Homebody by Orson Scott Card
Don got enough of a purchase on the floor to get some leverage. He lifted upward on the leg of the workbench and it tipped and fell on its side. As if the house knew at once that it was no longer half so useful as a weapon, the bench stopped moving and lay there, inert.
Don started toward Sylvie to help her with the door, when he saw the wood of the door below the handle start to deform, to extrude. “Get away from the door!” he shouted, but almost before he was through saying it, and long before Sylvie could possibly have reacted, the extrusion became a human hand made of splintering wood, and it seized Sylvie’s wrist and held her.
Sylvie screamed and tried to pull her hand away. To get leverage, she leaned her back against the wall beside the door. Another hand pushed out of the plaster and wrapped itself around her other arm, gripped it. Hands took her ankles, hands made of plaster, hands made of floorboard. And then a pair of hands at her throat.
“Don!” she cried, her eyes filling with panic.
It was going to happen again. Lissy was going to kill her again.
He stood up and screamed at the house. “How stupid are you? If you kill her then you won’t have that body, either!”
At once the window in the door deformed and became Lissy’s face in rippling glass. The mouth opened and the voice was high and sharp like the tinkling of crystal. “If I can’t have it, nobody can.”
Another face formed in the floor, the mouth gaping wide, the throat dark and deep. The voice thrummed deeply. “That body is Lissy, Lissy, not Sylvie. Call it Lissy.”
“Don’t say her name!” Don cried out. “Don’t say it, Sylvie! Don’t let her have that body back.”
She looked at him with frightened eyes.
He didn’t bother trying to pry away the hands that held her. He knew that his bare strength wouldn’t have the power to get her free. It would take weapons, and instead of attacking these new-made hands at the door he would break this creature’s back.
He searched the disarray of his tools for the skillsaw and the extension cord. Found. He plugged the extension cord into the wall, the skillsaw into the extension cord, and then pulled the trigger. It whined into life, the bare blade spitting off dirt from yesterday in the tunnel. The great timbers of the bearing wall still stood partly exposed, and he bit the skillsaw into the first one, making a cut all the way around it like a lumberman girdling a tree.
The glass Lissy-face in the doorway screamed. The wooden one in the floorboards buckled and deformed. What had once been the brow of that face now became a ripple in the floor, then a pair of hands that reached up and fumbled with the junction of the power cord and extension cord. Don was just starting on the second timber when the cords came apart and the skillsaw died.
One timber was cut. That was something. If he could find his sledgehammer he could break it apart. That would start the weakening of the house, wouldn’t it?
There was no time, no time to be searching for tools. Sylvie was dying there, pinned like a bug against the wall. He had to paralyze this house, break its back. Kill it and kill Lissy along with it.
He caught the movement in time to fling up his hand. The point of a mortaring trowel pierced his palm. The pain shot through him and he stumbled, nearly fell from the shock of it. But he was too angry now, too frightened to let pain stop him. He took the trowel by the handle and pulled it out. This moved the pain to a new level, and he almost fainted with it as the blood flowed. He had to stop this house before he lost too much blood or he’d end up watching Sylvie strangle to death as the last life fled his own body. Where was the sledgehammer?
It flew through the air straight for his head. He caught it, spinning with the force of it as he did. “Thanks!” he shouted triumphantly. She had put his best weapon in his hands herself.
“I’ve got to let her have the body back, Don!” cried Sylvie. The hands had loosened around her throat enough to let her speak. “She’s going to kill you!”
In answer, he swung the sledgehammer and struck the timber above the cut. It shuddered, but it did not break.
