She didn't say anything, just panted. Then groaned, a sound torn from the depth of her soul. Was she all right? He turned the flashlight from the body on the mattress to Sylvie's face. It wasn't grief or guilt that he saw there. It was horror. As if she were seeing this scene for the first time. She pointed at the corpse.
"What is it?" Don said. "She can't hurt you now, Sylvie."
"What she's wearing," said Sylvie, her voice weak. "Look what she's wearing."
Don shone the flashlight back on the body. He looked closely this time. The clothing was dark with tunnel grime, but as he stepped closer he could see that it wasn't the t-shirt Sylvie had described. It was a dress. A faded blue dress. He turned the flashlight back on Sylvie. She was plucking at her skirt like a little girl. The identical skirt.
"Same dress," said Don stupidly, trying to make sense of it.
"That's not Lissy," said Sylvie.
She sank down against the stone wall.
"It's me," she whispered.
16
Ballroom
It took Don a moment to realize what she was saying. "How could it be you?" he said lamely.
"I thought it was a dream," she said. She was shaking, leaning against the stone wall of the tunnel. The flashlight in his hand made her look like she was on stage, with a tight but feeble spotlight picking her out of the darkness. "I dreamed I came back down the tunnel and I was shaking her again, trying to wake her even though I knew she was dead, and then her hands... shot up and took me by the throat and I tried to apologize, I said I was sorry, sorry, I didn't mean to hurt her, but then I couldn't breathe and it hurt and I kept thinking, any time now I'll wake up, any time."
"She strangled you."
"Her face. So hateful. I thought it was what I deserved. I thought it was her ghost, haunting me. I've dreamed it a thousand times since then. I thought I was dreaming then. Because. Because it all went black, and then I woke up and it was dark because the candles had burnt out but I tripped over a body, lying on the mattress, a body right where I had left her body, I tripped over my body." She turned and looked over toward the corpse on the mattress. "Show me," she whispered. He turned the light toward the body. She crawled over. Touched it. Touched the parchment skin of the bare leg. Touched the damp rotting fabric of the dress. Then touched her own dress, the same dress, but not rotting.
"How can a..." How could he ask her this?
Her head sank. She didn't look at him.
"How can a ghost trip over a dead body."
She shook her head.
"You touched me. I touched you." He reached out to prove it to her.
"No!" she cried, recoiling from him, scurrying back to the wall.
"You're real," he insisted.
She cried again.
He reached out to touch her and this time she endured it. And yes, there was resistance, he could feel the skin of her arm.
And then he couldn't.
And then he could, but his finger was about a half-inch deep in her arm. He cried out in horror and pulled his hand away. She raised her face to look at him. "The house," she said. "I've got to get back inside the house."
"No, you've got to get away from this house."
"We're not in the house," she said. "Shine the light, show me the way back. I'm losing it."
He shone the light up the tunnel toward the basement. Sylvie got up. Too far up—she rose from the ground and drifted. She wailed in fear.
"My hand," he said. "Take my hand."
"I'm not here, Don! I'm not real, I can't—"
"You are real," he said. "You're Sylvie Delaney and you live in the old Bellamy house. In that new room, you've touched the walls of that room. You hid in the closet that I built and..."
And he felt her hand in his. He didn't look. He simply led her up the tunnel. He didn't want to see if she was walking or floating or if there was anything of her but that hand. That living hand.
They came out into the rubble-strewn basement and now he could hear her footsteps. He turned around and faced her. "You're all right," he said.
"I'm inside the house again."
"It sustains you."
"The stronger the house is," she said, "the realer I am."
"So if you know that," he said, "how could you not have known it was your body down there? That you were—Sylvie, you're dead. How could you not know?"
"I was still here, that's why I didn't know. The house held on to me." She walked toward the stairs. "But there were times when I felt... soft. Unreal. Puncturable." She walked up the stairs. Her hand was so solid on the two-by-four banister. He couldn't help it, he had to reach out and touch her again. She stopped walking. Stopped and waited, his hand touching hers.
"Sorry," he said, thinking she was offended.
"Oh, no, please," she said. "Oh, please, you're so warm. Don't let go." She burst into tears again and turned to face him, almost fell into his arms. He gathered her into an embrace; she wept against his shoulder. Her tears soaked through his shirt. How could she not be real? He got one arm under her legs, lifted her, carried her carefully up the stairs.
"Take me to the nook under the stairs," she said. "The heart of the house."
So once again they sat on the bench, with the portrait of the Bellamys looking down at them. She would not let go of his hand. "She left me there, Don."
"It explains why you never had any inquiries about her death."
"But what about my death?"
"She must have told them something. That you left. Went home. Went on to that job in Providence."
"When I thought I killed her, it destroyed me."
"Maybe it destroyed her, too," said Don.
"Now I know why I couldn't leave the house," she said. "I tried, early on. When they were closing it all down. I hid from them but then when they left I tried to leave. I'd get out onto the porch. Or out in back. And I'd get so faint."
"Faint?"
"I mean like I was going to faint. Light-headed. It frightened me. I thought it was my guilt holding me. I couldn't face the world. I had no right to be out there if Lissy couldn't go too. But she did go. So I did have the right."
"But the house held you."
"Held me, but it also kept me alive. Without the house I'd just be... gone. I think I was going anyway. All those years when the house was weakening. I was weakening too. Till you came. The sound of you walking through the house. As if it woke me from a long sleep. I was in the attic, listening to you talking to that guy and that woman. And she left because the dust was getting to her. Talking about how strong the house was. And how you could fix it up again. You don't know how that... it filled the house with hope. Me with hope."
"So you were there," he said.
"But maybe I wasn't even... visible? Maybe I was... sometimes I felt like I was the house. Like the timbers and beams, they were my bones, and the outside walls were my skin, and this place, this invisible place was my heart, beating, beating. Can't you feel the pulse here?"
He reached over and laid his fingers against her throat. The pulse was pounding there. "A ghost can't pump blood like that."
"Imitation of life," she said. "Mimesis. That's all I am. Plato said we were all shadows. Me more than most."
"Not as long as you stay here."
"Now when you sell the house, do I have to leave?" She laughed, but it quickly turned to crying again. Again he held her, his arm around her shoulders, her face turned in to his chest. "I've really screwed things up now. You can't sell a haunted house, Don."
"You think I care about that?"
"Yes."
"Sure, yes," he said. "But not as much as the fact that your body is down there. And she got away with it."