Help for the Haunted (12 page)

I nodded, thinking of those boys who showed up at the door the night before. This guy was older than them, the age my father must have been when he left Philadelphia and moved to that row-house apartment in Baltimore, where ghosts appeared to him in the evenings. “Sorry about your parents,” he told me.

I kept quiet, waiting for the part where he turned the comment into something hurtful, but it didn't happen. “How do you know my name?”

“I used to date your sister.”

“
Rose?
” Most of the dates Rose brought home looked like the derelicts in the smoking area at school and acted just as aloof. This guy seemed too athletic, too polite, to have been one of them. I studied his brown eyes, floppy brown hair, and bulky shoulders. His sweats clung to his crotch in a way that gave a pretty exact picture of the anatomy beneath—a sight that would have caused my mother to make the sign of the cross and mutter about the perversities of youth today. Then I remembered the fights she and my father had with Rose about one boy in particular. “You're not Franky, are you?”

“No, I'm Dereck.” He reached his hand over the fence to shake mine. Between Cora's fake, noodly fingers and his missing ones, I wasn't sure which felt more odd. Behind him, the birds gobbled and flapped, moving closer. “Keep it down, ladies!” he yelled, letting go and waving his hands to shoo them away.

When he turned back, I asked if he ever felt bad about what was going to happen to them in a few weeks. Dereck smiled. At each side of his mouth, he had a pointed tooth, more yellow than the rest, lending him a wolfish look. “
Nahh.
Spend as much time with these morons as I do and you're glad to see them go. Besides, it's just a job I'm doing for extra cash this month. I work at my father's garage in town the rest of the time. But anyway, I wanted to ask about your sister. She was always so much fun. Is she still?”

“Some might think so.”

“Yeah, well, you're her sister, so you probably don't. Tell her hello from me, okay?”

Despite—or maybe because of—the memory of Rose and Cora kissing, I found myself saying, “Maybe you should give her a call and tell her yourself. I'm sure she'd like that.”

Dereck smiled again, flashing those wolfish teeth. “Maybe I will. Glad I ran into you, Sylvie. Remember, what's the rule?”

“Rule?”

He held up his hand, twiddling what wasn't missing. “Fingers off the fence.”

“Fingers off the fence,” I repeated.

With that, I picked up my father's tote and started down the last of the path until it opened up to the lot across from our house. As I passed, I glanced at the foundation, which looked like a drained swimming pool. A tree had fallen inside, knotted roots balanced on the ledge, twisted branches soaking in a puddle at the bottom not far from the rusted steel rods that rose up in one corner. I thought of how much time Rose and I once spent down there, drawing the details of our imaginary home. Nothing used to make me so gloomy as when the rain came and washed it all away. Back then, my sister cheered me up by pointing out how fun it would be for us to draw everything all over again.

I left those memories of what seemed like two other girls behind and made my way across the street. That's when I noticed another of those foil-covered dishes on our step. Not far from our house, a wood-paneled station wagon idled down the lane, a woman in a frumpy beige dress walking toward it.

“Wait!” I called, figuring she must be the one leaving all that food.

She turned my way, giving me a glimpse of her grim, head-on-a-totem-pole face, before quickening her pace, pulling open the door, and slamming it shut on the hem of her dress. As the station wagon sped away, I squinted at the license plate, making out the colors but not a single number.

After she rounded the corner and was gone, what was left for me to do but turn back to the house? Even in daylight, that bare bulb could be seen burning behind the dusty glass of the cellar window. Given how hung over Rose had been that morning, I expected to find her passed out in bed, but her truck was gone. With that light on, no part of me liked the idea of being home alone, but I hurried toward the door, scooping up the dish before stepping inside.

