Help for the Haunted: A Novel

by John Searles

  “Are they—”

  “Your grandparents, Sylvie. In the candy shop that was once part of the theater.”

  We looked at them for a long moment. I studied their faces, hunting for glimpses of Rose in my grandfather’s strong chin, of myself in my grandmother’s wide eyes. In each, I saw my father, Howie too.

  “I must be getting old,” my uncle told me, speaking more calmly, “because I’ve never been the nostalgic type until lately. But I’m finding it’s a strange thing to be the last one left in a family. You spend a lot of time thinking about the past, wondering why things turned out the way they did.”

  His words led me to glance away from the photos and down at that messy carpet of newspaper clippings. My mother and Penny and all those headlines.

  “You must be wondering why I kept those,” he said.

  I nodded, then said, “Yes. I am.”

  My uncle tucked the first two photos back into the envelope, holding on to the third facedown so I couldn’t see it just yet. “If there’s one place drunks love, Sylvie, it’s a public library. Nice and quiet when you’re nursing a hangover. You can sleep the day away without anyone bothering you except maybe some nag of a librarian. The Seventy-Eighth Street Community Branch in Tampa—that was my favorite whenever a rent check bounced and the landlady padlocked my door. In my more sober moments, I used to dig around there for stories about my brother. Even if I didn’t believe the things he claimed, I felt proud he’d made something of himself. Jealous, too, since he was keeping me from the dreams I had for the theater. Later, after what happened, collecting those papers became a kind of obsession—one I’ve kept up since I got here. Guess I’m still trying to make sense of it all. Thing is, all those articles list the same facts. I know how hard it must be, Sylvie, but you were there that night. Can you tell me what happened inside that church?”

  Shhhh. . .

  As he drew closer to that question, the sound in my ear grew steadily louder. Useless, I knew by now, but I pressed a finger to my ear anyway. The thought of Rummel and Louise filled my head. “I tried,” I said, offering an answer I did not plan, but one I might well have given them, because it was true, “always to be their good daughter, the one they could count on and be proud of. But when it mattered most, that night in the church, I failed. Not only couldn’t I save them, I can’t even identify their killer with any real certainty now that they’re gone.”

  “But the papers—”

  “I know what they say. But I’m telling you otherwise.”

  When he spoke next, I heard something different in Howie’s voice, a kind of hunger. “Are you saying you don’t know who you saw?”

  I shook my head, staring at the final picture in his hands and waiting for him to flip it over. “What is that last photo?”

  He let out a weighted breath and handed me the picture: two shirtless boys cannonballing off a rocky cliff into a pool of water. It was taken, he explained, at an old Indian well a few miles from the theater. “Our dad used to drive us there on hot days when the AC broke in this place. Lucky he got that shot, because it was one of the few times your father actually jumped with me. He was always so nervous and preferred to walk the path down to the water. I swear he was more at home with the things he thought he saw in the theater than out in the real world.”

  “That night in Florida,” I began, bringing up something I’d always wondered about, “when you and my sister drove off in your truck, she told me later you said things that made her stop believing our parents. What did you tell her?”

  My uncle took back the photo and returned it to the envelope, then thought better of it. “Here, Sylvie. Why don’t you keep these? They’re the few pieces of our family history I have to offer. And who knows? Maybe they’ll give you some small comfort if ever you need it.”

  I thanked him and took the photos, slipping them into my coat pocket next to my journal.

  “I have an idea,” Howie said, standing from the cot. “Come with me.”

  We headed out into the hallway and on deeper into the building, passing more movie star ghosts as we went. On each side of the hallway, open doors led into other shadowy rooms like the one where Howie had been working and living. So black and boxy, those rooms would put anyone in mind of a prison cell, and in every single one, I imagined Albert Lynch, pacing or sitting, gazing out at me with a desperate, penetrating glower. When it became too much, I looked away, just as Howie took my hand, guiding us through a minefield of missing floorboards. All the while he spoke with an excitement in his voice I’d not heard before about his longtime dream for the building—the dream my father kept him from in life, but no longer could in death.

