Help for the Haunted (30 page)

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 somehow.”

“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.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing, actually. He just finished his beer and said he wanted to walk back to his apartment, since it wasn't far. We weren't ever big on hugging, so he shook my hand. I remember standing outside in the parking lot, watching him go. I didn't see or hear from him again for almost ten years, when Rose was born. I showed up to see her in the hospital, bringing the first of those horses from the track as a peace offering. But it was never the same between your dad and me. The truth was, it hadn't been since we were kids.”

I glanced across the avenue. If Heekin had noticed us, he gave no sign. We had come all that way, but none of what I'd learned put me any closer to the answer I needed most. “That night last winter,” I said to Howie, “I mean, the night they died, where were you?”

He looked to Lloyd, who stood quietly beside us on the sidewalk still, before turning back to me. “I've told you before, Sylvie. I was home in my apartment in Tampa. I'd lost another job and was drowning my sorrows in booze the way I used to do. I didn't come out of it for a few days.”

As he spoke, I thought of my mother teaching me how to sense what was inside a person. And though I didn't really believe I had any of her gift, I did believe that Howie was telling the truth.

“Sylvie!” Heekin had noticed us at last and rolled down his window. I called back that I'd just be another minute. And then I told my uncle I really did need to go.

This time, Howie didn't try to keep me there any longer. Instead, he told me he was glad, after all, that I'd come to Philly. He also said he never planned to go along with Rose's request for long. “That's why I kept telling you we'd see each other down the road. Once I got the place up and running, and started making money, I planned to revisit—well, let's call it the terms of my agreement with your sister. Even if she's resistant to the idea, I want to help you. I want to be a part of your lives.”

I stared down at his arms, noticing a tiny horseshoe among the playing cards. My uncle reached out and pulled me close, tighter than before, in a final hug. He spoke into my ear, choosing the good one by chance, and telling me to call anytime, that Rose wouldn't have to know. When he let go, I said good-bye to him and to Lloyd too, before crossing the avenue.

I expected Heekin to begin grilling me the moment I climbed into his cramped car. The thought of explaining all I'd learned before thinking it through myself felt daunting, and so I was grateful when the most he said was that I must be hungry, and to help myself to the sandwich and chips he had bought for me. I did just that, fishing lunch from the bag while the car's engine sputtered to life. As we chugged away from the curb and moved down the street I watched Howie and Lloyd grow smaller and smaller in the side-view mirror, standing beneath the drooping marquee with its crooked letters until they were gone.

It wasn't until we were on the highway south, sandwich and chips demolished, that Heekin spoke. He told me that even though it was just three o'clock, I probably felt tired after the long day. He said we could talk about whatever went on inside the theater when I was ready, same went for the unfinished stories he had begun telling on the drive up about his involvement in my parents' lives. I did feel tired—drained by it all, in fact—so my only answer was to nod and lean my head against the window. It felt as though only a short while passed before we were rolling down the off-ramp of the highway then winding our way through the narrow streets of Dundalk. That's when Heekin broke the silence at last, saying, “While I was waiting for you outside the theater, I thought of something.”

I looked away from the window at him. Those weedy gray strands of his hair caught the fading sunlight, the unusual hills and valleys of his face. “What's that?”

“Earlier, you mentioned you never wanted to forget certain things. It made me remember the tapes from my interviews with your parents. Their voices are on them. The police made me turn over the cassettes, but you should ask the detective for them, so you can have those pieces of your parents at least.”

By then, we had reached Butter Lane. Heekin stopped in the exact spot where I'd met him that morning. I told him I would inquire about the tapes, and then he gave me his business card with his home number written on the back in case I needed to reach him. I thanked him and pushed open the door. The question I'd started to ask him back at the preserve had been niggling at my mind ever since, and it made me stop. “Were you and my mother—” I paused, finding it hard still, to say the rest of what I wanted to know.

“In love?” Heekin said, doing the job for me.

I nodded.

“No, Sylvie. I would have wanted something more between us. But she was loyal to your father and to you girls too. I'd be lying if her rejection didn't fuel some part of my motivation in refusing to change certain details in my book.” He stopped and let out a sigh that seemed weighted with regret. “Anyway, speaking of my book, whatever more you need to know can be answered in the pages you've been avoiding. Maybe it's best if you discover it there. It might not be tomorrow or next week or next year. But I'm guessing at some point, you'll be ready.”

Even as he said those things, I knew the time had come. When I was alone in the house again, I needed to dig that book out of the police bag in Rose's closet and finish it at last. There seemed no point in telling Heekin that, however, so I just thanked him again and got out of the car. Daylight had begun to slip away, so he flicked on his headlights to help me see as I headed down the lane. When I reached the house, I listened as his VW bug stalled out before he started the engine again and sped off down the main road.

Standing at the edge of the property, not far from the
NO TRESPASSING!
signs that had never done much good, I looked at Rose's truck in the driveway, the light in the basement window, which still glowed. Once I walked through the front door, I knew I wouldn't walk out again until it was time to go to the station in the morning. Fifteen, maybe fourteen hours left, I guessed. The thought, coupled with the idea of facing my sister, made me want to put off going inside a little longer.

As night fell, I wandered to the empty foundation across the street. For a long while, I stood on the edge, not far from the twisted roots of the fallen tree. Same as Rose used to do, I reached down for a handful of rocks, tossing them at the metal rods that snaked up out of the cement in one corner. And then my memory of Rose was replaced by a memory of Abigail, sketching a map on the wall with a stone in the moments before blood pooled on her palms.

Now do you get it, Sylvie?
Now do you understand how much I need your help?

When I grew tired of thinking about Abigail, tired of tossing rocks too, I sat on the ledge, legs dangling over the side the way a person sits by a swimming pool. Enough time passed that the last of the sun disappeared and the moon began to loom over the edge of the woods. And then, amid the never-ending
shhhh,
came the sound of an engine, like an animal rumbling down the street. I looked to see the glow of headlights against the bare tree branches. They came to a stop halfway down the lane, not far from the spot where I witnessed those two witches kissing on Halloween night.

Slowly, I stood. I saw a figure step out of the car and walk in the direction of our house, carrying an object of some sort. Another teenager with a doll to throw on our lawn—that was my first thought, since the person was difficult to make out with the car's headlights so bright behind. But when the figure came closer, I realized it was the woman with the grim, head-on-a-totem-pole face, wearing the same sort of frill-less dress.

Just as I'd done while waiting for birds to land in my hands, I did not move. The woman reached the edge of our property and paused. I waited for the moment when she stepped into our yard—and
that's
when I began moving, hurrying along the far side of the road in the direction of her idling station wagon. She had left her door ajar, and I slipped inside, leaning across the seat and reaching for the glove compartment, which popped right open. First thing I pulled out was a bible, thin pages highlighted and dog-eared same as my mother's. I dropped it on the floor and fumbled for an envelope, pulling out a yellow slip of paper. In the dim glow of the dashboard, I looked to see:

Nicholas Sanino, 104 Tidewater Road . . .

Nearby, I heard footsteps and what sounded, oddly, like my mother's humming. Lifting my head to look back, I saw that the woman had already left our property and was on her way to the car, close enough that she'd see me if I stepped onto the road. That's what I should have done, of course: gotten out and confronted her. But panic compelled me to shove everything back in the glove compartment then throw myself over both sets of seats, until I landed with a
thud
in the very back of the station wagon. I reached around and found a blanket, gritty with sand, which I tugged over my body.

A moment later, I heard her arrive at the car. That song she hummed was too full of false cheer, too easily recognizable, to be anything like my mother's, I realized. And where my mother's tune had a way of slowly fading from her lips, the woman's stopped abruptly. In the silence, I braced myself for the wide back door of the station wagon to swing open, for the blanket to be yanked off and for her to discover me. But there was only the sound of a door closing up front in a quiet click, the sound of a buckling seat belt, the sound of the car shifting into gear, and then the feeling of motion as the woman turned the station wagon around.