by John Searles
Abigail fixed me with a look, and I thought of that van she had first arrived in, all the years she and her father had spent wandering. “The secret is to not think so much,” was all she said. “Just feel the air. Just let go.”
After that, I pulled my hand inside and simply watched her, since I felt suddenly self-conscious about the whole thing. And as we drove the dark streets, I couldn’t help but notice how comfortable she seemed beside me, living Rose’s old life. Thinking that caused some suspicion to awaken inside me, one that kept nagging at me the rest of the ride home.
And then, hours later, I woke in my bed. No one had called my name, but I sensed her presence lingering on the other side of that wall. This time, I knocked.
“Yes, Sylvie?” Her response was almost immediate.
“They aren’t real, are they?”
It was, finally, the words that had festered in my mind ever since watching her in the car earlier, though they seemed to have been there long before that, I realized. In some way, it seemed I had always known.
The question brought about a pause, longer than any during our conversation the previous evening. I wondered briefly if Abigail knew what I meant. But at last she said, “The answer isn’t a simple yes or no, Sylvie. It’s harder to explain than that.”
“Then try.”
“Okay, then. But do you promise not to tell anyone? Because my wish is that things stay good. My wish is that we stay friends, Sylvie, always and forever.”
Is that what we had become? I was not so sure, but I was hungry for whatever she was about to tell me, so I said what she wanted to hear, “I promise.”
Abigail sighed loud enough that I could hear it through the wall. “Other than those few weeks in the winter when we’re in Oregon, we live in campgrounds and rest stops. We hardly ever see anyone at all. The only thing we do is go to whatever religious services he finds. One day, years ago, we slipped into a healing service in some auditorium in some town. I don’t even remember where since they are all pretty much the same after a while. People singing the identical songs, raising their hands in the air, falling to the floor when they think the Holy Spirit has overtaken them. But at this one service, the preacher announced that his inner circle was going to pray over a boy whose soul had been occupied by an unwanted spirit. They brought out the boy and laid hands on him. In big, booming voices, as he snarled and scratched at them, they ordered the devil to be gone. Looking at it all, I thought I could be that boy.”
I didn’t understand what she meant at first. “Why would you—”
“My father never listened to what I wanted—until I behaved that way. Then he paid attention. It put me in control instead of him. At first, that power meant nothing but making sure he was as miserable as me. But in the end, it led us here, to me living with your family instead of him.”
“I see. He’ll come back for you, though. Eventually.”
“I worried about that at first too. But it’s been so long now I’m pretty sure he’s given up. Before we came here, I made it so I was impossible to live with. He’s afraid of me now. Terrified, in fact. I did some pretty awful things to him. So if he’s smart, which he is in his own way, he’ll keep staying away. Because I want to live here for good, Sylvie. I want to go to school here in this town like a normal person, to have a normal family and a normal life.”
Abigail Lynch might have been the first person ever to look upon our family as normal, but I didn’t tell her that. Instead, I simply kept listening.
“Your father mentioned a lecture date he’s got coming up. He asked if I’d be willing to go onstage, the way your sister never would, to talk about how he and your mother helped me.”
I tried to recall an occasion when my father had ever asked my sister to join them onstage, though no such memory came. “What did you tell him?”
“That I’d do it. Happily.”
“But you’d be lying. And my father wouldn’t—”
“Please, Sylvie. It doesn’t matter as long as I do a good job for him. Besides, it’s not all a lie. There is something inside me, just like my father told you and your mother that first day. Some people might call it a demon. All I know is it’s something that made me live my life this way. It’s made me do terrible things too.”
Given the things she was saying, I felt grateful for that wall between us then, since I did not want to look at her. All summer, I’d been thinking about the deal my parents made, the one where things would return to normal come fall. I’d even been ticking off the days until early September arrived and we would make the trip to see Rose and maybe even bring her home. All along, I’d envisioned Abigail being gone by then, returning to that life she lived with her father. Now, I was not sure what would happen, but I didn’t say another word about it and neither did she.
