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If the idea was to make up with the Weird sisters, Don still had a ways to go. And the start would be that leaf-covered lawn.

Their garage contained no car. Instead, it had the cleanest array of gardening tools Don had ever seen. What did they do, wash them in dish soap after each use? Every tool had a shelf of its own or a clip to hold it to the wall. Nothing touched the ground. The only sign that they had not been maintaining the garage up to their normal standards was a couple of spiderwebs, but these were so new they didn't even have sacs of eggs or more than a couple of bug corpses. If these ladies had stayed in the Bellamy house, the place would never have decayed at all.

The rake was clipped to the wall. Don took it down and toted it over his shoulder out to the front yard. His body didn't like raking, not today, not after yesterday's labors, but he pushed on and after a while the aches and pains subsided and became the trance of labor. His hands were already callused. It felt good to him, to know that work had shaped his body. Back when he was a general contractor, building house after house, real physical labor had been only a hobby for him, fine carpentry in the garage. He had no calluses then. The last few years before his wife left, he had even been developing a little pooch at the beltline. That was gone, too. He didn't have the shaped, constructed muscles of a bodybuilder. He had the body that honest labor made, and he had learned to recognize it in other men, and respect it. And to like his own. He felt good in this flesh.

The job was done. The leaves were piled at the curb. He leaned for a moment on the rake, and the front door opened. Not just a crack, and not just to be slammed in his face. Miz Judea and Miz Evelyn both stood there, waiting for him. He waved. "Got to put the rake away." They closed the door as he walked around the house to the garage in the backyard.

Unsure how they went about making their tools so perfectly clean, Don contented himself with picking all the leaves off the rake before putting it back into its clip. He used that small handful of leaves to swipe at the spiderwebs and clear them away. Then he tossed the leaves over the high hedge into his own yard. Plenty of room for spiders there. They didn't need to go disturbing the perfection of the Weird sisters' garage.

The back door stood ajar, waiting for him.

He went inside. Miz Judea, looking weary and ancient, was slowly washing the plastic containers that had contained the food Don brought for them. "Was it good?" he asked her.

She just looked at him sadly and went back to washing.

Miz Evelyn came in from the parlor, carrying a plate of cookies. "I had this set out for you in the parlor, but then I remembered you didn't like going in there when you were dirty from work." It broke Don's heart to see her walking like an old woman, one step at a time, balancing the plate in one hand.

"Oh, ladies," he said. "I'm so sorry I've put you through all this."

Miz Evelyn shook her head. "All began before you were born."

At the sink, Miz Judea began to hum a melody that Don didn't recognize. At first he wondered why she was singing this song at this point in the conversation; then he realized that she wasn't paying attention to their conversation at all. She was humming because she felt like it.

"Thank you so much for raking our leaves," said Miz Evelyn.

"I had an ulterior motive."

"Oh, and for the lunch, too. But Gladys liked it. She misses store-bought food. Can you believe it?"

"Too much vinegar in everything," said Miz Judea. So she was listening.

"Maybe that's how they keep it from going bad in the display case," said Don.

"Maybe they don't know how to cook," said Miz Judea. "Gladys wouldn't know a good meal if it bit her on the butt."

"Now, Miz Judy, don't go talking down your dear cousin," said Miz Evelyn.

"Hungry bitch," said Miz Judea.

"It's the house that's hungry, Miz Judy, and you know it."

Miz Judea nodded. "I'm tired."

Miz Evelyn turned to Don to explain. "The house is so strong now."

"I wake up dreaming about it," said Miz Judea. "Five times a night. Dreamed there was a ball there. Saw you dancing, young man. With a heron."

"A what?" asked Don.

"A heron. Long-legged bird."

"It wasn't a heron," said Don.

"Whose dream we talking about, boy?" she demanded.

"I thought it wasn't a dream," said Don. "Because I was dancing there this morning. Until dawn."

"You too lonely, boy," said Miz Judea.

"You wasn't dancing alone, I take it," said Miz Evelyn.

"No, not alone," said Don.

"Who you got over there?" asked Miz Evelyn.

"She was there when I arrived. A girl. A woman."

Miz Judea looked skeptical. "Gladys never said nothing about no woman there."

"She's not a... her body was left in a tunnel under the back yard. About ten years ago."

"Good Lord," said Miz Evelyn. "You telling us she's a haint?"

