Helens-of-Troy by Janine McCaw

As soon as the Lachey’s side door opened, Jacey threw her arms around the first person she saw. It happened to be Helen, who didn’t like to be touched by people she hardly knew in the first place, let alone locked in a fright squeeze by one.

  “Help us,” Jacey begged.

  “I will if you let me go,” Helen replied.

  “Give her to me,” Helena said, putting her arms around Jacey’s shoulder, pulling her away from Helen as she did so. “What on earth happened?” she asked the frightened girl.

  As they went up the stairs, Jacey briefly told them that she and Ellie had gone out shopping, leaving Stan with Tom, and when they returned home, they had found Tom lying unconscious on the floor.

  “Ellie went to look for Stan,” she explained. “I dialed directory assistance to get your number. She thought I needed it to dial 911. Sha…like I’m an airhead or summat.”

  “Have you called an ambulance?” Helen asked.

  “Wot for? I don’t think this is an ambulance type of thing. I don’t think paramedics take paranormal classes even though they kind of sound the same. You know, para-whatsits.” She paused, fingering the cross around her neck. “I could be wrong I guess, but I don’t know…my spooky senses are tingling. I think Tom was knocked senseless by a vampire. And I think the vampire might have Stan.”

  “Oh dear,” Helena sighed.

  “Good God,” Helen said, looking at her mother. “I want to laugh, but somehow…somehow I get the feeling nobody is joking around here.”

  Tom was sitting on the bed, rubbing his head, when the ladies walked into Stan’s bedroom. The encounter had left him somewhat dazed and confused. “Where am I?” he asked.

  “You’re at the Lachey’s. Let me see that eye,” Helena demanded, grabbing Tom’s head in her hands. A welt stretched from the side of his head to his nose. It looked like he had run into the proverbial brick wall. “You’re going to have a beaut of black eye,” she noted, checking the rest of his head for contusions.

  “A Shiner?” Tom winced. “I never had a shiner before. How’s it going to look?”

  “In less than a week,” Helena predicted, “you will be up to your leading man antics. But you might want to lay low for a while. Tell your parent you got in the way of Stan’s baseball bat.”

  “Stan,” Tom remembered. “I forgot about Stan. Where is he?”

  The ladies looked at each other helplessly.

  “Goth-Chic’s gone to find him,” Jacey offered.

  “Goth-Chic?” Helen questioned.

  “I’ll explain later,” Helena replied.

  “Seriously, they’re calling her Goth-Chic?” Helen continued. “I was afraid something like this would happen if I didn’t get her to the Biggie-Mart.” She looked sternly at Jacey. “What do they call you?”

  “Hot,” Jacey offered with a big smile on her face.

  “Never mind, Helen,” her mother interrupted. “We have bigger things to worry about.”

  “Oh really?” Helen agreed sarcastically. “Those vampires have a way of slipping your mind, don’t they?”

  “Shit, I forgot about him too,” Tom remembered. “He must have hit me harder than I thought. My brain’s not working right.”

  “You’ll be fine, Tom,” Helena assured him.

  “So let me get this straight,” Helen said, trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together. “You, Tom…you think you were kicked in the head by a vampire?”

  “I know I was,” he answered.

  “And you, Jacey…you believe him?”

  “Well, I’ve never actually saw him,” she began, “but Stan talks about him all the time.”

  “All the time?” Helena asked.

  Tom and Jacey nodded in unison.

  “And you, Mother…you believe what they are saying to be true?”

  “Uh-oh,” Helena grimaced. Maybe it was too late for the Colorado blue lawn seed after all. Maybe the whole neighborhood knew about her backyard guest. “Think, Helena, think,” she thought to herself. “How do I get out of this one?”

  “You can’t,” Helen said aloud.

  “Now?” Helena said, shocked. “Now you decide to read people’s minds?”

