Help for the Haunted(89)

K . . . L . . . M . . . N . . . O . . .

At last, I let go of the seats and ran full speed toward a slip of light beneath a door not far away. I burst through the door, stumbling into a lobby filled with sawhorses and lumber and spools of cable, all lit by the muted sunlight filtering through the newspapers and permits on the glass doors. I fumbled along the doors, slamming my hands against the handles. None opened until I reached the very last, which I lurched through into the daylight. As the sun washed over me, making it impossible to see, I kept moving until I slammed into something—or someone, I realized as I felt hands take hold of me, gripping my body tight.

“Easy there, young lady. You okay?”

I stepped back, almost falling to the sidewalk. My eyes adjusted, and I made out Lloyd’s withered face before mine. “Where’s Sam Heekin?”

“That reporter?” Lloyd twisted around, pointed to the Volkswagen parked on the far side of the avenue. “Right there.”

I looked to see Heekin in the driver’s seat of the VW bug, a newspaper spread over the steering wheel, reading and popping potato chips into his mouth.

Footsteps sounded behind me then. The same door of the theater opened, and my uncle stepped outside, no blueprints in his hands. My voice wobbled more than I liked when I shouted, “Why would you do that . . . not just to me but to him?”

“So you understand then?” Howie said.

“Yes. And you could have just told me.”

“I’m sorry, Sylvie. But when you asked what I said to Rose that made her stop believing, I thought the best way was to show you. And now you know.”

I stood there, crossing my arms, waiting for the confusion and fear of the last few moments to leave me. “But why?” I asked again. “And how?”

“It began as something of a joke. Well, not quite a joke, since I was trying to teach your dad a lesson. I first got the idea when Lloyd”—he stopped and nodded to Lloyd, who must have realized then what we were talking about—“was sampling some light filters in the projection room one day when I was here after school. I snagged some lenses, slipped a black one over a flashlight, and shined it up at the chandelier to create the effect.”

“But my father was smart. He would have figured it out.”

“How old was Sylvester at the time?” my uncle asked Lloyd. “Nine? Maybe ten?”

Lloyd made that tapping sound with his tongue against his teeth, nodding. “About that, I’d say.”

“Young enough that he was more susceptible to the possibilities of what he was seeing,” my uncle told me. “That first time, I expected him to scream and go running out of the place. Figured it would teach him not to sneak back at night and get what he’d hidden in that seat. Instead, your father stood stock-still, watching those shapes move around him. I swear, it looked like he was communicating with them somehow.”

“So you were both in on it?” I asked. “And you kept it up?”

“Not really,” Lloyd said. “When I caught Howie with the filters and realized what he was doing, I had a little fun at your father’s expense too. But after a few weeks, I told him enough was enough.”

“In the end, Sylvie, it was just a prank that got pulled a handful of times before it was over. At least I thought it was over. Months later, I came home to find my mom and dad laughing around the kitchen table, my brother looking serious and upset. I asked what was so funny, and they told me I should ask Sylvester to describe what he saw in the theater.”

“And that’s when he told you he saw—”

“Globules,” Howie said, resurrecting that word from Heekin’s book. “But even stranger than that name he’d concocted for them: I asked when he last encountered those things and he told me he’d been seeing them every day for months.”

“Are you saying my father made it up?” I asked, wondering how much of what he said I should believe.

Howie didn’t respond right away. He and Lloyd just looked at each other, and I had the feeling neither wanted to answer the question. “I don’t know, Sylvie,” my uncle said at last. “Sometimes I wonder if he lied to us. Other times, I wonder if he lied to himself. Maybe his belief gave that light a power all its own.”

His words made me think of Penny, the things my sister once said about the doll’s power over our family, power that only seemed to grow stronger instead of weaker after I dumped it down the well. “So he never knew what you’d done to him?”

“Years later, when your dad was in dental school in Baltimore, I drove down on my motorcycle on a whim to see him. Should’ve known better, but I got this idea in my head that the two of us might have a brotherly visit. Shoot pool. Throw darts. Your father actually seemed happy to see me and was a good sport when I dragged him to a bar. A miracle considering what a Bible thumper he had become. He even drank two beers. Me, I drank too many. At some point during the night, he started talking about the things he saw in the student housing building where he lived. Even a little bit of booze always loosened your father’s lips, and he went on about how they had followed him from the theater. He had quit calling them that strange name by then, saying they were ghosts, plain and simple. Anyway, that’s when I realized I never should have let it go on so long. So I told him.”

“What did he say?”