Help for the Haunted (17 page)

“Okay!” Rose leaped up from the table and actually hugged him, a sight I had not seen in a long time. She even kissed his forehead, leaving the last of the baby blue smudges from her lips on his creased skin.

Happy as that moment made them both, some part of me still worried and waited for that once hostile Rose to resurface. I thought for certain the driving lessons would end in a screaming match. But I was wrong. Things went so smoothly that within a few months Rose had her license, with a DMV photo that showed her smiling big and wide. And she loved nothing more than being behind the wheel, so she found any excuse. When I stayed after school, she picked me up. Sunday mornings when the four of us needed to get to church in the gym, Rose was always ready and waiting at the wheel. She even began grocery shopping with my mother just so she could drive. Best of all, as far as my father was concerned, she willingly played chauffeur when we headed out on more of my parents' lecture trips and television bookings.

Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware . . .

Philips Convention Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania . . .

Webster Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts . . .

None of those places or any others brought about the drama of Ocala. Rather, things went as originally intended: while my mother and father talked to crowds, which grew larger each time, or when they appeared on a dozen local and a few national TV shows, Rose and I waited in the greenroom. No grapes thrown at the ceiling. No sneaking through doors to hear what they were saying. My sister simply passed the time spinning the car keys on her finger while reading those classics about orphans my mother pressed upon us, books Rose once refused. I spent the hours reading as well, though a different type of book held my attention now:

Encyclopedia of Visions, Possessions, Demons & Demonology
by M. E. Roche.

Hard to believe, but soon nearly two years had passed since that visit from Dot, which meant the deadline for the Maryland State Student Essay Contest had rolled around again. This year I was working on a slightly less overblown paper than my first contest submission. Late one night, after hours spent working on my new entry about the Cold War, I went downstairs for a drink. I had just turned on the faucet when a voice came from behind, “You a real girl? Or one of those things I keep seeing?”

I whipped around. A man was slumped in a chair at the table, his face riddled with so many creases and folds it looked stitched together. His eyes were bleary and red, his salt-and-pepper hair mussed from sleep, his beard scraggly. “You're . . .” I began as the water kept running behind me, “ . . . you're not supposed to be up here.”

The man did not respond. He just blinked his bloodshot eyes and tapped his fingers against the table in such a determined way he might have been typing. A few nights before, I'd heard the phone ring then listened from my bed to the knock on the front door not long after, followed by the
clomp-clomp-clomp
of footsteps heading to the basement. So I knew we had someone with us in the house, but I'd never actually seen him. I'd never actually seen any of them before, I realized.

“There's a cot downstairs,” I said. “And I saw my father take down a sandwich and a pitcher of juice earlier tonight. So you have everything you need down there. My parents don't allow—” I stopped, searching for the word to describe this man and the others my parents welcomed into our home. “They don't allow haunted people up here.”

That strange finger tapping of his came to an abrupt stop. He stood from the chair, and I saw that he was much taller than I realized, so tall his head knocked the ceiling lamp that hung above the table, causing it to rock back and forth. In a voice as distant as his expression, he told me, “Your mother. She's been reading scripture to me. Things in that book never sounded so good as they do they coming from her mouth. And your father, well, he mostly asks questions about the things I've been seeing.”

The shifting light created a helter-skelter feeling in the kitchen, making me all the more nervous. I reached behind and turned off the faucet before walking to the basement door and pulling it open. When the man moved by me toward the steps, the air smelled like sweat and old clothes and damp leaves. At the top of the stairs, he paused, and I couldn't help but ask, “What did you mean before? When you wanted to know if I was a real girl?”

“Since the night I got here, I've been seeing things. Down in that basement.”

I looked past him at the bottom of the stairs, expecting to see whatever it was dart between the shadows. “What . . . things?”

