Help for the Haunted(52)

And then came a different kind of trip for our family. I first learned of it when Rose picked me up one Friday from school. On the dashboard, I noticed a map with a route highlighted in yellow. “Planning a vacation?” I asked.

“If I was, it would be to pretty much any place but the Buckeye State.”

“Texas?”

Rose groaned. “Texas is the Lone Star State, Sylvie. Buckeye, that’s Ohio. Anyway, Dad will tell you, but we’re going there this weekend.”

“For another talk?”

Rose shook her head. “You know those calls we’ve been getting at night lately? Apparently they’ve all been from the same person.”

“Who?”

“Don’t know. Didn’t ask. My guess: the owner of a house where weird crap keeps happening. Or maybe a parent with a kid who’s messed up, like so many of them.”

It had been some time since I thought of that girl in the bushes out front of the convention center in Ocala—long enough that it took me a moment to pull the memory into focus. As I stared out the window of the Datsun, I saw not the houses we passed, but that father with blood on his face as he called into the shadows. I remembered the way he approached my mother for help, the way she knelt, humming that song while reaching a hand toward those shiny, blinking eyes. “Albert and Abigail Lynch,” I said aloud as we made the turn onto Butter Lane.

“What?”

“That night in Ocala. Remember the man with the scratch marks? The one calling into the bushes?”

Rose smiled. “How could I forget a freak like that?”

“I thought maybe he was calling for a lost cat. But it was actually his daughter. A girl named Abigail. Mom helped them after you drove off with Uncle Howie.”

The most Rose had to say was, “Mom helped them, huh?”

“Yes. I witnessed it.”

“Well, good for you, Sylvie.” When Rose spoke next, we were turning into the driveway, and a trace of her old self shimmered beneath her words. “We better go inside and pack. Dad wants to leave at some ungodly hour in the morning so we get there by noon. You’ve seen firsthand how helpful they are when people need them.”

Five and a half hours—that’s how long it took to reach the Ohio state line, another two to Columbus. Rose drove except for a break in Pennsylvania when my father insisted on taking the wheel so she could rest. Otherwise, he sat beside her in the passenger seat, making notes on a legal pad. My mother sat in the back with me, knitting or reading her bible while humming that tune I recognized by now but still did not know the words to. My book kept me busy, but the more I read, the more the stories began to seem like just that: stories. Ancient and far away. Not much different than if I’d been reading about a world inhabited by witches who tempted pretty girls with poison apples. I began to get the sinking feeling that I was getting further from proof instead of closer.

At a gas station stop in Wheeling Creek, Ohio, I ran inside to pee in the grimy restroom. When I came out, my mother and father stood by the car, stretching their legs while Rose waited behind the wheel. As I got closer, I caught scraps of their conversation.

My mother: “ . . . scratches again.”

My father: “ . . . needs to be removed from the home.”

But that was the most I heard. When we climbed into the car, however, my mind filled with thoughts of the Lynches.

The plan had been that my parents would pick up Kentucky Fried Chicken for Rose and me then leave us at the hotel until they returned. When we arrived, though, the gum-chomping woman at the counter informed us that the room would not be cleaned for a few hours. After some back and forth, my parents decided Rose and I would drop them in the Grandville neighborhood where they were headed. We had permission, along with a twenty my father pulled from my wallet, to see a movie at the Cineplex downtown.

Orchard Circle, like Butter Lane, turned out to be a pretty name for a place that wasn’t. Neglected two-story homes surrounded a dilapidated park with a rusted chain-link fence. When Rose stopped the car, my father gathered his equipment from the trunk while my mother took out her bible. She told Rose and me to enjoy our time at the movies then gave us kisses before getting out.

As we drove away, I stared at that second-floor apartment—the Lynches’ place, I felt more and more certain—where the curtains were all drawn. I watched my parents move up the outdoor stairs to the door at the top. After knocking, my father fussed with his tote while my mother waited beside him, hands clasped, that bible between, in a way that told me she was praying. I kept staring back to see if it would be Albert who answered the door, but we turned the corner before anyone opened up.

Despite my preoccupation with whoever was inside that apartment, I was excited to go to the movies so I did my best to put it out of my mind. It wasn’t that we weren’t allowed to go to the movies at home. My father grew up working in a theater, after all, so he loved them. But we went as a family, which meant my sister and I ended up sitting through films like Agnes of God or Mask—not exactly our top choices. That afternoon in Columbus, we looked at the splashy posters outside the theater for Die Hard, Beetlejuice, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and I could tell Rose was as excited as me. We compromised on our mutual second choice then spent what was left on popcorn, Kit-Kats, and sodas, something my parents never allowed.

As Rose and I sat in the dark, fingers sticky with butter and chocolate, watching Michael Keaton play a cartoonish ghost, that unsettled feeling slipped away and I forgot about what my parents were doing back on Orchard Circle. When the lights came up, the happy mood lingered as we walked to the lobby. We didn’t get far before an old man, broom in hand, called to us. “You wouldn’t happen to be Rose and Sylvie Mason, would you?’