Don nodded. "She gets stronger along with the house. I didn't understand any of what you told me. But the more I worked on the house, the more solid she became. Until I could feel her in my arms as we danced. But she's only real inside the house."

"You expect us to believe this bullshit?" asked Miz Judea.

"Hush, you silly old goose," said Miz Evelyn. To Don she said, "She's only trying to get even with you for not believing us earlier."

"I don't blame her," said Don.

"Well who the hell else you going to blame?" asked Miz Evelyn. "We may be old and feeble and going through a hard time, but we're still responsible for what we say, I hope! I ain't ready for them boys in white coats, I can tell you that."

"Ladies," said Don. "I need your help."

Miz Judea whirled on him, sudsy water flying from her fingers, she turned so fast. "And how that supposed to work, Mr. Lark? You tell us what you need, and then we go do the opposite, that it? That how folks help each other?"

"Come now, Miz Judy," said Miz Evelyn. "Can't you see he's sorry?"

"Look at my hands," said Miz Judea. They were trembling so violently it was a surprise she could wash dishes without dropping them. "You sorry enough to make up for that?"

"All I want," said Don, "is to find a way to set everything to right. I've stopped renovating the house."

"When?" said Miz Judea. "You tore out those false walls all yesterday afternoon and half the night. Gladys was up there crying her eyes out, saying, Don't he have to sleep? When that boy going to sleep! We all so desperate for sleep we almost gave up, we almost just walked on over there and knocked on the door and give ourselves back to that place."

"We weren't even close," said Miz Evelyn. "We just talked about it. Nobody was going to do it."

"Gladys can't do it," said Miz Judea. "That's the only reason we didn't. Her magic ain't doing much now that the house is so strong. It just goes on day after day, year after year. What you think that poor woman can do?"

"It's not him, Miz Judy," said Miz Evelyn. "It's the house. Don't you go getting that confused."

"There's got to be a way," said Don. "To set you free without destroying Sylvie."

"That the name of that haint you got?" asked Miz Evelyn.

"Didn't you ever think maybe you tear that house down, she get set free too?" asked Miz Judea.

"If that's the best solution, and she agrees to it, then that's what I'll do," said Don. "But neither of us wants to."

They looked at him in silence for a moment.

Then: "Don't that beat all," said Miz Evelyn.

And at the same moment, from Miz Judea: "He gone and fell in love with a ghost."

"I didn't know she was a ghost until after."

"After what?" asked Miz Evelyn, all curiosity.

"After I came to care for her," said Don.

"'Care for her,'" echoed Miz Evelyn. "Ain't that sweet, Miz Judy? You hear anybody talk like that anymore these days?"

"Shut up, you silly two-bit tart," said Miz Judea. "There's nothing old-fashioned about plain old love. I'm just glad to know he's suffering a little, too."

"Miz Judy, it pains the Lord to hear you talk like that." To Don she spoke apologetically. "She doesn't really wish suffering on you, Mr. Lark."

"But she's right," said Don. "The way things are going right now, everybody's in some kind of pain except one person."

"Who's that?" asked Miz Judea, as if she meant to find that person and slap him.

"The woman who killed Sylvie."

Suddenly Miz Judea grinned. "Oh, now we got the game going, don't we. That's why you come here. To find a way to get that killer."

Don had no idea what she was imagining. Voodoo dolls? A fatal potion? "I don't know why I came," said Don. "Except that the way y'all talk about Gladys, I thought she might know what I should do."

Miz Evelyn looked shocked. "Talk to Gladys? In person?"

"Well, I don't have a phone."

The two women retired to the back of the kitchen and conferred for a moment. Don ate a cookie while he waited. It was very good. When did they have time to bake, as wiped out as they were? And how many of these cookies did Gladys eat at a time?

"We got to ask her," said Miz Judea, when they broke their huddle.

"But it's so hard getting up and down the stairs now," said Miz Evelyn. "Would you mind helping us get up the stairs? You still have to wait outside Gladys's room. And you best call her Miss Gladys, even though we don't. We're older than her, but you sure ain't."

"Promise you don't go in till she say so," said Miz Judea.

Don agreed at once, and soon had Miz Judea on one arm and Miz Evelyn on the other, helping them up the stairs, which were wide, but not wide enough to make three abreast easy. They both hung from his arm, they were so weak. It hurt him to feel how light and frail they were. I did this, he thought.

