Orson Card - Homebody

"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.

Lissy

All the way back around the fence to the Bellamy house, Don was filled with dread. Sylvie was fading already, Gladys had said. Now that she didn't have that aching hole of guilt and shame in her heart, the house didn't have so much power over her. What if she was already gone? At this moment it was an unbearable thought. I just found her, he thought. I didn't ask to be in this swamp, and neither did she, but we found each other, and it's not right that I should already be losing her.

The door wasn't waiting open for him. She wasn't in the alcove in the ballroom. He called her name, striding through the main floor. Called again, again, more loudly, as he ran up the stairs, searched the second floor. Then up to the attic, and she wasn't there either, and now he felt it like another death. How could it happen so quickly?

The basement? She never went down there on purpose.

But then, that was before she learned the truth about who killed whom. Don skimmed down the stairs like a schoolboy, then ran the length of the ballroom to get to the basement stairs. "Sylvie!" he called. "Sylvie!"