Homebody

21

Reunion

It didn't take long to explain to Sylvie what he had done.

"Why did you call her?" Sylvie said. She looked miserable.

"There's nothing she can do to you now," said Don. "You don't have anything to be afraid of."

"Yes I do," she said. "She can kill you."

"Hey, you're living proof. Death isn't the worst thing in the world."

"Yes it is," she said. "You lose everything."

"You keep your memories," said Don. "In the end, that's all we have."

She held up her hands. "And our hands. And our feet. Our eyes. Our ears. The feel of things, the taste and smell of them." She smiled wanly. "I can't smell anything."

"We have what we have. If I'm still alive when you go, I'll remember you forever. That's how long I'll long for you."

"So I managed to hang on here long enough to ruin somebody else's life."

"Sylvie, you gave my life back to me." He reached for her, to kiss her.

She turned her head. "I don't want to kiss you, Don."

"Are you mad at me?"

"I don't want to kiss you and not feel it."

He looked away to hide his face from her. By habit, really, his old habit of hiding his emotions. There was nothing she hadn't seen of his emotions by now. No weakness she didn't already know.

"You need to get some sleep," said Sylvie.

"You think I can sleep?"

"You hardly got any rest last night. This morning. You're still mortal, Don. Don't you think you need to be alert when she gets here?"

"Something I got to do first."

"What?"

"Seal the gully end of that tunnel."

"What does it matter which way she gets into the house?"

"I don't want her messing around with your body." His wrecking bar wouldn't be enough. He got a big old crowbar, almost as heavy as his sledgehammer. Got the sledgehammer, too, and his skillsaw and his two longest extension cords. Sylvie came down into the basement to watch him plug in the saw and string the cords together. But he wouldn't let her come down into the tunnel with him. "The tunnel's outside the house," he said. "I don't want you to disappear on me again."

"So the little woman sits home and waits while her man goes off to war."

"Down into the mine is more like it."

"How green was my valley."

He didn't get it.

"An old movie about Welsh coal miners," she said. "Roddy McDowall was in it, back when he was cute."

"Someday you have to take me to see it," he said. They smiled at each other, even chuckled a little over the bitter impossibility of it. Then he plunged down into the dark tunnel.

The cord was long enough, with plenty to spare. There was no second corpse near the entrance. Whatever she did with Lanny's body, she didn't leave it here. The wooden ceiling came to an end right where the tunnel narrowed down to a twisting passage that showed no daylight. There must be some kind of closure outside, something that kept neighborhood children from discovering and rediscovering this tunnel all the time. Lissy would know how to find it, though, even in the dark, and open it. When she got in here she'd find things changed a little.

Don wore his goggles this time—the debris would be coming from above. He took the safety guard off the skillsaw. Now it was just a naked blade, spinning, deadly. Starting at the board nearest the entrance, he sliced through the rotting old wood pretty easily. Of course, there was no way the blade could get even halfway through the boards, so nothing fell but chunks of sawdust. Exposed to the wet ground for so long, however, there was no chance this ancient wood was dry and termite-free. The miracle was that it had lasted this long. Maybe the tunnel was a structure of its own. Gladys talked about it being a place of freedom. If it was older than the Bellamy house, that could only mean it was used for escaping slaves. Guests coming in and out, leaving happy. A place built by love. It had all the ingredients for strength, didn't it? Maybe that's why it lasted when any other such structure should have rotted away a long time ago.

It's history I'm cutting down here, thought Don. It's a place with a life of its own. I'm a builder, not a destroyer. And yet right now it's destruction that we need.

He didn't want to cut too far. When the tunnel collapsed, he didn't want it to make a sink across the lawn. He only needed to break down enough of it to stop Lissy from coming in. It wouldn't take more than a few yards of blockage to stop her completely. In the dark, she wasn't going to want to dig. She no doubt would be armed—but not with a pick and shovel.

He picked up his sledgehammer and began the arduous work of breaking up the wood overhead. He held the sledgehammer out in front of him, then launched it upward, his arms extended. His muscles weren't shaped to deliver much strength in that direction. Fortunately, the wood was as rotten as he had hoped, and most of the time the sledgehammer sank into wood and when it came away, half the railroad tie crumbled down with it. Dirt began to fall like rain. Now it was time for the crowbar. Don rammed it into the packed earth over the rotten fragments of railroad tie and pried it, tore it loose. More and more of it fell. He backed up and hammered out more wood, pried down more earth. Finally some kind of critical mass was achieved and with a whoosh and a great cloud of moist earth, the roof at the tunnel mouth collapsed completely.

The force of it made him lose his balance. He fell. He tried to scramble out of the way. More of the ceiling was collapsing. His legs were covered with dirt. For a moment he couldn't move them. Then he pulled hard with his arms and his legs came free. Another section of roof sagged, right where he had cut it. Wish I hadn't cut so far, he thought. He scrambled up the tunnel, reaching for his tools, trying to gather them up. The sledgehammer he got; the crowbar was buried and he didn't have time to get it out. He had left his worklantern on the shelf of stone just a little ways down the tunnel. He could still get it by clambering over the fallen earth just a little ways. But he decided against it. Good thing. Another two yards of roof gave way right then, and the light was gone.

He could hardly breathe in the thick wet dust. He still had the sledgehammer. And the skillsaw had to be around here, lying on the floor.

He felt the cord under his foot, followed it back. It disappeared into a pile of earth. Had he really left the saw so far down the tunnel? Forget it, leave it. It wasn't that expensive to buy another.

No, don't be stupid, he told himself. The part of the ceiling you cut has all collapsed. The saw must be just a few feet under the shallowest part of this earthfall.

He probed with the handle of the sledgehammer. Right. The saw was right there. He reached in, felt through the dirt till he got it by the handle and pulled it out.

