Help for the Haunted: A Novel

by John Searles

  His wife. Now that my father had mentioned her again, Heekin realized that unless he brought her up soon, he would lose his last chance to ask about her. But the words he wanted would not come, so he followed my father instead to the bookcase against the wall. One by one, my father picked up the items on the shelves, offering a history of each. The details varied, but the stories were unified by similar circumstances: every statue and figurine and even that twisted branch was said to be taken from a haunted place that became peaceful once the object had been removed. On a lower shelf, Heekin noticed a hodgepodge of jewelry—rings and lockets and brooches that had been left by the people who came to our house, my father informed him. “I believe it’s best,” he said, “if they reenter the world with none of what they came with when the spirit occupied them.”

  “I see,” Heekin said as his next question took shape in his mind. Doing his best to control each word, he put forth the words: “If you believe these items to hold some ill force, doesn’t it make you uncomfortable having them in your own home?”

  “No,” my father said in a calm voice. “Why would it?”

  “Well, it seems obvious.” Heekin felt more confident now. “If you believe these items once manifested malevolent spirits, isn’t it possible they could do the same here? What’s more, taken together, it would seem their collective force could create a mass of dark, festering energy beneath your home. I mean, if that’s what you believe.”

  My father was quiet. He rearranged the items on the shelf in such a way that led Heekin to realize the haphazardness was studied. At last, my father said: “My wife and I are extremely devout. We live a clean and honest life in accordance with God’s will. That gives us dominion over anything down here.”

  “What about your daughters? Are they devout? Or do they risk falling prey to—”

  “Of course our daughters are devout. They’re my children, after all. I wouldn’t tolerate anything less.”

  “Do you allow them down here?”

  “It’s their house too, so they’re welcome anywhere. My wife does prefer that no one go near her old rocker, which once belonged to her father and has sentimental value. As for me, in the same way an accountant, or even a dentist like I once was, would not want children monkeying around in his office, I prefer my girls spend their time elsewhere. Now, speaking of my daughters, they’ll be home soon, and I have calls to return before then. Is there anything more you need for your article?”

  Your wife, Heekin thought. I need to talk to your wife. But despite the fact that he had managed to ask probing questions on other topics, those words still refused to come. “No,” he said at last. “No more questions.”

  With that, my father led him up the stairs. When he stepped through the front door and out onto the stoop, Heekin felt relieved to be in the daylight again. He turned back and managed, “Please tell her . . . your w-w-wife, I mean . . . tell her h-h-hello from me.”

  My father nodded, but that was his only response before closing the door.

  In the week that followed, Heekin sat at his cluttered desk at the Dundalk Eagle, playing the tape from the interview and staring at the few scattered notes he’d taken, doing his best to draft the story. He played and replayed the tape, listening to every word, until something jumped out at him:

  “I promise you, in most ways, we are the same as any ordinary family. My wife goes grocery shopping on Saturday mornings. My daughters—”

  Maybe, Heekin thought as he stopped the tape, rewound, and played those words again, maybe I’m not such a bad reporter after all.

  The next weekend found him roaming the aisles of the Mars Market closest to Butter Lane. As a bachelor, he spent little time in stores like that, most nights just grabbing frozen dinners and ice cream from 7-Eleven. He lingered in the market for nearly an hour, picking things up from the shelves and dropping them into a cart, until he began to get suspicious looks from the clerks, at which point he rolled his carriage down an empty aisle and abandoned it, making a speedy exit from the store.

  During the next week, he told himself to forget my mother and just write the story based on his notes and the tape. And yet, when Saturday rolled around, he found himself pushing a cart up and down the Mars Market aisles. This time, as he reached for a Hungry Man dinner, a voice came from behind. “Sam?”

  Heekin turned to see, not my mother, but my father. At his side: a twelve-year-old me with braids in my hair and bright purple bracelets on my wrists. “H-h-hello,” he said, that nervous stutter wasting no time in returning.

