Help for the Haunted: A Novel

by John Searles

  “I don’t mind,” I told him, taking a seat again too.

  “I didn’t eat before the rehearsal. After, I was famished. One of the parishioners gave me a ride over to—” He held up the bag so I could see the Herman’s Bakery logo. “Against the rules to eat here. But I won’t tell if you won’t.”

  Coffey fished a piece of a marshmallow doughnut from the bag and popped it in his mouth before reaching in for a cruller. Behind us, the church door opened—or I thought it did. When I turned, no one was there. It’s only the shhhh, I told myself. After offering to break his cruller in half and share, an offer I declined, Coffey began wolfing it down. He asked about my coat and boots, which I explained belonged to my sister’s boyfriend without telling him anything more.

  “How is Rosie anyway?” he asked, smiling when he said that name.

  “Same,” I told him, trying not to think of the fight we’d just had. “Rosie’s always exactly the same.”

  “I’d tell you to say hello from me, but I’m not sure she wants to hear that.”

  When I asked him why not, Father Coffey told me that a week after the funeral he’d come by our house. “It was a school day, so you weren’t there. But your sister was. I brought food with me. Not that awful stuff Maura, the rectory housekeeper, makes. I stopped at Burger King.”

  “Well, Rose never gave any to me.”

  “That’s because she told me she didn’t want it.”

  I thought of all the food left on our steps by that woman with the grim, head-on-a-totem-pole face, the way my sister refused to take even a bite for fear it might be poisoned, the way she instilled the same fear in me. “Did Rose think you put something in it?”

  Coffey swallowed the last of his cruller and began picking crumbs from the bag. “Put something in it?”

  “Poison, I mean.”

  “Poison? No. Well, at least I hope she didn’t suspect me capable of such a thing. Your sister said she didn’t want anything from me or the church. Her specific words were that I had been nothing but trouble for your mother and father, and that it was better if I kept away. Believe me, Sylvie, I’ve thought many times of you girls out there living on that empty street. But Rose made it quite clear she was the one in charge of your lives now, and she didn’t want me in it.”

  Once more, we fell quiet. I glanced back at those statues on either side of the closed door. I imagined the door opening, imagined seeing myself from this vantage point just as whoever killed my parents had that night.

  “Has there ever been any word from the girl?” Coffey asked.

  I turned back around. “Girl?”

  “The one who came to live with you? The daughter of—”

  “No,” I told him, shaking my head. “We never heard from Abigail again.”

  “Someday, perhaps.”

  Considering the way she left, I doubted as much. Outside the stained-glass windows, the sky was growing darker. Inside, the air around us was darkening too. Sixty-two hours left, I guessed. Maybe less. Fran’s instructions about being direct when asking the survey questions flickered in my mind. “Father,” I said, “since we’re talking about things back then, can I ask why my parents stopped coming to Saint Bartholomew’s?”

  Coffey wiped his fingers on the bag, crinkling the mouth of it and giving up on whatever crumbs were left inside. “Well, I guess I’d start by saying that when I came to this parish, I inherited your parents.”

  “Inherited?”

  “They’d been here with Father Vitale before me. Vitale shared their beliefs about the power of demons and souls banished to hell for eternity. Personally, I take a less extreme approach to faith. Even so, your father struck me as a decent man. And your mother, well, there was something so tranquil about her. To be in her presence, it just made you feel . . .” He trailed off, before adding, “In fact, Sylvie, you have a good deal of her in you. I don’t know if anyone has ever told you that.”

  “I look like her. People have said that.”

  “I’m not talking about looks. I mean whatever that thing was about her. You have it too.”

  As he spoke, my mind filled with the memory of that hotel room, my mother lying close to me, her whispery voice telling me: It began when I was a girl not much older than you. . .

  “After Father Vitale left,” Coffey said, pulling me away from that memory, “I made a decision that as long as the things your parents did weren’t happening in my church, I would put it out of my mind and embrace them, same as I would any other parishioners.”

