Help for the Haunted(48)

“No,” I told him, feeling the tic-tic-tic of my heart.

It seemed he might take a couple of quick steps, pick me up, and force me to go with them. But I was wrong. “Well, if you aren’t going to come, then at least take my jacket. It’s cold out, and you’re not dressed warm enough. You never are.”

“Ten seconds,” Rose said from behind Dereck. “Nine. Eight. Seven . . .”

“Quit your counting!” he yelled, the first I ever heard him speak up to her. He pulled off his battered barn jacket and held it out to me. When I didn’t take it, he tossed the coat on a patch of tar between us. He removed his boots too, set them beside the coat. With that, he turned, walked toward the truck, and climbed inside. A moment later, Rose stepped on the gas, the tires spun in the mud, and the truck picked up speed and disappeared.

Their sudden absence left a vacuum of quiet behind. A cool breeze moved through the trees surrounding the field, bringing with it the memory of Rummel’s voice:

You’ve got sixty-six hours to consider exactly what you did or did not see in the church that night last winter. After that, your time is up.

I stepped forward onto the patch of tar where Dereck had left his boots and jacket. It looked as if he had been sucked into the earth, pulled down to the underworld depicted in the pages of those books my father kept in the curio hutch. I slid out of my flip-flops, stepped into Dereck’s boots, roomy and warm from his large feet. I lifted his jacket, put that on too. Slowly, clumsily, I began walking out of the field in the direction of those industrial buildings. I hadn’t let on to Dereck, but I knew exactly what I was going to do once they were gone. It was something I’d decided while down on those truck mats, getting knocked around, same as that Scooby head. Inside my journal was the letter I found beneath Rose’s bed. For more than two weeks now, I’d been carrying it with me, taking it out and reading the words:

Dear Rose, I’m probably the last person or spirit on God’s green earth you want to hear from right now. Yet, here I am writing you anyway . . .

Those coins from the floor of the truck, the only income I’d see from all my hard work, might not have been enough to replenish my savings or buy poor Boshoff that cookbook. But it was enough to make a call to the number on the top of that letter. If my parents were alive, they never would have wanted me to do it, but he was the only person who knew more about their lives, about our family, than me. And maybe, I thought, he might be able to tell me something about that night and all that had come before it.

I had little more than sixty-three hours left.

I was going to call Sam Heekin and ask for his help.





[page]Chapter 12

Girls



There should be a word to describe the specific kind of melancholy that creeps up during the final days of a trip. Whatever it would be called, that feeling began infecting each of us the very next morning in Ocala—a bit too soon, considering our time away from Dundalk was only just beginning. The plan had always been that we would spend a few days after my parents’ lecture doing what most tourists do in the Sunshine State: going to Disney World. We stuck to the plan but, unfortunately, that end-of-vacation feeling stuck to us.

More than anything, what brought it on was the dramatic change in Rose.

Over breakfast at an IHOP off the interstate, my sister was quiet and polite. Not overly friendly. Not chatty. But she smiled and paid attention when each of us spoke. She answered questions when asked. She ordered chocolate chip pancakes. Used her knife and fork to cut them before chewing softly and cleaning her plate. On the way out of the restaurant to get back on the road to Orlando, she even thanked my parents for the meal.

Those were the results my parents had hoped for when my father dragged her out of that room. And yet, even though they seemed pleased, the change was so sudden, so drastic, I had the sense none of us really trusted it.

Since my mother and father were never ones for rides, they spent most of their time at Disney World waiting on benches while Rose and I stood in eternal lines. I knew most of the attractions didn’t appeal to my sister, yet she climbed on board and buckled up, feigning excitement as we glided through Wendy and Peter’s window out over the twinkling lights of London. She put on the same cheery face as we floated through countries where children sang “It’s a Small World” in so many different languages. When it came time for Space Mountain, I suspected that hurtling through the dark might shake out the true Rose. But same as me, she gripped the safety bars and held in her screams. In the end, she offered just one glimpse of the person hidden beneath. While riding our “doom buggy” through the Haunted Mansion, a trick mirror reflected the image of a ghost in a top hat seated between us.

“What?” I asked when I saw Rose sneering in the reflection.

“Nothing.”

“Not nothing. What?”

“I was thinking that they should have come on this ride.”

“Mom and Dad?”

“Who else, stupid?”

“Why?”

“For starters, maybe they could have taken a picture of that ghost and put it on the screen at their next phony talk.”

“You don’t believe them?”

“Do you, Sylvie?”

“Yes. Well, at least I think I do.”

“Think harder. Uncle Howie told me stuff that might convince you otherwise.”