Helens-of-Troy

“Stop. Right. There,” Helen demanded, raising her left palm. The woman coming down the stairs sort of looked like her mother, but one never could tell. It wouldn’t be the first time an entity had tried to take over a human body. It was the subtle signs that gave them away.

  “Now what?” Helena asked.

  “You’re wearing a turtleneck.”

  “So?”

  “So…you don’t do turtlenecks. You do French bodices, but you don’t do Irish wool.” Helen walked around her mother, eyeing her up and down. Her mother had put on a few pounds since the last time she had seen her. It was nothing an acquaintance would notice, but to the eagle eye of a daughter, about ten pounds, give or take.

  “Don’t read too much into that, Helen. It’s cold outside, that’s all,” Helena replied, squirming in her jeans that were a size too small. “Stop that twirling around me. You’re making me dizzy.”

  “And…”

  “And I think my thong is stuck up my butt crack.”

  “That’s better,” Helen smiled, and gave her mother a hug. “You had me worried there for a second. I just wanted to make sure you were still in that body I know so well. The one that gave birth to me.”

  “This body is getting harder to maintain, let me tell you. If my ass get’s any bigger I’ll be able to rent it out for advertising.” Helena pulled her sweater out from beneath the waistline of her pants, loosening the fit. “Damn dryer. It shrinks everything.”

  “Uh-huh,” Helen smiled.

  “What do you feel like doing?” Helena asked. “We have the house to ourselves. I could hook up the Karaoke machine.” She raised her fist near her mouth, like a microphone and threatened to sing. “That’ll kill a few hours. We could start with KC and the Sunshine Band… ‘shake, shake, shake’…”

  “Or not. Maybe we should start cleaning up the porch?” Helen offered. She was already dressed in her winter coat and boots in preparation for the task. “It’s probably time to take the Halloween decorations down,” she noted, looking out the window. The wind had already made a mess of the cotton cob-webs.

  “I guess so,” Helena sighed. “I hate the taking them down part. It’s the same at Christmas, only at least at Christmas they get to stay up longer. Sometimes I wonder why I put so much effort into Halloween.” She took her own jacket from the closet and slipped it on. “Remind me to call Forest Lawn tomorrow. I need to find out when Mr. Wagner’s funeral is. I think I’ll have a little party back here after the service.”

  “A party?”

  “Well, you know what I mean. A gathering. With food. And alcohol.”

  “So, a party…”

  “Pretty much,” Helena agreed. “I doubt anyone else is doing anything for him. He was a bit of a loner.” She paused. “Helen, when I die, make sure there’s plenty of wine, okay? Spring for the good stuff. I’ll leave you the money.”

  “You’re never going to die, Mother. You’ll annoy me forever.”

  “I can still do that after I’m dead, but I’d rather do it now,” she smiled. “And I don’t want any lilies. Lilies make me sneeze. Even when I’m dead, they’ll make me sneeze. I just know it.”

  “A wake would be a nice gesture,” Helen agreed. “For Mr. Wagner,” she clarified. “I’m sure you were a good friend to him.”

  “Well, he was a good friend to me,” Helena assured her.

  “How good a friend?”

  “Helen!”

  “I’m just teasing. I think. What religion was he? Do we have to do anything special?”

  “I don’t know,” Helena admitted. “We never talked about that. He liked cheese and lettuce sandwiches, so I guess that’s what I’ll serve.”

  “That sounds pretty easy,” Helen agreed. Although she was sure she would have to lay out a much bigger spread when Helena did eventually kick the bucket. “Have you heard from Dad lately?” she asked. “Dad likes cheese and lettuce sandwiches.”

  Helena opened the front door and motioned for Helen to go through. “Define lately.”

  “This decade,” Helen answered, putting her gloves on as she walked outside. The snow was not looking like it was going to let up any time soon. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. Maybe this can wait until tomorrow. Your new door is going to wait until tomorrow, let me tell you.”

