Help for the Haunted: A Novel

by John Searles

  I shouldn’t have told you all those things,” Heekin said as we pulled off an exit ramp after nearly two hours on the highway north. At the stoplight, his car stalled for what must have been the fifth time. He pumped the gas and worked the ignition until it started again just as the light turned green. “Blame the long ride. Blame the fact that you remind me so much of her.”

  I stared at my reflection in the glass of the passenger window, trying to see the parts of me that led him and so many others to think of her. Outside on the derelict sidewalks, I watched a woman carrying shopping bags that looked too heavy for her stringy arms. I watched a hunched man push a grocery store cart heaped with empty bottles. It felt as though we were touching down in some strange place, a tiny bird from the preserve gliding its way into some far-flung country on Rose’s globe.

  When we turned onto the streets of a barren neighborhood, one last unexpected question slipped out: “Did she ever tell you how her father, my grandfather, died?”

  “Only that it was some sort of accident on the farm.” He paused, before adding, “Your mother was an honest woman, but I got the feeling that was one of the rare lies she told. If I was a better reporter, I might have found out what really happened.”

  For all his talk of poor reporting skills, Heekin had done an expert job of tracking down my uncle—or rather, never losing track of him in the first place. Before we got on the road, he had insisted we give him a call from a pay phone. When Howie heard my voice, he sounded surprised, and even more so when I told him I was on my way to see him. He stalled, suggesting we put it off until some other time. But I insisted. Even if he didn’t exactly agree, that’s how I made it sound to Heekin when I hung up. Now, after driving all that way, I felt anxious about the possibility that my uncle might not be there after all.

  We moved at a crawl through the streets of a dreary neighborhood, squinting at the boarded windows of houses we passed, the shell of a scorched car, the minefields of shattered glass on the pavement that Heekin carefully navigated around. At last, we came to a stop outside a large building. As I looked at the chipped gray paint, the scramble of crooked letters above the row of glass doors, a strange feeling stirred inside me. It made me realize I’d seen this place before, but where?

  “Are you okay, Sylvie?” Heekin asked.

  I told him I just felt anxious about seeing my uncle again after so many months. “And, well, I don’t understand. After all these years, why—how did he end up here?”

  “Those are questions your uncle can answer better than I can. And that’s what we came here for, isn’t it: so you can get answers?”

  With that, Heekin pushed open his door. I did the same. We stepped out onto the sidewalk, desolate except for a bodega a few blocks away. Sirens wailed and faded until the air grew silent, thick with something menacing. I remembered the unexpected shyness I felt upon seeing my uncle that night in Ocala as some version of that feeling swooped down upon me now. There was little time for that, however, since Heekin was moving across the street, and I hurried to keep up. All the while, my gaze kept going to the scramble of crooked letters on the old marquee. We had come to the place I’d seen in one of the photos in my father’s desk drawer when Dot splashed about upstairs that long-ago night. This was the theater where he had spent his childhood, collecting tickets, sweeping floors, and seeing ghosts—his very first—amid the darkness inside.

  Chapter 16

  The Well

  The morning after we returned from Ohio, I expected to walk downstairs and find my mother right where we left her, asleep on the living room sofa. But she was gone. In the late morning hours, my father explained, she must have managed to make it up the stairs and into their room, because he opened his eyes to find her in the bed next to his.

  “Penny too?” I wanted to ask, but something in me already knew the answer.

  For nearly a week after that, my mother remained sealed away in their bedroom. She did not appear in the mornings before we left for school. She did not appear in the evenings when we arrived home. Funny how that waitress had trouble envisioning “someone like her” being a mother, because during that time, I think all of us in our family realized how good a job she’d always done. It wasn’t just my father’s runny mashed potatoes or dried-out cube steaks; and it wasn’t just our unwashed clothes in an ever-growing heap by the machines. Those details felt insignificant compared to the off-kilter mood that permeated our house. I would not have been surprised to have found murky water sloshing in the basement corners, because that’s what we had become: a ship taking on the dark and icy sea, about to sink.

