Help for the Haunted: A Novel

by John Searles

  “I remember when Mom and Dad first brought you home from the hospital too. ‘Look at its hands,’ I used to say. ‘Look at its feet. It’s so tiny.’ And Mom would say, ‘Rose, your sister is not an it, but a she.’ ” Rose let out a laugh then and paused, lying there with her sneakers on my mattress, staring at that picture of our mother in the paper. I walked over and looked at it again too, my gaze shifting to a passage from Heekin’s article:

  “After we returned to our apartment from the hospital, where we had lost our daughter, I put Penny on top of her bed,” said Elaine Entwistle. “For some time, I felt too heartbroken to go back into that room. But when I did, I saw the doll’s arms and legs were arranged differently than I’d left them. I asked my husband if he’d been in that room, and he said no. I told myself it was my imagination, that I wasn’t thinking clearly. But soon, it happened again. That was just the beginning of a series of very strange occurrences, which led us to contact the Masons.”

  I stopped reading. I’d already been through it once at the library that day. Clearly, Rose wanted to be done with it too, because she crinkled the paper and tossed it in my wastebasket. “I feel sorry for you, Sylvie.”

  “Me?”

  “I’ve only got another year left. But you’ve got all of high school with them. It’s not going to be easy after this. And according to Dad, the piece got picked up by other papers. Bigger ones.”

  “Maybe people will forget,” I said, detecting that flimsy sound in my voice once more. “Maybe things will go back to normal.”

  “Keep telling yourself that. But if I were you, I’d get rid of that doll before she does any more damage.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe the things they said about her.”

  “I don’t. But does it matter what I think if others out there believe? Now that people know she’s here in this house, Penny will just keep influencing things. Look at Mom and Dad. They believe, and it’s changed them already. It’s changed the whole feeling in this house too. It’s like the air is harder to breathe. That’s what belief does, Sylvie. Whether something is true or not is beside the point.”

  I sat on the edge of my bed, considering. Finally, I asked, “But get rid of her how? Where?”

  “You’re the brainiac. Figure it out.”

  Rose looked past me then. Her expression tightened, and I turned to see our father in the doorway. In one hand, he held an ancient book from the curio hutch, so thick and heavy it might have been a weapon. “I made dinner,” he said, his voice deep and low.

  “I’ll be right down,” I told him, even though I didn’t feel hungry in the least.

  “And what about you, Rose? Should I assume you won’t be joining us again?”

  “No thanks,” she answered, quieter than I was used to. “I ate after track practice.”

  “Suit yourself. I’ll take food to your mother, Sylvie, then see you downstairs.”

  Once he was gone, Rose stood from my bed and went to the door. I asked why she never ate with us anymore and she told me the more she stayed out of his way, the better. “Like I said, I’ve only got next school year left. At this point, I’m just trying to get through it.”

  With that, she turned to go. Despite the fact that Rose had gotten into my room anyway, I locked the door and headed down to the kitchen. My father had not set the table, so I did. When he joined me again, he took the phone off the hook, then pulled out the frozen glass tumbler I only ever saw him use at holidays. From the cabinet above the fridge, he dredged out a bottle of scotch and poured himself a drink, and then we sat at the table, Rose and my mother’s chairs two ghosts among us now. If Penny keeps having an influence, I thought, someday soon I’ll be the only one left.

  It was unlike my father not to bother with conversation while we ate the dinner he had prepared—a flavorless meatloaf that tasted nothing like the one my mother made with onions and garlic and stewed tomatoes on top. I kept trying to introduce topics into the silence, telling him about my upcoming exam and the trick questions my teacher tossed in, but those things did not hold his interest.

  “Is something the matter?” I asked finally.

  My father sipped more of his drink. Turpentine mixed with rubbing alcohol—from where I sat that’s what it smelled like, a smell that made me think of Christmas, since it was normally the only time he allowed himself a glass. “Just nerves,” he answered. “I’m meeting that reporter tonight.”