  “The snow might make it easier for us to slide the swing to the other side of the porch. It’s a bit heavy,” Helena speculated. She grasped the frame with both hands and tried to give it a shove. “I can’t budge it. I’m going to need your help with this.”

  Helen went around to the other side of the swing and tried to give it a push. It moved, but only a few inches. “It’s stuck on something,” she said, pointing towards the base. “So, how is he?”

  Helena glanced at the wooden floorboard. Kevin Clark’s ghost sheet costume had gotten knotted up behind the swing and was preventing it from sliding freely. He had taken it off while Roy was investigating the death of Mr. Wagner. She tugged at it until it came loose. “It’s definitely time to clean this porch, poor thing,” she sighed, touching the fabric softly. “I heard from your father a while back, Helen. Alexander’s the same as he always is.”

  “And that would be?”

  “A royal pain in the ass.” She grabbed the broom from the corner of the railing and began to sweep some of the snow away. If the snowplows didn’t make it out tonight, it was going to be a tough commute for everyone in the morning. “I see Roy’s cruiser coming down the street. Are you ready to tell him about what you saw in your vision?”

  “As ready as I ever will be, I suppose,” Helen admitted. “I guess it helps that you have this understanding with him. You know, the whole Fourth of July thing.” Helen hoped it would save a lot of time and frustration, not having to convince him that her visions were real.

  “Maybe after this is all over he’ll introduce you to the Dayton boys.”

  “Mother, I don’t think I’m ready for a new relationship right now, thanks anyway.”

  “You never know, Helen. The best ones come when you’re not looking. And like I told you, being a police officer predisposes them to the fragility of human nature. I find that comes in handy.”

  “You would.”

  “They’re good looking. They have a steady job. You can take your pick between them.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Helen said, in an effort to end the conversation.

  Roy parked the car behind Helena’s Mustang and walked towards the LaRose women. “Do I need pepper spray?” he asked Helen.

  “Look, I’m sorry about that whole you, me, the punch to the head thing. I promise not to do it again,” she said sheepishly. Secretly, she was still pretty amazed at the beating she was able to lay on him.

  “That would be a good thing,” he replied, rubbing his neck. “So what’s up? Your mother said you had some information for me in regards to the whereabouts of the Clarks?”

  “I don’t really know where to begin,” Helen admitted. “I know you might think this is a little crazy…”

  “She’s had a vision,” Helena said calmly.

  “A vision?” He leaned on the porch railing and eyed Helena suspiciously. “Like mother, like daughter. Expect the unexpected.”

  “Hear her out, Roy. It’s not easy for her.”

  “Okay,” Roy sighed. “Let’s just assume for the moment that I buy the whole ‘vision’ thing. I don’t need to know your whole back history, Helen. Just get to the point you want to make, then I’ll decide if I want to hear more.”

  “I saw a white truck, with two dead people in it. The truck had been run off the road and it’s lying overturned in a ditch.”

  “It does sound like the Clark’s,” Helena insisted. “She’s trying to describe the cliff out by the ski hill.”

  “How do you know, Helena? Did you have a vision too?” He wished she would let her daughter tell the story on her own.

  “No, she just did a better job explaining it to me earlier. Before you got here. She’s nervou
s now.”

  Roy wondered how anyone who had managed to knock him unconscious could suddenly have a case of the nerves. “Okay,” he sighed. “Maybe you’d better start at the beginning, Helen.”

  Helen subconsciously twisted her pony tail around her fingers. It hung in a loose curl when she released it. “Roy, I know this sounds crazy. It all started with a terrible migraine that I had earlier. It happens when I get a vision.”

  “It does,” Helena interrupted. “You have to see her to believe it. Her forehead goes all wrinkly.”

  “Go on…” he replied, his voice indicating suspicion. He raised his hand to Helena. “I mean, go on Helen.”

