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.