No, age did this, and the house. I only pushed them the next step.

Miz Judea disappeared inside the bedroom to the left at the top of the stairs—the bedroom whose curtains Don had so often seen parted, back when they still had the strength to spy on him. As soon as the door was closed, Miz Evelyn leaned close to him. "You got to be nice to that girl," she said.

"Miz Judea?"

"No, you fool," said Miz Evelyn. "Gladys. Don't you look at her like no sideshow. Because she got that way for our sake. She got to eat to give her the strength to fight that house. Only fighting the house, that don't use no calories if you see my point."

"She's fat," said Don.

"Oh, she's way beyond fat, you poor boy. Fat? My land." Miz Evelyn shook her head. "You just remember that we owe her everything. Me especially. She didn't need to take me. She come for Miz Judy, her cousin, don't you see. Gladys, she was only a slip of a girl, fourteen years old at the time. Took the train from Wilmington all by herself, and those was hard times for a black girl traveling alone, you can bet on that. But she comes right in and rebukes that house like a preacher casting out Satan. Then she calls our names and says, 'Come forth,' like Jesus calling Lazarus. And Miz Judy and me, we just feel a load come off our shoulders like as if we're free for the first time since we was born. That little slip of a girl."

"How could she do what the two of you couldn't do?"

"Oh, she learnt the old ways. Some of them black people brought secrets with them from Africa. Passed them along mother to daughter, aunt to niece. Gladys knew them old ways, and found out a few new ones of her own. And I said, 'We're free!' and Miz Judy starts laughing so hard she's crying for joy, but Gladys, she just scorns us and says, 'That spell's the best one I know for what ails you, and it only lasts an hour or so. I got to keep casting it over and over, or this house going to suck you back here.' And I see she's just talking to Miz Judy, not to me, and I understood that. I didn't even ask her to take me along. But I got to saying good-bye to Miz Judy, and naturally I was crying but I didn't ask no favors. And Miz Judy, she's crying too, but she never thought Gladys would care a fig for a hillbilly white girl like me, so she didn't ask either. But Gladys, she ups and says, 'You planning to spend your whole life here?' and I says, 'I pray not, every night and every morning.' And she says, 'This day your prayers be answered.' Just like scripture she said it. 'All you got to do is stay together, close by me, and I can keep you out of this house.' And she kept her word. So you show respect to that girl, Don Lark. You hear?"

"I hear, ma'am, and I'll obey."

"About time you started doing that," she said, without a trace of a smile.

The door opened. Miz Judea shuffled out. "She says come on in."

The curtains were drawn in the room, and in the light of a single lamp beside the bed it took a moment for Don to realize that the mountain of pillows on top of the king-size bed that almost filled the room wasn't pillows at all. It was the vast body of a black woman, her face sagging with chins and dewlaps of fat, her arms sticking out almost sideways, held up by the rolls of fat.

Don tried not to look at the body. Look at the eyes, that's all, see nothing but her eyes.

They were good eyes. Kind eyes. Weary, but well-meaning. And they were gazing at Don.

"Took you long enough to believe us," said Gladys. Her voice was deep and husky. The voice of a woman just roused from a sleep that was not long enough.

"I believe you," said Don. "But I don't know what to do now."

"Tear the damn house down," said Gladys. "We told you that from the start."

"It's the only thing keeping Sylvie alive!"

"Excuse an ignorant girl from tobacco country, but it seem to me that girl already be dead."

"But she shouldn't be," said Don.

"A lot of things is that shouldn't be," said Gladys. "I should be married and have me about forty grandkids by now. Your baby daughter ought to be about four and a half years old. Sure that girl ought to be alive. God's world works that way."

"God expects us to make things right when we can," said Don.

"What do you know about what God expect?"

"I know as much as you know about God," said Don. "What I don't know about is houses."

Behind him, the Weird sisters were whispering, coaching him.

"Don't do no good to make her mad."

"Careful what you say to her, Mr. Lark."

A slow smile spread across Gladys's face. "I think the word uppity was invented so they'd have something to call you."

Don didn't bother answering that. What mattered was that he had her attention. "Miss Gladys," he said, "what is it about that house? Why is it so strong?"

"You ask me that?" said Gladys. "You, a builder of houses?"

"I've built plenty of good solid houses in my life, but none of them had that kind of power."

