The Gray House

by Mariam Petrosyan

  It had been two weeks already since he’d been referred here for prosthetic fitting. At first Grasshopper had thought that it would be over in a few hours. He’d be given arms—not real ones, of course, but at least somewhat useful—and then he’d be on his way. Only when he ended up in the hospital wing did he realize how little he knew of these things.

  He liked it here at first. The unhurried life, the cleanliness, the silence. The Stuffage boys weren’t picking on him and the nurses were friendly. Sepulcher seemed light, airy, and peaceful, the nicest place on Earth. Elk brought him books and helped with his homework, just like during his earliest days in the House. Grasshopper couldn’t understand why this place was considered bad news. Where did the morbid name “Sepulcher” come from? The word itself used to scare him before he’d come here.

  It was fine. Then he started feeling lonely. Especially when the snow came. He missed Blind. And something else too. Grasshopper, now bored, forgot about the books and moved to the windowsill. The nurses would shoo him off, but he climbed right back. He dutifully performed everything he was told to do with the prosthetics, even though he knew that he was unlikely to ever need those skills. They warned him to take care of the prosthetics, and that was when he knew he wasn’t going to wear them. They’d just get broken in the very first fight, either accidentally or on purpose. To spend all this time in the Sepulcher was meaningless. So he was spending it looking out of the window.

  “Just like a forest creature on a leash,” the nurse said as she came in. “You’ll soon be back with your friends, don’t you worry. And it’ll be so much more fun playing with them too.”

  He was waiting for her to tell him off for sitting on the windowsill again, but she seemed to have tired of that.

  “Do you miss them?” she asked with concern.

  “No,” he said without turning around.

  It was light already, and the nurse turned off the lamp. He could hear the jangle of the cutlery and the groans of nightstands being moved. The yard was empty, as were the streets outside and the ruins of the snow fortresses. The nurse left, the door clicked shut behind her, and all was silent again. Then someone came in and stopped behind him.

  “I wonder how cats go around in the snow when the snow is higher than cats?”

  The voice was unfamiliar to him, but Grasshopper didn’t turn around.

  “They jump,” he said, still looking out to the yard.

  “You mean dive in headfirst and jump out again every time? Or are they building tunnels?” The voice smiled. “Like moles?”

  Grasshopper turned. There was an unfamiliar boy standing next to him, looking past him out the window. His lips were quaking with laughter, but his eyes remained somber. The most striking thing about him was the clothes. He had on the white top from the hospital pajamas and fraying blue jeans underneath. The sneakers on his feet were black with dirt. Laces undone. His hair was smeared with something white where it fell over his forehead. He didn’t look like a patient. He didn’t look like anyone Grasshopper had known. The sick were supposed to lie in their clean beds, while the healthy and the able were not supposed to sneak around the Sepulcher entering other people’s rooms. But that wasn’t the strangest bit. Where in the spic-and-span Sepulcher could one find that much dirt to soil his feet?

  “The snow moles,” the boy said dreamily. “They burrow in the winter and come summer they turn into cats. And in the spring, just after the transformation, they emerge from the ground screaming. The March shrews. With their piercing shrieks.”

  Grasshopper jumped off the windowsill.

  “Who are you?”

  “I am a prisoner of the Sepulcher. I wrenched the iron ring to which I’ve been shackled out of the wall and directed my steps here.”

  “Why here?”

  “Because I’m a vampire,” the visitor said sincerely. “I came to partake of fresh blood. You wouldn’t deny a sick man, would you, my child?”

  “What if I would?”

  The boy sighed.

  “Then I’ll just die. Before your very eyes. In horrible agony.”

  This piqued Grasshopper’s interest even more.

  “All right. Partake, then. But not too much. Not so that I’d die. If you can do that, of course.”

  “Very noble of you, my child,” the boy said. “But I am sated today, therefore I reject your offering. The bodies of nurses, bitten and drained, are even now marking the way from my dungeon to this door.”

  Grasshopper imagined this vividly. A nurse, and another one, and another . . . All lying there, bitten, pale, their eyes rolled back.