  “Hello,” my father said.

  “And hello to you t-t-too,” Heekin told me. “You must be Sylvie. I’ve seen your picture in your living room. What’s on your wrists?”

  I shook my arm, moving the rubbery bands there. “Friendship bracelets.”

  “Ah. Well, looks like you’ve g-g-got two good friends. Am I right?”

  “Yes. Gretchen and Elizabeth. We all wear the same bracelets.”

  “So how are you?” my father asked.

  Heekin looked around for some sign of my mother. “G-g-good. And y-y-you?”

  “Fine. I’ve been meaning to call and ask when the story is going to run.”

  “The story? Y-y-yes. That. Well, it is g-g-going to run. I just need to . . .”

  “Need to what?”

  “Write it,” Heekin blurted. “I need to write the thing.”

  “Write it?” my father said. “We spoke weeks ago. But I guess these things take longer than I realized.”

  “In this case, it does. Because I need to t-t-talk to . . . I mean, I h-h-have. . . .”

  “Follow-up questions?”

  “Yes. Follow-up questions. I need to come by again and ask a few more.”

  “Certainly. Why not come tomorrow? Same time as before?”

  The next day Heekin arrived at our door for the second time. On the drive there, he had promised himself to ask about my mother. She was fifty percent of the story, after all, and it made sense that he inquire about her. He rang the bell, forgetting the detail about my sister breaking it with all those coins. The door opened anyway, and Heekin was prepared to blurt the question the moment he saw my father’s face. But after so much waiting, it was my mother who stood before him.

  “I thought I heard someone out here,” she said in a soft-timbred voice. Heekin. “Is everything okay? You look startled, if you don’t mind me saying.”

  “It’s j-j-just. I was, well, on the d-d-d-drive over I was imagining . . . not imagining . . . p-p-planning how this visit would g-g-g-go. And I didn’t expect—”

  “Didn’t expect what?”

  “You,” he managed to say. “I didn’t expect you.”

  “Well, I didn’t expect to see you, either. I prefer my husband talk to you on our behalf. I don’t feel comfortable doing interviews. But I’m afraid you’ll have to see him another time. I will let him know you came by.”

  My mother stepped outside, pulled the door shut behind her. She gave Heekin a warm smile and started past him toward the Datsun in the driveway.

  “I d-d-don’t understand,” he called after her. “We have an appointment. Where is he?”

  “Upstairs in bed. He’s thrown his back out.”

  “I’m s-s-sorry.”

  “I’m sorry too.”

  My mother reached the car, sizing it up as though it were a horse she was wary of mounting. Heekin watched as she went through the keys on her chain, determining which would unlock the door. “You hate to drive,” he blurted, getting the words out all at once.

  She looked up at him with her glittery green eyes. “How do you know that?”

  “Your husband. It’s on the tapes. The tapes from the interviews, I mean. I remembered him saying that about you.”

  “Well, you’re right. It makes me nervous, because I’ve never been very good at it. But I manage fine when the situation calls for it.”

  “I could drive you. Wherever you’re going.”

  My mother did
not answer immediately. She stared at something inside the car, jangling her keys, before looking back at him.

  “No interview,” he promised. “Just some friendly chitchat.”

  Her errand turned out to be to the pharmacy for my father’s pain pills. My mother explained that on occasion he called in prescriptions under her name, since the one thing he maintained from his former career was his medical license. Other than that, Heekin did the talking, stuttering and rambling despite his best efforts. He told her about his lonely year spent in the air force working as a typist. “Not many p-p-people know this b-b-bit of trivia, but H-H-Hugh Hefner also worked as an air force t-t-t-typist. It’s the only thing that guy and I have in c-c-c-common.”

  It was a joke Heekin had told before, one of the few he could count on to get a laugh, but my mother just said, “Forgive me, but Hugh who?”

  “Hefner.”

  “Heifer?”

