Homebody by Orson Scott Card
“I don’t know of any such place,” she said.
“You roomed here back in the mid-eighties.”
“You must be thinking of somebody else. Good-bye.”
“Hang up if you want, Miss Delaney, but I’ve seen what’s in the tunnel under the house.”
She said nothing.
“You don’t seem to be hanging up,” said Don.
“Maybe we do need to have a conversation,” she said.
Don covered the receiver and whispered to the old ladies, “Now she wants to talk.” Into the phone he said, “Yes, I think we ought to meet.”
“Are you here in town?” she asked.
“No, here in Greensboro.”
“Well, you don’t expect me to drop everything and go all the way down there, do you? I have a job, I have responsibilities—”
“That’s not my problem, is it?” said Don. “I’m betting you can get here by tomorrow at noon. After that, I call the police to check the body. When they figure out that it matches Sylvia Delaney’s dental records, they’re bound to start wondering who’s this woman who’s been using Sylvie Delaney’s name for all these years.”
“You’re crazy if you think I’m going to pay blackmail over something that you’ve clearly concocted out of your own imagination.”
“I’m not taping this, so you can skip the innocent act,” said Don. “Noon tomorrow, at the Bellamy house. Come to the front door, and come alone.”
“This is the stupidest prank I’ve ever heard of.”
“I’m looking forward to meeting you—Lissy.”
“Who are you?” she demanded.
He set the receiver down on the cradle. Then he sat back in to one of the plush parlor chairs. “That may just be the stupidest thing I ever did.”
“What did you do?” said Miz Evelyn.
“Is your brain gone, you silly hillbilly?” said Miz Judea. “He just invited the woman who killed the girl next door to come down here and kill him, too.”
“Oh!” cried Miz Evelyn. “That was foolish of you, Mr. Lark!”
“I know,” he said. “But it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“You mean you don’t even have a plan?” said Miz Judea.
“All I know is that Lissy Yont is going to face Sylvie one last time before Sylvie fades away.”
Miz Judea shook her head. “You best talk to Gladys again,” she said. “You bit off more than you can chew this time.”
Nothing had changed in Gladys’s room, except that Gladys looked even wearier and more impatient. “I wish you’d tell that girl to stop all that dancing,” she said. “It wears me out.”
“Her dancing?”
“Around and around. Like spinning thread. Like knitting. It ties me up in knots.”
“Well, don’t worry,” said Don. “She’ll be gone soon.”
Immediately Gladys was full of sympathy. “Oh, you poor thing. It never lets up for you, does it?”
Was she mocking him? “Miz Judea thinks I should talk to you.”
“Only because you’re as stupid as they come,” said Gladys. “Of course, I say that with your best interests at heart. Most people are stupid. I don’t hold it against them. I just wonder what we’re supposed to do for you when you’re dead?”
“Why, you can see the future now?”
“Miz Judea told me what you did. That woman’s going crazy right now, figuring out how she’s going to kill you and get away with it.”
“Well, if it’s any comfort, she’s also probably planning how to burn down the house or blow it up to destroy all the evidence against her. So you’ll win no matter what.”
“Burning’s the last thing we want. It’ll take years for the shadow of that house to fade, if it burns. We need it torn down. In case you haven’t been listening.”
“Give me a break here,” said Don. “You didn’t come up with anything. And I’m going to get Sylvie some justice before she goes.”
“Which Sylvie?”
“Which?” He was confused. “Sylvie. The Sylvie.”
“The Sylvie who’s dead and living next door? Or the Sylvie who’s probably buying a gun right now and heading on down here to kill you?”
“That’s Lissy Yont.”
“It was Lissy,” said Gladys. “Don’t you know nothing about the power of names, Mr. Lark? When I saved these girls, I called them by their soul names—name of their spirit and their body. When that girl started going by Sylvie’s name, she didn’t know what she was getting in for. When people know you by a name, call you that name and you answer, it ties the name right to you. Now, her spirit is still Lissy Yont, but her body has been called Sylvie Delaney by everybody for the past ten years. She’s been divided. Her soul is split, so her body’s name is Sylvie Delaney by now.”
“So the soul’s name is the spirit and the body?” said Don.
“Divide the names and you divide the soul. Leaves room for other spirits to try and seize the body, possess it. That woman doesn’t know how weak her hold on her own body is. That body don’t feel like it be part of no soul, it feel like it just be possessed by this spirit named Lissy. It want to get with its right spirit.” Gladys cackled with pleasure. “People who don’t know what they’re doing, they do the dumbest things! Like you, calling a killer down to visit you.”
“And you think it’s funny?” asked Don, irritated now.
“I won’t laugh when you dead,” said Gladys. Sounding a little irritated herself.
“Not this time,” said Don.
“Why? You don’t look bulletproof to me.”