Sylvie screamed. He turned just enough to see the nails rising up like a swarm of bees from their brown sacks, eight-penny nails, ten-penny, twelve-penny. Every one of them an arrow aimed at him. He turned his back on them and swung the hammer again. The hammer struck just as the nails began stinging, stabbing at his back. His neck, his scalp, his arms, all up and down his legs. A hundred bee stings. He groaned, partly from the pain of it, but more because again the timber didn’t break free. As he twisted his body to swing yet a third time, he could feel the nails popping out of his muscles, or snagging them, tearing him inside. It wasn’t going to stop him. He wasn’t going to stand by and let her die just because he was in pain. He swung with all his strength, perhaps with more than his strength. And this time the timber tore apart at the cut. Above the split, the post was dislodged almost completely free of the bottom part; only an edge of the upper part still rested there. A fourth swing as the face in the glass cried out, “No, you’re hurting me, you’re hurting me!”
He struck the post and it came entirely free. At once a great creaking sound came from the ceiling. The post that had been holding up the second story and the roof was now a weight pulling them down. The house writhed with the injury.
Don looked over at Sylvie. She was struggling to get free. The hands still held her, but were they perhaps a little bit weaker? The hands at her throat seemed no longer to be trying to strangle her. No—it was worse. They had hold of her head now. Twisting. Lissy was trying to use the strength of the house to break Sylvie’s neck.
“Don,” Sylvie cried. “If I go back into the house she’ll leave it, she’ll go into the body. You have to be the first to get the gun!”
“Don’t do it!” he screamed at her. “Don’t let go of that body! Don’t go into the house! I can do this!”
He meant it when he said it, but he had no idea how.
Gladys watched with her eyes closed, feeling more than seeing what was happening. Judea and Evelyn could look out the window all they wanted—there was little to see that way. It was Gladys who could sense what was happening. How the spirit of the murderer had taken possession of the house. Fortunately it was still distracted, trying to destroy Don and either get the girl’s body back or, failing that, to kill it. But if it once succeeded in doing that, it would turn its attention again to them. To their old bodies, in thrall to the house. Gladys wouldn’t have the strength to fight it off anymore, not if it were ruled by such malevolence.
So when the floor rose up and tore apart the power cord, Gladys moaned in despair.
But despair never lasted long. There were things she could do to help. “Quick,” she cried out. “Get me that extension cord!”
Evelyn and Judea looked at her blankly. “From the TV! The extension cord!” The TV had been her lifeline to the outside world. The girls never watched it—it just made them sad. But Gladys had it on a lot, a background to her life, to her struggles with the house. There was only one outlet in this old room, electrified before modern codes. To get the TV across from her, they had had to run an extension cord from the outlet beside her bed.
Judea got it free of the wall and handed that end to her. “Both ends,” Gladys said. And in a moment Evelyn had the end from the television plug. Gladys took the male end in her left hand, the female in her right, and tried to put them together. It was like pushing together the north poles of two magnets. They dodged, refused.
Of course they did. Because the spell she was casting linked the extension cord to the skillsaw cord in the house. And the house could feel it, and was fighting her. It was a hard spell in any circumstance. But she had to do it.
“Help me,” she said. “Hold my arms. Push. Help me get these together.”
They did their best, but it wasn’t until Don managed to break open the first timber that the house weakened enough or got distracted enough that they could do it. Gladys felt the plugs touch. She guided them, carefully, forced
In the parlor, Don held the skillsaw but couldn’t get the cord to hold still long enough to grab the power end. It was like a snake, dodging, dodging. And then, suddenly, sparks leapt from the extension cord on the floor, arcing like a welder, blinding him for a moment. The extension cord and the skillsaw power cord still didn’t touch, were yards apart, in fact, but the power sparked through the air to join them. A current flowed, dazzling white and blue in the air. Don’s finger found the trigger of the saw and it whined into life. He wasted no time, no matter what the house flung at him. He made his cuts, post after post. Of course only the posts in this room were exposed, but that had to be enough. Cutting these down had to be enough.
The house’s strength was growing feebler all the time. What it threw at him struck with less and less force. He glanced over to see that Sylvie still hung in the house’s grip, but it was no longer trying to break her neck or strangle her. It only held her, held on to her.
“Please,” moaned the face in the glass. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I didn’t mean to do anything bad.”
Don had no pity. He knew what Lissy was and what had to happen to her now. He hefted the sledgehammer and began striking the cut timbers. It took three blows with the first one, but after that the house was weak enough that a single blow broke each timber apart. The whole second floor sagged. The house’s back had been broken.
The glass face rippled, thinned, then collapsed back into the original flat surface. Only a shadow of it remained. Only the whisper of a voice.
“Don’t kill the house, Sylvie,” said the face. “It loves you.”
The ceiling above them, pulled downward by the weight of the timbers, bowed more and more; plaster in the ceiling cracked. Plaster dust and fragments began to fall, more of them, faster and thicker. As the house weakened, its power to heal itself, to hold itself together faded and its age began to tell on it. Don cared only for Sylvie, still held by plaster hands, wooden hands. They didn’t let go but they didn’t grip her tightly, either. They were dead. The house had lost the power to extrude them, but along with it had also lost the power to draw them in. Don used the sledgehammer, aiming carefully so as not to break Sylvie’s bones. He struck once, again, again. The plaster hands shattered into dust. The wooden ones broke off in splinters at the wrists. Nothing held her. She was free.
Behind them, the stairway itself, no longer anchored to anything on one side, groaned, sagged, lurched downward. Sylvie looked at it, looked up at the cracking ceiling above her as Don fumbled with the deadbolt. The key was gone from the lock. He had one in his pocket, but he wasn’t going to look for it. “Out of the way,” he said to Sylvie. She moved behind him as he swung the sledgehammer one last time, knocking the deadbolt clear out of the door. The door itself rebounded from the blow, falling open. Don grabbed Sylvie by the wrist and half-dragged her out onto the porch. It buckled and sagged under the weight of them. He bounded down the steps, then held out his arms and she jumped to him, he caught her and staggered back, turning around and around, out on the lawn in the rain, in the wind, free of the house. He held her in his arms, dancing again, only this time no dream of old waltzes, now it was real and cold and wet and the woman in his arms was alive and crying and laughing for joy.
He stopped. He kissed her. Her lips were wet with rain, but her mouth was warm, and she held him, not lightly, but with tight, eager arms.
22
Freedom
A voice came from across the yard. “Pardon me, but don’t you two have sense enough to come in out of the rain?”
They looked over at Miz Evelyn standing behind the picket fence, holding an umbrella. Even by the light of the streetlamp she looked stronger than yesterday. Invigorated.
“We did it, Miz Evelyn,” he said. “We put things back to rights.”
“House is weaker now but it ain’t dead.”
“It will be soon,” he said. “And we’re alive.”
“Just barely! Look at you, bleeding like a stuck pig.”
It was true. Blood was still seeping from the wound in his hand. Now that he thought about it, now that the adrenaline was wearing off, he hurt all over.
“Oh,” cried Sylvie softly. “There are nails still in your head. Turn around.”
“Get over here,” said Miz Evelyn. “I can help.”
As they walked around the picket fence and into the carriagehouse yard, Miz Judea came out onto the porch and waved them over. “Get on up here out of the rain,” she said. “Come on, I’ve got what you need.” Steam rose from a pitcher. She held a basket full of bandages and ointments. Some of them looked like the FDA had never certified them, but he figured Gladys knew things that the FDA never heard of, so there on the porch he stood while they pulled nails out of his legs and backside.
“Somebody nailed you good,” said Miz Judea. Then she cackled with such mirth, you’d think she hadn’t laughed for years.
As soon as he could, he sat on the porch swing and let them strip off his shirt and start anointing his wounds with foul-smelling salves that stung and then felt good. The old ladies introduced themselves to Sylvie and Sylvie smiled and introduced herself back again. Don just sat and watched, deeply weary but also satisfied.
“So you’re the haint that’s been living in that house all these years,” said Miz Evelyn.
