hospital social worker, the first person I saw standing by my bed when I opened my eyes was Detective Dennis Rummel. The man had bright blue eyes and snowy hair, the sort of blocky jaw you might see on an old statue. Odd, perhaps, that a detective would slip his large hand into my small one and hold it for so long. Odd that he would take the time to fill my cup with water from the plastic pitcher and ice from the noisy machine down the hall. Odd, too, that he would adjust my pillows and blankets to make certain I felt something close to comfortable. But he did all those things.

  “The more you can tell me about what happened, Sylvie,” the detective said in his steady voice that made me think of a statue too, the way one might sound if it parted its lips to speak, “the better chance we have of finding whoever is responsible. That way your mom and dad can rest in peace. And that’s what you want for them, isn’t it?”

  I nodded, even as I thought of my father saying, People don’t need to know what goes on inside our house . . .

  “Why don’t we start with what led you to the church in the first place?” Rummel asked, sitting on the edge of the bed, slipping his hand into mine once more.

  The question left me suddenly thirsty. I wanted more water from the pitcher. I wanted more ice from the machine down the hall. I wanted my sister, but Rummel had not yet mentioned Rose. So instead of bringing up any of those wants, I told him that the phone rang after midnight, that my mother came into my room and woke me to go to the church.

  “Did she seem upset to you?”

  I shook my head.

  “And did she tell you who called or who they were going to meet?”

  Shhhh . . .

  As Rummel fixed his blue eyes on me, that noise grew louder. I swallowed, my throat feeling even more dry than before, the answer nesting on my tongue.

  “I know this is hard, Sylvie. No one should have to go through something so unspeakable, particularly at such a young age. So I appreciate you being brave. I also appreciate you giving me the answers as best you can remember. Understand?”

  I nodded.

  “Good. We’ll have the phone records pulled. But in the meantime, it’s important that you tell me, did either of your parents say who called?”

  You and Rose shouldn’t say anything to anyone. . .

  “No,” I said, my voice trembling over such a short word.

  “Not a mention?”

  No matter who it is . . .

  “They never told me about the things they did. And on the drive to the church, we were quiet on account of how late it was and because of the slippery roads.”

  The detective looked away, and I had the sense that he was unsatisfied with that answer. His gaze moved from the drab curtains to the flickering T
V. “Okay, then,” Rummel said, turning back to me. “Tell me why your parents took you along but left your sister at home.”

  “At home?”

  “Yes.”

  I was quiet, listening to that sound in my ear. I pressed my fingers to the bandage, squeezed my eyes shut.

  “Are you all right? I can call the nurse. She’s right outside in the hall.”

  “It’s okay.” I opened my eyes, looked at my feet by the end of the bed. “Didn’t Rose tell you why she was at home?”

  “Sylvie, she’s at the station right now being asked the same questions. After we discovered you and your parents at Saint Bartholomew’s, an officer was dispatched to your house where we found your sister. Now it’s crucial that we piece your separate accounts together in order to help. So tell me, why did your parents leave Rose behind?”

  “They didn’t say,” I told him..

  “Was it unusual for the three of you to go somewhere without her?”

  Two pairs of cords flew over the top of the dressing room just then, followed by flannel shirts. “Hurry up and try the stuff on,” Rose said. “I have to pee like a pony.”

  If there is such a thing as putting away a memory until later, that is what I did. I gathered the clothes from the floor, unable to keep from muttering the word, “Racehorse.”

  “Huh?” my sister said from the other side of the door.

  “ ‘I have to pee like a racehorse.’ That’s the saying. There’s no pony involved.”

  A silence came over my sister that told me she was doing some big thinking. All that brainpower led to her saying, “Are you telling me ponies don’t pee too?”

  I had slipped on brown cords and a flannel, half listening as I studied myself in the mirror. Funny that we were discussing horses, because I looked like a stable girl. “Ponies pee,” I said, tugging off the cords. “But that’s not the—”

  “Ha! Got you, nerd brain. Now let’s move it, because I really do have to go.”

  “There must be a bathroom around here, Rose.”