Help for the Haunted: A Novel

by John Searles

  For a long moment after that, no one spoke. My sister had stopped kicking the rug a while before, so the only sound in the room was the ticking of the clock. At last, my father said, “Rose, go upstairs and pack your things.”

  “Pack?” I said. “What for?”

  Rose stood from the sofa. “I told you, Sylvie,” she said on her way toward the stairs. “You should have kept your big mouth shut. You think you’re the smartest in this family, but you’re really the stupidest of all.”

  “Enough of that,” my father told her. He was no longer yelling, though, nobody was. “Go to your room. We’ll leave in a half hour.”

  “Leave?” I said to my parents as I saw my sister slip out of the living room and walk away up the stairs. “Leave where? I told you I was the one who did it.”

  “From what I just heard,” my father said, “it was Rose who kept urging you to sneak downstairs and watch TV. Am I right?”

  I was quiet, because the truth was being used against us both now.

  “And it was Rose who told you the smart thing to do was get rid of Penny. Am I right there too?”

  Again, I did not respond.

  “So it’s apparent that Penny is not the one having a bad influence around here. It’s your sister controlling things. Putting ideas in your head too. And I’m tired of it.”

  My mother kept her eyes on the floor. “But Sylvester, can’t we try one more time? What about her senior year?”

  “We talked about this. Enough trying. It’s not just about what happened last night. It’s about getting Rose’s head right.”

  I opened my mouth to try and convince him not to take Rose wherever they were going, but I knew it was useless. Instead, I turned and ran upstairs and down the hall to my sister’s room. When I stepped inside, the cinnamon-colored suitcase we shared was wide open on the floor, a heap of clothes tossed inside along with her black sneakers. I wondered if she might yell at me about what I’d done, but Rose stayed quiet, grabbing things at random: a stash of heavy metal records, a few half-melted candles, a carton of cigarettes hidden in the back of her closet, even her old globe. I watched her, saying nothing until she reached under her bed and pulled out a forgotten horse. Pure white with shimmering blue eyes and a mane made of miniature white feathers like an Indian headdress. Same as me, Rose tugged at a leg to see if it might snap off. When that didn’t work, she pulled two limbs in opposite directions, wishbone style, but that wouldn’t break them either.

  “Here, Sylvie.” She handed the horse to me. “You might as well keep the last unbroken one. Write and let me know how long it survives after I’m gone.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Jail. Or something close to it.”

  “I’m serious, Rose.”

  “Some school. Saint Julia’s, I think it’s called. Ask Mom or Dad about it.”

  “Let’s talk to them again. Convince them not to—”

  “It’s too late, Sylvie. Especially since you’re the one who did the convincing in the first place. Besides, this isn’t as sudden as it seems. Dad’s been cooking up this scheme for a while now. He had the place ready and waiting for me, as soon as I made a wrong move. Only it turned out I didn’t need to. You did it for me. I should probably thank you, though, since anywhere will be better than here.”

  In another part of the house, the phone rang, sounding shrill. Someone must have answered it quickly, because after the second ring things fell quiet.

  “I don’t want you to go,” I told my sister.

  Rose did her best to force the suitcase closed, but it was too full. She jettisoned the globe, placing it back on her dresser, then yanked out some clothes, leaving them in a pile on the floor. After that, I helped her by sitting on top of the suitcase. “Yeah, you do, Sylvie,” she said, the buckles releasing a solid thwack each time one snapped into place. “You just don’t know it yet. Life will be more peaceful here without me.”

  “But when am I going to see you again?”

  “That’s a question for Mom and Dad too. I bet they’ll tell you it’ll be as long as it takes to get my head right. Isn’t that the line of crap they like to say about me? Either way, let me give you some advice: You know how they always tell us about their rule that we can share anything with them?”

  I nodded.

  “Don’t believe it.”

  The final buckle snapped shut, sealing the suitcase tight and putting an end to the topic. My sister stood and went to the door. She must have wanted at least a few minutes to herself, but I stayed put a moment longer, looking around the small space, which felt somehow void of her presence already.