  “Not people’s,” Helen said. “Yours. You are not people. You are my mother. You are an entirely different sub-genre. I had this argument with Ellie a few days ago.”

  Helena folded her arms across her chest and looked disapprovingly at her daughter.

  “Don’t try to block me out,” Helen warned. “It’s too late for that. I want to know all about the vampire. So you can tell me, or…”

  “Or what, Helen?”

  “Or I’ll break down that wall you’re trying to put up and discover all kinds of secrets about you that I probably don’t really want to know.”

  “Is anyone else in here freezing?” Helena asked, ignoring her for the moment. She’d rather get into it with Helen at home later, without other people’s children listening to the whole conversation.

  She walked around the bed to the open window, and was about to close it when something drew her attention away from that thought. She noticed a tiny footprint on the windowsill. She looked down at the ground hoping for a clue as to where the vampire had taken Stan, but there were too many footprints already in the snow to tell for sure. “Let’s get downstairs, start a fire and think this thing through,” she said to them.

  She had never been in Betty’s house before, and doubted she ever would again. “Shame,” she thought to herself. The pictures on the walls, and the collection of antiques she was discovering throughout the house, gave Helena a whole new sense of Betty. A Betty she might actually get to like, should she have the chance. “Not going to happen,” she sighed.

  “What’s that, Mother?” Helen asked, following the three others down to the Lachey’s living room. “You know, we could just turn up the heat.”

  “That’s strange,” Helena commented, noticing something peculiar in the otherwise orderly room. “Why is there ash on Betty’s Persian rug?” She bent down, took a little of the soot into the palm of her hand and sniffed. “Hmm, white oak. I have a heck of a time with the hardwoods. I usually opt for spruce. She must get Ryan to split it for her.”

  The fresh trail of soot led directly into the fireplace. Helena felt the grate. It was cold. “Weird. This mess looks fresh, like it’s just been blown out of the chimney.”“Maybe it’s the wind,” Jacey offered. “It’s kind of nasty out there.”

  “Do you want me to grab the vacuum and clean it up?” Tom asked. “Betty will freak, and…well… maybe Betty doesn’t really need to freak out again right now.”

  “Tom, find me a flashlight, will you?” Helena asked. “I want to look up the flue.”

  “Sure thing,” he said. “Stan has flashlights all over the house.” He opened up the drawer on the coffee table and took one out. “Would you like me to check it out for you, Mrs. LaRose? I’m looking kind of shabby now anyway.”

  “Okay, Tom,” she said apprehensively. Tom had a point, the vampire had left him rather rumpled, and her turtleneck was brand new. No sense wrecking a perfectly good sweater, she reckoned.

  Tom sunk to the floor and leaned on the base of the fireplace. He turned on the flashlight and contorted his body into a position that allowed him to look up inside the chimney. “I think there’s something stuck up there,” he said. “I can’t see any daylight.”

  “Maybe it’s just really dirty,” Helen offered.

  “No,” Tom said. “Betty had it swept out at the beginning of the month. I remember her coming into the hardware store looking for a self-cleaning log. My dad said she was better off to have it professionally done for insurance purposes. The chimney sweep came on a Saturday, the day after the Trojans beat the Argonauts. Ryan told me the guy woke him up by walking on the roof.”

  “I guess we can rule neglect out,” Helena agreed. “I wonder what the problem is?”

  “Maybe a raccoon’s in there,” Tom said. “I hear something whimpering.” He sho
ved his head as far as he could into the brick structure to take a better look.

  Like the whispering walls of St. Paul’s Cathedral, the soft cries coming from the animal caught in the brick and mortar stack worked their way down to Tom. “I think it’s talking to me,” he said bewilderedly. “I could have sworn it called my name.”

  “Oh, no…” Helena said, clamping her hand over her mouth.

  “My head, my head…” Helen cried. “It’s starting again.” She pressed her hands to her skull. Her forehead began to wrinkle.