Only now he was turned around. He swung with the sledgehammer until it rang against stone. Here's the wall. The left wall, as he headed up the tunnel. He didn't want to stay on the right side, where his feet would stumble across the mattress, across Sylvie's ruined body. He could hear snapping and creaking overhead. Was more of the tunnel going to collapse? Even where he hadn't cut the wood? This was going a little better than planned.

He finally saw the light at the top of the tunnel, just as he heard the rotten wood snapping and tearing like velcro as tons of earth collapsed into the tunnel, zipping toward him. He ran, faster, scrambling. He thought of dropping the tools, but couldn't get his fingers to let go of them, he was holding so tightly. A huge cloud of choking dust blew past him. He couldn't breathe. He staggered, fell. The crackling sound was coming toward him. He couldn't see at all now. He got partway up, crawled, stumbled, until he ran into something hard, right in his path. What could he possibly have run into?

The coal furnace. He was out of the tunnel. But he still couldn't see. The fine moist dust that had blown upward through the tunnel was hanging thick in the air in the basement. He blinked; dirt was in his eyes. They teared up, he couldn't see. Still pulling the skillsaw with him, he picked his way around the furnace, out into the open. Except the skillsaw suddenly snagged. Of course. The cord had been buried. Don grabbed the cord and pulled hard. It came free. But it was only the short cord of the saw itself that he had. The long extension cord was trapped down the tunnel.

"Don!" She was calling his name. She sounded so far away.

"I can't see," he said. "I've got dirt in my eyes."

"I'll lead you." He felt her gentle touch, tugging at his arm. She kept letting go. No. Not letting go. Her hand was sliding free. She was getting less substantial all the time. Less real.

He couldn't think of it that way. She wasn't getting less real, she was getting more free. She would let go of this house that had trapped her for so long. That was a good thing for her. It's not as if he was losing her, because he never really had her. Just the dream of her, the idea of her. It felt so real to hold her in his arms, but in the end she was always a ghost. And here, now, with his eyes closed, surrounded by darkness, he could believe that. This was reality, this choking blindness. What Sylvie was, what she meant to him, was a moment of clarity in the dark. She would be his memory of light. He could live with that.

Barely.

At last they were up the basement stairs. She led him into the bathroom. "I can't turn on the faucets anymore," she said.

"Can't you get the house to do it for you?" he said.

"Oh," she said. Then laughed. "I was getting used to being real."

He was still fumbling with the faucet when he felt it move on its own, and the water gushed out. He filled his hands again and again, splashing it on his face. Finally he could blink his eyes open without pain. His hands were filthy. He soaped them up to his elbows, then washed his face with soap. After he rinsed, as he toweled himself dry, he looked in the bathroom mirror. His hair was caked with mud. His clothing was completely covered.

"I thought you were dead down there," she said. "What was exploding?"

"No explosion," he said. "That tunnel was ready to collapse. I got it started and it didn't know when to stop."

"Well," she said. "I guess I finally got a decent burial."

He shuddered. He thought of her body lying on that mattress, now covered with broken, rotted timbers and tons of earth. Buried was buried, with or without a box. With or without a marker.

"What I need," he said, "is a shower." But when he left the bathroom, he didn't go out to the ballroom to head up the stairs to the shower. Instead he went down the basement stairs. The dirt had settled on everything. A thin skiff of it covering the whole basement, even clinging to the beams overhead. The light was dim because of moist earth spotting the bulb. He walked over to the coal furnace. Dirt spilled out from both sides like the fan at the mouth of a canyon. Behind the furnace, it was piled up as tall as he was. And daylight was visible above. The tunnel had broken down along its entire length, and what he feared had happened—there had to be a sag in the back yard right behind the house, marking where the tunnel was. If Lissy wanted to, she could sneak into the house through this gap in the foundation. But he didn't think she would. The gap wasn't all that high. She wouldn't know to look for it. If she couldn't get into the far end of the tunnel, she'd assume she had to come through the door.

The plugged-in end of the extension cord still emerged from the tunnel. He unplugged it and started to pull. At first it came easily. The earth that had fallen wasn't tightly packed, and he could straighten out the bends in the cord. It got harder as the cord straightened out and the weight of all the earth of the tunnel began to oppose him. Stubbornly he pulled and pulled. He had some vague idea that he didn't want to leave a cord like a trail, tempting someone to excavate and find Sylvie's body and disturb it. He leaned against the resistance of the cord, putting his whole weight behind it. And then suddenly it came free and he fell down on his butt, like a baby just learning to walk. It hurt his tailbone; the pain really stabbed as he got up. I'm getting old, he thought. All I need now is a broken tailbone.

The rest of the cord came out easily. He found what had given way. The second extension cord had come free. All he had pulled out was the first one. Well, that was fine. No part of the buried cord was sticking out. Nothing was left dangling.

He coiled the cord and walked up the stairs as he finished. She wasn't waiting for him at the top of the stairs. But he heard water running in the house. He gathered up the sledgehammer and the skillsaw. They were caked with dirt. He brushed them off at the back door. I could use the Weird sisters to clean my tools right now, he thought.

In the back yard, the sag of the collapsed tunnel was only visible right up against the house, where the entrance had been. The rest of the tunnel was deep enough that the sag didn't make a sharp line across the lawn.

He looked around. Could anybody see him from the nearby houses? Screw 'em if they could. He stripped off his shirt and pants and chucked them in the garbage can. There wasn't a coin laundry in America that could cope with this dirt without breaking down. His shoes, though, he could clean. He got them off and beat them against the wall of the house until they merely looked dirty instead of encrusted. His socks went into the garbage with his pants and shirt.

Even his underwear was muddy brown from dust that had got through his jeans. That stuff was in his lungs. He'd be coughing up mud for a week, he was sure. He glanced around one more time for onlookers, saw none, and stripped off his briefs and dropped them in the garbage can. Then he picked up the skillsaw, cord, and sledgehammer, and dodged inside the house. Maybe I take this neatness thing too far, he thought. I'd rather be naked for a whole minute out in front of God and everybody than leave my filthy clothes anywhere but in a closed garbage can, or set down my tools anywhere but in their proper place. He imagined the police showing up at his door with a warrant for his arrest for indecent exposure. Maybe they'd arrive just as Lissy got there with her gun.

Lissy. If he had harbored any ambition of getting her arrested, it had sure faded now. His best evidence was now lying under tons of dirt in a tunnel. He could see the police excavating with pick and shovel, tearing apart Sylvie's body in the act of discovering it. No, whatever happened with Lissy would be private. Just between the three of them.

Don put the saw and cord and sledgehammer where they belonged, then rummaged for some clean clothes. He could hear the water running. He knew it was Sylvie starting the shower for him. Man, was he ready. He felt his skin crackle as the clay dust dried all over him.

Holding his clothes, he turned around to head for the stairs, and there was Sylvie, watching him. Instinctively he brought his clothes down to cover his crotch. "Um, sorry," he said.

"I've seen you naked before," she said.

He raised his eyebrows.

"I watched you all the time," she said. "You were the only interesting thing going on in the house, Don. You can hardly blame me."

He wondered how she watched him. With her own eyes, or somehow using the house to see for her? He didn't understand how this thing worked with a house and the spirit that haunted it. It responded to her, did things that she wanted without her even knowing she wanted them. It watched whatever she wanted to see.

"Well fine," he said. "You've seen me naked, I've seen you dead. We got no secrets."

She laughed.

He jogged up the stairs. His tailbone still hurt and his muscles were sore from all his exertion of the past few days. Hard work was a good thing but he hadn't been giving his body enough rest. He set his clothes on the lid of the nonfunctional toilet and stepped into the shower. It took three soapings before the water finally rinsed away clear. He must have been carrying ten pounds of dirt, from the thick mud that formed in the bottom of the tub. He washed it all down the drain and soaped and rinsed himself a fourth time before he opened the shower curtain to find Sylvie leaning nonchalantly against the door, watching him. He grinned and shook his head, reached for his towel, and dried himself. "They got laws against peeping, you know," he said.

"I don't peep," she said. "I stare."

"That's all right then. As long as you don't point and laugh."

He pulled on his clothes. He tried not to look at her too much, because if he did, he'd see how he could kind of make out the door behind her, right through her. She was fading way too fast.

Sylvie, of course, didn't try to avoid the question. "What if I'm not here when she arrives?"

"That would be a bummer," said Don. "Let's hope she drives fast."

"Believe in me, Don," she said. "Keep me here."

"I have something better than belief," he said. "I know you. I love you."

"Well what do you think belief is?"

In the doorway he bent to kiss her. He could feel her, yes, but only faintly. Like the memory of a kiss. Like a gentle breeze. He started to cry again. "Damn," he said. "Damn, I'm not the crying kind of guy."

She touched his cheek. "I can still feel your tears," she said.

"I feel like this is just one sadness too many, Sylvie. I don't know. I don't know."

"You'll be fine."

"I don't know."

"You've got to sleep now," she said.

"Sleep? You think I'm going to waste any of the time we have together?"

"She's coming, Don. And you're so tired right now you can hardly stand up. Look at you, stooped over like an old man. What good will you be to me or yourself if you're falling down from exhaustion?"

"What if you're gone when I wake up?"

"I won't be gone, Don. Even if I've faded, I'll still be here. In the house. I'll still be here."

"She has to see you, Sylvie. She has to face you."

"I'll hold on. I'm stronger than you think. I've got the strength of the house to hold me here, don't I? And your strength to keep me real. But for now you've got to sleep."

She was right and he knew it. He nodded, unhappy about it, and started for the stairs.

"No, not down there," she said. "You can't sleep down there. What if she sneaks up in the dark before either of us knows she's there, and shoots you through the window?"

"Didn't think of that."

"This isn't TV," she said. "Bad guys don't really stand there and confess everything so there's time for the good guys to get there and rescue you. They just shoot and down you go and they're out of there."

"I don't know, even bad guys like to have somebody hear their story."

"We'll find out tonight, won't we. Here, sleep on my bed. In this beautiful room you made for me."

"I didn't know it was for you till it was done."

"I didn't know you loved me until you gave it to me."

Her bedding had gone unwashed for ten years, but it felt clean enough as he lay down atop the bedspread. Whatever was hers was clean enough for him. Or maybe it really was clean. Like her faded dress. Maybe the house had the power to do that, too. All that was missing was flower petals to mark her passage through the house.

With all his aches and pains, with the evening light still coming in through the windows, he thought it would take him forever to get to sleep, or that perhaps he might not sleep at all. But within a few minutes he felt himself fading. For a moment he thought: Is this how it feels to her? To fade like this? But he knew it was the opposite. His body was heavy and real; it was his consciousness that was fading. Her consciousness would stay, locked up in this house until he tore it down and set her free. And that's what he'd do. He'd have ten, twenty thousand left, maybe a little more, after paying the demolition crew. That was enough for a down payment. He'd work his way up to cash purchases again. He'd done it before. His life wasn't over. It only felt that way.

She was still there, sitting on the floor, her back against the wall. "Sylvie," he whispered.

"Aren't you asleep yet?"

"Almost," he said. "Promise me you'll wake me when she comes. Don't try to face her alone."

"I promise," she said. "I've been alone long enough. The house kept trying to draw me in, make me part of the walls, the timbers. I never did. I knew I had to stay separate. Myself. I was waiting."

"For Lissy to come back?"

"No. For you."