  “You know something, squirt? I always knew you were bright. But you’re pretty brave, too. Dumping that doll down the well.”

  Sitting on that overstuffed suitcase, I didn’t feel so brave. What I felt was foolish. But what point was there in telling my sister that? When I stood and stepped past her into the hallway, I felt the urge to give Rose a hug. It had been years since the two of us had done that, however, and it made me nervous to think of how she might react. Instead, I said simply, “I’m sorry for ruining things.”

  Rose looked away, fixing her gaze on that suitcase we shared on all those trips with our parents. “Don’t worry about it, squirt. It’s not all your fault. Now leave me alone so I can finish up in here.”

  I didn’t want to, but I turned and retreated to my room. Inside, I sat on the edge of my bed, absently petting the soft feathers of that last unbroken horse. All the while, my mind could not help but fixate on Penny down in the well. Despite my wishes, despite any rational thought, I kept wondering if the doll was still having an influence from where she lay in that cold, murky water.

  Thump, thump, thump—I listened to the sound of my sister dragging our suitcase down the stairs. One last time, I told myself that I should do something to keep her from leaving. But when I went to the window and saw the car idling in the driveway, trunk popped open, I knew there was no undoing things now. Our father and mother stood by the road examining our mailbox, which had been knocked off its post. The trash cans were down, too, though they ignored those for the time being. I watched our father pick up the mailbox, inspecting the buckled sides and the bent red flag that spun round and round like some whirligig carnival game. He attempted to balance the thing on the post again, but it wobbled before toppling to the ground. My father kicked it away in frustration.

  And then the front door opened and Rose stepped outside. She lugged our suitcase down the stoop to the car. Despite his back trouble, my father went to her and heaved it into the trunk. As he walked to the driver’s side, our mother pulled an envelope from her jacket and pushed it into Rose’s hand. My sister refused it, but my mother insisted, shoving it in Rose’s pocket. And then our mother did what I had felt too nervous to do, putting her arms around Rose, pulling her close. My sister did not return the hug, standing there stiff as that headless mailbox post.

  From that moment on, things moved quickly: Rose got in the car and buckled her seat belt. My father did too, shifting into Reverse. As they backed out of the driveway, I waved to my sister, willing her to look up and wave too. But it never happened, even though I kept on waving until the Datsun pulled onto the lane and rolled away.

  For a long while after they were gone, I looked out at the empty driveway and my mother lingering on the front lawn, gazing down the road as though she hoped for them to return. With the exception of a few occasions when she mentioned her father’s passing, I’d rarely seen my mother cry. As I stood at my window, however, I watched her hands move to her cheeks, wiping away tears. When I couldn’t bear to watch any longer, I turned to my desk and began sorting those horse limbs, lining them up until they were side by side, ready for the odd surgery I’d grown accustomed to performing.

  Hours—that’s how long it took for me to carefully glue them together. All the while, so many questions about Rose and when exactly she’d be back knocked around my mind. When all the horses
were returned to my shelf once more, it occurred to me that, ringing phone and chiming clock aside, there had been no sounds inside our house for some time. I stepped out of my room, locking the door behind me, listening for my mother. When I still did not hear anything, I made my way to the first floor. At last, I opened the front door and found her sitting on the stoop, wearing her robe and slippers still, a thick stack of white paper in her lap and more tears in her eyes.

  I stepped outside and sat beside her. Above us, birds chirped in the misty air, and squirrels scrambled along the branches of the birch trees. I looked over at my mother’s crumpled face. The tears that rolled down her pale cheeks seemed capable of washing away the hints of blue from the veins beneath her skin.

  “Can I ask,” I said, finally, “where Saint Julia’s is?”

  Her hair had fallen out of its pins and looked wild as hay. She brushed it from her eyes, telling me, “Your father gave me the name of the town. But my mind—well, it’s been so muddled lately. This fatigue. I just haven’t felt myself. Anyway, it’s a nice place in upstate New York where they help people like her. Troubled girls, I mean. Your father found out about it. Made all the arrangements. If I felt better, I might have been able to keep stalling him the way I have for months now.”