  “If you embraced them, why did they stop coming?”

  Coffey looked away at the altar, running a few fingers beneath the collar of his turtleneck, before taking a breath and answering. “I want to make it clear that I came to like your parents, Sylvie. Genuinely. I understood their choice for privacy, given the nature of their work, but that also made them seem remote, secretive even. And as their notoriety grew, it became difficult for me not to think about who they were and what they did, especially when parishioners began to complain.”

  “Complain?”

  “Yes. Frankly, Sylvie, people found your parents’ presence in the church distracting. They didn’t much like the idea of people doing what your parents did all week long, coming so close to Satan I guess is how you could put it, then attending Mass on Sundays. Never mind serving as a Eucharist minister as your father did.”

  “So you told them to stop coming?”

  “No. Actually, I defended them, reminding those parishioners that gossip had no place in the church. It worked for a while. But once that photo of your mother and the doll appeared in the paper —not to mention the news of the hatchet and so many other things kept in your basement—and once Abigail came to live with you, well, after that, no amount of scripture put an end to their gossip and complaints. I don’t know how else to say it, Sylvie, but people were afraid of them.”

  The light through the stained glass had shifted again. Father Coffey and I would be nothing more than shadows soon, but neither of us made a move to get up just yet. Seated so close to him, I could smell the sugary sweetness of those doughnuts on his warm breath. In a quiet voice, I said, “People misunderstood my mother and father. They took the things they did and twisted it around. All my parents wanted was to help people.”

  “Maybe so. But I’m not sure that’s what ended up happening. I read the book by that reporter. It painted a very different picture of their motives. Your father’s anyway. Have you read it, Sylvie?”

  “Yes,” I told him, though that wasn’t entirely true. I still hadn’t been able to brave the final section—“Should You Really Believe the Masons?” “You were saying that people were afraid of my parents, but they didn’t care what people thought. So that couldn’t have been their reason to stop coming to church.”

  “Imagine, Sylvie, how awkward it was for your father to serve Communion when no one would go to his line except your family. And when I asked him to offer the wine instead, the handful of people who took that did not anymore. Finally, I had no choice but to tell your father his assistance was no longer needed.”

  I remembered those Sundays at church, how awkward they had become, and how grateful I felt when we suddenly quit going. “So that’s why they stopped?”

  “Yes, and at first, he grew angry and said he was going to complain about me to the bishop. He never did, though.”

  “Why not?”

  Father Coffey glanced behind us at the silhouettes of those wooden statues, as though he worried someone might be listening. In a whisper, he said, “I think we should finish here, Sylvie. I need to get to the school. The nuns arranged to have the floors of the gym waxed, and the smell is so noxious they don’t think people will make it through the service on Sunday without passing out. Someday, God willing, we’ll raise enough money to build a church where students don’t dribble balls all week long. Now do you need a ride somewhere? Or is that car outside for you?”

  “I thought that car was yours?”

>   “The Buick belongs to me. But there’s another one out there—a Jeep with the engine running and someone behind the wheel. Do you know who it is?”

  “I might,” I said, because I had a hunch.

  Coffey stood and exited the pew, this time making a hasty sign of the cross. As we walked out of the church, I looked back at the altar, thinking of my parents entering that building, not knowing they would never leave, thinking of Rummel who asked if anyone in their circle had reason to do them harm. When Coffey pushed open the door, I saw the Jeep and gave a small wave. “Do you still keep a spare under the flower boxes?” I asked, as he jangled his keys, locking up. It was a detail I recalled from my father’s deacon days.

  “Not in a long while. I’m the only one who can open this place now.”

  I saw a quick flash of silver as he slipped his keys into the pocket of his jeans and headed for the Buick. I knew he didn’t want me to follow, but I did anyway. On the backseat of his car, I could see stacks of boxes. Whatever was inside must have been heavy, since the car looked sunken in the rear.