  “No. Hefner.”

  “Oh,” she said. “And who’s that?”

  “You know, the head of Playboy magazine.”

  Her hand went to her chest. “I’m sorry, Mr. Heekin—”

  “Sam. Call me Sam.”

  “I’m sorry, Sam. But I’m not familiar with those sorts of publications or the people in them.”

  Their time together was off to a bad start. Heekin wanted to rewind things, to begin again. Instead, he told her about his life at the paper, the bland stories he normally covered, and his dream of someday finding a subject worthy of writing an actual book about. All the while my mother sat in the passenger seat, smelling of rosewater like her name, her delicate hands stroking her black leather purse as though it were a cat purring on her lap. Empty soda cans littered the floor, and she nudged them away whenever his Volkswagen made a turn.

  When they pulled into the strip mall, she asked if he minded parking around back, since she preferred using that entrance in order to slip in and out more easily. He did as she wanted, and my mother told Heekin she’d just be a moment. True to her word, she emerged in no time, pausing unexpectedly to examine a towering stack of thick, discarded books behind the neighboring hardware store, pulling one off the top and carrying it with her to the car. On the drive back to our house, Heekin made up his mind to allow her to do the talking. Beyond the brief explanation about the book, however—filled with wallpaper swatches, a fortuitous find, she said, since she needed help figuring out what to do about the peeling walls in our kitchen—my mother did not have much to say. Most of the ride was spent in silence, her purse on the floor now, as she turned the pages of that book, looking at all the patterns there, asking now and then his impression of a particular swatch. At last, they turned onto the lane, and Heekin could not help feeling like he’d blown his chance at some connection with her. “Good-bye,” he told her, a disproportionate melancholy stirring in his chest.

  My mother thanked him, unbuckling her seat belt and getting out of the car. But in the last moment before closing the door, she surprised him by leaning in to say, “You seem like a nice man. And this story sounds important to you. Uncomfortable as it makes me, I’d like to help. Why don’t you bring your notebook and recorder in for tea?”

  “Really?” he said, hearing the childish excitement in his voice.

  “Really,” she told him.

  Inside, my mother asked Heekin to make himself comfortable while she went to the kitchen. Rather than take a seat, he stood in the hallway, running questions he wanted to ask though his mind. My mother had set the wallpaper book and the small white bag from the pharmacy on a side table by the stairs, and the pharmacy bag was open enough for Heekin to see the jumble of amber containers inside: Tylenol with codeine, Vicodin, others with unfamiliar names. After the whistle screeched on the kettle, my mother moved through the hall with a tray to take up to my father, fetching the white bag on the way.

  When she returned, they went to the living room. “So,” she began once they were seated. “What can I tell you that my husband has not?”

  “Your childhood,” he said, fighting his nervousness. “He ne-ne-never to-to-told me . . . well . . . I mean we ta-ta-talked about his childhood. But we ne-ne-never touched on yours. Could you te-te-tell me . . . you know, about it?”

  My mother sat patiently, waiting for him to get out all those words.

  When he was done, Heekin managed, “Forgive me. It’s an old ha-ha-habit I’ve kicked. But it ha-ha-happens sometimes when I’m ne-ne-nervous.”

  In a gentle voice, she asked, “Has it always been this way for you?”

  “It s-s-started with m-m-my father. He used to b-b-b-bark at me, and so I felt uptight around him. The habit comes ba-ba-back whenever I’m uncomfortable.”

  “I’m sorry,” she told him. “If you like, we can pray together about it and see what can be done.”

  “Thank you. But with all d-d-due respect, I’m not really a believer in those things.”

  “What things?”

  “You know, prayer and d-d-demons.”

  My mother was quiet, thinking over his statement. At last, she said, “What is prayer but meditation? What is a demon but a fear that lives inside us, one we cannot easily conquer on our own? If you prefer to use those words, it’s all right by me. So I make the same offer. If you like, we can meditate together on this fear you can’t control.”