"Come on now, Mr. Lark. Don't tell lies like that. You know the minute you walk into a house which ones got power and which ones be dead. The powerful ones, they feel like home the minute you go inside. You feel like you already remember living there even though you never did. But the dead ones, they feel like nothing but walls and floor and roof, just slabs of stuff."

Now that she put it into words, he'd felt those things about every house he ever entered. Some made him welcome, and some repelled him. "So what makes the difference? Good design? Workmanship?"

"That's part of it," said Gladys. "That's the starting place. Shoddy don't ever come to life. But the house got to be one of a kind. You build a whole bunch of houses all the same, you got to take one house worth of life and spread it out over all fifty or a hundred of them."

So much for housing tracts. No wonder Don hated working from overused designs. They felt dead before work even started.

"One of a kind, shaped to fit the people who live there. And then the first people who live in a house, oh, that's more important than all the rest. You got love there, you got parents looking out for their kids, you got hardworking folks caring for the house, you got guests coming in and feeling welcome, people in and out all the time—why, that house gets a heart to it, that house gets a soul, it gets a name, their name. The carpenter make the bones of the house, but the people breathe the breath of life into it. You get a ugly little cottage, shoddy built, ten thousand others just like it, and if the first people that live there fill it up with good life, then there be some strength in that house, at least a little."

"So it really is the Bellamys' house. Even though they're long dead."

"It has their name, it beats with their hearts. I felt their love the minute I walked into the place. Made me sad how the strength of that love got twisted by the ugly things bad folks turn it to when my cousin Judea got to whoring there. Stole that house, turned the name into a lie. That wasn't no love there, that wasn't no joy. It wasn't the Bellamy house no more."

"So how did they get stuck?"

"It ain't the house sticking to them, it be them sticking to the house."

"So it depends on the person?" said Don. "But why them?"

"You don't think I be wondering about that myself? I'll tell you what I guess. And this just a guess, Mr. Lark. It be the folks who most need a home that gets stuck in a strong house. Pain and loss, that fetch you up in a place like that. Shame and guilt, that hold you, that make you stick. My cousin Judea, she got herself pregnant by her uncle Mack, and they took that baby away from her before it make a sound, she never see it, and then she run off what with her mama and daddy calling her a low-class whore, and then she fetch up here where they make it true. You got it all there, pain and loss, shame and guilt. That baby didn't get adopted, either. They drown that baby like a cat. She told me before that baby born, she say, Gladys, I better run off, they going to hurt my baby. Only she never did run off, did you, Cousin Judea."

"No," said Judea softly.

"So she stick to that house. Her need so strong, that house so strong, they be two magnets."

Don turned to Miz Evelyn. "What about you?"

"That's nobody's business," said Miz Evelyn darkly.

"Oh, now, Miz Evelyn, we asking this man to help us get shut of that house," said Gladys.

"He don't have to know all that," said Miz Evelyn.

"Let's just say that Miz Evelyn knowed where the shotgun be, and where her husband be, and who he with. Let's just say that. Had to hightail it out of the mountains before the sheriff found the bodies. They still warm when she fetch up here and hide out in that house. Pain and loss and shame and guilt."

"So why am I not caught?" asked Don.

"You got the pain, you got the loss," said Gladys. "But what you ashamed of? What you guilty for?"

"I didn't save my daughter when I could."

"My laws, boy, you know you couldn't save her. You know you did all that Jesus ever let you do. You may think you ashamed, but you not. Deep in your heart, you know you done all."

"You don't know what I feel," said Don.

"I know that if you be guilty, that house suck you in."

Don had to think about this. About what it meant for Sylvie. He walked to the window that faced the house and opened the curtains.

"Please don't," said Miz Judea.

"No, you let him," said Gladys. "Just you don't look."

What about Sylvie? He knew her pain and her loss. But shame? Guilt? She had thought she killed Lissy. So the house held her. But now she knew she didn't...

"The girl next door," said Don. "Sylvie Delaney. She thought she committed murder there, and so she had the shame and guilt. But now she knows she didn't. That she was the one who was murdered."

"Kind of slow, ain't she?" said Gladys, looking amused.

"Innocent, that's what she is," said Don. "And now that she knows it, will the house lose its grip on her?"

"Maybe she not telling you, Mr. Lark," said Gladys, "but that house already letting go of her bit by bit. She fading. So you might as well tear that place down. She as good as gone."

