Help for the Haunted: A Novel

by John Searles

  The headline could not be missed on the newspaper folded neatly in the wastebasket by Boshoff’s desk. When I walked into his office the morning after Halloween, I glanced down to see those words and Albert Lynch’s unlined face—his bald head, long nose, and wispy mustache—staring up at me.

  I’d been avoiding stories about my parents’ case in the papers ever since Cora gave me what I thought was her only worthwhile advice: “The things people write will mess with your head. Better off letting the detectives and lawyers keep you abreast of what you need to know.” So I did my best to focus on Boshoff, who unwrapped a cough drop and placed it on his pink farm-animal tongue before telling me, “I read a poem last night that put me in mind of you, Sylvie.”

  “A poem?”

  “Yes. I’ve been anxious to tell you about it all day.” As I took a seat, he went on to say that when he had trouble sleeping, he read poetry. Cookbooks were his favorite reading material, but he had worked through all the titles on his shelf, and they were too costly to buy more. “Some people would claim that’s not much of a change, since recipes are little poems in their own way. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  I nodded, remembering the recipe my sister recited before I left for school. Considering all that happened the night before, it was no surprise I never slept. Not long after the sun came up, a car turned into the driveway. Peeking through my window, I glimpsed Cora tugging the Hulk into her backseat while Rose burst through the front door and began vomiting downstairs.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Rose said, wiping her mouth and straightening up after I followed the retching sound to the kitchen. The green makeup was washed from her face, though clumps still clung to her hair. “You’re thinking: don’t puke in the sink. But who says the toilet’s the only place a person can puke? Now that I think about it, the sink’s way more sanitary.”

  Actually, I’d been thinking about the boys who had come to the door and the light in the basement. I opened my mouth to tell her about them, but Rose broke in before I could speak.

  “I’m going to make a pizza. Want some?”

  “You’re cooking?”

  She reached for a 7-Eleven bag on the table. “Here’s my recipe: open box, remove frozen crap, nuke in microwave. I’m no Julia What’s-Her-Tits, but I’ll manage.”

  “The poem has nothing to do with your situation,” Boshoff was saying, luring me back to the here and now of his office. “But it contains a few lines that might offer you a helpful approach. It’s called ‘Little Things’ by Sharon Olds. I would have written it down, except I was in bed with my book-light on, so I didn’t have a pen. Plus, I didn’t want to wake my wife. She needs her rest these days.”

  The tight-fitting band on his finger should have led me to consider the existence of a Mrs. Boshoff, but I never had. When I tried to picture her what came was a woman with white hair and rosy cheeks, a kind of Mrs. Claus, tucked under the covers beside him. “Why does she need her rest?” I asked.

  Boshoff quit clacking his cough drop. “I’m afraid my wife’s not well.”

  I knew how it felt when people pushed on a sensitive topic, so I told him I was sorry, but I didn’t ask more. He nodded his thanks and we let that be enough. I watched him slip on his glasses and lean over his desk, doing his best to recall the poem. As his pencil scratched across the pad, I felt Albert Lynch’s eyes upon me. Since there had only been one witness at the church—me—I wondered who could have come forward to clear his name.

  “Here we go, Sylvie. I can’t remember the entire poem. Just the part that made me think of you.” Boshoff swiveled his chair in my direction and read aloud. When he was done, he pulled off his glasses and asked if the passage put me in mind of anything in particular. I had no clue, so I shook my head before remembering to speak my answer. Glasses back on, he tried again. This time, I listened carefully as he read: “ ‘I learned to love the little things about him, because of all the big things I could not love, no one could, it would be wrong to.’

  “As I told you, Sylvie, the poem itself is about an unrelated topic. However, those lines might offer a way for you to think about your sister.”

  I learned to love the little things about Rose, because of all the big things I could not love, no one could, it would be wrong to.

  Never once had I mentioned the larger blame I placed on my sister for making that call and luring them to the church or my role in not telling the police about it, but perhaps Boshoff had sensed something in my silence, the way my mother once taught me to do.