  “When will she back?”

  “I don’t know, Sylvie. In some ways, that’s up to her.” My mother looked out at the empty driveway, hands resting on the thick stack of paper in her lap. When I asked what those pages were, the question brought more tears. I reached over, rubbed my hand on her back, feeling the knobby bumps of her spine. At last, my mother took a breath and told me that when she woke that morning, she made up her mind to fight her weariness and get out of bed to cook us breakfast. After being cooped up in that bedroom, however, she first wanted a glimpse of the sun. That’s when she opened the front door and caught sight of the vandalized mailbox and toppled trash cans. “I made my way to the street and picked up some of that trash, then lifted the mailbox off the ground only to discover this manuscript stuffed in there. It’s from that reporter your father welcomed into our lives.”

  Inside the house, the phone rang. It had begun to sound like small screams to me. “Do you need to get that?”

  My mother shook her head, waved it away. She looked down at the title on the top page. I did too: Help for the Haunted: The Unusual Work of Sylvester and Rose Mason by Samuel Heekin. “Your father,” she said, when the ringing stopped, “thought he was going to persuade the man to omit certain details he apparently told him one night when they were out having a drink after an official interview. But Sam—Mr. Heekin, I mean—had already finished the book and has no plans of changing even a single word. It will be published in another few months. September, actually. Heekin intended to give it to your father last night, but chickened out—that’s the only way to say it. Instead, he slipped it in our box after he dropped him off. Before whoever came by and knocked it off the post.”

  “How do you know all this?” I asked.

  I glimpsed an odd expression on my mother’s face then: a wide-eyed flicker that left me with the feeling she’d said more than she intended. Her mouth opened to answer, but just then the phone burst into another series of shrill screams. I asked once more if she needed to get it, and she told me, “Eventually, I should. But he’ll call back.”

  “He? Who is calling?”

  “Well, I don’t mean he. Not exactly anyway. After all, there are plenty of people calling. More reporters who want to interview us. And these people who call themselves lecture agents, who want to book your father and me all over the country for more talks. And so many strangers have been calling too, more than ever before, seeking our help. But there’s one person who has been more persistent than the rest. Relentless, in fact.

  “But enough about that,” she added, looking at me with her glittery eyes. “What’s most important, Sylvie, is that I need you to promise you’ll never ever read these pages, even when the book is published. This reporter no longer has a good opinion of your father. And whoever’s fault that is—your dad’s, mine—I don’t want you going forward in life with disillusioned feelings about your own father, who loves you very much and would do anything for you.”

  “I promise,” I told her, meaning it. “I won’t read any of it. Not a single word.”

  “That’s my good girl.” She brushed back more hair, wiping her eyes too. “I knew I could count on you. And now, Sylvie, I need to ask your help with something else. Between what’s happened with Rose and now this book, your father is going to be pretty upset when he gets home. I’d like there to be one less thing that frustrates him.”

  We sat for a long moment, side by side, silent except for the sound of our breathing, the sounds of birds and squirrels all around. My mother did not need to say anything more; I knew what she was asking. Even though a sizable part of me wanted to refuse, another part—the part that wanted to please her, the part that felt so dogged about using my smarts to solve any problem—had already begun dissecting the matter. It took little time before arriving at the most obvious method. I stood and told my mother I’d be right back, before making my way into the house and down the basement stairs.

  When I tugged the string that dangled from the ceiling, the bare bulb came to life, illuminating the hatchet on the wall, the hulking bookshelf blocking the crawl space, my father’s desk in the center, and the empty area where my mother’s rocker had been before they lugged it upstairs for Penny. I went to the desk and pulled open a drawer. Those tarnished instruments lay inside, bound by a rubber band, same as they’d been so many years before. I removed the dental scaler and orthodontic pliers then used the pliers to bend the tip of the scaler until its shape resembled a hook. Next, I went to my mother’s knitting basket, grabbed a spool of yarn.