  “I could see the white truck travelling back towards town,” Helen continued. “A man was driving, and there was a woman in the front with him. I think they’d been out shopping because the rear seat was full of groceries. He was a stocky guy with red hair and she…she was just… plain,” Helen shrugged. There was nothing particularly outstanding about the woman’s features.

  “Tell me more,” Roy said, now with interest. It did sound like the Clarks.

  “This car came up from behind them and smashed into them. The red haired guy in the truck tried to steer back onto the highway, but the car hit him again. They were deliberate hits. The white truck had no where to go. It went over the embankment.”

  “The car that hit the white truck, can you describe it? Roy asked.

  “It was a Hummer. Black. Not a fully decked out one or anything,” she said, trying to focus in on the vehicle in her subconscious. “An older model. I don’t think it’s worth a lot anymore.”

  “What about the truck?” Roy asked. “Anything about it stick out in your memory?”

  “I can see the license plate on the truck, it says ACEMAN1.”

  “Yeah, that’s the Clarks,” Roy sighed, clearly disturbed. “He’s a big poker player.” He studied Helen’s face. Whether her story was true or not he didn’t know. But he believed, that she believed, that it was.

  “I think I’ve seen a Hummer just like that around town,” Helena remembered. “Or maybe I’m thinking of a Jeep. I don’t know. I used to be able to tell them apart, but now they’re making the Jeeps bigger and the Hummer’s smaller. It’s confusing the hell out of me.”

  Roy took his phone from his pocket, began to call Purdy, and then reconsidered. If he didn’t have to involve any of the officers with Helen’s information, it might be the best thing for all concerned. Roy knew there was a Hummer like that in town. And he knew who it belonged to. “Okay, Helen,” he said. “I’ll head out on the highway to take a look. But if you’re wrong about this, you owe your mother and me dinner at Delphine’s. I eat a lot. You should know that.”

  “All right,” Helen conceded. “Thanks, Roy… for at least hearing me out.”

  “No problem,” he replied. “That’s what I do. But if you don’t mind, before I go, I just need to talk to your mother about…about…about the upcoming tea party for the senior’s centre next Wednesday. There’s a problem with the seating arrangements, and she knows better than anyone who to put with whom.”

  “That sounds too thrilling for me,” Helen replied, happy for the excuse to leave. “I’m cold anyway. I’ll go inside and start some laundry.”

  “Don’t you dare put my white peek-a-boo blouse in with Ellie’s mud soaked jeans,” Helena begged. She looked at Roy. “I’ll tell you about the angora sweater incident some other time.”

  “Who said I was doing your laundry?” Helen laughed as she headed inside. The door stuck as she tried to close it. “We should get some new weather stripping at the hardware store tomorrow while we’re at it,” she noted.

  “Good plan,” Helena acknowledged, pulling the door firmly shut.

  “Okay, Helena. What’s going on around here?” Roy asked when they were finally alone.

  “What do you mean?” Helena asked, feigning innocence.

  “First, there was Brooke Quinlan. It was the darndest thing. I got a call from the coroner saying she had no blood in that tiny little body of hers beyond what clung to her body tissues when they did the autopsy. Then Kevin Clark gets murdered. And you know what? The coroner calls me again, and guess what he says?”

  “What?” Helena winced.

  “He can’t figure out why Kevin Clark is down a half a body of blood! He said he found two puncture wounds on his ankle. Wounds that under normal circumstances would bleed a like a paper cut and then stop.”

  “Well, not if he was dead.”

  “Or, if there was some other force that had time to suck some of the blood out of him.”

  “Like what? Really, Roy. Aren’t you jumping to conclusions that are pretty far out there?” she said sheepishly.

  “You tell me. It’s your daughter having the visions. And your granddaughter who had the weird dream. What does that all mean? Do we need to re-visit your infamous Fourth of July party, Helena?”

  “Let’s not.”

