Help for the Haunted (3 page)

“Boo!” Brian yelled as he watched me walk away.

When Rose came to a stop, I opened the truck door and climbed inside. Since she'd hacked off her hair again a second time last winter, it had grown back long and wild, black as mine still, but with a reddish hue that hadn't been there before. Rose liked to keep the windows down and let the strands whip around her, so that when she came to a stop she had to pull the mess away from her face.

“Hey,” she said from behind her tangled hair.

“Boo!” Brian called from the curb, waving his hands and jumping up and down.

“What's his problem?” my sister asked as her pale, broad face made an appearance, dark eyes blinking.

“He's trying to scare me.”

She made a
pfft
sound, then leaned over and gave him the finger. My sister flipped people off like nobody else: thrusting her arm, popping that middle digit fast and flashy as a switchblade. “Butt-holes like him are the second reason I hated this school.”

“What was the first?”

“Food sucked. Teachers blew. And I
hated
homework.”

That's three,
I thought but didn't say since she had moved on to yelling at Brian.

“Step in front of my truck so I can squash your balls!”

“Boo!”

“Is that the only word in your vocabulary, you moron?”

In a quiet voice, I said, “Just go. It's easier to ignore him, Rose.”

She turned back to me. “Sylvie, if we don't stand up to him and all the rest, they'll never leave us alone.
Never.
”

“Maybe so. But right now, I'd rather go to the mall.”

Rose blew out a breath and gave it some thought before letting it go. “Guess it's Dinky-Dick's lucky day. Otherwise, I'd get out and pummel him.” She popped her middle finger one last time before slamming on the gas.

“Boo!” Brian shouted as our giant tires squealed. “Boo! Boo! Boo!”

He kept at it, like a ghost haunting an abandoned house on a hill. If you believe in ghosts. I did and I didn't. But mostly, I did.

Nine months. That's how long my mother and father had been dead.

And yet, despite what I told Brian, those things my parents kept in the basement—things so many people in Dundalk wondered about whenever they laid eyes on my sister and me—they were down there still.

 

Chapter 3

The
Shhhh . . .

A
n hour—that's how long we spent roaming the echoing corridors of the mall, riding the escalators in a daze brought on by the bright lights and smells of chocolate chip cookies and cinnamon. There was so much to take in that Rose didn't even walk ahead of me the way she usually did. She was the more attractive sister, with a taller, more athletic body and what people call a handsome face on a girl. I caught men giving her a once-over as we passed, but Rose ignored them. As we wandered, I had a happy feeling for the first time in a long while, because our lives felt almost normal.

At JCPenney, the catalogs we had known for so many years, since our mother once shopped only from those pages, sprang to life before our eyes. In the Junior Miss department, I stopped to feel a knee-length black dress with a cinched waist and narrow collar. I liked the dress but worried it looked like one Wednesday Addams might wear, which would only encourage the Brian Waldrups of the world.

As it turned out, my opinion on that outfit was unimportant. Rose led me to a clearance rack in the back and told me to have fun choosing. The clothes there consisted of a hodgepodge of flared cords and snap-up shirts I had no interest in wearing. The moment my sister wandered away, I wandered too. No sooner had I found another rack when she appeared again and asked what I thought I was doing, then ordered me to wait in the dressing room while she picked my clothes. Considering the bickering we'd done about her driving on the way there (too fast, too much attention to the radio, too much wind through the windows, too much lane changing, not enough signaling), I didn't want to stir up more trouble. I went to a booth and stripped down to my underwear and bra, which fit too tightly after months of not buying anything new.

I was good at waiting. Last winter I had done a lot of it, lying in my hospital bed and listening to the footfalls of nurses in the hall, the tinny laugh tracks of sitcoms drifting from other patients' rooms, pages crackling over loudspeakers. And hearing, without having to listen for it, the unending sound that filled my ear. “It's like the noise inside a seashell,” I told the doctors, “or when someone is telling you to shush.”

Shhhh . . .

Not Rose. Not Uncle Howie. Not Father Coffey. Not anyone I knew. Other than a nurse or doctor or hospital social worker, the first person I saw standing by my bed when I opened my eyes was Detective Dennis Rummel. The man had bright blue eyes and snowy hair, the sort of blocky jaw you might see on an old statue. Odd, perhaps, that a detective would slip his large hand into my small one and hold it for so long. Odd that he would take the time to fill my cup with water from the plastic pitcher and ice from the noisy machine down the hall. Odd, too, that he would adjust my pillows and blankets to make certain I felt something close to comfortable. But he did all those things.