She crawled the yard or so to the bed and leaned on it with her face just inches from his. "When Lissy was around, men always ignored me and fell for her."

"I'm smarter than those guys," he said.

And then he slept.

Sylvie watched him for a while, but then she began to wander through the house. As she was fading, she felt the pull of the house on her growing stronger. She could already feel her footsteps as strongly from underneath as from above; she felt through the floor as much as through her own feet.

For ten years she hadn't let herself want anything. Not sunlight, not food, not love, not life. Nothing. She hadn't known she was dead, but at the same time she knew she felt that way. Only when she stopped being dead, only these few weeks with Don Lark in the house did she understand how dead she had been. Lost in her guilt, her shame, her pain, her losses. Now that she had learned again to love and hope, now that she was no longer ashamed or guilty, of course it was that very joy that was killing her again. Whoever set up this universe, she thought, it really sucks. If you ever get around to making another one, change the rules a little. Lighten up on your creatures. Give us a break now and then.

She walked the house, feeling like a ghost now for the first time. She could sense the house responding to her. Windows rattling as she passed. Boards creaking because she wanted them to. Doors opening, closing. She walked among Don's tools as if they were a field of butterflies; they rose up and flew out of her way as she walked among them, then settled back down, right where they had been, when she was gone. The flue opened and wind blew up the chimney because she wanted to exhale. She could feel her own heartbeat throbbing in the walls. This house was strong now. Don had made it strong. So now when she faded into the house there would be real power in it. She would own this house.

Please tear it down, Don. Please don't leave me trapped here, with timbers for a skeleton and lath-and-plaster skin. Windows are not eyes. This alcove is beautiful, but it's not my heart, not my heart.

The sky grew dark outside. The nearly leafless trees whistled in the gathering wind. Cold front coming through—she felt the temperature dropping through the contraction of the clapboard of the house. It would rain, it would blow; the last leaves would be stripped from the trees. Rain would probably pour down into the house through the sag in the lawn, the new opening in the basement. Mud would spread across the basement floor. The beginning of death. She could feel it like a wound. Not serious yet, but it would be infected. Left untended, it would kill the house. She wouldn't let Don fix it. She wouldn't.

And yet she felt the house's need for it to be repaired, felt it like a deep hunger, like thirst, like a full bladder, those strong desires. When she was fully swallowed up by the house, would she have the strength to tell him not to repair it? Or would the house's hungers become her own, the way most people were never able to distinguish between their bodies' hungers and their own. As if their body were their self. They tore their lives apart, all for the sake of giving their body what it wanted, thinking all the time that it was what they wanted. Then they looked at the wreckage of their lives and wondered what had seemed so important about getting laid right then by that person; they lay in the hospital tubed up and dying, wondering what it was about each new cigarette that had made it seem so much more important than life itself. It takes death to wake you up, she thought. And then it's too late. And when I'm caught up in the house, will I remember what I learned? Not likely. I'll be mortal again, and die when the house dies, never remembering that its desires were never my own. My love for Don will be a distant memory. And he'll forget me, too.

No. Not so. Never. You don't forget this, any more than Don could forget his daughter. He'll remember me. And I'll feel it. I'll know that I was known, that I am known. That someone holds me in his heart.

If she could have wept, she would have. Instead she let the rain cry for her, streaking down the side of the house, faster and faster. She let the wind sob for her, throbbing against the house, gust after gust.

And all the time she watched. Watched Don sleeping. Watched the street outside.

Midnight. A Saturn drove slowly by. She noticed it. When it passed, she almost let it go.

But it parked just up the block. Just the other side of the gully. A woman got out. A dim shape in the rain. Years had passed, but Sylvie knew the walk. It was Lissy. She had come.

She walked across the bridge over the gully. Looked both ways. No witnesses? If she only knew. She climbed the low fence. Went down the muddy slope. Sylvie lost track of her, but it didn't matter. She wouldn't get into the house that way.

Sure enough, ten minutes later, the rain falling much harder now, a cold rain, the woman came up out of the gully, bedraggled and muddy, her feet sliding. Still holding that purse, clutching that purse. That's where the gun was, Sylvie knew that.

Sylvie glided up the stairs to where Don slept. How many hours had he slept already? He was so tired. She hated to wake him, but she had promised.

"Don," she said. "Don, she's here."

But he didn't hear her. Didn't stir.

Was he that sleepy? She reached out to shake him, but her hand disappeared into his body. For a moment she felt his heart beating, then snatched her hand away. She couldn't shake him. "Don," she said, frightened. But this time when she spoke, she realized that her own voice was very faint now, almost lost against the sound of the wind outside the house, the rain against the windows and walls. "Don!" she shouted, screamed. But he only rolled over, probably putting her voice into his dream.

All right then. What could she do? She had tried to keep her promise. But it was better this way, she had known that ever since he told her Lissy was coming. This was between her and her old roommate. Don was the catalyst, but not the cause and not the solution. She'd deal with it. She had voice and substance enough left for that. Didn't she?

She flitted to the mirror in the bathroom. She could see the wall behind her, yes, but she was still there, still visible.

Down the stairs just as Lissy reached the front door. Lissy rattled the doorknob. Sylvie went around the corner to the alcove. Then she caused the house to unlock the door. To open it. It creaked open because she wanted it to creak. Let's do the whole haunted house bit, she thought. Let's give Lissy the whole ride.

Lissy came in with her hand inside her purse. Holding the gun, of course. Not a light was on in the house, but the streetlight was no longer obstructed by the leaves of the trees, and the rain did little to block the light. So Lissy could see, but not well, and the shadows were deep and black.

Sylvie watched as Lissy crept through the south apartment first, checking each room. No one there, of course, just Don's tools all assembled in the parlor, where he had put them while he opened up the ballroom. Five minutes, and then she was back at the entryway, looking up the stairs.