He just shook his head and started down the steps without answering. I watched until he was gone from view, then shut the door. Before going back up to my room, I found myself walking to the curio hutch in the living room and staring at all those books behind the glass cabinet. I thought of what that man just said. Then I thought of my sister sneering at that phony ghost at Disney World, of her asking if I believed the things our parents claimed to be true. In search of some sort of proof, I dragged over a chair, climbed up, and reached for the key my father kept hidden on top. Possessive as he was about those books, it was odd how carelessly they were shelved: haphazardly piled, upside down, wrong side in. I pulled out what looked to be the oldest and thickest of all. Back in my room, I made a cover out of a paper bag, same as for my textbooks, writing simply
HISTORY
on the front.

Inside the worn pages, I
did
discover a history, different from any I'd read before, about people from long ago who suffered strange afflictions and reported otherworldly visions. Of all the stories I read, none stayed with me so much as those about the girls. The first I encountered was Marie des Vallées, born in 1590 into a poor family in Saint-Sauveur-Landelin, France. At the age of twelve, Marie's father died. Her mother remarried a butcher, “whose humour and manners resembled those of the animals he worked with” and who beat Marie with a stick until she fled. For years she lived on the streets until in 1609 a female “tuteur” took her in. After moving into the woman's house, Marie began to experience what the clergy labeled as symptoms of demonic possession. On countless occasions, she fell to the ground, “mouth agape, emitting otherworldly cries of agony and terror.” If she walked by a church, never mind attempting to enter, her body collapsed and convulsed until she was carried away.

Another girl, more famous than the first Marie, was also born in France, though later, in 1844. Her name: Marie-Bernarde Soubirous, though she came to be known simply as Bernadette. A devout peasant girl, Bernadette began seeing apparitions at the age of fourteen. She described her first sighting as, “a gentle Light that brightened the dark recess, and there in the Light, a smile. A girl dressed in a white dress, tied with a blue ribbon, a white veil on her head, and a yellow rose on each foot.” Despite early skepticism, the church declared Bernadette's sightings worthy of belief. The site in Lourdes where her body was buried became a shrine where millions search for miracles.

A
nd then came a different kind of trip for our family. I first learned of it when Rose picked me up one Friday from school. On the dashboard, I noticed a map with a route highlighted in yellow. “Planning a vacation?” I asked.

“If I was, it would be to pretty much any place
but
the Buckeye State.”

“Texas?”

Rose groaned. “Texas is the Lone Star State, Sylvie. Buckeye, that's Ohio. Anyway, Dad will tell you, but we're going there this weekend.”

“For another talk?”

Rose shook her head. “You know those calls we've been getting at night lately? Apparently they've all been from the same person.”

“Who?”

“Don't know. Didn't ask. My guess: the owner of a house where weird crap keeps happening. Or maybe a parent with a kid who's messed up, like so many of them.”

It had been some time since I thought of that girl in the bushes out front of the convention center in Ocala—long enough that it took me a moment to pull the memory into focus. As I stared out the window of the Datsun, I saw not the houses we passed, but that father with blood on his face as he called into the shadows. I remembered the way he approached my mother for help, the way she knelt, humming that song while reaching a hand toward those shiny, blinking eyes. “Albert and Abigail Lynch,” I said aloud as we made the turn onto Butter Lane.

“What?”

“That night in Ocala. Remember the man with the scratch marks? The one calling into the bushes?”

Rose smiled. “How could I forget a freak like that?”

“I thought maybe he was calling for a lost cat. But it was actually his daughter. A girl named Abigail. Mom helped them after you drove off with Uncle Howie.”

The most Rose had to say was, “Mom helped them, huh?”

“Yes. I witnessed it.”

“Well, good for you, Sylvie.” When Rose spoke next, we were turning into the driveway, and a trace of her old self shimmered beneath her words. “We better go inside and pack. Dad wants to leave at some ungodly hour in the morning so we get there by noon. You've seen firsthand how helpful they are when people need them.”

