Help for the Haunted (27 page)

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

A
n 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.

“Each has a mood, the way each person has a personality,” I remembered her saying. “Which would you be, Sylvie?”

“You mean, which would I want for our kitchen?”

“No. Which would best match who you are?”

The sharp and sudden sound of knuckles banging against the car window startled me. I looked up to see a man with a withered face and long yellow teeth that made me think of old piano keys. He made a rolling motion with his fist, wanting me to lower the window. Instead, I made sure my door was locked then glanced back for some sign of Heekin. The most I saw were the faded flags above the door of that bodega.

I figured the man outside the car wanted money, and I nervously waved him away. He stayed put, though. On the other side of the glass, I heard his muffled voice say, “
Sylvie?”

My name passing those wrinkled lips should have allowed me to relax, but it only left me more nervous. “Yes?” I offered in a tentative voice.

His mouth began moving again, but the
shhhh
made it difficult to piece together all that he was saying. At some point, he must have read the confusion on my face, because he stopped talking and made that winding motion with his fist again. At last, I cranked the window down a couple inches. “That's better,” he told me. “A little anyway. You
are
Sylvie, right?”

“How do you know my name?”

“That's what I was trying to explain. I know your uncle. Knew your father too when he was young, before he went off and got famous. Before— Well, I wasn't exactly the nicest to him back when he was a kid. He probably never mentioned me.”

As he spoke, the stories in Heekin's book came back to me. “Are you . . .
Lloyd
?”

He let out a breath, smiling with those piano key teeth. “You got it. I wouldn't have known it was you out here, except I saw that reporter and remembered him from when he came poking around months back. I was with Howie when you called earlier. Put two and two together. Anyway,
bingo
. Hello there, Sylvie.”

“Hello,” I said, warmer, though not lowering my window any farther.

“Guess I'll get to the point. Howie wouldn't appreciate me doing this, but if you want to see him, I suggest you come with me.”

“Come with you where?”

“Easier if I just show you.”

In the side-view mirror, there were only those flags above the bodega door. I imagined Heekin inside, watching a clerk smear mustard on our sandwiches or roaming the narrow aisles in an effort to excavate something edible among the cigarettes and magazines. “If you don't mind, I'll wait until that reporter gets back so he can come too.”

Lloyd looked down the block, making a tapping sound with his tongue against his teeth. “Try seeing your uncle with that guy in tow, and things aren't going to go so great. Tell you that right now. Howie doesn't want to talk to reporters. Especially that one.”

“Why doesn't he want to talk to him?” I asked, even though what I most wanted to know was why he didn't want to talk to
me
.

“Better off letting him do the explaining. If that's what you want, come with me.”

I studied Lloyd outside the car—his thick fingernails, chipped and worn and yellow as his teeth. Hadn't he been one of the people to laugh at my father? “Why are you here?” I couldn't help but ask.

Lloyd shifted his feet, kicking one of his work boots against the curb. Having this conversation through the narrow opening of the window frustrated him, I could tell. But he didn't say anything about it, leaning forward instead, putting a hand on the roof of the Beetle. “Back when your grandparents were alive, I was the maintenance person around this building. I hung on to the job even when it became a different sort of place. Now that Howie's back, I'm still here. So like I said, I'm making you the offer before your reporter friend shows up again. You want me to take you to your uncle or not?”

Some instinct warned me not to trust him, to roll up that window and wave him away as if he really were a vagrant begging for money. Even as those thoughts filled my mind, however, my hand reached for the door handle and pushed it open.

Outside the car, I saw that Lloyd was smaller than I realized, not much taller than me, in fact, with a loose belly and long, monkeyish arms that dangled at his sides. Rather than say anything more, he simply motioned with one of those arms. We walked back across the street, and I thought he might pull a key from his paint-splattered jeans for one of the doors out front. Instead, he went to the alley around the side. Before stepping into the shadows, I glanced down the block to see if I might catch a glimpse of Heekin exiting the bodega, our lunch in his hands. No sight of him, though. Considering that I'd dragged us there on what amounted to a lie, and he'd already been kind enough to forgive me, I knew it was wrong to wander off. But it seemed too late to turn back.

Inside that alley, void of garbage cans or graffiti or anything more than a single enormous Dumpster with a motorcycle parked behind it, we came to a stop at a flight of iron stairs. The stairs looked no different than a fire escape, I thought, and after a moment I realized it
was
a fire escape.

“See that door?” Lloyd pointed one story up. “It's unlocked. Just go on up and head down the hall. Third door on the right.”

I stood there, not moving.

“Don't wait for me, Sylvie. If I take you to him myself, he's going to be pissed. So do me a favor: just act like you figured it out on your own. I'll consider this one small way of making something up to your father.” With that, Lloyd turned and walked out of the alley. Gone as quickly as he came.