I don't want you to go up there, thought Sylvie.

So she made the worklight in the ballroom switch on, all by itself.

At once Lissy came into the room, her gun out of the purse now, naked, exposed. There was murder in her face. But she didn't see Sylvie in the shadowy alcove. Her gaze was taken by the hugeness of the ballroom. She walked out into the middle, looking around her in awe. She had never guessed that there was a space like this hidden in their cramped apartment.

Sylvie spoke aloud. She felt like she was shouting, but she had to make sure Lissy could hear her over the noise of the storm outside. "Not quite like you remember, is it?"

At once Lissy whirled and fired the gun without even looking to see who it was, or whether she was armed. Still a murderer, aren't you, Lissy.

The bullet passed through Sylvie and lodged in the wood behind her. She felt it with her sense of the house, and there was a vague sense of heat in her own shadow-body as the bullet passed through, but that was all. Sylvie laughed at the futility of Lissy's weapon and rose to her feet, stepping out into the light.

"Ouch," Sylvie said.

Oh, it was sweet to see Lissy's eyes grow wide. To see her back away, holding the gun in front of her like a cross to ward away a vampire in an old horror movie. Fear, that's what Sylvie saw in Lissy's eyes. Fear and—could it be?—shame. Guilt? Could she still feel guilt? What was the recipe that would trap her here?

"Sylvie," said Lissy.

"Oh, but I thought that was your name now," said Sylvie. "I thought that's the name you were going by, there in Providence."

"The man who called me," said Lissy. "Where is he?"

"Your appointment was always with me," said Sylvie. She walked closer to Lissy. She remembered that she wasn't supposed to touch Lissy, but she wasn't even close yet. And Lissy's confusion was delicious. Lissy had never been confused. Always so sure of herself. Finally here was something she didn't know how to handle.

"Get away from me," Lissy said, panicking.

Now the gun wasn't a talisman. It became a gun again. She fired. Again, again. Sylvie felt the bullets pass right through the center of her chest.

"Good aim," said Sylvie. "But too late. You already killed me as dead as I'll ever get." But that wasn't quite true. Soon Sylvie would be even deader. Well, she wouldn't give Lissy the satisfaction of knowing that.

"I didn't mean to kill you," said Lissy.

"Sure, I know," said Sylvie in her most understanding voice. "You accidentally fell on my throat and accidentally squeezed it till I stopped kicking and clutching at you and then you accidentally kept squeezing until I was dead. These things happen."

"You hit me first!" cried Lissy. "With a rock!"

"But I didn't kill you, did I."

"So I was better at it than you were," said Lissy. "I was always better at everything."

There it was, the old Lissy. Angry Lissy, tearing at Sylvie, making her question her own ability. But Sylvie knew better now, knew how Lissy was a parasite who sucked her life from the people around her.

"How long did my job in Providence last?" said Sylvie. "I bet it didn't take them long to learn that you just couldn't cut it. You just didn't seem to be the same person who wrote that dissertation."

"Who needs a job like that?" said Lissy. "That was just to get me started anyway. I couldn't live on a pissant salary like that anyway. That was only enough money for the mousy kind of life you lived."

Lissy was moving toward the back of the ballroom, looking through the door to see if anyone was there. Fearing a trap, because she would have laid a trap.

Well, there was no trap. But she also wasn't going to get out that way. Just as Lissy broke and ran for the kitchen door, Sylvie reached through the house and slammed it right in Lissy's face. Lissy screeched and fell against the door, then whirled around and fired the gun again. This time it was wild. It entered the ceiling where the chandelier used to hang.

Sylvie felt his footfalls on the floor above her before she could hear the sound. Don was awake. The gunshots had done what her faint voice couldn't do. And now he was going to run down the stairs, straight into Lissy's gun.

"There he is!" cried Lissy.

"This is between you and me," said Sylvie.

Lissy ignored her and ran the length of the ballroom, toward the entryway, toward the passage to the stairway. This was not going to happen. Sylvie flew to the passageway between ballroom and entry and spun around several times in her fury, trying to make enough of a show to frighten Lissy, to make her back off.

"You've done your last murder, Lissy!" she cried.

"I'm Sylvie now! Me!" Lissy answered. She sounded contemptuous, but Sylvie could see she was also afraid. "Get out of my way."

"I'm not moving," said Sylvie. "I'm in your face forever."

Sylvie could see how Lissy steeled herself, put on a mask of bravado to hide her fear. "You don't have to move. You're nothing. I can walk right through you."

Sylvie backed up as Lissy took a step toward her, holding up a hand to ward Lissy off. Lissy lashed out with her left hand, the one not holding the gun, to slap Sylvie's hand away.

She should have seen it coming, should have dodged out of the way. She knew she wasn't supposed to let Lissy touch her. But the moment the hand touched her, it didn't feel like someone else's hand. It felt like her own hand. Her own self. The room spun insanely, and then everything was changed. She was looking out of eyes again, real eyes. Eyes that blinked, that went wide with panic.

But there was something suffocating her. Something interfering with her heartbeat. Something inside her body with her that had no right to be there, that was trying to control her, screaming at her even though it made no sound because Sylvie had control of the lungs, the throat, the tongue, the lips, the teeth.

This is my body. Sylvie felt it, knew it deep down. And the body knew it, too. Sylvie Delaney, that was this body's name, that was who this woman was. The other was a stranger, with another name, belonging in another place. The whole soul named Sylvie Delaney rejected the interloper. And without saying it, without even meaning to do it at any conscious level, Sylvie screamed silently back at the intruder: Get out! And gave a little push.

A little push at some level that she could not understand or feel with the flesh, a little push and suddenly she was alone in this body, this delicious living breathing flesh, this skin, this muscle, these organs, this beating heart. These hands holding a gun, this face with sweat dripping down, this hair tangled around her face, her neck. These clothes binding, pulling, sliding across her skin as she moved. This life, this reborn life.

