"I think I always knew," she said. "I knew I was dead. My life was over. I knew I wasn't hungry. I kept thinking, sometime along about now I ought to get something to eat, I'm going to die if I don't, and then I just never... I never even got thirsty. You think I didn't wonder about that? But then I'd think, Don't think about it, you'll just make it worse if you think about it. So I didn't. I'd sleep. Inside the bones of the house. I hid from it. Because if I knew the truth, then I'd fade. If I knew I was a ghost, I'd start having to live like one. Invisible. Going through walls. Appearing and disappearing."
"But you did that anyway."
"But I didn't know. I could still believe. And now I can't."
"Yes you can. You are real. How else could I know you if you weren't real?"
She looked up into his eyes. "That's true," she said. "You aren't by any chance dead yourself, are you?"
"Despite my fondest wish on many a dark night, no, I'm not dead."
"Maybe the house kept me here so there'd be someone living in it. Maybe it kept me alive so I could keep it alive."
Don reached up and touched Dr. Bellamy's face.
"OK, buddy, what did you put in this house? What's the plan?"
"It won't answer," she said. "It doesn't talk. It doesn't think. It just is."
"It's been keeping you alive all these years, trapped here, for a reason."
"Reason," she said scornfully.
"Purpose," he said. "I'm not saying it's rational, but maybe if we could figure out what the house wants, it would let you go."
"It isn't a letting-go kind of place," she said.
"So you'd rather stay here? What if you're supposed to be in heaven?"
"Don't be silly," she said. "God's forgotten me, if he ever knew I was here."
"Maybe you're the lost sheep, and he's out looking for you."
"Maybe you're the one he sent to find me." She giggled.
"The repairs I made," he said. "The room upstairs. The house didn't want me to do that. But when I finished, it made the house stronger, didn't it? It made you more real and solid, didn't it?"
She got up, took a few short steps out into the room. "I took a shower, Don! I felt the water against my body! I washed. And that Coke you brought me, I tasted it. Oh, Don, I felt it in my mouth, fizzing. I felt the sheets of the bed you moved for me. I ate that pizza. A bite of it, anyway. I chewed it. The cheese was stringy, Don. How would I feel that if I'm not alive?"
She turned around slowly, around and around.
"How would I dance here in this room if I weren't real?" She closed her eyes, her face upturned, spinning slowly. "O house, big old house, why did you keep me alive? Why didn't you let me go?"
He saw her turning and turning, and he imagined seeing her by candlelight, reflected in mirrors between the windows. A very clear picture. Why would he imagine something like that? Then it suddenly came to him, the reason why this house was shaped so oddly.
"It's a ballroom," he said.
"What?"
"This room. Look. It isn't a parlor. It never was."
"But it's too small."
"No," he said. He ran to the back wall of the room, thumped it with his hand. "It's plaster," he said. "But that doesn't prove anything. When it was a speakeasy, they didn't need the ballroom. They needed more walls, more private rooms. The two bedrooms—they're both part of this. That narrow hall, it's part of the ballroom."
She walked over to join him. She touched the wall. "When I read about the Bellamys, back in college, when I read about them they were having dances all the time. They had ball after ball. It's what they did. Dancing."
Of course. It was dancing that they loved. It was for dancing that the house was built. "The wall's not tied to the house, is it? Nothing's resting on this wall."
She leaned her head against it. "You're right," she said. "It's just... it's nothing. This wall is in the way."
"And the next one? Between the bedrooms?"
They went down the hall, verifying that the bedroom walls were add-ins, just like the north wall of the passage. But the south wall was real, as was the wall between the kitchen and the back bedroom.
"It was a huge room," said Don.
"He built it for her," said Sylvie. "Can't you feel it? She loved to dance, and he built her a dancing place."
"Well, now we know," he said. "Why the house is so off-center. I can't believe I'm worrying about that right now, though. I mean—what does it matter? After what happened to you?"
"But I'm tied to the house," she said. "Now that I'm facing the truth, I might start fading. So the house needs to be stronger."
"If you want to stay," said Don. "The Weird sisters next door, they kept telling me to let the house go. Leave it alone or tear it down. What if they were trying to set you free?"
"Free?" said Sylvie. "I don't want to be free, Don, I want to be alive!"
"But I can't do that."
"Yes you can," she said. "The stronger the house, the realer I get. Tear out these walls, Don. Please."
He studied her face. Her body. Incredible that this might be only spirit. He reached out and touched her again. Her cheek. She brought up her hand and held his.
"Let me dance in this room," she said. "Make me real."
He let go of her and went in search of his wrecking bar.
It took until well after dark. Past midnight, into the small of the morning. Tearing down huge chunks of plaster, then prying out every lath. Then the skillsaw through the timbers—though these were nothing like as heavy as the great masts of that bearing wall beside the stairs. The sledgehammer blows shivered him to the shoulders, to the spine, but the timbers came free of the ceiling, came up from the floor, and he hauled it all outside, a huge pile of junk out by the curb.
Still he wasn't done. He gathered up all his tools, his boxes of supplies, his suitcases, his cot, and moved them all into the south parlor. The real parlor. So nothing was left on the floor but the fragments of plaster and a few eight-penny nails from the laths.
And still there was a job to do. He found his broom and swept the whole floor, it felt like acres of wood, but he swept it all till it was clean.
Only one more job. He found all the nailholes where the new walls had been fastened down to the polished wooden ballroom floor, then filled them with putty and sanded them smooth. It was three in the morning. He was exhausted. He turned to her, there in the alcove, where she had sat as she watched the whole job, her eyes shining.
"How's that?" he asked.
In reply she smiled at him. "Aren't you going to ask me to dance?"
He laughed. "I'm a sack of sweat right now. I must have chalkdust sticking to me all over."
"It just makes you all the more real."
"I'm not the one who felt unreal," he said. But the moment he said it, he wasn't altogether sure it was true. How real had he been, before he found this house?
He walked over to her and held out a filthy hand. "Miss Sylvie Delaney would you be so kind?"
"I think it's a waltz," she said.
"Could well be."
"I'd love to waltz with you."
He pulled her up from the bench. Her hand was solid in his. So was her delicate hand resting lightly on his shoulder, her girlish waist under his hand. He pressed with the heel of his right hand, to let her feel which way they were going, and she followed his lead. One-two-three.
"We need music," she said.
"So sing," he said.
She began to hum, then to sing wordless tunes. He recognized them. The Emperor Waltz. Blue Danube. And others that he didn't know. They danced around and around. He should have been too tired to dance. Or maybe he was only just now as tired as he needed to be, to forget his exhaustion and go on dancing and dancing.