  When I got back outside, my mother was still on the steps, alternately turning more pages of Sam Heekin’s manuscript and looking up to observe what I was doing. Pushing off the plywood, staring into that dark well, I located Penny, facedown and floating in the water. I slipped my makeshift fishing line over the edge, lowering the scaler and moving it in a figure-eight motion. A hand, a sleeve, a strand of that strange red hair—I hoped to hook any such part of that doll. Twice I managed, but no sooner did I begin lifting than the weight of its waterlogged body became too much and Penny slipped free. Before the line broke or the hook came loose, I brought it up again—tripling the yarn, doubling the knots, testing to be sure things were secure. Dropping it down and circling once more, eventually I felt the gotcha feeling a fisherman must when something is on the hook. Carefully, I lifted. The closer the doll got to the surface, the louder the rainstorm sound of water gushing from its body. I kept tightening the line, winding it between my hand and elbow, until at last I was able to reach down and grab Penny.

  My mother had put aside Heekin’s manuscript by then and joined me at the well. She watched as I dropped the doll on the ground. Water pooled from its body, trailing in small rivulets around my mother’s slippers and my sneakers.

  “There,” I said, brushing my wet clothes. “That’s what you wanted.”

  She stared down at Penny—a few dead leaves in the doll’s hair, but otherwise no worse for wear. “Thank you, Sylvie. And I’m sorry too.”

  “Sorry?” I said.

  “Your sister was right. Your father and I—we used to keep you girls separate from our work, as much as possible. As time’s gone on, I’ve realized we failed at that.”

  The mention of Rose and the things she said before leaving only stirred the sadness and guilt I felt about her being gone. In an effort to change the subject I said, “Last night, you told me you didn’t believe them at first.”

  “Believe who?”

  “That couple in Ohio. The Entwistles. When I came to your room, you said you didn’t believe the things they claimed about the doll. What do you believe now?”

  My mother let out a heavy sigh, watching as still more water drained from Penny;
it seemed the doll had soaked up a never-ending supply. “I felt badly for them,” she said. “That much was certain. But from the letters they sent, I had the sense they were simply a couple mourning the loss of their daughter, hoping for something to be true that was not. And I told your father as much.”

  “Then why did we go there?”

  “At first, they wrote to say that in its own strange way the doll had brought hope back into their lives. But over time, they reported that her presence seemed to be responsible for disruptive occurrences.”

  “What sort of occurrences?” I asked, thinking only of the ones in our lives.

  Again, my mother sighed. She never liked talking about this sort of topic as much as my father, and I worried she might cut it short. But she continued, “Broken dishes. A shattered mirror. A fire in the store below their apartment. More than any of those things, however, they described a pervasive, off-kilter feeling that plagued their home. Eventually, your father convinced me that we should visit and help them if we could. But from the very moment we watched you girls drive off to the movies, I had the same impression as when reading the Entwistles’ letters: this was a couple struggling with overwhelming grief. At first, that opinion was based solely on those feelings I get. But the details of their lives confirmed it. Their daughter had been dead nearly three years, and yet, when the Entwistles showed us the girl’s bedroom, it was just as she left it, right down to her barrettes on the nightstand and her dirty play clothes in the hamper. Most nights, Mrs. Entwistle informed us, she slept right there in the twin bed with her daughter’s doll cradled in her arms, rather than in her own bed with her husband.”

  “So were they lying to you and Dad about the things they claimed Penny did?”

  “Not lying exactly. What they were doing, I believe, was sharing with us a kind of truth they had created for themselves. In some ways, it’s not so different from what many people do in this world. Their truth was a story that they had woven together in the years after their heartbreaking loss—one they kept adding to, seizing any scrap of evidence to support their belief. You’ll see as you get older, Sylvie, even if the examples aren’t so extreme, there are times when it is easier to fool yourself than swallow some jagged piece of reality. Does that make sense?”