“The more you can tell me about what happened, Sylvie,” the detective said in his steady voice that made me think of a statue too, the way one might sound if it parted its lips to speak, “the better chance we have of finding whoever is responsible. That way your mom and dad can rest in peace. And that's what you want for them, isn't it?”

I nodded, even as I thought of my father saying,
People don't need to know what goes on inside our house . . .

“Why don't we start with what led you to the church in the first place?” Rummel asked, sitting on the edge of the bed, slipping his hand into mine once more.

The question left me suddenly thirsty. I wanted more water from the pitcher. I wanted more ice from the machine down the hall. I wanted my sister, but Rummel had not yet mentioned Rose. So instead of bringing up any of those wants, I told him that the phone rang after midnight, that my mother came into my room and woke me to go to the church.

“Did she seem upset to you?”

I shook my head.

“And did she tell you who called or who they were going to meet?”

Shhhh . . .

As Rummel fixed his blue eyes on me, that noise grew louder. I swallowed, my throat feeling even more dry than before, the answer nesting on my tongue.

“I know this is hard, Sylvie. No one should have to go through something so unspeakable, particularly at such a young age. So I appreciate you being brave. I also appreciate you giving me the answers as best you can remember. Understand?”

I nodded.

“Good. We'll have the phone records pulled. But in the meantime, it's important that you tell me, did either of your parents say who called?”

You and Rose shouldn't say anything to anyone. . .

“No,” I said, my voice trembling over such a short word.

“Not a mention?”

No matter who it is . . .

“They never told me about the things they did. And on the drive to the church, we were quiet on account of how late it was and because of the slippery roads.”

The detective looked away, and I had the sense that he was unsatisfied with that answer. His gaze moved from the drab curtains to the flickering TV. “Okay, then,” Rummel said, turning back to me. “Tell me why your parents took you along but left your sister at home.”

“At home?”

“Yes.”

I was quiet, listening to that sound in my ear. I pressed my fingers to the bandage, squeezed my eyes shut.

“Are you all right? I can call the nurse. She's right outside in the hall.”

“It's okay.” I opened my eyes, looked at my feet by the end of the bed. “Didn't Rose tell you why she was at home?”

“Sylvie, she's at the station right now being asked the same questions. After we discovered you and your parents at Saint Bartholomew's, an officer was dispatched to your house where we found your sister. Now it's crucial that we piece your separate accounts together in order to help. So tell me, why did your parents leave Rose behind?”

“They didn't say,” I told him..

“Was it unusual for the three of you to go somewhere without her?”

Two pairs of cords flew over the top of the dressing room just then, followed by flannel shirts. “Hurry up and try the stuff on,” Rose said. “I have to pee like a pony.”

If there is such a thing as putting away a memory until later, that is what I did. I gathered the clothes from the floor, unable to keep from muttering the word, “Racehorse.”

“Huh?” my sister said from the other side of the door.

“ ‘I have to pee like a racehorse.' That's the saying. There's no pony involved.”

A silence came over my sister that told me she was doing some big thinking. All that brainpower led to her saying, “Are you telling me ponies don't pee too?”

I had slipped on brown cords and a flannel, half listening as I studied myself in the mirror. Funny that we were discussing horses, because I looked like a stable girl. “Ponies pee,” I said, tugging off the cords. “But that's not the—”

“Ha! Got you, nerd brain. Now let's move it, because I really do have to go.”

“There must be a bathroom around here, Rose.”

“Public toilets give me the skeeves. I'll go at home if I don't wet myself first.”

My mood had shifted by then, same as it did whenever I thought about Rummel's questions. And even though I wanted to get dressed and walk out of the store, I needed new clothes so I kept trying them on. Each outfit looked worse than the next, until finally I dressed in the capris and tank I wore to the mall and stepped out of the booth.

“Where are you going?” my sister asked.

“To pick out my own stuff.”

“You can't.”

“Why not?”

Rose didn't offer up an answer right away so I turned in the direction of the Junior Miss department, figuring the dress on that mannequin deserved a second look.

“Because I need to watch our budget, that's why,” she blurted.

