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.