Five and a half hours—that's how long it took to reach the Ohio state line, another two to Columbus. Rose drove except for a break in Pennsylvania when my father insisted on taking the wheel so she could rest. Otherwise, he sat beside her in the passenger seat, making notes on a legal pad. My mother sat in the back with me, knitting or reading her bible while humming that tune I recognized by now but still did not know the words to. My book kept me busy, but the more I read, the more the stories began to seem like just that:
stories
. Ancient and far away. Not much different than if I'd been reading about a world inhabited by witches who tempted pretty girls with poison apples. I began to get the sinking feeling that I was getting further from proof instead of closer.

At a gas station stop in Wheeling Creek, Ohio, I ran inside to pee in the grimy restroom. When I came out, my mother and father stood by the car, stretching their legs while Rose waited behind the wheel. As I got closer, I caught scraps of their conversation.

My mother: “ . . . scratches again.”

My father: “ . . . needs to be removed from the home.”

But that was the most I heard. When we climbed into the car, however, my mind filled with thoughts of the Lynches.

The plan had been that my parents would pick up Kentucky Fried Chicken for Rose and me then leave us at the hotel until they returned. When we arrived, though, the gum-chomping woman at the counter informed us that the room would not be cleaned for a few hours. After some back and forth, my parents decided Rose and I would drop them in the Grandville neighborhood where they were headed. We had permission, along with a twenty my father pulled from my wallet, to see a movie at the Cineplex downtown.

Orchard Circle, like Butter Lane, turned out to be a pretty name for a place that wasn't. Neglected two-story homes surrounded a dilapidated park with a rusted chain-link fence. When Rose stopped the car, my father gathered his equipment from the trunk while my mother took out her bible. She told Rose and me to enjoy our time at the movies then gave us kisses before getting out.

As we drove away, I stared at that second-floor apartment—the Lynches' place, I felt more and more certain—where the curtains were all drawn. I watched my parents move up the outdoor stairs to the door at the top. After knocking, my father fussed with his tote while my mother waited beside him, hands clasped, that bible between, in a way that told me she was praying. I kept staring back to see if it would be Albert who answered the door, but we turned the corner before anyone opened up.

Despite my preoccupation with whoever was inside that apartment, I was excited to go to the movies so I did my best to put it out of my mind. It wasn't that we weren't allowed to go to the movies at home. My father grew up working in a theater, after all, so he loved them. But we went as a family, which meant my sister and I ended up sitting through films like
Agnes of God
or
Mask
—not exactly our top choices. That afternoon in Columbus, we looked at the splashy posters outside the theater for
Die Hard, Beetlejuice, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?,
and I could tell Rose was as excited as me. We compromised on our mutual second choice then spent what was left on popcorn, Kit-Kats, and sodas, something my parents never allowed.

As Rose and I sat in the dark, fingers sticky with butter and chocolate, watching Michael Keaton play a cartoonish ghost, that unsettled feeling slipped away and I forgot about what my parents were doing back on Orchard Circle. When the lights came up, the happy mood lingered as we walked to the lobby. We didn't get far before an old man, broom in hand, called to us. “You wouldn't happen to be Rose and Sylvie Mason, would you?'

“Who wants to know?” Rose said.

He pressed his lips together, confused by her answer. “Well, I do. Is that you?”

“Maybe. And what if it is us? Do we—”

“That's us,” I said. “Why do you ask?”

“Oh, good. Your dad called the theater. He asked us to keep an eye out for you. Good thing it's the middle of the day, because I'd never have spotted you girls in the crowds at night. Anyway, he wanted us to let you know that he and your mom aren't ready to be picked up yet, so you can take in another movie if you like.”

The news thrilled me, though my sister let out a groan. “What's wrong?” I asked.

“How does he expect us to do that? He only gave me twenty, and we blew the extra cash on the popcorn and crap.”

As Rose and I debated our options, the old man went back to sweeping. Finally, we decided there was nothing to do but drive around town for another couple hours, though even Rose said she was sick of driving by then. We were walking toward the exit when that man called us back. “Follow me,” he said, leading the way to a set of doors. “This movie's about to start. It's a personal favorite. Not many people watching, so the show's on the house. Just don't tell anyone.”