  Still, my father and I tried. In the evenings, we sat with Rose at the kitchen table—my mother’s chair with her book of wallpaper swatches on top nothing short of a ghost among us—pretending the meal tasted as good as one she would have made from her recipes. To his credit, my father worked hard at keeping the conversation alive. Most often, that meant asking me about school, since my sister had become difficult to talk to. One night, as she was cutting into her sauceless chicken breast, my father took a stab at it anyway. “Rose?” he said. And when she kept cutting, not answering, he tried again, “Rose?”

  My sister looked up. “What can I do for you?”

  “What can you—” He put down his fork, rubbed his temples. “You can make an effort at some conversation over dinner—that’s what you can do. Haven’t you got anything to say for yourself?”

  Rose slipped a piece of chicken between her lips and chewed. “I do, actually.”

  “Okay, then. Go ahead.”

  “Well,” she said with her mouth full. “I was just wondering when Mom is going to rise from the dead?”

  “Rise from the— Rose, your mother is not dead. She’s ill.”

  “If that’s the case, then maybe we should take her to a doctor. Or do we not believe in doctors anymore around here? Are we hoping that Jesus will magically—”

  “For your information, we did take her to a doctor.”

  “When?” I asked.

  “The other day. You girls were at school. Dr. Zeller gave her a thorough exam.”

  “And?” Rose and I both said.

  “And he wasn’t sure what to make of her symptoms. The random waves of nausea. The extreme fatigue. All that and yet no fever whatsoever. Could be any number of things, he told us. But most likely a bacterial infection.”

  “Now that sounds official,” Rose said. “Old Doc Z could be a regular on St. Elsewhere.”

  “Saint what?” I asked.

  “I’ve said it before, Sylvie; it might do you good to watch crap TV once in a while. Otherwise, you’ll end up not knowing anything about the real world, just like—”

  “When do you watch that sort of TV?” my father asked.

  “I don’t,” Rose told him. “I only wish I could. But you never know, St. Elsewhere might poison my pure mind and heart, and put me at risk of falling prey to—”

  “Don’t,” my father said, raising his voice. “We talked about your behavior and that mouth of yours.”

  We were all quiet then. I couldn’t help but think of the murky water I imagined in the basement. I pictured the house sinking, the kitchen slanting, the table and chairs sliding across the floor, dishes crashing, as that icy water rose up and swallowed us alive.

  “So when will Mom be better?” I asked.

  “Soon,” my father told me. “Very soon.”

  Rose put down her knife, giving up on dinner. Under her breath, she muttered, “Should have handed the doll over to that waitress.”

  “Waitress?” my father said.

  “Never mind,” she told him.

  “If you’re going to say something, follow through. Now what waitress?”

  “She means the one from the truck stop,” I offered, in hopes of easing the tension between them. “That place near Harrisburg.”

  My father squinted, remembering. “But we didn’t eat there. So how did you girls come to talk to any waitress?”
r />   “She was in the bathroom. And she recognized you and Mom from TV,” I said.

  This bit of news caused my father to sit up straighter. “Oh, she did, did she?”

  “You’d think the lady had never laid eyes on a doll before,” Rose said.

  “Or at least not one in a bathroom in the middle of the night,” I added. “Not to mention the fingerprints on its neck and the bracelet around its—”

  “Did your mother put Penny down?” Our father was sitting up straight still, paying careful attention. “And this waitress—did she notice those details about the doll?”

  “Yes and yes,” I answered.

  “She couldn’t get enough of the thing,” Rose told him. “That’s why we should have given it to her. If you ask me, it’s got some weird germs that are making Mom sick. Didn’t you tell us it belonged to some kid with a disease who died?”

  “I did. But it’s not Penny’s germs that are infecting your mother.”

  “Well, what is it then?”

  My father pushed back his chair and stood from the table without taking his plate to the sink. It was Rose’s turn to clear and wash the dishes. If it had been mine, he would have helped, but he never bothered when it came to her. “All this talk made me realize there’s a project I need to work on,” he told us, before pulling the basement door open and descending the stairs.

