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16

Ballroom

It took Don a moment to realize what she was saying. "How could it be you?" he said lamely.

"I thought it was a dream," she said. She was shaking, leaning against the stone wall of the tunnel. The flashlight in his hand made her look like she was on stage, with a tight but feeble spotlight picking her out of the darkness. "I dreamed I came back down the tunnel and I was shaking her again, trying to wake her even though I knew she was dead, and then her hands... shot up and took me by the throat and I tried to apologize, I said I was sorry, sorry, I didn't mean to hurt her, but then I couldn't breathe and it hurt and I kept thinking, any time now I'll wake up, any time."

"She strangled you."

"Her face. So hateful. I thought it was what I deserved. I thought it was her ghost, haunting me. I've dreamed it a thousand times since then. I thought I was dreaming then. Because. Because it all went black, and then I woke up and it was dark because the candles had burnt out but I tripped over a body, lying on the mattress, a body right where I had left her body, I tripped over my body." She turned and looked over toward the corpse on the mattress. "Show me," she whispered. He turned the light toward the body. She crawled over. Touched it. Touched the parchment skin of the bare leg. Touched the damp rotting fabric of the dress. Then touched her own dress, the same dress, but not rotting.

"How can a..." How could he ask her this?

Her head sank. She didn't look at him.

"How can a ghost trip over a dead body."

She shook her head.

"You touched me. I touched you." He reached out to prove it to her.

"No!" she cried, recoiling from him, scurrying back to the wall.

"You're real," he insisted.

She cried again.

He reached out to touch her and this time she endured it. And yes, there was resistance, he could feel the skin of her arm.

And then he couldn't.

And then he could, but his finger was about a half-inch deep in her arm. He cried out in horror and pulled his hand away. She raised her face to look at him. "The house," she said. "I've got to get back inside the house."

"No, you've got to get away from this house."

"We're not in the house," she said. "Shine the light, show me the way back. I'm losing it."

He shone the light up the tunnel toward the basement. Sylvie got up. Too far up—she rose from the ground and drifted. She wailed in fear.

"My hand," he said. "Take my hand."

"I'm not here, Don! I'm not real, I can't—"

"You are real," he said. "You're Sylvie Delaney and you live in the old Bellamy house. In that new room, you've touched the walls of that room. You hid in the closet that I built and..."

And he felt her hand in his. He didn't look. He simply led her up the tunnel. He didn't want to see if she was walking or floating or if there was anything of her but that hand. That living hand.

They came out into the rubble-strewn basement and now he could hear her footsteps. He turned around and faced her. "You're all right," he said.

"I'm inside the house again."

"It sustains you."

"The stronger the house is," she said, "the realer I am."

"So if you know that," he said, "how could you not have known it was your body down there? That you were—Sylvie, you're dead. How could you not know?"

"I was still here, that's why I didn't know. The house held on to me." She walked toward the stairs. "But there were times when I felt... soft. Unreal. Puncturable." She walked up the stairs. Her hand was so solid on the two-by-four banister. He couldn't help it, he had to reach out and touch her again. She stopped walking. Stopped and waited, his hand touching hers.

"Sorry," he said, thinking she was offended.

"Oh, no, please," she said. "Oh, please, you're so warm. Don't let go." She burst into tears again and turned to face him, almost fell into his arms. He gathered her into an embrace; she wept against his shoulder. Her tears soaked through his shirt. How could she not be real? He got one arm under her legs, lifted her, carried her carefully up the stairs.

"Take me to the nook under the stairs," she said. "The heart of the house."

So once again they sat on the bench, with the portrait of the Bellamys looking down at them. She would not let go of his hand. "She left me there, Don."

"It explains why you never had any inquiries about her death."

"But what about my death?"

"She must have told them something. That you left. Went home. Went on to that job in Providence."

"When I thought I killed her, it destroyed me."

"Maybe it destroyed her, too," said Don.

"Now I know why I couldn't leave the house," she said. "I tried, early on. When they were closing it all down. I hid from them but then when they left I tried to leave. I'd get out onto the porch. Or out in back. And I'd get so faint."

"Faint?"

"I mean like I was going to faint. Light-headed. It frightened me. I thought it was my guilt holding me. I couldn't face the world. I had no right to be out there if Lissy couldn't go too. But she did go. So I did have the right."

"But the house held you."

"Held me, but it also kept me alive. Without the house I'd just be... gone. I think I was going anyway. All those years when the house was weakening. I was weakening too. Till you came. The sound of you walking through the house. As if it woke me from a long sleep. I was in the attic, listening to you talking to that guy and that woman. And she left because the dust was getting to her. Talking about how strong the house was. And how you could fix it up again. You don't know how that... it filled the house with hope. Me with hope."

"So you were there," he said.

"But maybe I wasn't even... visible? Maybe I was... sometimes I felt like I was the house. Like the timbers and beams, they were my bones, and the outside walls were my skin, and this place, this invisible place was my heart, beating, beating. Can't you feel the pulse here?"

He reached over and laid his fingers against her throat. The pulse was pounding there. "A ghost can't pump blood like that."

"Imitation of life," she said. "Mimesis. That's all I am. Plato said we were all shadows. Me more than most."