  “The Philly Chamber of Commerce started an initiative to revitalize the neighborhood,” he told me. “They’ve even helped me secure a loan. Nothing short of a miracle considering my credit. It’s barely enough to make some basic changes, bring the place up to code. That’s okay. I’m banking on the look of the old place to give it a certain coolness.”

  We arrived at a set of double doors. Howie released my hand and pushed them open, leading us out onto a balcony inside the theater. In the flickering light, I could see hundreds of seats filling the orchestra below, hundreds more on the mezzanine above. Despite the peeling paint and web of cracks in the ceiling, the ornate chandelier and the stage with velvet curtains flanking a blank movie screen offered hints of former glory. “Used to be an old vaudeville house before your grandparents owned it. Your dad and me, we spent our childhood between these walls. Scouring the floor after people left in search of dropped change. With this many seats, you’d be amazed at how much we made. If we got lucky, we’d come across jewelry or a wallet—that was hitting the jackpot.”

  “Did my father make you return it?”

  Howie laughed. “Difficult as it might be to imagine, even your dad was a kid once. A pretty devious one when he wanted to be. The jewelry got pawned with Floyd’s help. We gave him a cut, of course. Wallets, we agreed to keep secret and split whatever cash was inside. Well, that was supposed to be the way things worked.”

  “Supposed to be?”

  “Yeah, until E-19.” Howie aimed a finger at the orchestra seats, ticking his way up from the stage until he was pointing to one chair in particular. “That seat right there. Doesn’t look any different from the others. But it’s where your dad used to stash most of what he found in a tear on the side of the cushion, so he didn’t have to share it with me. I used to think the reason I turned up so much more loot than him was because I was older and faster and had a better eye. Then I caught on to what he was doing.”

  The lights in the theater blinked—off and on, then just off—causing my uncle to fall silent. Things remained dark long enough that I wondered if they’d come back on at all. Waiting out on that balcony, Howie’s figure became nothing more than a hulking silhouette beside me, one that put me in mind of those statues by the altar. I listened to the sound of him breathing, smelled the smoke on his breath from his last cigarette. “Is everything all right?” I asked into the blackness, feeling a tightening in my throat as his heavy shoes shifted on the floor beneath us.

  “Should be. The wiring inside this monster is just so damn ancient. That’s one of the things I’m spending the loan money on: updating the electrical. Anyway, give it a minute and the lights will—” Just then, the theater blinked to life, allowing us to see again and allowing Howie to finish his sentence with relief, “come back on.”

  I gazed out at all the empty seats, imagining the boys from the photo scrambling among them, imagining my father standing down near that one seat in particular, hiding whatever he found from his brother. “And this is where my father first saw . . . things?”

  My uncle nodded. “Let’s go see the view from downstairs.” Back in the hall, he led the way to a set of threadbare drapes, the fringe as gray as mop strings. We were about to step through to the staircase just beyond when Howie stopped. “You know what, Sylvie? Why don’t you go on ahe
ad while I grab the blueprints from the office?”

  I stared past the drapes at that empty staircase, feeling that tightening in my throat again when I looked back at him. “Why?”

  “Because I want to show you the exact plans. So just go on down to the orchestra level. I’ll catch up in a minute.”

  Missing floorboards, faltering lights, the things my father used to speak of seeing among the seats—all of it left me wary. “I think,” I told Howie, “I should probably go.”

  “Go?”

  That odd tightening in my throat grew tighter still. When I spoke next, my words came out in awkward clumps. “There’s an appointment I have. In Maryland. At the police station. The detective there—he wants to talk to me. I need to figure out what I’m going to tell him.”

  “Tell him about what?”

  “I don’t know. But, well, Sam Heekin is waiting for me. I shouldn’t—”

  “Don’t worry about that guy, Sylvie. Like I said, you own this place too. Now that you’re here, I want to show it to you. Who knows when Rose will let us see each other again. Now get down there.”

  Get in the truck . . .