  The next afternoon, I stepped off the bus and walked down the lane only to hear Rose and my father shouting inside the house. At first, I figured it was more of their usual bickering. As I got closer, though, I began to make out words, more barbed and menacing than I’d heard them use before.

  “I warned you in Florida! I told you that was strike one! Now it’s strike two! One more, Rose, and I promise you’ll be out!”

  “Just like that, huh? You’ll send me packing, same as you do those freaks who come here once you’re done using them!”

  “Using them? We help them! You keep talking like that, and I’ll send you away until you can show some respect for your parents and live in a way we see fit!”

  That was the most I heard, because when I opened the door, Rose burst from the kitchen and stormed down the hall. She shoved past me, stomping up the stairs and slamming her door. A moment later, I heard my father clomp down the basement stairs after slamming that door too. In the ringing silence that followed, I stood wondering which of them to go after.

  That’s when my mother stepped from the kitchen and appeared before me in the hallway, smiling. In the stories my father told in lectures, people woke to find a deceased relative bathed in warm light at the foot of their beds. In those stories, the person’s heart filled with overwhelming joy at the sight. That’s how it felt to lay eyes on my mother. I ran to her and threw my arms around her. “I’m so happy to see you,” I told her, breathing in the milky smell of her skin.

  “I’m happy to see you too,” she said, laughing. “But, Sylvie, you’re carrying on as though I’ve been away. I’ve only been upstairs with a bug. You could’ve come visit.”

  “Dad told us we should leave you alone.”

  “He did, huh?” She ran a hand over my hair. “Well, I’m sure he was just worried you girls might catch whatever I had. And trust me, you wouldn’t have wanted it.”

  I hugged her more tightly, turning my face in the other direction, so I could see into the living room. That’s when I spotted the doll slumped in my mother’s old rocker from the basement, head tilted sharply to one side as though someone had snapped her neck. “What’s that doing here?” I asked, pulling away.

  “Penny? Oh, I don’t need to cart her around anymore. I handed her over to your father. From the looks of things, he found a home for her in the living room.”

  Footsteps trudged up from the basement just then. We turned to see my father emerge, holding his 35 mm camera. “I know it’s your first time out of bed in almost a week,” he said to my mother, keeping his eyes on the dials and fiddling. “But we’ve only got a few exposures left on this roll. I want to get it developed before our next lecture. So we may as well put it to good use and get a picture of you—”

  “Oh, Sylvester. I can’t get my picture made now.”

  Getting her picture made—that was a turn of phrase left over from my mother’s childhood in Tennessee, something I never heard anyone but her say. “How about taking one of Mom and me?” I asked.

  “Actually, Sylvie, I was thinking of taking a photo of your mother and Penny.”

  “Penny?” my mother said. “What for?”

  “You know what for, Rose. We’ll file it with the others. Maybe show it in our talks or allow that reporter to use it when he writes another article or that book about us.”

  “That book,” my mother said with a sigh. “Sylvester, I’m not sure I want a photo like that turning up in a newspaper or a book or anywhere at all.”

  “You didn’t let me finish. I was about to say, only if you feel comfortable. But those were just ideas I was tossing around. We can discuss them later. For now, let’s just take a photo for our records. Best to do it while there’s still daylight, since the flash on this thing doesn’t always work so well.”

  I watched as my mother walked reluctantly to the rocker, picking up the doll and propping it over one shoulder, just like during that car ride. She followed my father outside and stood before our Tudor, which looked more run-down than usual in the fading light. My gaze stayed on her as she cradled Penny the way she must have once cradled Rose, the way she must have once cradled me as well. My father wasted no time before snapping away. Despite his reasoning that there were only a few exposures left, I counted nine before I interrupted to ask if he could please take one of my mother and me.

  “Oh, angel,” he said, looking at the dials and fiddling again. “I just used the last exposure. You should have said something sooner.”

  “I did say something sooner,” I told him before I could stop myself.

  My father lifted his head and fixed me with a look. “Sylvie,” he said. “Your mother and I are doing this for our work, not for fun and games.”