Stuffed shells—that's what we'd been tempted with this time. I deposited them on the kitchen counter for my sister to inspect then returned to the living room, where I pressed my good ear to the carpet same as I'd done months before. After hearing none of the rattling or breaking I once did, I sat on the sofa and turned on the TV. When the afternoon news came on at last, I listened as a perky anchorwoman repeated the same information about the elderly man who had come forward in the case. As she spoke, pictures flashed on the screen of Albert Lynch, then my parents, then, finally, a photo that news programs and papers loved to trot out: the shot of my mother standing on our front lawn, cradling Penny as if the doll was her living, breathing child.

After it was over, I lay back on the sofa and allowed myself to think of that night in the church. I remembered the way my eyes adjusted to the dark until I made out three silhouettes near the altar. When I called, none moved. Waiting there in the cold shadows, a detail drifted back to me from the few times I'd been inside that church. Painted statues surrounded the altar: a robed man with forlorn eyes and a beard, rosary beads dangling from his fingers; a nun with an oddly shaped habit, clutching a bible. But there had only been two statues. The thought led me to look more closely, which was when I saw that the third figure was moving after all.

“Hello,” I called out again. And again, it sounded like a question:
Hello?

And then there was the tumble of heavy footsteps moving out of the darkness in my direction, the sound of something exploding by my ear, then nothing until I woke in the hospital. How many times had I been over those details and so many others with Rummel and Louise? At some point during every meeting, Louise impressed upon me how crucial it was that my account never waver, saying, “We have Lynch's footprints and fingerprints inside that church. We have the details of his threats toward your parents. But what the jury needs to hear, Sylvie, is that you saw him with your own eyes when you stepped inside. That's what's going to seal the deal and put him away. That's what's going to make it so your mother and father rest in peace. And isn't that what you want?”

“Yes,” I told her whenever she asked that question.

Yes,
I thought as my eyes fell shut on the sofa.

When I opened them, the sunlight through the front window was gone. The TV had moved on to the evening news. As Peter Jennings droned on, I looked at the ticking clock: almost seven. What had caused me to wake, I realized, was the sound of someone at the door. Those boys again, I worried. But before I could get up and twist the locks, it swung open and Rose stepped inside. She wore a top I'd never seen before, nicer than her usual, with a little bow at the collar as though she was making a gift of herself. In the flickering blue light, I saw that she held something in her hands. Mail, I guessed, since she set it on the stairs to carry up later. After that, she turned to the cross on the wall and brought her hands together in a gesture that looked like she might be about to pray.

“
Whooaa!
” She noticed me at the last second and spun around. “What the hell are you doing just sitting here in the dark?”

“I fell asleep in front of the TV. I was tired after school.”

“Well, you scared the crap out of me. And try working a job when you're tired. It's not easy.”

I let the mention of a job go for the moment. Her praying, too. “Dereck says hello.”

“Dereck who?”

“I don't know his last name. He works at Watt's Farm and at a garage in town.” I held up my thumb and index finger, twiddling the way he did. “Missing digits. Werewolf teeth.”

“The one with brown hair?”

“Do you know a
blond
Dereck with missing fingers and werewolf teeth?”

“You know what, Sylvie? Every once in a while you're actually funny. But not this time. No one calls that doofus by his real name, so that's why I wondered.”

“What do they call him?”

“Seven.”

“Seven?”

“That's how many fingers he has left.” Rose hunted down the remote and collapsed into a wingback chair. As she flipped channels, I watched her kick off her shoes and rub her feet. It took a while for me to work up the courage, but I managed to ask, “Have you been down in the basement?”

“Nope. Why?”

“The light's been on. Ever since last night.”

“Probably something screwy with the wiring. Don't start thinking your weird thoughts. By the way, that detective called. So did Louise. There's been a development. They want us at the station in the morning. So you'll have to miss a few classes.”

I waited to see if Rose would say anything more about the development, but she did not. Rather than tell her what I'd read in the paper and seen on the local news, I just took to watching bits and pieces of TV before asking: “What state has license plates with a blue background and gold letters and numbers?”

“You don't know, Sylvie? We see them all the time. They're from one state over.
Delaware.
Why?”

“No reason. Did you mention something before about a job?”