In the days that followed, we lived two lives: the one where Abigail and I were those disembodied voices, communicating through the wall in the dark of our rooms. In that life, we stayed away from any difficult conversations. Instead, she taught me her mother’s preflight routine, and I repeated it back to her each evening, a kind of prayer that comforted her before sleep. And then there was our second life, the one we lived during the day. No longer afraid to go to the basement, Abigail spent hours down there, practicing her part in the talk with my father. He told her that all she had to do was get up onstage and tell her story, but she wanted every word, every gesture to be approved by him beforehand.
And then, just as my mother predicted, summer ended and school began. The publication of Heekin’s book was just weeks away, and though my father called him to request a copy, he never heard back. Meanwhile, my parents’ lecture came and went with Abigail joining them onstage to great success according to my father. I waited in the greenroom, like I used to with Rose, taking that old copy of Jane Eyre along, studying the words I underlined years before, and wondering what I’d seen in certain passages.
Eighth grade should have been something I looked forward to, considering it was my last year of junior high. But from the very first day I stepped through the doors to see the same old teachers and Gretchen and Elizabeth, who had never been quite the same toward me since that article appeared in the paper, I couldn’t help but feel that the year ahead was simply something to be gotten through.
What I looked forward to most was our visit to see Rose, since the ninety days would soon be up. My mother informed me that we would be going to Saint Julia’s the weekend after school began. No one mentioned enrolling Abigail as she’d hoped. Instead, she walked me to the bus stop each morning in her bare feet and met me there each afternoon.
Only a few days into the first week, I stepped off the bus to find her waiting for me the same as always. Even before I saw the fresh scratches and bruises on her toes, I sensed something different in her expression, which appeared glazed and distant. As the bus lumbered away, Abigail said in a voice less serene than the one I’d finally grown accustomed to: “Let’s not go home for a little while, okay?”
“Okay. But why not?”
“Your parents. There’s someone in the house with them.”
“Your father?” I said. There was a certain inevitability and relief in my voice. “Did he finally come back?”
“No,” she told me. “Not yet anyway. But that’s what I need to talk to you about. Your mom told me that he’ll be coming to get me any day now.”
She had begun walking, and I trailed along. Soon, she led us to the foundation directly across from our house, where Rose and I used to create our imaginary homes. The crumbling cement steps, the twisted iron rods in one corner, the fallen tree resting in a puddle—I looked over the edge at all those things, trying to imagine us playing there now.
Despite her bare feet, Abigail started down the steps. I worried she might cut herself, but she so rarely bothered with socks or shoes that she seemed unfazed. When she reached the bottom, Abigail picked up a stone and used it to write on the wall the way Rose and I once did with our pastel chal
ks. An X and a Y—that’s what she drew, placing them at a distance from each other. The sight of those letters put me in mind of that helter-skelter pattern on the van the day she arrived, the doodle of that headless animal with its endlessly swirling tail.
“If you’re in the mood to do algebra,” I said, trying a joke as I looked down at her inside the foundation, “I have plenty of homework in my bag. It’s all yours.”
“That’s not what this is,” she said in a serious voice.
“So what is it then?” I asked, glancing across the lane at my house, feeling impatient.
“It’s more like a geography lesson. One you are going to teach me.” She paused and looked up at me, and I couldn’t help glancing away again across the lane, until she called out. “If I’m at X, which is right here in Dundalk, but I want to be at Y, which is the Baltimore Train Station, what’s the best way to get there?”
It felt odd to have such a serious conversation in the daylight, rather than through the bedroom wall. “Ask my parents. They’ll—”
“They’ll tell me to forget it, Sylvie. They’ll make sure I stay put until my father comes to take me back. And I can’t do that again. Not anymore.”
I stopped and looked at her down in that foundation, the X and Y on the gray wall. “Where are you planning to go?” I asked at last.
“My mother used to have a friend—a nice lady who left the ministry before we did. The two of them wrote letters all the time. I remember that friend’s name and where she moved to.”
“Where?”
“I’m not telling you, Sylvie. Because once I’m gone you’ll feel obligated to tell your parents, to give them the answer they want.”
She was right, of course, but I couldn’t help feeling surprised she’d figured that out about me. I would always give them the answers they wanted. “Well, even if you get to this friend of your mom’s, then what?”
“Then she will help me contact my mother.”
The two of us stood there a moment, staring at that X and Y.
“It’s not the best plan, but it’s the only one I’ve got,” Abigail said finally. “So please. Help me.”
At last, I put down my books and descended those crumbling stairs into the old foundation, where I took the stone from her hand. The last time I had drawn on that wall, it was to create a pretend window, one with pink curtains that looked out onto a yard with lime-green grass and lavender flowers. Now, I drew a map of the path through the woods, past the poultry farm to the spot where you could hear the highway in the distance. “This would be your quickest way,” I told her. “The path opens up right behind this foundation. Just follow it to the highway. Then follow that into Baltimore. There must be signs for the train station, I’m sure.”
“Thanks,” Abigail said, sounding genuinely grateful. “But there’s one more thing. I need money, Sylvie. Enough for a train ticket at least.”
At some point during our late-night talks, I’d let slip a mention of those essay contests and how proud I was of winning them, how I’d been saving the money for something special, though I didn’t know what that was just yet. “Let’s go back to the house and have dinner,” I said, stalling before she mentioned the obvious. “Maybe go get ice cream and swim. It’s still warm enough.”
“No,” she told me. “It might still be warm enough for that. But it’s almost fall now, then winter will come. And he’ll be here to get me long before that. I have to do something. And I have to do it now.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, giving the answer I know my parents would have expected of me. “But I can’t help you.”
I turned again toward the stairs, put my foot on the first step as a few chunks of the cement crumbled away. From behind me, there came a shuffling sound. A moment later, when I reached the top of the steps, I heard the smallest of moans before Abigail shouted, “Sylvie! Look at me!”
Something in me did not want to turn back, but her voice grew louder as she called out again. And when I looked at last, I saw that she was standing by those twisted iron rods, the ones Rose speculated had once been the start of a fireplace. Blood pooled on one of her open palms. The sight caused me to gasp.
“Now do you see?” she said. “I do have something inside of me? It may not be the demons other people talk about, but it’s something that makes me capable of hurting myself if I need to. Hurting other people too unless I get what I want. So please. What I want is your help.”
It seemed I should have made some sudden move, scrambled back down the stairs to help her by trying to stop the bleeding. Or run quickly as I could away from her before she tried to harm me too. But, no. I just stood at the top of those stairs, staring at her a long moment, watching blood drool down her fingers and drip onto the cement of the foundation. Neither of us said a word. And then came the sounds of another voice, calling “Sylvie! Abigail!”
It was my father.
“I have to go,” I said. “We both do. You’ve got to clean that wound and bandage it up.”
Abigail still did not speak, but she reached over and dragged her other hand across one of those rods, releasing another moan, louder this time as her face contorted in pain. When she was done, she held her blood-smeared hands out to me and said simply, “The money. I know you have it. I can’t ever promise to pay you back, but please.”
“Okay,” I told her at last, since it seemed the only way to make her stop. Still, I couldn’t help stalling if only to give me time to figure out the best way to handle the situation. “I’ll give it to you tomorrow.”
“I can’t wait until tomorrow. I need that money tonight. When I’m asleep down in the basement, bring it to me.”
“The basement?” I said, surprised. “Why would you be sleeping down there?”
“Because, Sylvie, that’s the other thing I have to tell you. Your parents are putting me downstairs on the cot tonight. That person I mentioned, the one who’s at your house right now with them, well, it’s your sister. You won’t be going to see her this weekend, because Rose has come home at last.”
Chapter 21
Help for the Haunted
Most people, they are afraid to believe in ghosts. Me, I’m afraid not to believe. Because, well, what then? If there really is nothing else—nowhere to go after this, no way to linger on this plane to finish unsettled business if we must, then that means each moment, each breath, each passing second, is as ethereal as the wind. It means all we do here on earth—the going and coming, the loving and hating—it is all for naught. So, no. Ghosts don’t scare me. But no ghosts—that terrifies me.