I knew we didn't have much money, not even when our parents were alive. People didn't pay well for the services they provided. They wrote letters begging for help and only occasionally enclosed a check to cover gas or airline tickets. Or they showed up on our doorstep with a glazed look in their eyes, offering promises to undo the debt later if only my parents could make all that had gone wrong in their lives right again—there, too, money rarely materialized. Instead, we relied on income from my parents' lectures to support us. Once Sam Heekin's book was published, however, that income dried up. Still, I'd seen my sister blow plenty on things we couldn't afford, namely her truck, purchased with insurance money and the sale of our parents' Datsun after the police released it from impound. When I turned around and reminded her of that, she broke into an all-out fit, her voice pitching higher and higher until she yelled, “Whether you like it or not, Sylvie, I'm your legal guardian now!”

With that, she walked out of the store.

Whenever that phrase passed her lips it caused some part of me to fold in on itself. I remembered, of course, the lawyers, my parents' nonexistent will, the endless paperwork and court appointments, Norman's visits and now Cora's. I remembered, too, the afternoon Uncle Howie had been located somewhere near his apartment in Tampa, days after that night at the church. The way he came around, announcing his intention to take care of us, and the way that ended when Rose and the attorneys raised the issues of his DUIs, a drug arrest, and his lack of any consistent history of involvement in our lives. And yet, the knowledge of how our situation came to be did nothing to keep that feeling away. I stared down at the flat red carpet in JCPenney's while customers who had been watching our feud slowly returned to their shopping.

“Honey,” a passing clerk said, “are you okay?”

I looked up at the
Can I help you?
pin stuck to her enormous bosom but did not make eye contact. Instead, I just nodded before heading out to the parking lot. I couldn't find the truck at first, and I wandered the rows of vehicles, certain Rose had left without me. When I finally did spot it, there was no sign of her inside. The heat of the passenger door warmed my back as I waited. For a place teeming with cars, it seemed strange that so few people were around. In the distance, a woman strapped a wailing baby in a car seat. Farther away, a man in a green uniform arranged bags in his trunk. Other than that, it was just me out there until I heard keys rattle nearby. I turned to see Rose coming my way, sipping a mammoth soda and devouring an oversized bun out of a carton.

“Where were you?” I asked.

“You wasted so much time, I had no choice but to use the scummy restroom. And then I got hungry.”

She unlocked my door, went around to hers. As we climbed inside, Rose said she would leave it to me to explain the way I dress to Cora if the woman stopped babbling long enough to ask again. My sister started the truck, the monstrous engine vibrating the floor beneath my feet. “Besides, I barely notice what you wear when you walk out of the house anyway. More important: there's nothing I like less than hovering over a toilet seat in some filthy restroom. So don't make me do it again.”

On the drive back to our faded Tudor hidden among the thinning cedars and birch groves at the end of Butter Lane, neither of us spoke. Rose kept the windows down and failed to signal when she changed lanes, but the radio remained off. As the last of the sunlight vanished, I stared at the dead leaves on the lawns we passed. One family had carved their jack-o'-lantern too soon and, with three days to go until Halloween, already the face was caving in on itself.

As we turned into our sloping driveway, past the faded
NO TRESPASSING!
signs, I couldn't help but glance at the basement window. A light used to remain on down there at all times. Considering the reasons my parents kept it on, I should not have longed for the sight of that yellowy glow seeping beneath the rhododendrons, but I couldn't help myself. Not that it mattered. The bulb burned out sometime after their deaths, and neither of us had gone down to replace it.

“Isn't it funny?” I said. “All those times Mom and Dad went away and you fought for us not to have a nanny so we could be alone. Now, here we are. Just the two of us.”

Rose cut the engine. As we listened to the faint
tip-tap
beneath the hood, she untangled her hair, and I waited for that vibrating sensation to leave my feet.

“Like that time with Dot,” I began.

“Why do you have to talk about that stuff?”

“I just—”

“I don't want to think about the past anymore, Sylvie. Mom and Dad chose their lives and beliefs and career. And look what happened. I know I should never have made that call. Believe me, I wouldn't have if I'd had any idea what would come of it. But Albert Lynch would have found a way to get to them anyway. Or if not him, some other freak. So I don't think it's good for either of us to go on about what used to be anymore. Once we get through the trial come spring, we have to leave it behind.”