  “Do you think you could try that, Sylvie? Since you have to live with her for the next few years at least, it might help you to focus on the positive.”

  “I’ll try,” I said, unable to muster even a hint of enthusiasm in my voice.

  “Well, why don’t we start by making a list of little things about her that are lovable? We can begin it together. Do you have the journal I gave you?”

  That small violet book came with me everywhere in my father’s tote, since leaving it home meant Rose might discover all I’d been writing there about the things from our past I did not want to forget, like that night with Dot, that trip to Ocala and what came after. On account of what I’d written, I didn’t like the idea of taking it out, so I told Boshoff I didn’t have it. He riffled through the desk and found a pad instead. In his sloppy script, he wrote “Little Things” at the top, numbers one through three down the side, before handing it to me.

  “You once mentioned Rose has a nice voice when she sings with the radio. That seems like a small enough thing to love, right?”

  Reluctantly, I wrote: My sister has a decent singing voice.

  When I was done, I stared at the impossibly vast spaces beside those next two numbers. “I’m sorry,” I said, my gaze shifting to Albert Lynch in that photo once more. “I’m not feeling well. Do you mind if we stop?”

  This time, Boshoff’s gaze followed mine to the wastebasket. His lips parted and he brought a finger to his mouth, like he was pushing a button there and turning something off. “Sylvie, you’re aware I share this office with a handful of rotating staff. I got here a short while before you today. Had I noticed the paper there, I would have removed—”

  “I think I need to go to the nurse. But can I take that newspaper with me?”

  “Of course. If that’s what you want. But wouldn’t you like to talk about it?”

  After weeks of him gently circling the topic, I felt bad that this was the way it had come about. Even so, I shook my head, forgetting about Louise Hock’s insistence that I practice speaking my answers. I reached into the basket, feeling as if I were reaching down and down into our well to fetch one of those rag dolls by its fingerless hands. I grabbed the edge of the newspaper, a coupon section and the sports pages falling away, leaving me with the pages I wanted. I carried them with me as I left poor, startled Boshoff and his list of “Little Things” behind.

  The direction of the nurse’s office—that’s the way I headed, even though I had no intention of ending up there. Instead, I took a detour down the industrial arts hall, where the smells were unfamiliar: sawdust and solder. At a water fountain, I splashed my face, because it was true that I didn’t feel so well, before unfolding the newspaper.

  Dundalk—The killer shot Rose Mason, 45, leaving her to die by the altar in a small chapel in a quiet Maryland town twenty miles from the state capital. Sylvester Mason, 50, her husband, was killed a few feet away with a gunshot to the back of the head.

  The younger of the couple’s two children, a 13-year-old girl, had been sleeping in her parents’ car outside the chapel when she woke to the sound of gunfire. “When I heard the second shot, I opened the car door and walked into the church,” she told police, though no further details of her account have been released to the press. Officers reported that they did not find the girl, who was crouched beneath a pew, until hours after the investigation had begun. “Her head was bleeding and she was drifting in and out of consciousness,” said Detec
tive Dennis Rummel of the Baltimore County Police Force. “We got her out of there as soon as we could.”

  In the weeks following the investigation, a lone suspect emerged: Albert Lynch, 41, a drifter, originally from Holly Grove, Arkansas. Since 1986 Mr. Lynch had been seek—

  “Excuse me, young lady.”

  I looked up to see a teacher I didn’t recognize. “Yes?”

  “Do you have a pass to be out here loitering during class time?”

  “I’m on my way to the nurse’s office.”

  “Well, this is a roundabout way of getting there.”

  I folded the paper, left the hall with its unfamiliar smells, and once more walked in the direction of the nurse’s office. But when I came upon an exit, I slipped through it. Rarely did I miss class, never mind skip out in the middle of the day, but I wanted to go someplace where I could read the article without interruption. Considering how often I took it, the path I first followed when Dot had been locked in our parents’ bathroom should have been well tread by then. But like some fairy-tale forest, it remained forever overgrown and unwelcoming. A maze of stone walls led me to the barbed-wire fence behind Watt’s Farm close to Butter Lane. Most of the year, the field there held no sign of life, but come fall it teemed with white-feathered turkeys. The way they arrived, all at once and fully grown, left me suspicious about how many were actually raised on premises, but nevertheless, mornings when I was early for school, I stopped at the fence and watched those birds strutting about on their scaly, bent-backward legs. The high-pitched warble that rose from their throats made them seem like nervous old women.