Don heard the first gunshot, but it was part of his dream. The next three were also in his dream, but they woke him. His eyes opened and he listened but didn't hear anything. And then he did. Voices downstairs. Running feet. A slamming door. Another gunshot. He was off the bed and running along the floor. He heard the voices more clearly now. Someone was running across the ballroom floor. And he thought: She has a gun. What am I going to do, run down the stairs and die?

He ran as lightly as he could down the stairs, knowing that he was heard, but what could he do about that? He could hear their conversation. "I'm not moving," Sylvie was saying. He ducked around the corner into the south parlor, where his tools were. He could have used the big crowbar now as a weapon. "I'm in your face forever," Sylvie said.

The smaller wrecking bar he used for tearing out drywall and lath and plaster would have to do. Truth was, neither tool would be worth much against a gun, but it was his only chance. If she came close without seeing him, he could maybe get in a blow before the gun came into play. The right blow, and the gun would never fire again.

He came back around the corner, tiptoed as rapidly as he could across the entryway, peered around the corner into the ballroom. Sylvie was standing with her back to him, blocking Lissy's path. Lissy gun in hand, gathered herself up, covering her fear with a mask of contempt. Don had time to notice how much alike they looked, and yet how different. How jaded and world-weary Lissy looked, compared to the fresh beauty, the untainted grace of Sylvie's spirit.

"You don't have to move," Lissy said. "You're nothing. I can walk right through you."

She took a step toward Sylvie, who backed away, raising a hand to ward her off. Lissy lashed out with her left hand.

"No!" Don cried.

The hands touched. And to his horror, Sylvie lurched toward Lissy, then suddenly spun around in the air like a kite out of control in a storm, and then was sucked into Lissy's body.

"No!" Don screamed. She was trapped in the body of that murderous bitch and it was his fault, he had brought her here. Don lunged toward Lissy as the woman's face contorted, twisted with—pain? Confusion? She looked toward him but didn't seem to see him. The gun hung by the trigger guard from her hand. She was slackjawed, stupid, empty-faced. Don reached out to take away the gun.

Suddenly Lissy's body stiffened and she moaned, a long moan, rising in pitch, rising to a screech. And when it seemed she couldn't possibly scream any higher or louder, something leapt out of her body, flew up. For a moment it hung in the air, spread-eagled. It was Lissy again, a copy of her, a shadow of her, wearing only a t-shirt. She looked younger. Not like the body that had been called Sylvie for all these years. It was the spirit of the Lissy who murdered Sylvie that night more than ten years ago, now suspended in the air in the midst of the ballroom.

Meanwhile, Lissy's body came to life. The eyes opened. Looked at him. The gun clattered to the floor. The hands reached up to touch the face. The tongue flickered out to lick the lips. And the face changed. Came to life in a different way. No longer weary-looking, no longer cynical and angry. Those lines were still there, but the expression belied them. It was a face filled with wonder. With joy. "Don," she said. "It's me."

If Lissy's spirit had been flung out of the body, if it now hung in the air drifting toward the exact center of the ballroom, then who else could be in Lissy's body?

"Don, don't you know me?"

Of course he knew her. "Sylvie," he said.

The face smiled. And in that moment it was no longer Lissy's face. Oh, it was, by the superficial markers of a face, the bone structure, the lips, the eyebrows, the cheeks, the brow, the chin. The nose longer and narrower than Sylvie's had been, the eyelashes heavy with makeup where Sylvie had not had any such artifice. But the expression of the face, the way the mouth moved, the way the eyes sparkled when she looked at him—it was Sylvie's face that looked at him. Sylvie, in the flesh, in living, breathing flesh. In a body that knew it belonged to her. Sylvie alive. Sylvie whole.

He stepped toward her, reached for her. "Of course I know you," he said. He took her hand. He gathered her into an embrace. Not light now, not inhumanly light; she had the weight and mass of a real woman, the softness of flesh yielding against him as he held her. The breath warm on his chest. "Sylvie," he said.

"Did you know?" she said. "Did you know it would end this way?"

At that moment the spirit hanging in the air began to scream in terror. They parted, turned, looked up to see what was happening.

"I guess it hasn't ended yet," said Don.

The spirit was twisting in the air, turning over and over. But there was nothing simple about the movement. Parts of her were turning faster than other parts. She was being stretched, pulled, drawn out like elastic. Like a victim on the rack. Finally one hand flung itself out and smacked against the ceiling of the room, the arm drawn long and thin like an elastic, and so transparent it was a mere shimmering in the air. A foot leapt to the far wall, another hand to the floor, the other foot to the front wall of the house. The head spun, then leapt to the bearing wall.

What was left in the middle of the air lost all shape. It grew like a balloon, thinning as it grew, till it was nothing but the shining of a bubble, iridescent as it filled the room. Don felt it pass over him, through him, a cold feeling that chilled him to the bone. And then the shimmering reached the walls of the ballroom, the ceiling, the floor. The room glowed for a second or two, no longer. And then everything was back to-normal.

"She's gone," he said.

"No she's not," said Sylvie. "The house took her."

"Then she's gone," he repeated.

"No," said Sylvie. "I can't feel the house anymore. This is my only body now. Lissy's got the house."

They could hear it start, far up in the attic. Doors slamming. Windows rising and falling, rattling. The second floor now, the slamming, the rattling. The water turned on. The toilet flushed.

And now the room they were in. A window was flung up by invisible hands. Wind and rain sprayed into the room. The kitchen door opened, slammed, opened, slammed. Under their feet the floor buckled, a wave of it rippling across until it passed under their feet, knocking them down. Sylvie clutched at him; they held on to each other, helping each other as they struggled to their knees, tried to stand.

