Help for the Haunted(87)
“But the papers—”
“I know what they say. But I’m telling you otherwise.”
When he spoke next, I heard something different in Howie’s voice, a kind of hunger. “Are you saying you don’t know who you saw?”
I shook my head, staring at the final picture in his hands and waiting for him to flip it over. “What is that last photo?”
He let out a weighted breath and handed me the picture: two shirtless boys cannonballing off a rocky cliff into a pool of water. It was taken, he explained, at an old Indian well a few miles from the theater. “Our dad used to drive us there on hot days when the AC broke in this place. Lucky he got that shot, because it was one of the few times your father actually jumped with me. He was always so nervous and preferred to walk the path down to the water. I swear he was more at home with the things he thought he saw in the theater than out in the real world.”
“That night in Florida,” I began, bringing up something I’d always wondered about, “when you and my sister drove off in your truck, she told me later you said things that made her stop believing our parents. What did you tell her?”
My uncle took back the photo and returned it to the envelope, then thought better of it. “Here, Sylvie. Why don’t you keep these? They’re the few pieces of our family history I have to offer. And who knows? Maybe they’ll give you some small comfort if ever you need it.”
I thanked him and took the photos, slipping them into my coat pocket next to my journal.
“I have an idea,” Howie said, standing from the cot. “Come with me.”
We headed out into the hallway and on deeper into the building, passing more movie star ghosts as we went. On each side of the hallway, open doors led into other shadowy rooms like the one where Howie had been working and living. So black and boxy, those rooms would put anyone in mind of a prison cell, and in every single one, I imagined Albert Lynch, pacing or sitting, gazing out at me with a desperate, penetrating glower. When it became too much, I looked away, just as Howie took my hand, guiding us through a minefield of missing floorboards. All the while he spoke with an excitement in his voice I’d not heard before about his longtime dream for the building—the dream my father kept him from in life, but no longer could in death.
“The Philly Chamber of Commerce started an initiative to revitalize the neighborhood,” he told me. “They’ve even helped me secure a loan. Nothing short of a miracle considering my credit. It’s barely enough to make some basic changes, bring the place up to code. That’s okay. I’m banking on the look of the old place to give it a certain coolness.”
We arrived at a set of double doors. Howie released my hand and pushed them open, leading us out onto a balcony inside the theater. In the flickering light, I could see hundreds of seats filling the orchestra below, hundreds more on the mezzanine above. Despite the peeling paint and web of cracks in the ceiling, the ornate chandelier and the stage with velvet curtains flanking a blank movie screen offered hints of former glory. “Used to be an old vaudeville house before your grandparents owned it. Your dad and me, we spent our childhood between these walls. Scouring the floor after people left in search of dropped change. With this many seats, you’d be amazed at how much we made. If we got lucky, we’d come across jewelry or a wallet—that was hitting the jackpot.”
“Did my father make you return it?”
Howie laughed. “Difficult as it might be to imagine, even your dad was a kid once. A pretty devious one when he wanted to be. The jewelry got pawned with Floyd’s help. We gave him a cut, of course. Wallets, we agreed to keep secret and split whatever cash was inside. Well, that was supposed to be the way things worked.”
“Supposed to be?”
“Yeah, until E-19.” Howie aimed a finger at the orchestra seats, ticking his way up from the stage until he was pointing to one chair in particular. “That seat right there. Doesn’t look any different from the others. But it’s where your dad used to stash most of what he found in a tear on the side of the cushion, so he didn’t have to share it with me. I used to think the reason I turned up so much more loot than him was because I was older and faster and had a better eye. Then I caught on to what he was doing.”
The lights in the theater blinked—off and on, then just off—causing my uncle to fall silent. Things remained dark long enough that I wondered if they’d come back on at all. Waiting out on that balcony, Howie’s figure became nothing more than a hulking silhouette beside me, one that put me in mind of those statues by the altar. I listened to the sound of him breathing, smelled the smoke on his breath from his last cigarette. “Is everything all right?” I asked into the blackness, feeling a tightening in my throat as his heavy shoes shifted on the floor beneath us.
“Should be. The wiring inside this monster is just so damn ancient. That’s one of the things I’m spending the loan money on: updating the electrical. Anyway, give it a minute and the lights will—” Just then, the theater blinked to life, allowing us to see again and allowing Howie to finish his sentence with relief, “come back on.”
I gazed out at all the empty seats, imagining the boys from the photo scrambling among them, imagining my father standing down near that one seat in particular, hiding whatever he found from his brother. “And this is where my father first saw . . . things?”