  “Oh, I think we will. Purdy and I had an incident with Stan Lachey the other night. We left him alone in the back seat of the cruiser when we were dealing with the situation out at the Wildman’s farm. When we finally got to leave, we found a teenager by the car, giving Stan some serious grief. When we approached him, the teenager laughed at us. And I couldn’t help thinking I had heard that laugh before. But where? It’s been driving me crazy the past few hours. And then I remembered. Your party.”

  Helena took her fingers to her temples and began to rub them. “I have had enough of that day to last a lifetime.”

  “I remember turning around in your backyard, to see who was laughing manically at us from across the lawn. I knew I was going to have to do a thorough job of covering your tracks that day, and obviously someone else besides you, Mr. Wagner, Betty Lachey, Marita Harbinger, and myself, had seen the whole thing happen. And I’m not referring to the brief appearance of the Exorcist. There was a teenaged boy standing there as well, taking it all in. I went to approach him, but he vanished. In the blink of an eye, he was gone. I went looking for him, but he never turned up again. You know me, Helena. I don’t like leaving loose ends around.”

  “It was a hot, crazy, July day,” Helena offered. “But it’s over now.”

  “I don’t think it is, Helena. The laugh I heard last night was the same. The boy was the same. And he was at the scene of Kevin Clark’s murder. I need to find that boy, Helena. Where is he?”

  “I don’t know,” Helena said honestly.

  “Well, you think about that,” Roy said knowingly. “And when you do know, you call me.” He turned his back on Helena and walked slowly to his car.

  “This is all getting very complicated,” Helena admitted to herself. “There is a tornado spinning around my house, and I don’t know how to make it stop.” She put the broom back in its spot on the corner of the verandah and went inside her home. Maybe it was time to start to come clean with Helen about what was really going on. She had to figure out a way to delicately broach the subject. It might be best to get Helen mad about something else and then divert her to the conversation she really wanted to have. Blindside her. She went down to the laundry room in the basement to find her and give it a try. Helen was sitting on top of the vibrating washer.

  “Um, what are you doing?” Helena asked.

  Helen was red-faced. “Nothing.”

  “You are more like me than you are willing to admit,” her mother laughed.

  “Change the subject, please,” Helen begged.

  “About Ellie’s father…” Helena began.

  “Change it back, please,” Helen wished. “I’m getting my jollies from the spin cycle, okay? Let’s talk about how wrong that is.”

  “Too late. Tell me about him.”

  “Julian? You want to know about Julian?”

  “Julian?” Helena questioned, tilting her head ever so slightly. “I thought his name was Jules.”

  “You’re losing it, Mother.”

  “I don’t think
so, Helen. If you don’t remember her father’s name, or if you don’t know her father’s name, you should just admit it.”

  “His name was Julian,” Helen said adamantly. “What about him?”

  “I’m just very sorry about everything you went through at the time of his death. I’m sorry I didn’t get to know him. What was he like?

  “He was tall, dark and handsome. And smart. And funny. He was everything I ever wanted.”

  “He sounds perfect.”

  “No,” Helen said softly. “He was far from that. But he was mine. At least for a little while.”

  “It takes a long time to get over the loss of someone you love,” Helena admitted. There had been times in her life when she had felt just like she assumed Helen must have then. More so when she was younger, when love’s betrayal somehow meant so much more.

  “It takes forever,” Helen replied solemnly.

  “You moved on,” her mother reminded her.

  “I did,” Helen agreed. “But it wasn’t easy. I still keep comparing every man I’m with to him. Maybe that’s why it never works out.”

  “It’s hard for a man to compete with a memory,” Helena said. “You need to let go.”

  “It’s not that easy. I feel like he’s always around.”

  “Helen?” her mother said, noticing her daughter had drifted off somewhere.

  Helen realized she might have said too much. “You’re right. I need to let go. It’s just hard, that’s all.” She reminded herself that she was going to have to be more careful around the subject if she didn’t want to raise suspicions.