From the way she rubbed her feet, I thought she'd tell me she found one waitressing. Instead, she said, “Try not to be too impressed. But you're looking at a bona fide tele-researcher for Dial U.S.A. in Baltimore. Today was my first day. I completed three phone surveys.”

“
Surveys?
About what?”

“Fast food. Deodorant. Cigarettes. They say opinions are like assholes and everyone's got one. But I say opinions are like teeth—everyone's got
hundreds,
and they love nothing more than to use them to chatter away.”

“Thirty-two,” I told her.

“Thirty-two what?”

“Humans have thirty-two teeth. Not counting the deciduous ones we lose and put under our pillow for the Tooth Fairy when we're kids. So according to your theory, every adult has thirty-two opinions. Not hundreds.”

My sister stared at me, massaging her foot still. “How the hell do you know that kind of crap anyway?”

“Our father was once a dentist. Didn't you ever talk to him about it?”

She let go of her foot, slouched in her chair, not answering.

“So do you like your job?” I asked, changing the subject.

“It's work, Sylvie. Nobody likes work. But I've already sucked up to my supervisor real good. Fran even forked over a Dial U.S.A. calling card, so I can take surveys home and do them from here. A privilege only people with seniority usually get. Anyway, I was thinking, if you help me, I'll give you a cut. Fifty cents for every completed survey. What do you say?”

It used to be I had money hidden in my room from that first essay contest and the others I'd gone on to win. But that changed the summer Abigail came to live with us. As much as I liked the idea of replenishing my supply, I knew better than to accept Rose's initial offer. We haggled, stopping whenever she found something good on TV. As I waited for a commercial, I found myself thinking of what Boshoff told me about his sick wife and the way he liked to read cookbooks when he couldn't sleep. Maybe, I thought, if I made enough cash, I'd pick him up a new one.

“A dollar a survey,” I told Rose when a commercial appeared at last. “Final offer.”

“Deal.”

I had plenty of questions: How would Fran know we weren't making up answers? What was the latest we could call people? But Rose told me she would explain everything in the morning. She didn't want to talk about Dial U.S.A. anymore. I knew better than to bother her, so I stretched out on the sofa again, figuring I'd stay up a while. My sister flipped channels until settling on a PBS documentary that I knew didn't interest her. But leaving that channel on was what we did when we wanted our house to feel the way it used to when our parents were alive, since that was all they watched.

This particular show was about famous speeches. As Winston Churchill addressed a crowd, I started thinking that I might do better than Rose when it came to making those survey calls. My voice was less pushy, like our mother's, which might put those people at ease. When I looked over, Rose had nodded off. Her eyes had a way of staying open the smallest bit when she slept. I kept staring at the milky slits until something caused her to stir.

“Why are you gawking at me?”

“I wasn't gawking.”

“You were so. Just like when I came in before. Now cut it out.”

I should have planned the next part, but the question came out almost of its own accord. “What do you think I should love about you?”

Rose opened her eyes more fully and sat up. I may as well have snapped on the lights, clapped my hands next to her ears. “
What?
”

“What do you think I should love about you?” I repeated, feeling more nervous the second time.

“What the hell kind of thing is that to ask, Sylvie?”

The Churchill speech should have inspired me to offer some eloquent response, but I felt stumped. Rose pressed the remote and the room went dark. Silent too, except for the ticking clock. I figured she'd given up waiting for an answer, because she told me she was too tired to go up to bed and that she'd just rest on the couch for a while. I picked up my things and walked to the stairs, glancing down at the mail and wondering if a letter from Howie might be in the stack. The moment I put my foot on the bottom step, I heard Rose's voice behind me. She sounded softer, a little like our mother for a change, when she said, “I'm your sister. Isn't that reason enough for you to love me?”

I wasn't sure what to say, so I told her she was right. Then I kept going up to my room, where I took out that small violet book and sat on my bed. Inside, I made a new list of “Little Things,” a list that looked like this: