Homebody

"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 i

"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 spi

"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 pla

"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 fu

"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 pla

"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. Then she get scared. Midnight too busy. She wait for you to sleep. She park way up the block. She come by the house on foot. From back there. Maybe she come to the gully, maybe she come up that tu

"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."