  “Hilarious,” he said.

  “Like you won’t believe,” the visitor agreed. “Listen, could you hide me here? They’re after me. Wooden stakes and all that.”

  “Sure,” Grasshopper said eagerly, looking around the room. “Except there isn’t anywhere you could hide. You’re too big to fit inside the nightstand. And if you go under the bed, they’d see you.”

  The guest smirked.

  “Leave that to me, O kindhearted youth. The old bloodsucker knows his business. Would you mind if your bed were to become a little bit higher?”

  Grasshopper shook his head vigorously. The boy walked to the bed and started turning some kind of lever there. The bed did rise. The guest peeked under it, apparently satisfied.

  “There are these elastic bands,” he explained. “Very handy. Unless they’re too tight, of course.”

  He approached Grasshopper and looked at him intently.

  “I like you, young man,” he said earnestly. “And now let us say our good-byes.”

  “You’re going,” Grasshopper drawled dejectedly.

  The boy winked. His eyes were brown, but of such a vivid hue that they seemed almost orange.

  “Only as far as under the bed.”

  He waved, got on all fours, and crawled under the mattress. Then he scrambled around there, swearing softly, and disappeared.

  Grasshopper ran to the bed and listened intently. It was very quiet. You could only distinguish the guest’s soft breathing if you bent down all the way to the floor. Grasshopper returned to the windowsill. He was deeply intrigued, but he knew that the nurses must find him in his regular position should they check his room. He rested his chin on his knee and peered into the window, watching and not seeing the yard and the boys now teeming there. He was afraid that anyone coming in would see his flushed cheeks and hear his thumping heart.

  They came for him at the assigned time and took him to the playroom, where the prosthetics and the tasks to be performed with them were waiting. When he came back, the nurse was already in with lunch, so he couldn’t check if the vampire was still under the bed. And after lunch came Elk.

  “How’s my student doing?” he asked, opening the door. He had a stack of books in his hands. The white lab coat made him look even taller.

  “Chirping nonstop, like a budgie,” Nurse Agatha complained, wiping Grasshopper’s mouth. “Didn’t eat a thing,” she added as she lifted the tray, inviting Elk to observe the smeared mashed potatoes and the wrecked meat loaf.

  Grasshopper had indeed been talking without taking a breath. He dreaded pauses and silence. That’s when the nurse would hear something else and look under the bed. He doubted the visitor was still there but couldn’t risk it if he were.

  “Curious,” Elk said, looking Grasshopper in the eye. “He’s not usually the chatty type. He is an indifferent eater, though.”

  “Well, he sure is chatty today,” the nurse said, putting the tray on the nightstand and covering it with a napkin. “It’s your turn now. I’m getting a headache with this boy and his stories. Never in my life have I heard so much nonsense at once.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Elk said, sitting on the bed and putting the books on the chair.

  “He really is a little angel,” the nurse cooed. “I almost thought we were boring him here. But he seems to have shaken it off today. Talking and talking, like he couldn’t stop.”r />
  “I wonder what’s gotten into him,” Elk said with a smile.

  Grasshopper looked at him and shrugged.

  Elk suddenly grew serious.

  “Any news of the runaway?” he asked the nurse.

  The nurse frowned and started whispering.

  “None. I wouldn’t put it past him to be outside the House by now. The doctor is going crazy. He asked you to make sure and drop in.”

  Grasshopper pricked his ears while casually studying the spines of the books Elk had brought.

  “Certainly,” Elk assured the nurse. “It is a serious problem.”

  “Yes,” the nurse said, getting up. “What could be more serious? You try and feed him. Maybe he won’t talk you to death.”

  She walked out, leaving the lunch tray behind.

  Elk turned to Grasshopper.

  “Listen, kid, have you by any chance met a boy here today, in blue jeans and with the gray bangs? About your height?”

  “No, I haven’t. Why?”

  “Nothing,” Elk said and smiled at the ceiling. “Just that if you do, could you tell him that he’s getting a lot of people in a lot of trouble? Including me.”

  Grasshopper nodded.

  “I’ll be sure to tell him that. If I see him,” Grasshopper said. “What did he do?”

  Elk lifted the napkin for some reason and studied the contents of the tray.

  “Many things. Enough for ten people. Are you going to eat this?”

  “No,” Grasshopper said. “Well, maybe later. Not now.”

  “All right,” Elk said and stood up. “Come on, let’s get you dressed. We’ll go for a walk. You need some fresh air once in a while.”

  Grasshopper reluctantly slid off the bed. Elk dug in his pocket, produced a slip of paper, smoothed it out, and placed it on the pillow.

  “A letter for you,” he said. “Read it and let’s go.”

  Grasshopper looked at the crumpled scrap with a single word: Miss. He knew Blind well enough to guess that he meant “I miss you.” Blind was missing him!

  “Thanks,” he said to Elk. “How is he? Are they picking on him?”

  “I don’t know,” said Elk. He seemed very tired. “I know so little about you, really.”

  They walked up and down the hospital wing’s deck, protected from the wind by the convex overhang. Elk was relating the news of the Stuffage, Grasshopper just half listening. After the walk, Elk took him for the second session with the prosthetics. Then he watched a television show in the hall, which was allowed every other day. Then dinner with Nurse Maria, plumper and younger than Nurse Agatha. This time Grasshopper ate in silence, completely sure that the visitor was long gone. No one, not even a vampire, would be patient enough to hang under the bed for this long.

  “I’ll come at nine to turn the lights off,” the nurse warned. “Don’t sit on the windowsill. It’s dark out, anyway.”

  As soon as the door closed behind her, Grasshopper jumped down and peeked under the bed. The vampire was lying on the floor, looking straight back at him.

  “Oh,” Grasshopper said. “You’re not hanging anymore? She could have seen you, easily!”

  The boy slowly crawled from under the bed, like a tortoise, and sat up wincing with pain.

  “You try hanging on those straps for four hours straight,” he snapped. “Naturally, I took breaks, when nobody was in here. But I think,” he said with concern, “Elk is onto me. He came back and checked the tray. And I ate almost all the meat loaf.”

  Grasshopper laughed. It was very funny, imagining a vampire secretly devouring his meat loaf. And Elk, checking on the meat loaf. Sniffing at the plate. Why wouldn’t he look under the bed, though? He probably didn’t realize someone could hide there.

  “Sure, laugh,” the vampire said. “Make merry. Of course, you can’t imagine how it is when you hold on to the elastic straps feeling the deathly breath of a wooden stake aimed at your heart. All for one measly dried-out piece of meat loaf. What’s so funny now?”

  “Stakes can’t breathe,” Grasshopper whispered, now weak from laughter.

  The vampire said sternly, “It was a figure of speech, my boy. I turned three hundred last Tuesday, so I’m allowed to mix my metaphors once in a while, don’t you think?”

  “You are,” Grasshopper admitted. “And I like the way you mix them.”

  “Well, we’ll see how you like this night. I intend to assume my true withered appearance and listen to your pleas for mercy as my teeth prepare to stab into your flesh!”

  The vampire broke off and sighed heavily. “Listen, can I lie on your bed for a bit? I’m stiff as a board. Is it OK that I’m dirty like this?”

  He slipped off his sneakers and stretched out on the bed. His feet were even dirtier than his shoes. Grasshopper sat next to him. The vampire winced.

  “My back really hurts,” he said sadly.

  “That could be because you’re so old,” Grasshopper suggested.

  “You think so?”

  The vampire was looking very pale, and this scared Grasshopper.

  “Should I call the nurse?” he asked timidly.

  “You mean for dessert?”

  “I mean for help.” Grasshopper laughed.

  The vampire smiled.

  “No. I am in the mood to while away the night talking to you and generally enjoying myself, not receiving the ministrations of a nurse. Let’s not waste any more time. Tell me, how is it going out there, in the House? I miss the life outside the Sepulcher.”

  “No,” Grasshopper said, climbing on the bed. “You first. And then I’ll tell you anything you want. I thought about you all day. I can’t stand the mystery anymore.”

