I looked past him at the bottom of the stairs, expecting to see whatever it was dart between the shadows. “What . . . things?”
He just shook his head and started down the steps without answering. I watched until he was gone from view, then shut the door. Before going back up to my room, I found myself walking to the curio hutch in the living room and staring at all those books behind the glass cabinet. I thought of what that man just said. Then I thought of my sister sneering at that phony ghost at Disney World, of her asking if I believed the things our parents claimed to be true. In search of some sort of proof, I dragged over a chair, climbed up, and reached for the key my father kept hidden on top. Possessive as he was about those books, it was odd how carelessly they were shelved: haphazardly piled, upside down, wrong side in. I pulled out what looked to be the oldest and thickest of all. Back in my room, I made a cover out of a paper bag, same as for my textbooks, writing simply HISTORY on the front.
Inside the worn pages, I did discover a history, different from any I’d read before, about people from long ago who suffered strange afflictions and reported otherworldly visions. Of all the stories I read, none stayed with me so much as those about the girls. The first I encountered was Marie des Vallées, born in 1590 into a poor family in Saint-Sauveur-Landelin, France. At the age of twelve, Marie’s father died. Her mother remarried a butcher, “whose humour and manners resembled those of the animals he worked with” and who beat Marie with a stick until she fled. For years she lived on the streets until in 1609 a female “tuteur” took her in. After moving into the woman’s house, Marie began to experience what the clergy labeled as symptoms of demonic possession. On countless occasions, she fell to the ground, “mouth agape, emitting otherworldly cries of agony and terror.” If she walked by a church, never mind attempting to enter, her body collapsed and convulsed until she was carried away.
Another girl, more famous than the first Marie, was also born in France, though later, in 1844. Her name: Marie-Bernarde Soubirous, though she came to be known simply as Bernadette. A devout peasant girl, Bernadette began seeing apparitions at the age of fourteen. She described her first sighting as, “a gentle Light that brightened the dark recess, and there in the Light, a smile. A girl dressed in a white dress, tied with a blue ribbon, a white veil on her head, and a yellow rose on each foot.” Despite early skepticism, the church declared Bernadette’s sightings worthy of belief. The site in Lourdes where her body was buried became a shrine where millions search for miracles.
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.”