  “So what’s next in the life of Helen?” her mother asked. Something in Helen’s demeanor indicated she was being unusually coy about the whole issue. She hoped it wasn’t because her daughter wanted to return to Tony.

  “The Daytons,” Helen laughed. “Would that make you happy?”

  “Yes, actually. It just might. You should see them. I think there’s a picture of them in last week’s paper, I’ll go get it.” Helena said with satisfaction.

  “God give me strength,” Helen whispered. “It hasn’t even been a week and she’s taking over my social calendar.”

  “Yes, here it is,” Helena said, coming back into the room. “They gave a talk to the grade three’s about winter safety this week. You can read all about it.” She started to hand the paper to Helen, and then remembered the sordid front-page story of the missing animals in Troy. “Here, Helen. Let me take that front page. I spilled some coffee on it earlier, it’s all crinkled.” She removed the page and opened the newspaper to the article. “Personally I think Cody is the better looking of the two, but they’re really quite similar.”

  Helen glanced at the picture. “Yeah, they’re kind of cute,” she had to admit. She handed the paper back to her mother. They reminded her of Davey Weiss from her own third grade class. Blond and blue-eyed, a total one-eighty from the men she was usually attracted to. That might be a good thing.

  “I know. You’d think they’d be off the market by now, but they’re not,” Helena said, tucking the issue under her arm. “I can’t imagine why.”

  Helen grabbed the paper back from Helena. “Oh, my God. Let me see that picture again.” She quickly flipped through the pages until she found the right one.

  “What is it, Helen?”

  “I know them,” she gasped. “He was one, now he’s two. St. Paul de Vence. They’re the wraith riders I unleashed from that box.”

  “You mean you weren’t lying about that?” Helena exclaimed in disbelief.

  “No, I wasn’t lying about that. Not that part anyway.” Helen grabbed her mother’s arm. “Oh no, it’s happening again.”

  “What is it, Helen?” She looked at her daughter’s face. “You’re going all wrinkly.”

  “The accident. It’s replaying in my mind. I can see the man in the Hummer. He’s blonde. He has a badge. He’s one of them. A Dayton.”

  “Are you sure?” Helena gasped

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “Hellsbelles! Can this day get any worse? I mean, really…”

  The upstairs phone began to ring.

  “Answer it, Mother,” Helen said. “My head is killing me.”

  “Let it go to the answering machine,” Helena replied. She wanted to stay by her daughter until this latest vision subsided.

  “ANSWER IT!” Helen screamed.

  “Okay, okay,” Helena replied, running upstairs to answer the phone. She was out of breath by the time she picked up the receiver. “Hello? Oh, hello Jacey…,” she answered, “…of course we can come right over. What’s wrong?” She listened intently to the hysterical girl on the other end of the line.

  “Helen,” Helena yelled. “You put that migraine on hold and get your boots on.” She flew down the old staircase, taking the stairs two at a time.

  “What’s wrong?” Helen asked upon her return. “I’m feeling kind of woozy.”

  “I’ll woozy you to hell and back, if you don’t hurry up,” Helena warned. “Can you hear that church bell ringing in the distance? It’s summoning us, but not to mass.”

  “Mother?”

  Helena threw her jacket haphazardly over her arm and headed out the door, grabbing Helen by the hand. Helen nearly slipped on the wet snow-covered pavement as Helena pulled her along to the Lachey’s side door.

  “Helen,” she began earnestly, “I need you to focus. I mean really focus. Willie was right. Ellie’s life is in danger.”

  “What?” Helen replied, wide-eyed. “But you said…”

  “I didn’t know then what I know now. Well, I knew part of what I know now, but that’s besides the point. We have some very nasty people to take care of, Helen.

  “You mean take care of as in…bringing them to your clinic, right?” Helen hoped.

  “I mean,” Helena clarified. “We have some very nasty people that we have to kill. And for the record, I don’t do that at my clinic.”