Help for the Haunted(14)

When I opened my eyes again, morning sun shone through my window. My nightlight was still out, clock too. I lay there, surrounded by my father’s words, wondering how they had come to me. Before I could think too long, though, I remembered: Dot. I got out of bed and crossed the hall. My parents’ door was shut and locked. I slipped back into my room a moment. My mother and I had a tradition: whenever they were about to leave on their trips, she helped me pick out the clothes I’d wear to school while they were gone. I found the soft blue spring dress and simple white flats she had chosen for that day and put them on without bothering to shower.

Downstairs, the antique clock ticked in the living room. I was running twenty minutes late, long enough that the bus was likely blowing past the end of the lane at that very moment. Inside the kitchen, I found Rose hunting down a fork, the toasty smell of something heating in the gas oven filling the room. “Where is she?” I asked.

“Who?”

“Rose, you know who I mean.”

“Oh. Her. Where do you think?”

“After what you put her through, I’m hoping she’s in mom’s or dad’s bed catching up on sleep.”

Rose pulled open the oven door, reached inside. Out came two waffles, which she tossed on a paper towel before blowing on her fingers. “Don’t you mean what we put her through? After all, you were the first one to scare the crap out of her.” As she spoke, I watched her slather butter on those waffles and dump on so much syrup that it drooled through the paper towel onto the counter.

“You’re making a mess,” I told her. “Just put them on a plate.”

“Won’t fit under the door if they’re on a plate.”

“What door?”

“The bathroom door.”

“She’s still in there?”

“Go to school, Sylvie. I’m taking the day off myself. Too much to do here.”

“Rose, you have to let her out. It’s been almost twelve hours.”

“Eleven, actually. And of course I’m going to let her out. I even told her I would last night, but that’s when Miss Mary Snatch said she planned to call the police as soon as she was free. So no can do just yet. The woman’s not getting out until we broker a deal. I guess you could say we’ve got a hostage situation going on up there.”

For a long moment, I stood watching as she flattened each waffle with a fork so they’d slide more easily beneath the door. Finally, Rose looked up at me. “Sylvie, you don’t want to be a part of this. I promise she’ll be out by the time you get home. Now go on. Don’t you have to turn in your paper so you can prove how smart you are?”

My paper. She was right that I needed to turn it in soon. But it wasn’t going to happen, I told her, since I already missed the bus and had no way of getting to school.

“Just walk.”

“Walk?”

“It’s not that far. Not if you take that path behind the foundation across the street. Just follow it past Watt’s Farm, and it’ll lead you to the high school and middle school just beyond. I’ve taken it plenty of times when I bailed from school. Thirty minutes tops.” With that, she grabbed the paper towel with those flat waffles on top and walked by me in a whiff of maple syrup. The smell made me hungry, and I thought of that Mexican girl I’d imagined—or maybe dreamed of—my father speaking about, the way her appetite had vanished, the way she had turned violent before the village priest devised a plan for her treatment. As Rose headed up the stairs, I called to her, “Wait.”

Rose stopped, looked back.

“If I walk to school, do you promise to let her out soon?”

With her hands still holding that paper towel, she made what was meant to be an X but looked more like a lopsided U over her chest. “Cross my heart. Now go.”

After she disappeared upstairs, I went to the rickety curio hutch and pulled a map of Dundalk from the drawer. Rose’s path was not marked, of course, but I traced my finger through the woods and saw that what she said looked possible. I gathered my books and walked across the street, past the foundation, where a house had been started but never built. Behind it, I found the opening in the trees, a kind of wide-open mouth that swallowed me into those woods. Rose’s shortcut turned out to be not much of a shortcut at all, since so much of those woods was thicker than I thought, but eventually, I emerged by the athletic fields, the middle and high school waiting for me.

For weeks, so much of what fueled me was the thought of placing my essay into Ms. Mahevka’s hands, but she was out sick so a substitute collected my paper. After that, I had to sit through an entire day of classes, unable to think about anything but Dot upstairs in my parents’ bathroom. Had she eaten those pathetic waffles? Had she promised not to call the police? Would she keep her word once she was free? By the time I stepped off the bus, those questions consumed my mind.

In the driveway, Dot’s Yugo was parked where she left it. On the second floor, I saw that my parents’ bathroom window, which led out onto a slanted section of the roof, was wide open, the shade unraveled and flapping in the breeze. Nearby, shingles were missing, and I spotted them among the rhododendrons below.

“ . . . There is the heat of summer and the cold of winter. Even a simple magnet demonstrates positive and negative energy. . . .”

Even before stepping inside, I heard the faint sound of my father speaking again. This time, I realized how it was that he had come to me during the night. I walked through the door, listening to his words. When I flipped a light switch, no lights came on. I went to the kitchen, but no Rose. By the time I returned to the living room and reached the staircase, pausing to stare up at the darkened hallway above, my father had begun talking once more about that girl, Lydia Flores.