  Unlike that night in Ocala, when I managed to avoid giving into his order, this time I couldn’t see a way out. I turned and stepped through the threadbare drapes, the drab fringe brushing my shoulders like limp fingers when I passed. Had there been a banister at some point during the building’s history, it was long gone; I was left to trail my hand along the wall while descending the steps. When I reached the first floor, I walked through another set of drapes and kept going out among the orchestra seats until I stood in the center aisle.

  How many people had filled that place when it was a legitimate movie theater? How many more when it was a vaudeville house before that? I tried to imagine them, holding hands, laughing or crying about the world come to life before their eyes on the screen or stage. Somehow, though, the great yawning maw of that open room felt stronger than the past, making it difficult to envision. Instead of those people, I ended up thinking of their possessions—coins and bills and bracelets and necklaces and wallets—all dropped to the floor, unknowingly, over the years. The thought led me to move in the direction of the stage, where the movie screen was plagued with cracks. At last, I stopped at one aisle in particular.

  After so many years, it would seem someone would have repaired the tear in seat E-19, but reaching down, I felt the slit on one side of that cushion. How could I resist slipping my hand inside? How could I not wonder if I might pull out some long-forgotten treasure? But only a few stray puffs of loose foam filled my hand.

  I let it fall to the floor, straightening up and waiting for Howie, who had plenty of time to get what he needed by then. When he didn’t show, it occurred to me that I’d not seen any blueprints on his desk or among those makeshift shelves. No sooner did that thought come than I began to wonder why there were no signs of renovations in the place. No tools or extension cords. No sawhorses or paint cans.

  “Hello!” I called into the belly of that theater.

  The word was tinged with a pleading sound. It was met with only silence before the lights flickered then snapped out, drowning me in darkness once more. As I stood with one hand on the back of my father’s torn seat, at the very place where he must have first seen those otherworldly visions, my own demons came seeping from the shadows:

  Dot calling, Hello? Yoo-hoo? Girls? My mother saying, When you feel afraid, I want you to pray. And then there were the strange rumblings from our basement in those early months after our parents were gone—the breaking, the rustling, the shifting about—that led me to plead with Rose in a quivering voice, You’re crazy if you don’t hear those things. They’re pissed off. They’re sad. They want them back. I can tell. . . .

  “Howie?” I called in an effort to keep those voices, that darkness, and my own rising panic at bay. “Lloyd? Hello?”

  Still no answer. I couldn’t wait any longer. I knew I was at E-19, so I told myself to track my way out to the center row then back toward the exit. I began doing just that when something brushed past the periphery of my vision, leaving me with the same chill I felt when the limp fingers of that fringe brushed my shoulders.

  Howie—that was my first thought—he had come to find me in the dark. Then I saw it again: not my uncle after all, but a blur of motion among the seats nearest the stage. The movement stopped, and I watched it, a pulsating shadow that contained no light yet had a presence all its own. I should have realized right away what I was seeing, but like those people who stood on our doorstep wondering why no one answered when they rang the bell, it took a moment to puzzle things out. Once I arrived at the truth, I did not want to be near it any longer.

  E-18. E-17. E-16. E-15 . . .

  Fast as I could, I moved toward the center aisle, where my hand found the next row of seats. I began tracking the alphabet toward the rear of that theater. F . . . G . . . H . . . I . . . J . . . When I reached K, I came to a stop. That lightless mass was in front of me now, a few rows away. The way its shapeless figure rose and fell, rose and fell, it appeared to be breathing, before skittering off into the darkness again.

  K . . . L . . . M . . . N . . . O . . .

  At last, I let go of the seats and ran full speed toward a slip of light beneath a door not far away. I burst through the door, stumbling into a lobby filled with sawhorses and lumber and spools of cable, all lit by the muted sunlight filtering through the newspapers and permits on the glass doors. I fumbled along the doors, slamming my hands against the handles. None opened until I reached the very last, which I lurched through into the daylight. As the sun washed over me, making it impossible to see, I kept moving until I slammed into something—or someone, I realized as I felt hands take hold of me, gripping my body tight.