  That afternoon, I stopped at my usual spot, put down my father’s tote, and rested a hand on the fence while I finished the article.

  Since 1986 Mr. Lynch had been seeking counsel from the Masons—a couple who built a national reputation, admired in some circles, mocked in others, as demonologists. Those close to the case say Mr. Lynch was disgruntled with the Masons’ treatment of his daughter. Lynch admits to meeting the couple at the chapel on the evening of the murders, but claims to have left the church before violence erupted. To date, he has lacked a substantiated alibi, insisting that he was at the Texaco on Route 2 at the time of the killings. The station’s security monitors were not in service so no video exists to support his claim. Further weakening Mr. Lynch’s case, he asserted through his attorney, Michael Cavage, that after fueling his car, he paid with cash. The clerk on duty has no recollection of seeing Mr. Lynch that evening.

  For months, the suspect insisted that an elderly man had seen him in the restroom. With the court case approaching in April, police had all but stopped searching for another suspect, as the witness failed to surface. Yesterday, however, Cavage announced that the person had been located and would corroborate Mr. Lynch’s alibi in court. Mr. Patrick Dunn, 71, of Kennebunkport, ME, claims to have seen Mr. Lynch in the men’s room that evening while his wife waited outside in the car. The sudden emergence of Mr. Dunn leaves police and investigators without any apparent suspects.

  In a final twist to an already bizarre account of the evening, Mr. Lynch has maintained that he paid the deceased couple’s eldest daughter, Rose Mason Jr., now 19, a small sum to make a call from a pay phone outside the Mustang Bar in Baltimore, inviting her parents to the church that evening. The allegation has been denied by Ms. Mason who states that she was home at the time of the call, a claim supported by her sister.

  Assistant District Attorney Louise Hock told the press a statement would be forthcoming.

  “Hello!” a voice called from across the field. “Hey, you! Hello!”

  I looked up to see a very tall someone trudging through the field of turkeys in my direction. He wore a tan barn jacket, gray sweats, and enormous boots, laces loose and slithering at his ankles. The sea of turkeys parted, flapping and gobbling in his wake. When he arrived at the fence, he said, “I’ve seen you here before.”

  “Sorry.” I figured I must be in trouble for trespassing or loitering. I pressed the newspaper to my stomach, where the only thing I’d eaten all day—a single slice of Rose’s microwave pizza—roiled.

  “Don’t be. I just wanted to warn you not to put your fingers on the fence. Turkeys are as mean as they are dumb. They’ll bite.” He tugged off a glove and held up his left hand, wiggling his thumb and index finger. His ring, middle, and pinky fingers were all missing.

  I yanked my hand off the fence. “Is that how—”

  “No. But the visual usually makes people listen. You’re Sylvie, right?”

  I nodded, thinking of those boys who showed up at the door the night before. This guy was older than them, the age my father must have been when he left Philadelphia and moved to that row-house apartment in Baltimore, where ghosts appeared to him in the evenings. “Sorry about your parents,” he told me.

  I kept quiet, waiting for the part where he turned the comment into something hurtful, but it didn’t happen. “How do you know my name?”

  “I used to date your sister.”

  “Rose?” Most of the dates Rose brought home looked like the derelicts in the smoking area at school and acted just as aloof. This guy seemed too athletic, too polite, to have been one of them. I studied his brown eyes, floppy brown hair, and bulky shoulders. His sweats clung to his crotch in a way that gave a pretty exact picture of the anatomy beneath—a sight that would have caused my mother to make the sign of the cross and mutter about the perversities of youth today. Then I remembered the fights she and my father had with Rose about one boy in particular. “You’re not Franky, are you?”