  “Just getting rid of some things from the rectory,” he said when he saw me looking. He opened the door, got inside. I worried he’d drive off without answering my earlier question. But then he said, “The reason your father never went to the bishop had to do with that girl.”

  “Abigail?”

  “Yes. She came to the rectory one night.”

  “When?”

  “At the end of her time with your family. I opened the door and there she was, looking bedraggled and troubled. In some ways, she appeared just as she had when you first brought her to church. Only now there were two wounds on her palms, like stigmata.”

  I knew about those wounds. I remembered the shock and confusion I’d felt seeing blood pool on her skin without warning. “What did she want?”

  “A place to spend the night. I welcomed her inside. Isn’t that a priest’s job, after all, to take in the needy? The girl spent much of the time begging me not to contact your parents or her father. Maura made her something to eat then made up the old couch in the basement. After we attended to her wounds, she went down to bed. While she slept, I lay awake, praying about the best thing to do. Times like that I missed Father Vitale. He always seemed to hear God’s voice when I didn’t, which is more often than I care to admit.”

  “What did you decide to do?”

  “I made up my mind to track down her father. It only seemed right.”

  “And so Albert Lynch came and got her?”

  “No. I never had the chance to contact him. In the morning, Maura took tea downstairs and found the couch empty. The girl had slipped out during the night.”

  “I don’t understand. What does that have to do with my parents not coming to church anymore?”

  “Abigail told me things, Sylvie.”

  “What things?”

  “Things about what went on that summer she lived with you. Things I don’t think your father wanted getting out. That’s why he went quiet. That’s why he walked away.”

  “Because you threatened him?”

  “He was the one who threatened me, remember? I simply let him know what I’d been told.”

  “And what did Abigail tell you?”

  Again, he ran his fingers back and forth beneath the rim of his turtleneck. This time, I noticed his nails were chewed, his cuticles raw. “We really do need to stop here. I’ve taken this conversation too far. You should get your answers from someone else. Now good-bye, Sylvie. Please come see me again, though not about this. I think it’s better to let the past stay where it is.”

  “Who?” I asked as he pulled the door shut and started the engine. “Who should I get answers from?”

  He rolled down his window. “I meant what I said before. You have a great deal of your mother in you. I can sense it. That’s probably what got me talking so much.”

  “Who should I go to for answers?” I asked again, ignoring the comment.

  “Your sister, of course. Rosie. I’m certain she can tell you things that I cannot. It’s not my place. I’m sorry.”

  With that, he said good-bye one last time. I stepped back from the car, watched him drive out of the lot and away down the road, his trunk drooping with the weight of those boxes. When he was gone, I walked to the Jeep. The moment I opened the door, Dereck started talking, “I got here just as that guy was walking into the church.”

  “That guy,” I told him, “is the parish priest.”

  “Oh. Well, I saw him head inside, then I started in too. But it sounded like you were having a pretty heavy conversation, so I waited out here until you were done.”

  So my ear wasn’t playing tricks after all, I thought. I had heard the church door open and close. “But how did you know I was here?”

  “I didn’t. After I left your sister, I stopped at the farm to grab another pair of boots. I kept thinking about you, Sylvie, wondering what you’d done after we drove off. So I went to that field, only you were gone. When I was driving back and passed the church, I remembered asking if you’d been back here so I wondered if this is where you might have gone.”

  By then, it was completely dark. The air carried a chill. I glanced at the clock on Dereck’s dashboard. Sixty-one hours and forty minutes remaining. Walking home would be a waste of time, and if the conversation with Coffey had done anything, it heightened my sense that I needed to stop wasting it. I climbed up onto the passenger seat and was about to buckle my seat belt when I felt something beneath me. A pair of gloves, I saw when I pulled them out. The interior lights glowed enough for me to make out flecks of something on the material. Before I could look closer, Dereck reached out his hand with the missing fingers and snatched those gloves from me, shoving them under his seat. I said nothing, leaving my seat belt unbuckled instead. As we pulled out of the lot, streetlamps cast shifting shadows over our faces. For some time, that Jeep rolled along, neither of us speaking. Finally, Dereck said, “It’s turkey blood. I left my regular gloves in the pockets of the coat I gave you. So I grabbed a spare pair at the farm.”

