Help for the Haunted(17)
Rose turned down the volume once more. With less enthusiasm each time, she did the lift-and-tilt motion with her head. “I’m sorry, Sylvie, but I really don’t hear anything. And why would I? There’s nothing down there except some rag doll and a bunch of dusty crap. You’re the crazy one if you believe the stuff Mom and Dad claimed to be true.”
“I’m not crazy.”
“Well, neither am I. And if you’re so convinced, go see for yourself.”
We both knew I was too afraid to go down there alone.
As the days wore on, Rose’s scoffing chipped away at me. I began to wonder if it was just a matter of me hearing things. After all, a doctor should have been the one to remove the tube from my ear. Instead, I woke one night to find it resting beside me on the carpet like a small worm. Apparently, I’d yanked it out in my sleep. Perhaps I’d done more damage than I realized, I started to think. After nearly a month, when we no longer spent so much time in the living room, the rattling and shaking and all the rest grew silent, sudden as a needle lifted from a record. Part of me believed my hearing was improving, that someday the shhhh would fade as well. But another part couldn’t help believe that down below those things my parents left behind had made their peace. If that was the case, they’d done it much faster than my sister and me up above.
For those reasons, for so many reasons, ours was not a house people should have visited on Halloween. Trick-or-treaters would have made better use of their time roaming the golf course, where oversized colonials were piled one on top of the other, instead of venturing down our street with its half-dozen cement foundations. Despite mosquitoes, puddles, and weeds rising from the cracks, Rose and I used to play in the one across the street when we were little. In pastel chalk, we outlined imaginary bedrooms for our imaginary children. We drew furniture on the floor, pictures on the walls, careful to stay away from the rusted steel rods on the far end that Rose speculated had once been the start of a fireplace. Our time down there was the closest anyone came to living in those structures, since they were abandoned years ago when the builder went bankrupt. The sole property he unloaded before trouble hit was the one my parents purchased.
Still, trick-or-treaters walked right past the NO TRESPASSING! signs and made their way down our driveway. Some behaved so casually I could tell they had come only for candy. But there were others who came on a dare, who giggled nervously as they approached, who fell into uncomfortable silence the moment they stepped onto our porch. It used to be that what they wanted was a glimpse of my mother or father—to leave with a story to tell. How disappointed they must have been those years when the most they encountered was a basket of candy on the doorstep along with a note in my mother’s careful cursive telling them: Please help yourselves, but be mindful of other trick-or-treaters and don’t let greed get the better of you. . . . And the years when we were at home, they were met with still more disappointment when the door was answered promptly and my tall, pale mother smiled as she dropped Butterfingers into their pillowcases.
But who knew how the details were altered in the retelling?
No one answered for a long time and we heard chanting in the basement. . .
When that woman opened up, she had dried blood caked around her cuticles. . .
That moon-faced doll with the red hair was rocking in a chair all on its own. . .
You cannot control the things people say. That much I had learned.
Despite Rose blasting Lynyrd Skynyrd on her stereo upstairs, and despite the never-ending shhhh, I heard the initial group of trick-or-treaters drawing near that first Halloween after our parents were gone. More than other years, I had good reason to worry about who might show up at our door. But I tried not to think about that. When I opened up, three girls stood on the stoop. Short skirts rustling in the wind. Torn fishnet stockings. Glittery tops. Ample lip-gloss and eye shadow. At the mouth of our driveway, smoke plumed from the muffler of a station wagon, headlights illuminating the old well and the dirt patch where Rose’s rabbit cage once stood. Those girls couldn’t have been much younger than me, so my voice should not have sounded motherly when I asked, “And what are you young ladies supposed to be?”
They burst into laughter, shrieking out their answer in unison so that it mashed into a single word, “Hookerscantchatell?”
I felt relieved that they had come for candy and nothing more. As I dropped peanut-butter cups and mini candy bars into their sparkly purses, I noticed something shiny down by their heels. Before I could get a closer look, one of the girls began cooing, “Ooh, ooh, ooh! I’ll do anything for an Almond Joy! I mean anything!”
I gave her extra. After all, it wasn’t every day a junior high student showed up on our step pretending to be a candy-addicted prostitute. After I watched them totter back to the station wagon, I bent and picked up a bowl covered in foil.
Once, sometimes twice a week, Rose and I returned home to find foil-wrapped offerings on our doorstep. Casseroles. Lasagnas. Chocolate cakes. Never once did they come accompanied with a note, so we had no idea who left them. As a result, no matter how hungry or tempted, we felt too suspicious to eat them. Instead, Rose shoved all the food on the counter to take out to the trash later.
I carried the bowl into the house and lifted the foil to find a Jell-O mold with walnuts and tangerine slices beneath the surface, like insects embalmed in amber. As usual, no note. I considered sticking my finger in and tasting it anyway.