  “No, I’m Dereck.” He reached his hand over the fence to shake mine. Between Cora’s fake, noodly fingers and his missing ones, I wasn’t sure which felt more odd. Behind him, the birds gobbled and flapped, moving closer. “Keep it down, ladies!” he yelled, letting go and waving his hands to shoo them away.

  When he turned back, I asked if he ever felt bad about what was going to happen to them in a few weeks. Dereck smiled. At each side of his mouth, he had a pointed tooth, more yellow than the rest, lending him a wolfish look. “Nahh. Spend as much time with these morons as I do and you’re glad to see them go. Besides, it’s just a job I’m doing for extra cash this month. I work at my father’s garage in town the rest of the time. But anyway, I wanted to ask about your sister. She was always so much fun. Is she still?”

  “Some might think so.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re her sister, so you probably don’t. Tell her hello from me, okay?”

  Despite—or maybe because of—the memory of Rose and Cora kissing, I found myself saying, “Maybe you should give her a call and tell her yourself. I’m sure she’d like that.”

  Dereck smiled again, flashing those wolfish teeth. “Maybe I will. Glad I ran into you, Sylvie. Remember, what’s the rule?”

  “Rule?”

  He held up his hand, twiddling what wasn’t missing. “Fingers off the fence.”

  “Fingers off the fence,” I repeated.

  With that, I picked up my father’s tote and started down the last of the path until it opened up to the lot across from our house. As I passed, I glanced at the foundation, which looked like a drained swimming pool. A tree had fallen inside, knotted roots balanced on the ledge, twisted branches soaking in a puddle at the bottom not far from the rusted steel rods that rose up in one corner. I thought of how much time Rose and I once spent down there, drawing the details of our imaginary home. Nothing used to make me so gloomy as when the rain came and washed it all away. Back then, my sister cheered me up by pointing out how fun it would be for us to draw everything all over again.

  I left those memories of what seemed like two other girls behind and made my way across the street. That’s when I noticed another of those foil-covered dishes on our step. Not far from our house, a wood-paneled station wagon idled down the lane, a woman in a frumpy beige dress walking toward it.

  “Wait!” I called, figuring she must be the one leaving all that food.

&nb
sp; She turned my way, giving me a glimpse of her grim, head-on-a-totem-pole face, before quickening her pace, pulling open the door, and slamming it shut on the hem of her dress. As the station wagon sped away, I squinted at the license plate, making out the colors but not a single number.

  After she rounded the corner and was gone, what was left for me to do but turn back to the house? Even in daylight, that bare bulb could be seen burning behind the dusty glass of the cellar window. Given how hung over Rose had been that morning, I expected to find her passed out in bed, but her truck was gone. With that light on, no part of me liked the idea of being home alone, but I hurried toward the door, scooping up the dish before stepping inside.

  Stuffed shells—that’s what we’d been tempted with this time. I deposited them on the kitchen counter for my sister to inspect then returned to the living room, where I pressed my good ear to the carpet same as I’d done months before. After hearing none of the rattling or breaking I once did, I sat on the sofa and turned on the TV. When the afternoon news came on at last, I listened as a perky anchorwoman repeated the same information about the elderly man who had come forward in the case. As she spoke, pictures flashed on the screen of Albert Lynch, then my parents, then, finally, a photo that news programs and papers loved to trot out: the shot of my mother standing on our front lawn, cradling Penny as if the doll was her living, breathing child.

  After it was over, I lay back on the sofa and allowed myself to think of that night in the church. I remembered the way my eyes adjusted to the dark until I made out three silhouettes near the altar. When I called, none moved. Waiting there in the cold shadows, a detail drifted back to me from the few times I’d been inside that church. Painted statues surrounded the altar: a robed man with forlorn eyes and a beard, rosary beads dangling from his fingers; a nun with an oddly shaped habit, clutching a bible. But there had only been two statues. The thought led me to look more closely, which was when I saw that the third figure was moving after all.