Help for the Haunted (20 page)

Courage—that's what I wished for, so I could keep walking down those stairs and turn off the light. But Penny and the hatchet on the wall and all the rest filled me with enough fear that I turned back. At the top of the stairs, I shut the flimsy door behind me. Rather than go to my room, something made me walk back to the kitchen. I lifted the foil on that bowl. Chocolate pudding. Again, I thought of Coffey and how he claimed my sister had refused the food he brought.

I dipped my fingers into the bowl. It had been a long time since I'd tasted anything remotely homemade, and once started, I could not stop. Without bothering to find a spoon, I kept dipping my fingers in, kept eating until the bowl was all but licked clean. At last, I buried the Tupperware container in the trash so my sister would not find it, then washed my hands before going upstairs.

For the next few hours, I waited for whatever poison to take hold. My stomach felt fine. My mind, however, drifted more than usual. I thought of Boshoff and his ailing wife and that cookbook I'd never be able to get him. And then I thought about a lady I had called in the 561 area code while doing those surveys. The crackle of her voice told me she was very old. She was so happy to talk to me I had the feeling nobody called her very often. All through the survey, she kept excusing herself then muffling the phone to cough, deep and rattling, like there was something swampy inside her. We were almost at the end when it got so bad I said we didn't have to finish. “Maybe you should have a glass of water,” I told her, since I felt guilty taking up her time asking meaningless questions about shampoos and deodorants.

She laughed a little, then said, “You are sweet to suggest it, dear. But I can drink all the water I want, and I'm never going to cough a pearl out on my pillow.”

I don't know why I thought about that, but afterward, I did one last thing I wasn't planning: I went to my closet and opened the door.

Inside, all my clothes from the previous winter fought for space. Sleeves and cuffs and hems tangled and twisted in such a way that it made me think of a pack of girls on a crowded bus. I reached in and pulled out a soft pink sweater with pearly white buttons. The sweater was warm, I remembered from the year before. Next, I pulled out a brown skirt. The wool was scratchy, I remembered as well, but it was warm too. The sweater and skirt matched enough that I set them on my chair the way my mother would have. I turned to the closet again and chose another outfit from the crowd. Then another. I imagined myself picking girls off that crowded bus.
You,
I said to them in my head,
and you and you and you . . .
I kept on picking until a week's worth of outfits was draped around my bedroom. Once that was taken care of, I was about to get back into bed when the phone rang.

Sometimes, those haunted people still called, seeking my parents' help. Rose usually just hung up on them, but I always took the time to explain that they were gone and apologized for not being able to do anything for them. I crossed the hall to my parents' room, figuring it would be another one of those calls. But when I answered, the person on the other end said, “Is Sylvie there, please?”

“This is Sylvie.”

“It's Sam Heekin. I got your message but not in time to call you back at the number you left, so I thought I'd try you here.”

“I see.” His voice did not stumble or ramble the way my father once complained, and I found myself skipping ahead in the conversation, coming to the point sooner than was polite. “I found the letter you wrote my sister, and I was hoping to talk to you.”

“Your sister? I never wrote any letters to your sister.”

“You didn't?”

“No. But your mother. I used to write letters to her sometimes.”

“My mother?”

“Perhaps we can meet in person, so I can explain. Would you like that?”

I looked around my parents' bedroom—at the pillows plumped beneath their bedspreads, at my father's striped tie draped over the back of a chair, at my mother's hairbrush and bobby pins on her dresser, and at the glowing green alarm clock, reminding me how little time I had left. I took a long, deep breath, before saying, “Yes. Yes, I would.”

 

Chapter 14

Doll

I
n the beginning, there was no cage for Penny. She simply slumped in my mother's old rocker, which my father dredged up from the basement and situated in the corner of the living room. Same as the cross on the wall, the desk in the corner, the drapes over the window, Penny remained positively, perfectly, one hundred percent inanimate. Strange as I found the doll's sudden arrival into our lives, she had no effect on my behavior. Her mere presence, however, did something to my sister. In the way paint can peel from a house, revealing the true color beneath, the façade Rose had maintained since the night my father dragged her from that hotel room peeled away too.

The erosion began almost immediately on our car ride home from Ohio. Except for the occasional soft humming of that song I still did not know the words to, my mother spent the ride in silence. She cradled the doll in such a way that Penny's head propped over her shoulder, and so Rose and I found ourselves staring at those blank eyes hour after hour. We did our best to look away out the window at the 18-wheelers rumbling by in the dark, but while rolling through the hills of Pennsylvania, I noticed Rose's hand reach slowly forward. She grasped a strand of Penny's red yarn hair, tugged—hard, fast—and it came free. We went still, waiting to see if anyone noticed. My father was listening to a religious program on the radio, which put him in a trance. And my mother had been in her own kind of trance since coming down the stairs on Orchard Circle. When it was clear neither noticed, Rose set the yarn on the hump in the middle of the backseat and reached forward again.