"Not as long as you stay here."

"Now when you sell the house, do I have to leave?" She laughed, but it quickly turned to crying again. Again he held her, his arm around her shoulders, her face turned in to his chest. "I've really screwed things up now. You can't sell a haunted house, Don."

"You think I care about that?"

"Yes."

"Sure, yes," he said. "But not as much as the fact that your body is down there. And she got away with it."

"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.

And in his mind, in his weariness, he began to hear, not Sylvie's voice, but an orchestra. And to see, not the light from the worklamp, but the light of a hundred candles in sconces on the walls, in three great chandeliers overhead. Around and around the room, great sweeps of movement, and Sylvie's dress swayed as if there were a bustle under it, exaggerating the movements of the dance. So did all the other dresses in the room, all the men in tails, whirling, whirling. No faces, Don couldn't see any faces because everything was moving so fast; nor could he see the musicians, though he caught the movement of a bow, the flash of light on a trombone slide every time he passed the bandstand against the wall separating the ballroom from the serving room. Servants moved in and out of that room with drinks on trays, hors d'oeuvres on platters. Onlookers smiled and laughed, and Don wasn't just imagining it, they did look up whenever he and Sylvie danced past them. Thank you for this party, they were saying with their silent eyes. Thank you for inviting us. For the lights, the food, the champagne, the music, and above all the grace of the dancers, skittering over the floor as lightly as the crisp leaves of autumn, around and around, caught in a whirlwind, making a whirlwind, churning all the air of the world...

And then they clung to each other, no longer dancing. The room still turned dizzily around them, but then even that held still. The music was over. The orchestra had disappeared, and all the onlookers, and the other dancers. Only Sylvie and Don remained, holding each other in the middle of the room. Don looked at the windows and saw that a gray light was now showing.

"We danced until dawn," he said.

She said nothing. He looked down at her and saw tears in her eyes. "They danced again in their house tonight," she said.

"And the house is strong," he said.

She nodded. "It's the Bellamy house again. It has the right shape for its real name."

"And you," he said. "You're strong, too." Her face so ethereal, her skin so pure, so translucent. Her lips still caught in the memory of a smile. He bent and kissed her lightly. She laughed, a low chuckle deep in her throat.

"I felt that," she said.

He kissed her again.

"I felt it to my toes," she whispered.

He wrapped his arms around her, picked her up, spun around and around. Her legs swung away from his body. Like a child, around and around, flying. Then he carried her to the threshold of the front door. Reached down and opened it.

"Don," she said.

"This is the only test that matters, Sylvie," he said.

"No, it's the one that doesn't matter."

"If you can leave, then you're alive," he said.

"Isn't it enough that I'm alive inside?"

"No," he said. "It's enough for me, but it's not enough for you. Unless I can give you back what Lissy took from you."

"You can't," she said. "Put me down, Don."

"Flesh and bone," he said. "Heart's blood and mind's eye."

"Oh, Don," she said. "Is it true?"

In answer, he opened the front door and stepped out onto the porch. It wasn't true dawn yet. Just the faintest of the early light. No lights shone in the neighborhood except the streetlights, and they were shrouded in the morning mist. Don stepped down, one, two, three steps. Onto the mown weeds of the yard. Out toward the junkpile, out toward the street. She clung around his neck.

And then she didn't.

There was nothing in his arms.

"Sylvie!" he cried out.

Almost he let his arms drop, because he couldn't see her. But he knew: If she was anywhere, she was here, in his arms. He had to get back to the house. "Sylvie, hold on to me! Hold on!" He ran back.

"Don!" he heard her call. As if from a distance.

He looked and couldn't see her. Not in his arms, not anywhere.

"Don, wait!"

He retraced his steps, felt with his arms. Brushed against something. Nothing he could see, but something. "Hold on to me," he said.

"Slow," she whispered. It sounded like her voice was in his ear. "Slow."

Trying to gather her like wind, he walked backward, slowly, toward the house. And the closer he got, the more he could feel her. Her hands, clawing at his sleeves, her feet dragging in the weeds. Now he could get his arms around her. Could hold her. Draw her along, then get his arms under her, lift her up again, carry her up the stairs. He could do that, he did it, he brought her to the front door and took her inside and closed the door and then they collapsed on the floor, exhausted, clinging to each other, crying, laughing in relief.

"I thought I lost you," he said.

"I thought I was lost," she said.

"The house can't make you real except inside."

"That's enough for me," she said.

"Not for me," he said. "Not while she's alive."

"Who, Lissy?"

"She killed you with her bare hands. Not just one blow struck in anger. It takes a long time to strangle somebody to death, five minutes of tightly gripping your throat. She could have stopped any time, Sylvie. But she never stopped. She hung on even after you were unconscious. She hung on till she knew you were dead."

"So what can we do about it?" she said. "We have this house."

"I want you to have your life back."

"How?"

"I don't know," he said. "But I know who might, if anyone does." He got up and walked to the door.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"Next door," he said. "The Weird sisters." He turned away, started through the door, then stopped, turned back inside.

"Please," he said. "Be here when I get back."

"Cross my heart," she said.