  “Oh. Is he still writing his book?”

  “He’s about done with it actually. But our last interview, well, it didn’t go the way I wanted. So I convinced him to meet me one more time. He’s always got so many questions. Some of them I’m incapable of answering, because it comes down to faith and the way we interpret the world.”

  “But you’ve always been good at explaining those things, Dad.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess the way our lives have been around here lately has me distracted. I want you to know, Sylvie, that this isn’t how I intended things to turn out.”

  I stayed quiet, pushing chunks of meatloaf around my plate.

  “I’m talking about your mother upstairs. Your sister as well. The two of us eating dinner alone. When I left home years ago, I dreamed of having my own family. A happy one.”

  “We are happy,” I said, but there it was again: that flimsy sound in my voice.

  My father took a few greedy sips from his glass, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he swallowed, letting his meatloaf go untouched. And then a horn honked outside. He stood from the table, giving me a kiss on the forehead.

  “You’re right, Sylvie,” he said, sounding less tense. “We are happy. All families have bumps along the way, so why should ours be any different? Things will go back to normal. Anyway, I’ve checked in on your mother for the night, so it’s best just to let her sleep.”

  After he grabbed his coat and walked out the door, I was left to clear the table before heading upstairs, where I stopped to peek in at my mother again. She lay in her bed, sound asleep, a half-empty dinner plate on the nightstand. I felt the same urge to go inside and take care of her, the way she always took care of us. But I did what my father asked, leaving her to rest and going to my room instead. I pulled that slim piece of metal from my pocket and slipped it into the knob, opening the door.

  The moment I stepped inside, I felt it beneath one of my slippers. When I lifted my foot, I saw another of those broken limbs. And then I looked to see not just one but dozens scattered on the carpet. Dozens more on my desk too. I stared down at the chaos a long moment before gazing up at that shelf, where every last one of them had been toppled.

  I closed my door. Knelt on the carpet. Hands shaking, I went to work gathering those pieces. When that was done, I put them in a pile on my desk before stepping into the hallway. Last I looked, the rocker had been empty downstairs, but I knew where I’d find Penny. And whether or not the doll was to blame, I wanted her out of our lives.

  I walked to my parents’ room and stood outside their door. My mother, I could see, was in her bed still. Quietly, I pushed open the door enough for me to step inside.

  Her voice sounded thick and sluggish when she stirred, asking, “Sylvie, is that you?”

  “Yes, Mom. It’s me.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “It will be. But I wanted to check in on you. To see if you need anything.”

  “Actually, a drink of water would be nice. I’ve just been so thirsty. There’s a glass here on my nightstand if you don’t mind.”

  I filled the glass in the bathroom sink and brought it to my mother, who lifted her head from the pillow and drank with a loud gulping sound. Meanwhile, I stared around the room, my eyes adjusting to the green glow of the alarm clock. Their dresser. Their nightstand. My father’s empty bed. It was all the same. But then I noticed a smaller lump beneath my mother’s covers. I reached over and pulled back the blankets.

  “Why?” I asked when that blank face gazed up at me.

  My
mother set down her glass, returned her head to the pillow. “I can’t explain it, Sylvie. I had my doubts about the claims that couple made. But your father—he believed. Either way, those people had been through so much, I thought it best to pray with them and remove the doll from their home, to give them peace of mind if nothing else. But now, well, there have been nights when I wake to find her here. Same as what happened to them.”

  “Well, I think I should take it back downstairs.”

  I waited for my mother to correct me, the way Rose said she once did to her, saying Penny was not an it but a she. But she just kept her head on her pillow as her eyes fell shut. For a moment, I thought of going into the bathroom for a towel to avoid touching the doll. But there seemed no time for that. I moved to the other side of the bed and reached down, moving calmly, intently, slipping my hands beneath its body and lifting. And then Penny was in my arms and I was carrying it out of the room.

