Help for the Haunted(97)

“Tell me, Sylvie. Does that make you feel better?”

The sight of Penny shut away behind those metal bars should have done something to alter my feelings. But looking at the thing on the other side—leaves gone from its hair, bracelet twisted tight around its wrist, candy-cane legs crossed daintily over each other, smiling just the same—the truth was, I felt no different. Still, I knew what my mother wanted to hear, so I opened my mouth to give her the right answer.

Just as the phone had interrupted my mother earlier, it released a shrill ring from upstairs at that moment, interrupting me as well. The sound startled us both. And this time, it kept ringing well past the point when the machine should have picked up. My mother sighed. “The tape must be full. I should probably get the phone, in case your father is trying to reach us from the road.”

She walked to the string dangling from the lightbulb. She was about to give it a tug when she stopped. “I was just thinking,” she said, “about when I was a girl. During long nights on the farm, I used to sometimes feel scared sleeping in my room. When that happened, my father used to leave the light on for me. He said it would be harder to imagine bad things happening when there was light to see by. I think the same applies here. Let’s leave this one on. How does that sound?”

As that phone rang and rang above our heads, I looked up at the rafters and felt an odd sense of alarm. But I told my mother her suggestion sounded like a good idea, and with that, she let go of the string, leaving the light burning in the basement as the two of us headed up the stairs.

Back in the kitchen, with the door shut behind us, I plopped down at the table and began flipping through that swatch book while my mother picked up the phone. The Paisley Party. The Bloomsbury House. The Littlest Stars. Each of the patterns had a clever name, and the day my mother brought the book home she asked which design best matched the person I was. I’d been unable to choose then, and all these months later, still none seemed right.

“I’m sorry,” I heard her say into the phone. “But I’ll have to ask you to call back when my husband is home. He handles that sort of thing. Thank you.” When she hung up, my mother looked to see what I was doing at the table, asking if I’d found anything close.

“Not yet,” I said, just as the phone rang once more. The sound caused us both to groan, and our groans caused us both to laugh.

“I understand now the way a receptionist must feel,” my mother sighed, before answering again. There was a long pause, and then, in a voice that sounded cooler, less polite than on the previous call, she asked, “At a pay phone where? Mars Market? I see. You’re quite close actually.”

The Purple Parade. The Stars and Stripes. The Milky Way. I kept flipping, searching for the perfect pattern.

“Well, I suppose it would be okay. I can’t promise I’ll be of much help, though. It doesn’t work that way. Besides, my husband is not here and normally he—” She paused, then continued, “If you take a left out of the lot onto Holabird Avenue, you’ll come to an intersection. There, you take a right. Well, no, actually. Not a right. You know something? It’s funny, I don’t often drive the route myself, so I’m not the best source of directions. Tell you what, ask someone there. Since our street is easy to miss, I will walk to the end of the lane and meet you. Okay then, Mr. Lynch.”

The name caused me to look up. I shut the book and waited as she said good-bye. The moment she put down the phone, I repeated: “Mr. Lynch?”

“That’s right. I’m not sure you remember, but we met him and his daughter a few years back in Ocala.”

Even after so much time, the memory of that night lived vividly in my mind. I heard the apprehension in my voice when I asked, “What does he want?”

“Well, he’s been the persistent one I was referring to earlier. Calling for days on end, in fact. Now, apparently, he’s turned up right here in town. Says his daughter is having troubles again, worse than before, actually.”

I could still see him calling into the bushes. I could still hear her snarling. I remembered the girl’s strange silence as her mouth moved up and down like a marionette’s beneath the lights of that parking lot. “Maybe you should have told him no.”

“Sylvie, that doesn’t sound very Christian of you.”

She was right. But I kept going anyway. “Just because he decides to show up in Dundalk does not mean you’re obligated to drop everything and walk to the end of the street to pray over her.”

By then, my mother was about to exit the kitchen. She stopped in the doorway, took a breath, and said, “A prayer does not cost a person anything, Sylvie. Remember that. Now I cannot guarantee I’ll be of any help this time, but taking a few moments out of my day to at least try, well, it’s no great burden. So I’m going to change my clothes and meet them.”

In the middle of that book there was an entire section of white swatches that I’d flipped through before. While I listened to the creak of floorboards upstairs as my mother got ready, I turned to them again. The Whitest Clouds. The Whitest Seashells. The Whitest Cotton. I studied each until my mother returned downstairs. Her hair had been swept up into pins once more. Silver crosses dotted her ears; another cross hung around her neck. She wore one of her many gray dresses.

“Did you always dress that way?” I couldn’t help but ask.