  I reached in his coat that I was still wearing. Sure enough, his gloves were inside. “I thought you didn’t slaughter the turkeys until Thanksgiving?”

  “We’re only six days away, Sylvie. We do some each day. Makes no sense, I know, to go through the effort to buy a fresh one, only to freeze it first. But people don’t care, and we’ve got a lot of birds to slaughter.”

  I looked at Dereck’s hands on the steering wheel, at his handsome face in the shifting light.

  “You’re trying to figure it out, aren’t you?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Then go for it. Make a guess.”

  I was quiet, thinking of all that I really was trying to figure out. At last, I gave him what he wanted. “A firecracker went off in your hand at a Fourth of July party.”

  “Now you’re getting somewhere, Sylvie. It happened at a party. That’s the closest you’ve come.”

  We reached Butter Lane, and Dereck made the turn. After passing the empty lots, he pulled into my driveway. Same as it had since Halloween night, the basement light glowed. The rest of the house was dark, Rose’s truck gone. “Where’s my sister?”

  “Don’t know. Not my problem anymore. We broke it off.”

  The news was the smallest of so many disappointments that day. And yet, it poked at something inside. Now I’d only see Dereck at the farm if he happened to be outside when I passed. After Thanksgiving came and went, he’d go back to just working at the garage, and I wouldn’t see him at all.

  “So,” he said, flashing his wolfish teeth in the dark. “Do you finally want to know how I lost my fingers?”

  I told him I did.

  “First you have to admit that you couldn’t figure it out on your own.”

  “I admit it.”

  “See, Sylvie. And you’re still here just the same. It’s not the end of the world if you don’t always know all the answers.”

&
nbsp; It will be soon, I thought, glancing at the dashboard clock.

  “Well, here goes. The fall after graduation, when everyone was home for Thanksgiving, one of my buddy’s parents went out of town. So we got the idea to throw a party. Not just any old lame kegger; what we wanted was a rager people would remember. A reunion blowout. All the guys from every team I ever played on were invited along with their girlfriends. Plus, all my Honors Society buddies were there. For once, everyone got along. Word got out and tons of people crashed. Your sister was there, too, with her friend. Rose was lucky to walk away without getting hurt the way a lot of us did. She never mentioned any of this to you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, none of us saw it coming. The house was mobbed. People were spilling drinks, dropping food, breaking glasses. This guy’s parents lived in a raised ranch with a deck off their kitchen on the second floor. The grill and an army of kegs were out on the deck, so that’s where the fun was. Fifty-seven of us, by the police officer’s count.”

  “Why were the police—”

  “I’m getting to that. Someone plugged in a boom box. It was cheesy music. Madonna or Paula what’s her face. But the girls started dancing, and they got the guys dancing too. Next thing I know, I feel something shift beneath me. At first I thought I was just dizzy from all the beer, but before I knew what was happening, we were tipping. That deck couldn’t support the weight.

  “Some people got burned by the grill. Others broke arms or legs.” Dereck held up his hand. “My fingers got wedged between two boards and ripped right off.”

  I lingered there, putting the pieces of Dereck’s story together in my mind. Finally, I said, “I’m surprised I never heard about it. It’s a small town. Seems like I would have.”

  “It was in the paper. Probably the biggest news story ever to hit Dundalk.”

  I was quiet, thinking of my parents, so many headlines about them.

  “Sorry,” Dereck said, realizing.

  “It’s okay.” I tugged off his jacket and boots. “But I better go.”