Don sat down on the window sill, despondent. "I found her and then I lost her," he said.

"Why you sad about that?" said Gladys. "She going to be free now. She can go home to Jesus."

"Call me selfish, but I wanted her to go home with me."

"You show me where it says in God's plan about a man marrying him a dead girl. You show me that."

"You show me where it says that when a man and a woman fall in love, they shouldn't get married just because one of them's dead."

"I'll tell you where," said Gladys. "It says in the Good Book that in heaven they be neither marrying nor giving in marriage."

"Well what does that prove? Sylvie ain't in heaven." Don got up and walked up and put a knee on the foot of Gladys's bed, so he could look her straight in her squinched-up little eyes. "Miss Gladys, everything about this is wrong. That house is beautiful and filled with love—so why should it snag people because of the ugliness in their lives?"

"Nothing needs beauty so much as ugly do," said Gladys.

"But it's not beautiful to them. To Miz Judea and Miz Evelyn. If it was, they'd still be over there, and it would make them happy inside."

"It got twisted," said Gladys. "Man who make it a whorehouse he be six kinds of ugly in his heart. I tell you the strength come from the love of that first family who lived there. But after that, the house take on the soul of the owner."

"Well I'm the owner now!"

"Too late," said Gladys. "Too late for us. Maybe ten years from now, you so good that house be decent again. But you think we still alive by then? Besides, Mr. Lark, that's a pretty big gamble. Whether you good enough to unbad that house, or it bad enough to ungood you."

"I don't want to tear it down," said Don. "It's too beautiful."

"Beautiful to look at," said Gladys. "But if it do ugly things, then all that pretty be a lie."

"But it's not doing ugly things," said Don. "No, listen to me. The house was mean enough when it thought I was tearing it down. I still have a sore place on the back of my head to prove it. But then it stole my wrecking bar and when I went looking for it, it was behind the old coal furnace. Right where that tunnel entrance was. That was what sent me down the tunnel. That was why I found Sylvie's body there, and we learned the truth. Now you can't tell me the house is malicious when it did that!"

Gladys shook her head, which moved her whole body, quaking the bed. "You poor man, you try so hard," she said.

"Don't make fun of me," he said, "just tell me what's wrong with what I said."

"It Sylvie's house all these years, Mr. Lark," said Gladys. "House be malicious, all right. It do what Sylvie want. Not what she want in her mind, but what she want in the dark secret places. She want to be blamed for her crimes. So... the house led you there. Betrayed her."

"But she didn't commit a crime! And if the house knows so much, it knew that!"

"Tunnel ain't part of the house, Mr. Lark. Tunnel be older than the house. A good place. A freedom place. The tunnel showed you the truth. But the house, all it knew was what Sylvie knew. So the house, it trying to make you hate Sylvie. That's what she thought—if you went down that tunnel and saw what it had there, you hate her then. Treachery and malice, Mr. Lark. That's what that house got from all those years with that bad man and his bad sons owning it."

Don thought of how he'd had to pay extortion money to the last owner. "I guess none of the owners were very nice, not since the Bellamys."

"Now that dead girl," said Gladys, "she's nice enough. She been taking the edge off that malice. Made my job a little easier. That's why Miz Evelyn and Miz Judea, they can go out and work in the yard. Till you fix things up over there."

"Miss Gladys," said Don. "I appreciate all you've explained to me. But the big question is still hanging in the air. What can I do to set things right?"

"And my answer still hanging right next to it. Tear down that house."

Don could feel Sylvie slipping through his fingers. "No," he said. "Not till I've done... something."

"What?"

"I got to set things right."

"You can't."

"If Sylvie's going to fade from that house no matter what I do, then she's sure as hell not going alone!"

"If you thinking of killing yourself, do the kind thing and tear the house down first, all right?" said Gladys.

"I'm not killing anyone," said Don.

"You're killing me right now," said Gladys. "Me and these ladies. Look how they can't take their eyes off that house."

It was true. Miz Evelyn and Miz Judea had both wandered over to the window and now had their faces pressed against the glass like little children.

"Close that curtain, Mr. Lark," said Gladys.

Don excused his way past the Weird sisters and drew the curtain closed. Miz Evelyn was crying softly, and Miz Judea looked like she had lost her last best hope in life. Gladys was right. This couldn't go on.

"Thank you for your help," he said. And it was help. He knew more. Knowing was better than not knowing.

But not by much.