  Down the hall. Down the stairs. Through the living room, past the empty rocker to the front door. Outside, a misty rain had begun to fall, making a faint skittering sound, like mice running up and down the gutters. I stood on the stoop, staring out at the tangle of twisted branches surrounding our house, at my parents’ Datsun in the driveway, at those signs my father had painted and nailed to the trees, the words screaming: NO TRESPASSING! Carry the thing into the woods, I thought, bury it there like my father had done with Mr. Knothead years before when the rabbit had been found dead one morning—no more tic-tic-tic of its heart. But I had only my bare hands to dig with, and the idea of venturing out there in the dark frightened me.

  And then, all at once, I knew.

  My feet moved down the stairs and across our mossy lawn until I reached the well we had no use for anymore. Without taking time to consider it, I shoved off the plywood and stared at the shimmering black surface of the water below. I held Penny over the side, took a breath, let go. A faint splash, but nothing more. No scream. No struggle. Of course not. The doll was powerless, after all, except for the power we gave it. If that’s what you believed. In that moment, I did. In that moment, I didn’t too. In the rainy silence that followed, I reached for the plywood, slid it back over the mouth of the well. I rooted around for rocks to put on top, but the ones at the base of Rose’s old rabbit cage were too heavy to lift. The plywood would be enough, I decided, before turning back to the house.

  Inside, I went to my room, thinking of my father out there with that reporter, wondering about the things he was telling him for that book. I slipped into my pajamas, looking over at the pile of limbs on my desk. Tomorrow, I told myself as I climbed beneath the sheets, I’d glue them together one last time. Even if they’d never be quite the same, I could lie in bed at night and stare up at them on the shelf. Despite what happened, those horses would appear whole again. Like my family, I thought, drifting off to sleep, they would be together, happy, unbroken once more.

  Chapter 17

  Possessions

  An upright soldier of an H. A slouching E. A slouching R. The word BAD, then a space, then another word, this one missing a letter like a gapped-tooth smile: DE_IRE. I stared up at that drooping marquee as Heekin and I drew closer to the theater, putting together the puzzle of those letters. With effort, I managed to conjure an image of the place it had once been: the ticket window clean and shiny, the marquee upright, proudly announcing films like Casablanca or Breakfast at Tiffany’s. But the image vanished when we reached the glass doors plastered over with newspapers and work permits.

  “Did your uncle say,” Heekin asked as he walked along the row, tugging on the tarnished handles and finding every door locked, “where exactly we should meet him?”

  I shook my head, glancing up at those letters on the marquee again as if they might rearrange themselves and offer an answer.

  “He did want you to come, didn’t he?”

  Confused, not angry—that’s how Heekin seemed, though I wondered how long until that changed. If he had not just shared those stories about his time with my mother, reminding me of her good and honest nature, perhaps I’d have been able to keep the lie going. But considering the larger untruth I’d been nurturing for so many months, there seemed no room for more.

  I turned away. Looked down the block at a bodega, a jumble of faded flags over the door, a redbrick church just beyond. “He didn’t want me to come. Not exactly anyway.” If I turned around, I knew what I’d see behind me: that look on my father’s face in the arcade, that look on Detective Rummel’s face in the interview room when I confessed my uncertainty. It was the look of a person realizing you were not who they thought you were—or more specifically, not who they needed you to be. It seemed to me I had a lifetime of those looks ahead; the world felt that full of endless opportunities to let people down, to break their hearts in little ways, in big ways too, each and every day.

  “But you said—” Heekin began.

  “I know what I said. And I’m sorry. But he wanted to wait. Down the road—that’s the phrase he kept using. We should see each other down the road.”

  “But I don’t understand. Why did you make me drive us all the way here if you weren’t c-c-certain?”