  “Don’t worry, dear,” my mother said, heading back in the house with Penny. “I promise to buy a disposable camera at Mars Market. We’ll get a nice photo made of us.”

  After the doll was returned to the rocker and my father returned his camera to the basement, there was homework to be done, followed by dinner. As we sat at the table, Rose’s empty chair became the ghost among us, since she did not come downstairs or respond when I knocked on her door. A roast made in the slow cooker—that’s all it was, but the food tasted better than anything we’d eaten in some time, since my mother prepared it. It was my turn to clear and clean the dishes, but both my parents helped, and my mother wrapped the bone in aluminum foil and put it in the freezer for some future day when she might need it to make soup stock. When all that was done, I figured we’d gather in the living room to watch a documentary on PBS, but my father said he had a handful of work things to discuss with my mother. The business of that book by Sam Heekin, I guessed. Whatever it was, I left them to it and went up to my room.

  When I’d found the broken horses a week before, I waited till morning to take the pieces into the bathroom where Rose was brushing her teeth. “Did you do this?” I asked.

  “Me?” Her mouth was full of toothpaste, which she promptly spit out. She plucked a leg from my palm, inspected the knobby knee, the broad hoof. “Of course not.”

  “Well, who else then?”

  “I don’t know. But what reason would I have?”

  “There are lots of things you do, Rose, that I don’t understand your reasons for.”

  “Careful. You’re starting to sound like Dad.” She returned the limb to my hand, her toothbrush to the medicine cabinet. “You know, Sylvie, when a horse breaks a leg, it’s a lost cause. In real life they’d shoot it. If I were you, I’d just toss it in the trash.”

  Her surprise, her denial—they had seemed genuine, so I left her and went to m
y desk to begin the careful surgery of gluing the pieces together. Still, I could not believe that my father or mother—or even that doll—could be responsible.

  Now, not so many nights later, I listened to the murmur of my parents’ voices discussing their work down in the living room while I looked up at that shelf. Inspecting the horses, counting their legs to be sure they were intact, had become a ritual before sleep. The ritual was interrupted when my gaze reached a spotted pony with glimmering brown eyes. Aurora’s wooden tail had been snapped off. It took hunting, but I located that tail behind my desk. I felt the urge to march down the hall, to slam my fist against Rose’s door, to scream at her that none of this was funny. But I knew she’d only deny it again, doing an even more convincing job the second time around. The obvious solution was to begin locking my door. I locked it then, and found the small hook-shaped piece of metal to lock it from the outside in the future too, before sitting at my desk once more and gluing yet another horse together.

  All the while, I heard my parents below. It was not possible to make out their words, but the clipped rise and fall of their speech gave me the sense that the discussion wasn’t pleasant. And then, all at once, they fell silent. I heard them climb the stairs and settle into their beds down the hall. By then Aurora was whole again, and though I needed sleep, I stayed at my desk and let my mind wander. For days, I’d been replaying what Rose had said about me ending up like our parents if I didn’t pay attention to the real world. Maybe the details about TV shows she tossed out in conversation were meaningless compared to the information in the documentaries we were allowed to watch, but I didn’t like the idea of my sister knowing things I did not. That feeling is what led me to unlock my door and sneak downstairs.

  Other than a quick glance, I forced myself not to look at Penny in my mother’s rocker. I simply pulled a chair close to the TV, turned it on, and lowered the volume. Flipping channels past late-night news stories about Margaret Thatcher and another about Oliver North, I landed on the sort of rerun my parents forbid but Rose might reference: Three’s Company. It didn’t take long to suss out the players and the plot, which had to do with an overheard conversation wildly misinterpreted. Ridiculous as the story was, I kept watching, easing into the unfamiliar sound of canned laughter. During a commercial, I went to the kitchen, where I made myself a sandwich from the leftover roast and poured a glass of milk before returning to the living room. It wasn’t until the credits rolled that I looked over at the rocker again. The watery blue light of the television flickered over that chair, over me too, as I stared at the place where Penny sat when I came downstairs.