The vast expanse of the bearing wall beyond the alcove began to shudder, forming a new shape. The shape of a face. Lissy's face, huge, like a bas-relief made of lath and plaster. The mouth moved. They could hear the voice like the sound of a bass drum talking. "That's my body!" moaned the face on the wall.

They were so enthralled in watching the wall that it was only out of the corner of his eye that Don caught the movement at the entryway. It was his favorite hammer, flying through the air straight toward Sylvie. Don leapt up only just in time; the hammer struck his back, between the shoulder blades. The force of the blow was vicious, knocking him down to the floor, entangling Sylvie and bringing her down, too. Just as well, for the wrecking bar flew just over them as they fell.

"Are you all right?" Sylvie cried out to him.

"Get out of the house, Sylvie!" he shouted.

"I can't leave you to face her alone—"

"It's you she wants! Get out!"

He got up, looking around desperately for any more flying objects as he helped her to her feet. Stooped over, he half-dragged her toward the entry. The pain between his shoulders was excruciating. Bruised ribs? Or broken ones? Or a bloody wound? No time to worry about that now.

In the passage to the entryway, Don could see into the south parlor, where his tools were sliding and sliding in concentric circles on the floor. In the middle was the workbench. As he stood in the passage, the circles stopped moving, except where they cleared a path leading straight to where Don and Sylvie stood. The workbench began to slide, then hurtle toward them.

"Get out!" Don screamed as he ran toward the workbench.

It hit him at hip level, flipping him over it. But he caught it as he fell, held on to the leg of it, so it had to drag him, so it slowed down as it continued relentlessly toward Sylvie.

Sylvie was fumbling with the doorknob. "It won't open, it won't open!" she cried.

Don got enough of a purchase on the floor to get some leverage. He lifted upward on the leg of the workbench and it tipped and fell on its side. As if the house knew at once that it was no longer half so useful as a weapon, the bench stopped moving and lay there, inert.

Don started toward Sylvie to help her with the door, when he saw the wood of the door below the handle start to deform, to extrude. "Get away from the door!" he shouted, but almost before he was through saying it, and long before Sylvie could possibly have reacted, the extrusion became a human hand made of splintering wood, and it seized Sylvie's wrist and held her.

Sylvie screamed and tried to pull her hand away. To get leverage, she leaned her back against the wall beside the door. Another hand pushed out of the plaster and wrapped itself around her other arm, gripped it. Hands took her ankles, hands made of plaster, hands made of floorboard. And then a pair of hands at her throat.

"Don!" she cried, her eyes filling with panic.

It was going to happen again. Lissy was going to kill her again.

He stood up and screamed at the house. "How stupid are you? If you kill her then you won't have that body, either!"

At once the window in the door deformed and became Lissy's face in rippling glass. The mouth opened and the voice was high and sharp like the tinkling of crystal. "If I can't have it, nobody can."

Another face formed in the floor, the mouth gaping wide, the throat dark and deep. The voice thrummed deeply. "That body is Lissy, Lissy, not Sylvie. Call it Lissy."

"Don't say her name!" Don cried out. "Don't say it, Sylvie! Don't let her have that body back."

She looked at him with frightened eyes.

He didn't bother trying to pry away the hands that held her. He knew that his bare strength wouldn't have the power to get her free. It would take weapons, and instead of attacking these new-made hands at the door he would break this creature's back.

He searched the disarray of his tools for the skillsaw and the extension cord. Found. He plugged the extension cord into the wall, the skill-saw into the extension cord, and then pulled the trigger. It whined into life, the bare blade spitting off dirt from yesterday in the tunnel. The great timbers of the bearing wall still stood partly exposed, and he bit the skillsaw into the first one, making a cut all the way around it like a lumberman girdling a tree.

The glass Lissy-face in the doorway screamed. The wooden one in the floorboards buckled and deformed. What had once been the brow of that face now became a ripple in the floor, then a pair of hands that reached up and fumbled with the junction of the power cord and extension cord. Don was just starting on the second timber when the cords came apart and the skillsaw died.

One timber was cut. That was something. If he could find his sledgehammer he could break it apart. That would start the weakening of the house, wouldn't it?

There was no time, no time to be searching for tools. Sylvie was dying there, pinned like a bug against the wall. He had to paralyze this house, break its back. Kill it and kill Lissy along with it.

He caught the movement in time to fling up his hand. The point of a mortaring trowel pierced his palm. The pain shot through him and he stumbled, nearly fell from the shock of it. But he was too angry now, too frightened to let pain stop him. He took the trowel by the handle and pulled it out. This moved the pain to a new level, and he almost fainted with it as the blood flowed. He had to stop this house before he lost too much blood or he'd end up watching Sylvie strangle to death as the last life fled his own body. Where was the sledgehammer?

It flew through the air straight for his head. He caught it, spinning with the force of it as he did. "Thanks!" he shouted triumphantly. She had put his best weapon in his hands herself.

"I've got to let her have the body back, Don!" cried Sylvie. The hands had loosened around her throat enough to let her speak. "She's going to kill you!"

In answer, he swung the sledgehammer and struck the timber above the cut. It shuddered, but it did not break.

Sylvie screamed. He turned just enough to see the nails rising up like a swarm of bees from their brown sacks, eight-penny nails, ten-penny, twelve-penny. Every one of them an arrow aimed at him. He turned his back on them and swung the hammer again. The hammer struck just as the nails began stinging, stabbing at his back. His neck, his scalp, his arms, all up and down his legs. A hundred bee stings. He groaned, partly from the pain of it, but more because again the timber didn't break free. As he twisted his body to swing yet a third time, he could feel the nails popping out of his muscles, or snagging them, tearing him inside. It wasn't going to stop him. He wasn't going to stand by and let her die just because he was in pain. He swung with all his strength, perhaps with more than his strength. And this time the timber tore apart at the cut. Above the split, the post was dislodged almost completely free of the bottom part; only an edge of the upper part still rested there. A fourth swing as the face in the glass cried out, "No, you're hurting me, you're hurting me!"