  “Helen, do you see what I think you see?” Helena asked. She feared now that the reason she had not seen extra footprints in the snow was because the vampire had not gone to the ground. He had gone up.

  “Yes, I do.” Helen squeaked, jumping up and down nervously on the spot. “Oh my God, call the fire department.”

  “We can’t call the fire department,” Helena said calmly.

  “What’s wrong?” Jacey asked. “Do you want me to call the police?”

  “No! No police,” the LaRoses cried. It was not going to be good if the Dayton’s answered the call.

  “Tom, come out from there,” Helena instructed. “Let me talk to him.”

  Tom didn’t move.

  “Helen, keep focused,” she demanded. “Jacey, help me pull Tom out of there. He’s fainted again.”

  Helena crouched down and grabbed one of Tom’s legs, indicating to Jacey that she should do the same with the other. They pulled hard, moving Tom’s limp body out from inside the hearth as fast as they could.

  “Why would Tom faint again?” Jacey asked. “I thought he was okay now. If it’s just a stupid raccoon…” Then it dawned on her. “Stan,” she whispered. “He’s in the chimney?”

  The LaRoses looked at her gravely and nodded.

  “I’m afraid so,” Helena admitted.

  “We have to call Roy,” Helen insisted.

  “We can’t call Roy either,” Helena said. “This is something we’re going to have to handle ourselves.” She raised the finger of her left hand to her lips and tapped gently upon them. “Think, Helena, think. How on earth do we get Stan out of this alive?” There was no simple answer. “So help me, Hannah,” she said under her breath, “when I get my hands on that undead little beggar, he’s going to wish he was dead.” She turned and pulled a crocheted afghan from the sofa. “And no, I was not talking about little Stan.”

  “Where are you going?”Helen asked her. She could see the determination in her mother’s pursed lips.

  “I’m going up on the roof,” Helena answered.

  “You can’t go up on the roof,” Helen protested “You’ll kill yourself.”

  “No such luck,” Helena reasoned. “Jacey, go throw some water on Tom’s face. I need him to find me some rope. He seems to know where everything is in this house. Helen, go back to my basement and get me my rock climbing shoes. I keep them under the stairs.”

  “You have rock climbing shoes?” Jacey asked in wonderment. “I didn’t know Jimmy Choo made those.”

  “He doesn’t, “Helena said. “But he never spent a god-forsaken honeymoon in the Himalayas with Helen’s father.”

  Less than five minutes later, the four regrouped themselves back on the driveway. Helen, Jacey and the now revived Tom watched in wonder as Helena took the rope Tom had found and began to form a lariat. She quickly tied a honda knot, leaving enough room in the loop to go over the top of the chimney.

  “Where were you and Dad when you learned that?” Helen asked. She had never seen Helena pull this particular trick out of her sleeve before.

  “Mexico,” Helena answered. “And I wasn’t with your father, I was with Jesse James.”

  “Whoa,” Tom said. “I didn’t know you went in for tattooed guys. Ryan’ll be stoked.”

  “I don’t think we’re talking about the same Jesse James,” Helen said.

  Helena began her windup. The first attempt landed short of the target, but luckily fell back to the ground without snagging on anything else. Her second effort was better, but only caught the corner of the chimney. “Third time’s the charm,” she said, swinging harder and aiming higher than the two previous attempts. This time the rope landed over the stack. “Voila!” she said, pleased with herself.

  “I am in awe,” Tom admitted.

  “Wish me luck,” she said, tying the crocheted afghan around her neck. She pulled the rope taught and began to climb, the blanket flowing down her back like a cape.

  “I’m beginning to see what Ryan sees in your mother,” Tom said, perhaps inappropriately.

  “What?” Helen asked.

  “She’s Batman.”

  “Batgirl,” Jacey corrected him.

  As Helena swung her leg over the side of the eaves, she collided with the drainpipe. Already heavily laden with wet soggy leaves, it didn’t take much for it to give way. It came crashing to the ground, missing Jacey’s head by about an inch.