  “What was it you thought? I bet it was about how cute that vampire was.”

  “I thought about . . . ,” mumbled Grasshopper. “What did you do that Elk was speaking of? Why are you a runaway? Why are you hiding?”

  The vampire frowned.

  “I didn’t do anything. Just ran away. But it’s no use. It’s the fourth time I’ve done it. I even tried setting fire to the place. They just don’t care. I mean, I did get to them. They started locking me up. So this time I ran away because of that. So that they wouldn’t think they outsmarted me. They won’t have a minute’s peace until I’m out of here.”

  “How did you manage to get out?” Grasshopper said breathlessly. The guest was quickly acquiring the halo of a heroic martyr in his eyes.

  “A friend helped,” the vampire said reluctantly. “A true soul. Don’t even think about asking for the nick, I won’t tell you anyway. So I thought this room was empty, and I came in. When I saw you sitting over there I liked you right away. I knew you wouldn’t go calling them. Even though you looked like you believed all that stuff I was saying.”

  “I didn’t,” Grasshopper admitted. “But it would’ve been really cool to have a vampire hiding under my bed.”

  “See, just as I said. You’re weird.” The guest propped himself on one elbow and looked at Grasshopper closer. “I like weird ones. What do they call you?”

  “Grasshopper.”

  “I’m Wolf. Your nick, you know . . . doesn’t fit somehow. I would’ve given you a better one. When did they bring you in?”

  “This summer. There wasn’t anyone here. Only Elk. He took me in. But there has been another newbie already after me,” Grasshopper added hastily.

  “I bet Sportsman hates you,” Wolf ventured.

  Grasshopper frowned.

  “Yeah,” he said curtly. “He does.”

  “And everyone else is picking on you to try and suck up to him.”

  “Used to,” Grasshopper said. “How do you know about me?”

  “I don’t. I know nothing about you, but I do know about them. Which people get along with them and which don’t. Also I overheard you talking to Elk when he gave you the letter from your friend. Who they may be picking on while you’re not there. Who is he, by the way?”

  Wolf perked up. He clearly enjoyed talking a
bout life outside the Sepulcher.

  “Blind,” Grasshopper said. He knew Wolf would be impressed, and Wolf was impressed.

  “You’re kidding.”

  Grasshopper kept proud silence.

  “My hat’s off to you,” Wolf said respectfully. “I never would have thought of Blind as friend material.”

  Grasshopper was hurt.

  “He is too, just like anyone else!”

  “Or of him being picked on,” Wolf continued, ignoring the outburst.

  Grasshopper turned away. Wolf patted him on the shoulder.

  “Don’t get mad, OK? I can be nasty sometimes. Especially when my back’s acting up. Tell me everything from the very beginning. When they brought you in. And from there on. And then I’ll tell you lots about everyone.”

  Grasshopper did. His story was interrupted by the nurse who came in to wash his face and tuck him in. After she left, Wolf got out from under the bed and climbed under the covers next to Grasshopper.

  “Please go on,” he said.

  Grasshopper spoke for a long time. Then they lay in silence for a while. Grasshopper knew that Wolf wasn’t asleep.

  “I wish I could get away from here,” Wolf said miserably. “It’s been six months already. You have no idea . . .”

  Grasshopper imagined that Wolf started crying.

  “You will. I’m sure you will,” Grasshopper said. “Don’t worry. It just can’t be that someone needs to get out of something and can’t.”

  “You’re really nice.” Wolf hugged Grasshopper and pressed his cheek against him. The cheek was wet. “If I manage to get out, I promise to fight for you to the death. You’ll see. Will you remember me if I don’t get out?”

  “I swear!” Grasshopper said. “I’ll always remember you.”

  In the morning, Nurse Agatha discovered Wolf sleeping in Grasshopper’s bed. Her scream woke up both of them. Wolf head-butted the nurse in the stomach and stormed out into the hallway. Grasshopper ran after him and watched, dumbfounded, as Wolf, navigating between the bawling nurses, knocked over the trays with food and medications. His path was marked with broken glass, cotton balls, and scrambled eggs.