ENOUGH ABOUT THAT, THOUGH. BACK TO WHAT I WAS SAYING PREVIOUSLY, MR. HEEKIN. FORGIVE ME, I MEAN, SAM. WHAT I HAVE ALWAYS WANTED, MORE THAN ANYTHING, IS TO BUILD A GOOD LIFE FOR MY DAUGHTERS AND MY WIFE. TO HAVE A FAMILY OF MY OWN WITH PROPER VALUES. GROWING UP, MY FATHER DRANK TOO MUCH. HE WAS NOT ABUSIVE, BUT HIS REMOTE NATURE WAS IN ITS OWN WAY A FORM OF ABUSE. MY MOTHER AND I HAD OUR TENDER MOMENTS BUT SHARED SUCH DIFFERENT INTERESTS THAT WE WERE NEVER CLOSE. AND MY BROTHER, WELL, HE DID THINGS I CAN NEVER FORGIVE. FOR ALL THOSE REASONS, I ENDED UP CREATING MY OWN WORLD.
WHAT’S THAT? EXCUSE ME?
NO, NO. THAT IS NOT WHAT I AM SAYING. THOSE THINGS I SAW—STILL SEE—ARE EVERY BIT REAL. WHAT I MEAN IS THAT I CREATED MY OWN LIFE APART FROM THE FAMILY I WAS BORN INTO. I MOVED AWAY. I FOUND THE BIBLE. I CAME TO BELIEVE THAT A LIFE LIVED IN THE LIGHT, FREE OF SIN AND REPROACH, PROTECTS US AS WE MOVE THROUGH THIS WORLD. IT KEEPS THE DARKNESS AT BAY.
The tape came to an end, and the cassette player in Detective Rummel’s car automatically ejected it. He asked if I wanted to listen to the other side. “Depends,” I said, my father’s voice echoing in my mind still. “How close are we?”
Rummel lifted a hand from the steering wheel, pointing to an impossibly high metal fence in the distance. I looked to see barbed wire curlicuing across the top, a compound of low-slung brick buildings on the other side. “We’ve got a little time still, Sylvie. But why don’t we wait until after to
hear more, so you can clear your head?”
Days. Weeks. Months. It might have taken that long to arrange a meeting with an inmate on the other side of that fence. But the morning after I found those candles in the trash, I drove in silence with my sister to the police station. The two of us had barely spoken since that fight in her truck over the money from Dial U.S.A., and our silence had become so palpable it felt as though we were both holding our breath, daring the other to let it out first. Once they separated us—Rose on that bench in the hall, me inside that achingly familiar interview room—Rummel and Louise asked if I was prepared to either recant or uphold my account of the evening last winter.
And that’s when I told them I wanted to see Albert Lynch. I refused to say anything more or even see my sister again until they made arrangements. Louise stepped out into the hallway to speak to Rose about the need for her permission, since I was a minor after all, and she was my legal guardian. While waiting, I asked Rummel about those interview tapes Heekin had told me about. For all the trouble I had given him, the detective maintained his kindness toward me. In an almost tender voice, he said that if I thought the tapes might help somehow, I was welcome to give them a listen. He brought a cassette player into the room, and my father’s interviews with the reporter filled the air around me. At different points on the recordings, Heekin’s faltering voice could not be heard, so it was just my father speaking between the occasional pause.
By midafternoon, Rummel poked his head into the room to inform me that the prison had okayed the visit and that Rose had begrudgingly acquiesced and granted permission too. The only thing we were waiting for was to find out if Lynch himself would agree to see me.
A short while later, word came that he did.
Nearly five hours after I entered the station, I walked out, carrying the one cassette I had yet to play. In the hallway, Rummel and I passed my sister on that bench, flipping through the same old safety brochures. It startled me to see her, since I assumed she had given up and gone home by then.