  “Kerpow!” Tom said, looking at the damage. “Good thing my dad has them in stock this time of year.”

  “Sorry!” Helena yelled. “Foot slipped.”

  “Mother, please be careful,” Helen begged.

  Helena pulled herself the rest of the way onto the roof, where the wet snow and the slope of the timbers made her every move all the more perilous. She stood up cautiously. “Tom, the guy who did the chimney cleaning for Betty, will he do the eaves as well? My own don’t look any better from up here.”

  “Mother, pay attention please!” Helen begged.

  Helena had almost reached the chimney when she hit a patch of ice and began to slide backward from the slope. “Uh-oh,” she exclaimed, hanging onto the rope for dear life. “I should have tied a safety.”

  Helen and the teenagers watched breathlessly as Helena came within inches of the end of the roof and then stopped.

  “Mother! You are out of your ever-loving mind. Get back down here and let me call Roy.”

  Helena knew that was not an option. Roy was going to have his hands full dealing with the Daytons when this was all over. He didn’t need to have to explain to the taxpayers of Troy how little Stan Lachey, while his brother was in jail and his mother was in the hospital, got stuck in a chimney on the first winter storm of the year. She pulled herself back up onto her feet and moved very slowly back towards the stack.

  “Stan,” she said, when she was close enough that she thought he might hear her. “Stan, it’s Helena. I’m here.”

  Much to her surprise, a tiny hand poked its way out of the chimney. Helena heaved a sigh of relief. He was still alive. “Stan, listen to me. I’m going to get you out of there, but I need you to stay really still. Wave your hand if you understand.”

  There was no motion.

  “It’s okay to move your hand if you can, Stan” she corrected. “I didn’t mean you had to stay that still.”

  She saw his palm move from left to right and back again.

  Tom looked up at the activity on the roof. “What’s she going to do now?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Helen admitted.

  Jacey cocked her head. “It looks like she’s going to karate chop the chimney.”

  “That would just be stupid,” Helen said.

  “I think she’s right,” Tom offered. “She’s sizing it up, like you would a stack of planks. Look, she’s turning her hand to the grain of the brick. She’s done this before.”

  On the roof, Helena took a huge breath. She knew she had calculate just how much force it would take to smash the bricks yet leave Stan unscathed. She could do it, she knew, but it had been a few years since she had to summon this kind of strength from her forearm, and she needed to prepare mentally for it. She wasn’t just fighting the technical engineering of the contractors who had built the house in the late sixties. She was also fighting a force of the undead. That took extra prep time.

  “Hi-yaaaa!” she screamed, raising her left arm to chest level and plowing through the clay mass like it was a bale of hay.


  “Look out!” Helen screamed, as pieces of the structure began to fall to the ground.

  “She is just…” Tom searched for the words. “Totally bitchin’.”

  Enough of the bricks had fallen away from the side of the chimney for Helena to be able to reach for the child. “Stan,” Helena said, looking him directly in the eye, “you are a star. I need you to just stay calm for a few minutes more.” She lifted his body from the confines of the chimney. He was amazingly warm. The tightness of his body to the chimney walls had acted as an insulator while he was stuck inside them.

  She draped the afghan around both of their bodies and pulled him closer. She wanted to keep him from going into shock now that he was free. “Bet you never thought you’d be doing this today, did you Stan?” she said, trying to break the tension. She reached for the rope. It might have been a good way for her to get up on the roof, but it wasn’t the easiest way for them to get off it.

  “Don’t just stand there like a bunch of reporters waiting for the fall,” she said to the three people below, gaping at her with their mouths wide open. “Tom, go get the trampoline from the end of the yard and move it closer.” She gave Stan a light squeeze. “Stan, we’re going to do this together, okay? We’re going to go for a little bouncy ride.”

  “Mrs. LaRose,” Stan asked wearily, “can you do me a favor?”