  Other than that brief encounter in the grocery store years before—a meeting I did not recall until he spoke of it in the car—it was the first I’d heard him stutter. Standing on that sidewalk before the lifeless theater, something about his faltering voice made me feel all the more guilty for leading us there. Turning back to him at last, I explained that I’d told my uncle we were going to leave the second I hung up the phone. “Since he knew we were on the way, my hope was that he’d feel obligated to be here when we arrived. But I should’ve known better. My father used to warn me about him. My sister too. Anyway, sorry for wasting your time.”

  “It wasn’t a waste, Sylvie,” Heekin told me, that stutter vanishing once more. “We got to spend time together at least. I think your mother might have liked that.”

  I wasn’t certain that was true, but it made me feel a little better to know he wasn’t upset with me. Heekin suggested we give it one last try and took to knocking on the row of glass doors. I did the same. For a long while, we stood waiting for someone to answer, though nobody did. At last he suggested that we may as well get back on the road to Dundalk before Rose began to worry.

  “We can go,” I told him. “She isn’t going to worry, though.”

  “Sylvie, she’s your sister. I can only imagine she would.”

  “Well, Howie is my uncle and look what difference that made.”

  Heekin paused, considering, until finally saying, “You’re right. Just because people are related doesn’t always make the difference it should. In your case, however, Rose also happens to be your legal guardian. If she’s not taking that role seriously, you need to say something. There must be a social services office monitoring your situation.”

  I thought of Cora with her dolphin or shark tattoo. I thought of Norman who had failed his real-estate exam, but planned on taking it again come spring. I thought of poor Boshoff with his poems and questions and ailing wife beside him in bed at night. “Rose does okay. I just mean she won’t worry, since she thinks I’m at the library studying.”

  If he believed me, I couldn’t be sure. Either way, Heekin let the conversation go. Before heading back to his car, he suggested I take a good look at the place, since it might be the last time I’d get to see it. “The city has wanted the building demolished for some time. But who knows? Now that I see those work permits on the door, maybe there’s another plan.”

  I looked at the building—its peeling gray exterior, the alley that snaked off into the shadows on one side—doing my best to form a description to put in my journal later so as not to forget. When I was done, we walked across the street. Inside his car, he started the engine, but rather than it stalling, this time he twisted the key and turned it off.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked into the quiet.

  Heekin pressed his palms against that
rubbery face of his. The way he shoved his skin around, he seemed capable of shifting entire features into new positions, his nose nudging toward his left cheek, his left cheek scrunching into his left eye, that eye vanishing altogether. But the moment he stopped rubbing, things fell back into place. “A good reporter wouldn’t give up so easily. Not after coming all this way. And like I told you, that’s something I’ve always wanted to be. More than that, after letting your mother down, it would mean a lot to me if I could help you, Sylvie. Let’s at least stick around awhile in case he returns. If your sister isn’t going to worry, an extra hour won’t hurt.”

  His suggestion seemed worth a try, and yet, I was beginning to think that if my uncle made that much of an effort not to see me, it might be smarter—safer even—simply to stay away. My parents never trusted the man. In the end, neither did Rose. Why should I?

  “Tell you what, Sylvie. If you stay here and keep an eye out, I’ll walk down to that bodega and see if I can get us some sandwiches and sodas. Would you like that?”

  I hadn’t eaten anything since leaving the house that morning, so I told him lunch sounded like a good idea. Before getting out, Heekin instructed me to stay put and keep the doors locked. I watched him grow smaller in the reflection of the side-view mirror until he disappeared into the bodega.

  Alone, I did my best not to think of the last time I’d been instructed to wait in a car by myself. I stared down at the floor of Heekin’s car, thinking of my mother sitting in that very same seat, nudging soda cans away from her feet while turning the pages of that swatch book plucked from the pile behind the hardware store. If she really was as tired of their work as Heekin said, it made sense that something as ordinary as a book of wallpaper samples would excite her. I remembered her showing that book to me, making no mention of her excursion with Heekin, simply turning the pages, gazing at the bursts of colors and designs with a kind of wonder in her eyes.