  “Easy there, young lady. You okay?”

  I stepped back, almost falling to the sidewalk. My eyes adjusted, and I made out Lloyd’s withered face before mine. “Where’s Sam Heekin?”

  “That reporter?” Lloyd twisted around, pointed to the Volkswagen parked on the far side of the avenue. “Right there.”

  I looked to see Heekin in the driver’s seat of the VW bug, a newspaper spread over the steering wheel, reading and popping potato chips into his mouth.

  Footsteps sounded behind me then. The same door of the theater opened, and my uncle stepped outside, no blueprints in his hands. My voice wobbled more than I liked when I shouted, “Why would you do that . . . not just to me but to him?”

  “So you understand then?” Howie said.

  “Yes. And you could have just told me.”

  “I’m sorry, Sylvie. But when you asked what I said to Rose that made her stop believing, I thought the best way was to show you. And now you know.”

  I stood there, crossing my arms, waiting for the confusion and fear of the last few moments to leave me. “But why?” I asked again. “And how?”

  “It began as something of a joke. Well, not quite a joke, since I was trying to teach your dad a lesson. I first got the idea when Lloyd”—he stopped and nodded to Lloyd, who must have realized then what we were talking about—“was sampling some light filters in the projection room one day when I was here after school. I snagged some lenses, slipped a black one over a flashlight, and shined it up at the chandelier to create the effect.”

  “But my father was smart. He would have figured it out.”

  “How old was Sylvester at the time?” my uncle asked Lloyd. “Nine? Maybe ten?”

  Lloyd made that tapping sound with his tongue against his teeth, nodding. “About that, I’d say.”

  “Young enough that he was more susceptible to the possibilities of what he was seeing,” my uncle told me. “That first time, I expected him to scream and go running out of the place. Figured it would teach him not to sneak back at night and get what he’d hidden in that seat. Instead, your father stood stock-still, watching those shapes move around him. I swear, it looked like he was communicating with them som
ehow.”

  “So you were both in on it?” I asked. “And you kept it up?”

  “Not really,” Lloyd said. “When I caught Howie with the filters and realized what he was doing, I had a little fun at your father’s expense too. But after a few weeks, I told him enough was enough.”

  “In the end, Sylvie, it was just a prank that got pulled a handful of times before it was over. At least I thought it was over. Months later, I came home to find my mom and dad laughing around the kitchen table, my brother looking serious and upset. I asked what was so funny, and they told me I should ask Sylvester to describe what he saw in the theater.”

  “And that’s when he told you he saw—”

  “Globules,” Howie said, resurrecting that word from Heekin’s book. “But even stranger than that name he’d concocted for them: I asked when he last encountered those things and he told me he’d been seeing them every day for months.”

  “Are you saying my father made it up?” I asked, wondering how much of what he said I should believe.

  Howie didn’t respond right away. He and Lloyd just looked at each other, and I had the feeling neither wanted to answer the question. “I don’t know, Sylvie,” my uncle said at last. “Sometimes I wonder if he lied to us. Other times, I wonder if he lied to himself. Maybe his belief gave that light a power all its own.”

  His words made me think of Penny, the things my sister once said about the doll’s power over our family, power that only seemed to grow stronger instead of weaker after I dumped it down the well. “So he never knew what you’d done to him?”

  “Years later, when your dad was in dental school in Baltimore, I drove down on my motorcycle on a whim to see him. Should’ve known better, but I got this idea in my head that the two of us might have a brotherly visit. Shoot pool. Throw darts. Your father actually seemed happy to see me and was a good sport when I dragged him to a bar. A miracle considering what a Bible thumper he had become. He even drank two beers. Me, I drank too many. At some point during the night, he started talking about the things he saw in the student housing building where he lived. Even a little bit of booze always loosened your father’s lips, and he went on about how they had followed him from the theater. He had quit calling them that strange name by then, saying they were ghosts, plain and simple. Anyway, that’s when I realized I never should have let it go on so long. So I told him.”