He struck the post and it came entirely free. At once a great creaking sound came from the ceiling. The post that had been holding up the second story and the roof was now a weight pulling them down. The house writhed with the injury.

Don looked over at Sylvie. She was struggling to get free. The hands still held her, but were they perhaps a little bit weaker? The hands at her throat seemed no longer to be trying to strangle her. No—it was worse. They had hold of her head now. Twisting. Lissy was trying to use the strength of the house to break Sylvie's neck.

"Don," Sylvie cried. "If I go back into the house she'll leave it, she'll go into the body. You have to be the first to get the gun!"

"Don't do it!" he screamed at her. "Don't let go of that body! Don't go into the house! I can do this!"

He meant it when he said it, but he had no idea how.

Gladys watched with her eyes closed, feeling more than seeing what was happening. Judea and Evelyn could look out the window all they wanted—there was little to see that way. It was Gladys who could sense what was happening. How the spirit of the murderer had taken possession of the house. Fortunately it was still distracted, trying to destroy Don and either get the girl's body back or, failing that, to kill it. But if it once succeeded in doing that, it would turn its attention again to them. To their old bodies, in thrall to the house. Gladys wouldn't have the strength to fight it off anymore, not if it were ruled by such malevolence.

So when the floor rose up and tore apart the power cord, Gladys moaned in despair.

But despair never lasted long. There were things she could do to help. "Quick," she cried out. "Get me that extension cord!"

Evelyn and Judea looked at her blankly.

"From the TV! The extension cord!" The TV had been her lifeline to the outside world. The girls never watched it—it just made them sad. But Gladys had it on a lot, a background to her life, to her struggles with the house. There was only one outlet in this old room, electrified before modern codes. To get the TV across from her, they had had to run an extension cord from the outlet beside her bed.

Judea got it free of the wall and handed that end to her. "Both ends," Gladys said. And in a moment Evelyn had the end from the television plug. Gladys took the male end in her left hand, the female in her right, and tried to put them together. It was like pushing together the north poles of two magnets. They dodged, refused.

Of course they did. Because the spell she was casting linked the extension cord to the skillsaw cord in the house. And the house could feel it, and was fighting her. It was a hard spell in any circumstance. But she had to do it.

"Help me," she said. "Hold my arms. Push. Help me get these together."

They did their best, but it wasn't until Don managed to break open the first timber that the house weakened enough or got distracted enough that they could do it. Gladys felt the plugs touch. She guided them, carefully, forced them with all her strength, all their combined strength, until the prongs slid into the receptacle.

In the parlor, Don held the skillsaw but couldn't get the cord to hold still long enough to grab the power end. It was like a snake, dodging, dodging. And then, suddenly, sparks leapt from the extension cord on the floor, arcing like a welder, blinding him for a moment. The extension cord and the skillsaw power cord still didn't touch, were yards apart, in fact, but the power sparked through the air to join them. A current flowed, dazzling white and blue in the air. Don's finger found the trigger of the saw and it whined into life. He wasted no time, no matter what the house flung at him. He made his cuts, post after post. Of course only the posts in this room were exposed, but that had to be enough. Cutting these down had to be enough.

The house's strength was growing feebler all the time. What it threw at him struck with less and less force. He glanced over to see that Sylvie still hung in the house's grip, but it was no longer trying to break her neck or strangle her. It only held her, held on to her.

"Please," moaned the face in the glass. "I didn't mean anything by it. I didn't mean to do anything bad." Don had no pity. He knew what Lissy was and what had to happen to her now. He hefted the sledgehammer and began striking the cut timbers. It took three blows with the first one, but after that the house was weak enough that a single blow broke each timber apart. The whole second floor sagged. The house's back had been broken.

The glass face rippled, thinned, then collapsed back into the original flat surface. Only a shadow of it remained. Only the whisper of a voice.

"Don't kill the house, Sylvie," said the face. "It loves you."

The ceiling above them, pulled downward by the weight of the timbers, bowed more and more; plaster in the ceiling cracked. Plaster dust and fragments began to fall, more of them, faster and thicker. As the house weakened, its power to heal itself, to hold itself together faded and its age began to tell on it. Don cared only for Sylvie, still held by plaster hands, wooden hands. They didn't let go but they didn't grip her tightly, either. They were dead. The house had lost the power to extrude them, but along with it had also lost the power to draw them in. Don used the sledgehammer, aiming carefully so as not to break Sylvie's bones. He struck once, again, again. The plaster hands shattered into dust. The wooden ones broke off in splinters at the wrists. Nothing held her. She was free.

Behind them, the stairway itself, no longer anchored to anything on one side, groaned, sagged, lurched downward. Sylvie looked at it, looked up at the cracking ceiling above her as Don fumbled with the deadbolt. The key was gone from the lock. He had one in his pocket, but he wasn't going to look for it. "Out of the way," he said to Sylvie. She moved behind him as he swung the sledgehammer one last time, knocking the deadbolt clear out of the door. The door itself rebounded from the blow, falling open. Don grabbed Sylvie by the wrist and half-dragged her out onto the porch. It buckled and sagged under the weight of them. He bounded down the steps, then held out his arms and she jumped to him, he caught her and staggered back, turning around and around, out on the lawn in the rain, in the wind, free of the house. He held her in his arms, dancing again, only this time no dream of old waltzes, now it was real and cold and wet and the woman in his arms was alive and crying and laughing for joy.

He stopped. He kissed her. Her lips were wet with rain, but her mouth was warm, and she held him, not lightly, but with tight, eager arms.