  “What is it, Stan?”

  “Can you not tell Ryan that I peed my pants?”

  Helena smiled. “I think that can be our little secret.”

  “Good,” Stan sighed. “And Mrs. LaRose…when I wake up…can you give me some medicine so I don’t dream about the vampire in your backyard anymore?”

  “I’ll see what I can do, Stan,” she said, putting his arms around her neck and hers around his waist before jumping off the roof onto the trampoline beneath. The two of them took more than a few bounces before coming to a halt. The canvas almost touched the ground with the weight of them falling from such a height. When the motion finally stopped, Helena still had Stan in her arms. She pulled their bodies from the trampoline.

  “Where are you going?” Helen asked. “Shouldn’t we take him to a doctor?”

  “I am a doctor,” her mother reminded her. “I’m taking him to my office. I’m going to give him a little something to help him sleep, and hopefully not remember any of this. Ix-nay on the vampire-ay, okay you guys? Not a word to anyone about this. Ever.”

  They nodded in agreement.

  Alone in her office, Helena sat Stan on her couch and covered him with the crocheted blanket. She prepared some valerian tea to rehydrate him. He drank it thirstily. She could tell he was drowsy from his ordeal, but his adrenaline was most likely stopping him from falling asleep. She needed him asleep.

  “Let’s read, Stan,” she said, pulling a book randomly from her bookcase. It happened to be a copy of Grey’s Anatomy. She opened the book in the middle and began to read in a low, monotonous tone. It was enough to make Stan close his eyes.

  “Finally,” she whispered, and reached for another book. It was a small, black, tattered and torn book with a cover that had ‘Book of Spells’ embossed on it. She gently thumbed through the weathered pages until she found what she was looking for.

  “Somnus quod alieno,” she sang over and over again, in a lullaby, until Stan began to snore. “Sleep and forget, my child,” she whispered softly in his ear. She looked up to see Helen’s face peering at her through the window. She motioned for her to come in, indicating for her to be quiet.

  “Where are Tom and Jacey?” Helena asked, looking around the room. Her mother had done a marvelous job turning the cottage in the backyard into an office. She saw her doctorate proudly displayed in a frame beside the door.

  “They’ve gone to visit Ryan,” Helen answered. “And to try to find Ellie.”

  Helena turned and looked out the window. Her garden was completely covered in snow, and she hadn’t had a chance to plant the spring bulbs yet. Just another thing left undone, she acknowledged to herself.

  “Is he okay?” Helen asked her, noticing Stan curled up on the couch.

  “He’s fine. I’ve used a memory spell on him. When he wakes up, he’s not going to remember a thing.” She reached over the child and stroked his sweaty hair. “I guess I’d better get him back to his room. I lifted him once, I can lift him again. It’ll be easier than explaining why he’s here when he wakes up.” She looked at Helen. “We’ll have to stay with him until the kids get back.”

  Helen nodded in agreement. “You know,” she said, “you were really brave this afternoon.”

  “Thank you,” Helena replied.

  “I didn’t know you still had it in you.”

  “Why? Is it because you think I’m not exactly young? I’m not exactly old either. Not in our lives. Not in anyone’s life, actually. You should go see your grandmother some time.”

  “Elaine?”

  “Yes, Elaine. She’s still living in the castle in England. She's not one to leave her home for long, my mother.”

  “How old is she now?” Helen asked.

  “I don’t know…one fifty, one sixty…she hides her age well. She’s walking with a bit of a limp though, from that last battle with Beelzebub. He’s her own personal stalker. How’d you like to have to shoulder that?”

  “No thanks,” Helen admitted. “What does this all mean, anyway?” she asked her mother. “If a vampire did really take Stan, why would he stuff him in the chimney? Why didn’t he finish him off like he presumably did to Brooke and Kevin?”

  “Stan’s just the bait,” Helena said sadly. “It means he’s really after Ellie.”