Sylvie reached up and touched her own cheek. “Not anymore, though,” she said.
“I told Miz Judy here, I said if anyone can put things to rights, it’s that boy Don Lark.”
“Said no such thing,” said Miz Judea. “You just said nobody could ever put things to rights.”
“The memory is the first thing to go,” said Miz Evelyn.
They watched as a man in sweats carrying an umbrella padded across the street to them. “What’s going on in that old house there?” he demanded. “I thought I heard such a crash. And a woman screaming.”
“That was us, I’m afraid,” said Don. “I’m the one who’s been renovating it. It wasn’t as sturdy as it looked. A main load-bearing wall collapsed.”
“That house ought to be condemned.”
“You’re telling me,” said Don. “I’m not spending another night under that roof. I’ll have a wrecking crew out here to tear it down first thing tomorrow.”
“Wait till after eight in the morning, would you?” said the neighbor.
“Count on it,” said Don.
“Can I give you some coffee?” said Miz Judea.
“No thanks, ma’am,” said the neighbor. “I don’t want to be awake.”
“They barely escaped with their lives,” said Miz Evelyn.
“Yeah, well, nobody was hurt, right?”
“All of us are fine,” said Don. And, in fact, with Gladys’s salves going onto his body and Sylvie there in the flesh before him, it was true.
The neighbor trotted back across the street.
“I think the rain is letting up a little,” said Miz Evelyn.
“I love the rain,” said Sylvie.
“You’ll love the sun, too, come morning,” said Miz Judea. “Now let’s get this poor boy inside and in to a bed. I’m afraid he’s going to have to buy himself some new clothes. Everything he’s got is either in that house or full of holes and covered with blood.”
“I guess I can go shopping for him in the morning,” said Sylvie. Then she burst into tears. “Oh, Don,” she said. “I can go shopping. I can go out.”
In answer he held her hand, and with the old ladies fussing around them, they went inside.
A week later, the demolition was complete. Don never went into the house again. He was afraid that some shadow of Lissy would remain alive in there. He didn’t want to hear her voice again. Didn’t want to walk into her lair where she and the house might have one last trick up their sleeves. So his tools were a dead loss. The only things he might have missed were his pictures of Nellie, but those were in the
As the house came down, the old ladies brightened and strengthened and began taking walks around the neighborhood. Sylvie got a locksmith to make her a new key for the Saturn, and after Don cleared out every reminder of its previous owner, she began driving everywhere, taking Miz Evelyn and Miz Judea with her. The three of them were soon as thick as thieves. Leaving Don with Gladys in that upstairs room.
With new tools he carefully dismantled the doorway of her room and laid boards and carpet down the stairway to convert it into a long, slow slide. He opened the front door, cutting away part of the wall, and made ramps out onto the porch and down to the lawn. A parade of doctors came to examine her, to judge whether she could make the move. Arrangements were made with a sanitarium, and they rented a truck to move her.
On the day the demolition was complete, everything hauled away, and the foundation hole filled in, Gladys was hoisted from her bed and, with the help of four men from the sanitarium, she passed through the widened doorway of her room and slid very, very slowly down the carpeted slide. On the main floor they harnessed and winched her up onto three gurneys strapped together and rolled her out through the gap in the front wall of the house to the street, where the truck waited.
“We going to the fat farm!” she cried when she saw the truck. “Inside this body be fourteen skinny women dying to get out!”
“Just do whatever the doctors tell you,” Miz Judea said.
“We’ll visit every day,” said Miz Evelyn.
“No you won’t,” said Gladys. “That get boring for you, and tell the truth I could use a little vacation from looking at you two every day. Of course I mean that nice as can be.”
It took another twenty minutes of hard labor but finally Gladys was up inside the truck, sitting on a king-size mattress with an enormous pile of pillows all around her. Two attendants would be riding in back with her, monitoring her vital signs during the whole trip.