Help for the Haunted(12)

The question was as good as a yes—we both knew it. My sister did an about-face and headed downstairs without answering. I followed until we were standing in the kitchen at the door to the basement. Our parents had only recently moved their workspace from the living room to below, so the place didn’t hold the same fear that would come later. Even so, I avoided it. But Rose pulled open the door and descended the wooden steps. Again, I followed, breathing in the musty air and gazing around at the cinder-block walls. In one corner, the beginnings of a partition separated a small area by the sliding glass door. My father had long ago begun constructing those walls, only to give up on the project. Through the sloppy cage of two-by-fours and snarled wires, I watched as my sister navigated among the heap of bicycles, a forgotten dental chair, and on deeper into the shadows.

While she did who knew what over there, I studied my father’s new desk and file cabinet, a compact TV and VCR on top. A hulking bookshelf had been positioned in front of the cavity in the wall that led to the crawl space, the shelves filled with boxes they’d yet to unpack, a basket of cassettes and a tape player, a few stray videotapes. My mother never cared for sitting at a desk, so she kept a wooden rocker there. The cushions tied to the seat and spindled back were worn thin, her knitting basket situated nearby so she could occupy her hands whenever they discussed their work.

Darkness cannot put out the light.

It can only make God brighter.

The words were engraved on a paperweight atop a pile of snapshots. I lifted it and flipped through the photos. A dingy hall in an old hospital. A hillside cemetery, names and dates worn from the stones. Only one photo had I seen before: a run-down theater with an empty marquee. In each, a stray sliver of light or odd shadow turned up. I tucked the photos beneath the paperweight and opened a drawer, where I found a bundle of tarnished dental instruments bound by rubber bands. Probes and explorers, bone files and orthodontic pliers—I knew all their names, because I’d once asked my father.

“Damn it!” Rose shouted from beyond the skeletal partition. “I stepped in a glue trap.”

That should slow you down, I thought, listening to her foot scrape the floor. “What are you doing over there anyway?”

“Just hold your horses, Sylvie.” She kept scraping. “You’ll see soon enough.”

I wandered to the bookshelf. Something made me pick up a video, push it in the VCR. A grainy nothingness filled the screen, then my mother appeared. On that fuzzy TV, it felt the way it must glimpsing an image in a crystal ball. She stood outside a brick house in a beige raincoat I’d not seen before, the belt tight around her slender waist. My father’s voice could be heard saying, “Okay. We’re rolling. Go ahead.”

My mother gave a nervous smile. “Go ahead, what?”

“Go ahead and explain where we are and what we’re doing here.”

“I feel . . . silly.”

“Just give it a try, Rose.”

She let out a breath. “All right then. My name is Rose Mason. I’m here with my husband, who is holding the camera. Isn’t that right, husband-holding-the-camera?” My father nodded so that the frame moved up and down. “We are at the home of—” My mother stopped, looked at the ground. “Oh, I don’t like this, Sylvester. Can’t we just record the details in a notebook or on a cassette like we used to do?”

“Here,” my father said. “You hold the camera. I’ll give it a—”

From the far side of the basement, there came a loud snap before the lights went out, the TV along with it. In an instant, the basement was enveloped in black. Apparently, it was the same throughout the house, because two floors above Dot called from the tub: “Girls? Hello? Girls?”

“Not funny,” I told Rose.

“Girls? Anybody hear me? Yoo-hoo! Girls?”

Rose clicked on a flashlight and shined it at her face, transforming her features into something ghoulish. She handed me a flashlight too. “First of all, who the hell says, ‘yoo-hoo’? Second, it is so funny and you know it.”

“Sylvie? Rose? Hello?”

“Dick Van Dot is calling,” my sister said. “We better go see what she wants.”

By the time we stepped into my parents’ room again, I could hear her splashing around in the dark, like some oversized, floppy fish washed ashore. The sound made me want to put an end to whatever more Rose had in mind, but, ashamed as I was to admit it, the thought of my essay and how much I wanted to win led me to keep my mouth shut. I sat on my mother’s bed, where Dot had discarded her uniform with the tiny bears. Since the rest of her clothes were folded in the laundry basket downstairs courtesy of me, I knew she had nothing in the bathroom except a towel.

Rose went to the door. Scratched at the wood.

“What the devil?” Dot said.

Scratch. Scratch. Rose kept at it, which brought on another onslaught of, “Girls? Hello? Girls?” At last, she gave up on that too. The woman sighed, followed by a splash, loud enough that I knew she was standing up in the tub. I listened to her feet pad across the linoleum. Her hand found the knob, and I watched the rope tighten. The door did not budge. Dot banged on it, crying out more frantically. “Girls! Can anybody hear me?”

Rose walked to my mother’s bed and sat on top of Dot’s uniform. Leaning close, she whispered in my ear, “Do The Scream.”