“Stop it,” I whispered, after watching her grasp and tug five strands free.

“It's not like I'm hurting her,” Rose whispered back. “She's a doll, Sylvie.”

“Yeah, but if they catch you, they'll—”

“I know what they'll do,” Rose said, her old self shimmering beneath those words. “But you know what I decided just now? I don't care anymore.”

“Care about what?” my father said from up front.

“Nothing,” I answered.

We were quiet after that, listening to the voice of a radio preacher boom through the speakers, “Say to the people of Judah and those living in Jerusalem, ‘This is what the Lord says: Look! I am preparing a disaster for you and devising a plan against you! So turn from your evil ways and reform!' ”

“By the time I'm done, that thing will be bald,” Rose whispered, leaning close to my ear. “Shove a lollipop in her creepy puss and we'll call her Kojak.”

“Ko-
who
?”

“You know, Sylvie, you really should sneak downstairs with me and watch reruns some night. It might help you see the world the way everyone else does.”

Sneaking downstairs to watch TV, scalping that doll—those things would only lead to trouble, and I told her so. But a few minutes later, her hand reached forward and then six strands rested on the seat. Soon there were a dozen. I worried she might keep her word and not stop until the doll was bald, but eventually Rose must have grown bored, because she fell asleep.

I slept too.

How much time passed before I opened my eyes to the sensation of the car stopping and the engine going silent? I was not certain. But I looked around and saw more 18-wheelers idling by a row of fuel pumps.
WELCOME TO SENECA HILL TRUCK STOP
read a sign above the glass doors of a shingled building not far from where we parked. My father got out and stood by the car. I expected him to make a show of kneading his hands on his back the way he did after sitting too long, but he simply let out a yawn. Rose and my mother had yet to stir. Same as before, Penny smiled in my direction, her blank black eyes holding my gaze until I looked down and noticed the yarn in my hand instead of on the seat.

“Very funny,” I said to Rose, poking her awake.

She sat up, rubbed her eyes. “What?”

I opened my palm to her. “Putting these in my hand while I slept.”

“Sylvie, I nodded off before you. And in case you didn't notice, I just woke up. So don't look at me.”

“Next stop, Dundalk,” my father said, ducking his head into the car. “
Pee
now or forever hold your
pees
.”

Rose and I shoved on our sneakers while he walked to the passenger door and pulled it open. My mother finally opened her eyes and got out. She was about to start toward the building when my father suggested that it might be best if she carried Penny along with her. When Rose saw that in her sleepy haze our mother was actually going to do as he suggested, she shook her head and began walking ahead toward the truck stop. I hurried to keep up. Through the glass doors, past the counter where men shoveled eggs in their mouths—Rose and I kept going until we entered the oversized ladies' room. After ducking into the stalls around one wall, we emerged to find our mother standing in the middle of the restroom, cradling the doll. A uniformed waitress with smudged makeup and tired eyes bent over a sink, washing her hands.

“Do you need me to hold her, Mom?” I asked, even though I felt nervous about the idea. “That way you can use the bathroom.”

My mother didn't respond. With her pale, papery skin, crosses in her ears, and black hair threaded with gray, she looked the same. Yet something about her felt altered.

“Mom?” Rose tried. “Why didn't Dad let you just leave that thing in the car?”

“Pardon, dear? Well, I guess he has his reasons. I mean, we both do.”

“Are you okay?” I asked, before Rose could speak again.

“I think so.”

“Do you want me to hold her?”

“Penny?” my mother said. “Oh, no. No, thank you. Now that I think about it, I don't want you girls touching her at all.”

“Not a problem here,” Rose said.

“Can I ask why not?” I said. “I mean, she's just a—”

“A doll. I know. Still, it's a feeling I have.”

“But you're holding her,” I pointed out.

My mother looked down at that doll cradled so tightly in her arms. I imagined a heart thumping inside Penny's small body. I imagined warm, milky breath escaping her thin lips. “You're right. I am. But that's just so I can get her home.”

“There's always the trunk,” Rose said. “Or the roof rack. It might even look decent as a hood ornament. A little bit big but what the hell?”

My mother's expression grew pinched, reminding me of that Halloween night when she slapped my sister for mouthing off to Almaline Gertrude. “Not funny, Rose. Strange as it may seem to you, your father and I know what we're doing. The way he sees it, a door was opened when we were upstairs at that apartment today. A door that's yet to be closed. So we need to be careful. Now how far are we from home? I've lost track.”

“We're outside of Harrisburg,” my sister told her. “A hundred miles from the Maryland border.”

I'd been trying to forget the waitress at the sink, but it was impossible once she twisted the faucet and the running water stopped. A silence fell over the restroom. I looked at her more closely. The woman's skin appeared clayish, a valley of wrinkles beneath her eyes, slivery cracks around her lips. She tugged a paper towel from the dispenser and dried her hands over the trash can. Her gaze trailed my mother, who walked around the dividing wall to the stalls. A brief rustling followed before she emerged a moment later.