“Because long before she can get to me, she’s going to meet Sylvie face to face, the real Sylvie, right there in that house, where Sylvie is strong. Where the house does her bidding.”
“Sylvie strong there compared to dead people who got no house. A dead woman’s never as strong as a live one.”
“They’re not going to wrestle. Lissy’s just going to face what she did to Sylvie.”
“Meaning you think that ghost is going to scare her to death.”
“She thinks she got away with it. I just want her to see that there’s a life after death and someday she’s going to answer for what she did.”
“Don’t it ever occur to you that only good people are afraid of paying for their sins?”
“No ma’am,” said Don. “I’ve known some bad people and some good people in my life, and it’s the bad ones who live in fear, all the time. Cause they know their own hearts, Miss Gladys, and they think everybody else is just waiting to pull the same moves on them that they’ve got planned to pull on somebody else.”
“People be more simple than you think, Don Lark.”
“You’ve spent the last sixty years sitting on a bed getting fat while you do spells to keep a big old house from swallowing up your people, and you’re telling me that people are simple?”
“Nobody simpler than me,” said Gladys.
“Well, so, maybe you’re right. Maybe Lissy’ll get here and see Sylvie and laugh in her face and then come shoot my brains out. If she does, then I won’t care anymore, will I?”
“Now look who’s talking brave.”
“I got to do something for Sylvie before she goes, if she’s going.”
“She’s going, and you already done something. You gave that girl love. What you think anybody want more than that? You think she give a rat’s behind about seeing Lissy? That for you, Mr. Lark. She do that for you.”
“OK, maybe,” said Don. “Maybe that’s for me. Maybe just once I want to look evil in the face and name what it is.”
“Only it be using the wrong name. That body be Sylvie Delaney walk through that door. And don’t you go expecting her to show up at noon. You think she crazy? You call her what, ten minutes ago? She on the road now. Not the airplane! She ain’t putting her name on no plane ticket. She driving, but not slow, no. She flying down the pike. How long from Rhode Island? Ten hours I bet. Pay cash for gas. She get to town at midnight. The
“I didn’t think of that.”
“You didn’t think of nothing. You acting from your heart now, not your head.”
“Yeah.”
“No, no, that be good, you keep doing that. Good people can’t out-think evil, cause evil think of things good folks can’t think of. Can’t enter your head what evil do.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“But the good heart, now, it think of good things that evil can’t imagine, cause it got no heart. How about that? That be philosophy. That be deep.”
Either it was too deep for Don, or not deep enough, he couldn’t be sure either way. But he was glad he talked to Gladys again. That back entrance to the tunnel, that had to go before tonight. That had to be sealed off.
“You know I wish I wasn’t so fat,” said Gladys.
“I hear that from a lot of folks,” said Don.
“I wish I could fit through that door. Wish I could go down them stairs. Wish I could be there next door.”
“Why? Can’t you tell what’s going on from right here?”
“Oh, sure I can. But see, I never heard of something like this before. I don’t think it ever happened. Somebody been living under a dead person’s name for years and years, come face to face with that dead person’s spirit. Who know what going to happen.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, that Sylvie spirit, it going to meet a Sylvie body. And back again. They going to know they belong together. If the Sylvie spirit still had its own body, then so what? That happen before, lots. But the Sylvie spirit got no body. What then? And that Sylvie body, it hungry for a Sylvie spirit for a long time. Want to be a soul again, not just possessed.”
“You’re not saying that Lissy’s body might capture Sylvie’s spirit,” said Don.
“I not be saying nothing, I just wondering. I just thinking it be a real good thing if you tell that dead girl not to touch that Lissy when she get here.”
“She might get trapped in the same body with the woman who killed her?” The idea made him sick at heart. What had he got her into?
“Just tell her keep away. She a ghost, Mr. Lark. That Lissy girl, she can’t touch her if she don’t want to be touched.”
“Thanks for the warning,” said Don.
“These ladies give you lots of warnings, you didn’t listen to a one of them.”
“So maybe I’m learning to listen better,” said Don.
“Maybe but not likely,” said Gladys. “But if you ain’t dead when this is all over, you come see me, tell me what all happened. I can’t see it except with the eyes of magic, and I want to know what it look like.”
Don held out his hand, then walked around the bed to where she could reach it. They shook on it, though her hand was so puffy with fat that he could barely get a grip on it. “We got us a deal,” said Gladys.
“Better than that,” said Don. “We got us a friendship.”
“Well, that’s good news. Cause I know you a man look after his friends.”
“No one does that better than you.”
“Now you go and don’t get killed if you can help it.” She waggled her sausage fingers at him.
He tipped his imaginary hat to her. Then to Miz Evelyn and Miz Judea. “I’ll let myself out,” he said.
They bade him good-bye as well, and he headed back over to the Bellamy house.
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 destroye
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.