  Heekin’s answer surprised even himself. “Okay.”

  My mother leaned forward in her chair. She took his warm hands in her cool ones, squeezing more strongly than he would have guessed she’d be able to do. He expected her to say something, but her lips stayed pressed together. She closed her eyes, and he took this as a cue that he should too. The only sound was the ticking of the clock, the birds chirping out in the yard.

  At first, Heekin felt tempted to open his eyes and peek at her face, so near his, but then he realized he didn’t need to, he could see it there, in the darkness behind his lids. Her pale, papery skin. Her thin lips pursed. The silver crosses glinting in her ears. Just thinking of her so close, feeling her fingers against his, put him at ease. His mind drifted to some warm, unnamable place. He was a child hopping the checkerboard tiles of the floor in the grocery store. He was a child riding his bike outside his father’s ranch house in Augustine, Delaware. At last, he felt her hands slip from his. He did not open his eyes right away, but instead, he remained as he was, picturing her pretty face once more as she asked, “And how did that feel?”

  “Peaceful,” he answered, looking at her finally.

  “Good,” she told him, smiling. “The next time you sense those old fears about to take hold, I want you to remember the special feeling of peace we created here together. My hope is that it will help you to stay calm and get your words out the way you intend them to sound. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Now,” my mother said. “Should we try this interview again?”

  “Yes.” Heekin felt himself breathing more easily. He felt the words come more smoothly too. “Can you tell me about your childhood?”

  “I grew up on a farm in the South. My mother was a quintessential farm wife. She disciplined me with a switch and believed children should be seen and not heard.”

  “And your father?”

  “I loved my father,” she said in such a way that implied she had not felt the same about her mother. “He was tough too, but he treated me like I was special. Unusual as it was for a man in rural Tennessee, he knew perfect Latin and taught it to me. Not that I have much use for it these days beyond the occasional Latin spoken at Mass in the gym.”

  It was then, with some prodding on Heekin’s part, that she told him the story of the birdhouses her father had built and what she’d done after he was gone.

  “That must have been heartbreaking for you,” he said when she finished. “And you mentioned that he passed, but you never said how.”

  In an instant, my mother’s eyes welled. Tears did not spill onto her cheeks, but they suspended on her lower lids, on the verge. Even after so
many years, he could see how the question had pricked at something raw inside her, so Heekin told her to never mind. It was something no good reporter would ever say, but he didn’t care. “You don’t have to tell me, Mrs. Mason.”

  “Rose,” she said, pressing her index fingers to the bottom of each eye as though to shove those tears back inside. “You can call me Rose.”

  “Rose!” my father called from upstairs.

  The timing caused them both to laugh. “Apparently, someone else does,” Heekin said, making a joke.

  And yet, my father’s voice broke whatever spell had been working between them. “I should be going,” my mother said, standing from her chair. “I hope the things I’ve shared help with your story and impress your editor.”

  “I feel certain that they will,” he told her.

  At the door, Heekin worked up the courage to mention the nature preserve he first discovered when he’d been stationed at the Dover Air Force base. Despite the roar of military planes overhead that so often startled the birds, the place had been his only escape. “Even if I was too afraid to fly, it was comforting to watch those little creatures do it. And if you’re patient and still long enough, they land right in your hand. Anyway, if you like I could—”

  “Rose!” my father called. “I need your help getting to the bathroom!”

  “You could what?” my mother asked Heekin.

  “I could take you there sometime,” he said, rushing out the words before my father could distract her any further. “No interview. Just a friendly field trip.”

  He expected my mother to politely decline his offer. But she didn’t hesitate. “I’d like that very much.”

  Heekin smiled, reached in his pocket, and gave her his card. She took it and thanked him before closing the door. As he walked to his car and climbed inside, glancing back at the house, he replayed their last hour together, in particular the moment she took his hands in hers.