Now, on the first Halloween without my mother or father, I looked away from the sight of Rose and Cora kissing and walked into our house, twisting the locks behind me. In some ways, my sister’s behavior was no different from all the other surprises she delivered over the years, from that night with Almaline to the morning last year when she came downstairs with a shaved head, still nicked and bloody from the razor. But hadn’t she done those things to antagonize my parents? What could be her reason now?
With the Hulk standing guard, I figured I’d seen the last trick-or-treaters. I helped myself to dinner—a handful of Mr. Goodbars—clicked off the lamps, and made my way upstairs. My sister didn’t make a habit of telling me where she was going and when she’d be back, so I felt a sense of freedom as I pushed open her door. Squashed soda cans, scratched off scratch-off tickets, her old globe—those things and more littered the floor. A humidifier puffed away, mold gathered at its mouth. The tub of witch makeup sat on her dresser, the epicenter of a green fingerprint storm that moved from the window to the walls to the tissues scattered everywhere but the wastebasket.
It had been eleven weeks exactly since we heard from my uncle. After the courts rejected his request to be made my guardian, he promised to return to Florida, “tidy up his affairs,” then move closer and be part of our lives anyway. Instead, all spring we had received late-night calls with rambling explanations about leases, debts, and so many other reasons why things were taking longer than he hoped. When the calls stopped, letters arrived, claiming he had devised a plan to help us all if only we’d be patient. After that: no word at all. Good riddance, my sister said, though I’d taken it upon myself to finally write him without telling her, if only to make sure our sole living relative was okay. It would have been much easier if I could’ve checked our mailbox for a return letter, but when a car came by and kids batted it off the post, Rose set up a P.O. box in town. Carrying mail home from that box put her in an even worse mood than usual, so it didn’t help to ask if anything was for me.
“Not unless you count these love letters from the electric and gas companies,” she told me last time. “What could you be waiting for anyway? An invitation from Harvard? Don’t get ahead of yourself, squirt.”
I moved slowly around the room, unearthing a laminated prayer card from Saint Julia’s that I was surprised she had not thrown away, and a newspaper where she’d circled an ad: PARTY PLANNER WANTED: MUST BE DETAIL-ORIENTED & ORGANIZED. Even though Rose talked about going back for her GED, so far she had done nothing about it, instead taking random office jobs only to get fired because she lacked the exact skills listed in that ad. I gave her old globe a spin and thought of the way she used to do the same, planting her finger on random locations and bringing it to a stop, announcing Armenia or Lithuania or Guam.
I was about to check out her closet when the Hulk’s chain rattled on the lawn.
I went to the window. Outside, the dog’s bone must have thawed, because she gnawed frantically on it, causing her chain to make that clanging sound. Except for Rose’s truck, the driveway remained empty. Relieved, I stepped through the minefield on her floor and opened the closet. Since so few of Rose’s belongings were ever put away, the space was mostly vacant. Nothing from Howie, but I located a plastic bag labeled Baltimore County Police Department. Flashlight, road map, repair bills, oil change receipts—its contents included everything the police had removed from the Datsun before returning the car to us. I stared at my father’s signature on a receipt, imagining his hand moving a pen across the bottom. Finally, I pulled out the only remaining item: Help for the Haunted: The Unusual Work of Sylvester and Rose Mason by Samuel Heekin.
Despite all the months that had passed, holding that book in my hands made me every bit as nervous as it had that night in the backseat. Some part of me worried about Rose coming home still, so I clicked on the flashlight and turned off the ceiling lamp, then sat down on the floor and flipped pages. My mother used to complain about Heekin’s convoluted way of stringing together sentences. Judging from passages that leaped out, I understood why:
If you are a believer who has come to this narrative, there is nothing that I, the author, can do to prepare you, the reader, for what you are about to discover . . .
. . . The Masons could very well open a museum of curiosities in the basement of their home, for that is where the remnants of their excursions in the realm of the paranormal live. I use the word “live” because, to this visitor at least, many of the things I encountered on my tour beneath their house did feel exactly that: alive. One of the very first artifacts I took note of upon entering the basement was a hatchet, which seemed to carry a life force all its own. This weapon was used in a tragic family slaying at what was once the Locke Farm in Whitefield, New Hampshire. But that, as they say, is only the beginning . . .