“Problem?” Rose asked.

“I can't lift my dress and hold Penny at the same time.”

Even though I'd offered, a small surge of panic moved through me at the thought that she was about to put the doll in my arms. Thankfully, my mother went to a sink. After wiping down the edges, she propped Penny up and left her there before returning to the stall. That's when the waitress tossed her paper towel in the trash and spoke to us in a hushed voice at last. “She's that lady, isn't she?”

“What lady?” Rose asked.

“The one from TV. I saw the man out in the lot before. They were on Channel Eight and on that talk show I watch some afternoons. Not
Donahue
, but the local one. Anyway, I don't remember anybody ever mentioning they had kids. You're their kids, aren't you?”

Rose and I were accustomed to getting stared at around Dundalk, but nothing like this had ever happened before. Neither of us said anything.

“Don't act all
spooked
by me!” She let out a rattling laugh. “I'm sure you've seen scarier things in your day. What are your names? I want to tell my boyfriend I met you.”

I looked at Rose, but even she seemed stumped. My mother, meanwhile, began coughing, deep and unrecognizable, in the stall.

“
Come on!
I'm Shawna. There, I told you mine. Now tell me yours.”

“I'm Sabrina,” my sister said, glancing my way and making her eyebrows jump. “And that's my sister . . . Esmeralda.”

Who would have guessed Rose remembered the names I'd given those horses? I thought of them on the shelf above my desk back at home, a place that felt impossibly far away at the moment.

“Such pretty names for such pretty girls,” the waitress was saying. “I wish I had a camera to get a picture with you and your folks. But who knew I'd be hobnobbing with practically celebrities in this dump? I bet you two could tell some stories, huh?”

Inside the stall, my mother's coughing grew so loud and guttural, she sounded on the verge of vomiting. “Mom,” I called. “Are you okay?”

“
Mom,
” that waitress repeated as though turning the word over and inspecting it. “Who knew a person like her could be a mother?”

“What do you mean, ‘a person like her'?” Rose asked.

The waitress didn't answer. She walked to the sink, where Penny slumped against the wall, red-and-white-striped legs like oversized candy canes dangling from the ledge. “What's her story?” she asked, leaning in for a closer look.

“Been sleeping with her since I was born,” Rose said, keeping her voice low so my mother wouldn't hear. “Can't go anywhere without her. That includes the bathroom.”

Things were quiet on the other side of that wall. I peeked around, scanning the floor beneath the stalls until I saw her simple black flats. “Mom?” I said again.

In a meek voice, she answered, “Yes?”

“Are you okay?”

“I'm fine, Sylvie. Don't worry. A little car sickness snuck up on me. That's all. Give me a minute to breathe, and I'll be good as new.”

“But I heard your mother say nobody better touch her,” that waitress was telling Rose when I turned around. “Why's that? Is she . . .
haunted
?”

“Not haunted.” My sister moved closer to Penny, voice low still. “She just doesn't want us getting her dirty. But your hands are clean. So go ahead. Touch her.”

“Rose,” I said.

My sister looked at me. “Who's Rose?”

“I mean, Sabrina. I don't think you should—”

“Just ignore her,” Rose told the waitress, all but whispering now. “Esmeralda's a worrywart. Your hands are clean. So like I said, go right ahead. Touch her if you want.”

I watched as the waitress bent down and put her face up to Penny's. “Hey there, dolly,” she said in a voice as quiet as Rose's. She reached out a nail-bitten hand and stroked all the red hair my sister hadn't gotten around to plucking. “When my girl was little she had a doll just like you, but smaller.”

Penny stared back, expressionless and indifferent as ever.

“Weird,” the waitress said.

“Weird?” Rose repeated.

“I mean, she's just an old Raggedy Ann. A dime a dozen. But this one, well, she feels different somehow. I don't know. Maybe it's those marks.”

“Marks?” my sister said.

“Fingerprints. Your doll has them all over her neck. Or where her neck should be anyway. I guess it's just the seam where her head is stitched to her body. Anyway, looks like maybe somebody's been choking her.”

I stepped closer. The waitress was right: gray smudges lay all around the seam between Penny's body and head.

“Plus, she's got that dainty gold bracelet twisted tight around her wrist. Looks like somebody—one of you, I guess—has been hating on her and loving her at the same time.”

My sister said nothing, and neither did I.

“Well, unless I want to end up with fingerprints on my neck, I better get back to my tables,” Shawna told us. “Nice to meet you girls. Hope your mom feels better.”

And then we were alone in the restroom. Once more, I asked my mother if she was okay. This time, her voice sounded stronger when she told me to stop worrying, that she just felt queasy from so much driving in a single day. As she spoke, I looked to my sister, but Rose stared down at her hands.

“Is that woman gone?” my mother asked from inside the stall.

“Yes,” I called back.