The Gray House

by Mariam Petrosyan

  They caught him in the side corridor, where Wolf unfortunately bumped into two men at once and was carried off into a private room, to the accompaniment of angry shouts from the nurses. He was soon followed there by stone-faced Spider Jan. The second doctor and the janitor, the ones who caught Wolf, were busy pouring iodine on the bite marks and pulling up trouser legs to inspect the contusions where he’d kicked them. Half of the nurses gathered around and began rehashing the incident, while the rest started picking up the wreckage.

  Grasshopper, stunned and wild eyed from the sudden awakening, was standing mutely by his door.

  “I thought you were a good boy,” Nurse Agatha said, walking past him. “And you turned out to be a liar. They are taking all this trouble with you, fitting you with prosthetics, and this is how you repay them for their efforts?”

  “You can shove your prosthetics!” Grasshopper said furiously. “And your efforts!”

  He turned on his heel without another glance at the nurse, who was rooted to the spot, and went inside.

  In the room, now empty, he looked at the unmade bed and at the blanket on the floor. Then he hooked the chair with his foot and hurled it against the wall. The sound of the crash, the cup slipping off the nightstand and breaking to pieces, the sight of the overturned chair—all of that calmed him a bit. Nurse Agatha was clucking concernedly in the hallway.

  “There,” Grasshopper said at the ceiling. “Now they’re just going to chain me up next to Wolf. And he won’t be alone anymore.”

  But no one chained him up anywhere—not next to Wolf and not by himself. Doctor Jan gave him a scolding in his office. Elk apologized for him and promised to get him out of the hospital wing. Nurse Agatha said that he really was a good boy who just happened to fall under bad influence.

  The principal patted him on the head and said, “No harm done. The child was understandably upset.”

  “Let Wolf go,” Grasshopper said.

  The only one who heard that was Elk.

  That evening he was visited by a girl in light-blue pajamas, with flaming hair, like a red poppy. He’d never seen anyone with hair so bright. He never imagined that such a color could exist. Well, maybe on some clowns. The girl came in and approached Grasshopper’s window, proudly clutching a bunch of strange fuzzy flowers. Her head was illuminating the white room like a very small, very concentrated fire.

  “Hi,” she said.

  Grasshopper said hi too and climbed down from the windowsill.

  The girl placed the flowers on the nightstand and said, “I am Ginger.”

  She had big ears, the skin around her nose was a bit reddish, and her eyes, unexpectedly, were almost black, framed by red lashes. It took some time for Grasshopper to register all that. It was not easy to look away from her hair. Grasshopper was surprised that she thought he needed to be told something so obvious.

  “I can see that,” he said. “Hard not to.”

  “No,” said the girl, shaking her head. “This is me introducing myself. Ginger. Get it?”

  He did.

  “Grasshopper,” he answered.

  The girl nodded and looked around the empty room.

  “It’s boring here,” she said. “Clean and boring.”

  Grasshopper didn’t say anything.

  “Want to come with me? That’s an invitation,” she said.

  “Is that permitted?”

  Grasshopper seriously doubted that he would be allowed as far as his room’s door, after everything that happened.

  “It’s not. But no one will say a word. You’ll see. Coming?”

  They went out into the shining white corridor of the Sepulcher, which muffled their steps. The frosted-glass doors were opening and closing. Seniors in pajamas lounged in chairs, flipping through colorful magazines. Nurses flew from one room to another like snowballs. Grasshopper was following Ginger, expecting that at any moment someone would shout at him, but no one did. Nobody asked them anything. They walked and, alongside them, their reflections appeared and disappeared in the mirror sides of the cabinets lining the wall, one after the other. Blue pajamas and white ones. And the fire of her hair flaming up and extinguishing itself as they passed.

  It’s as if we have vanished, Grasshopper thought, astounded. We’re walking, but we’re not. No one sees us or hears us. This red-haired girl has put a spell on the entire Sepulcher.

  Snow still fell outside the windows. They turned down another corridor, where the floor was shiny, and went to the very last door.

  “Here we are.”

  Ginger pushed the door.

  The room was really tiny. Three beds, strewn with clothes. Fully developed piles of magazines, notebooks, paper, brushes, and jars of paint. Drawings adorned the walls, and a green budgie jumped up and down excitedly in its wire cage. The room resembled Stuffage and even smelled like Stuffage. Grasshopper stepped on some orange peel and stopped, a little embarrassed. Ginger jumped onto one of the beds at a run, shook away her slippers, swept off the trash, and introduced her mate.

  “This is Death.”

  A handsome boy with a mop-top haircut smiled and nodded at him.

  “Hi,” he said.

  Grasshopper startled when he heard the nick.

  “So you must be . . .”

  Death nodded again, still smiling.

  “Have a seat, will you,” Ginger called, pushing another pile off the bed. “You can stare at him later, we have time.”

  Grasshopper sat down next to her. He knew about Ginger’s friend. Death was the boy who never left the Sepulcher. The counselors, when talking among themselves, always said that he wasn’t “long for this world.” Death was a bed case. He never walked. He never even used a wheelchair. He’d lived in the Sepulcher since time immemorial, and Grasshopper always imagined this permanent resident to be greenish-pale, almost like a corpse. There was no other way to imagine someone who hadn’t been long for this world for so many years now. But Death turned out to be a small, tender boy, with eyes occupying a good half of his face, and long dark-red hair that looked varnished. Grasshopper was staring at him while Ginger was picking cards off the blanket.

  “Wanna play?” she asked.

  She and Grasshopper climbed onto Death’s bed.

  For the next hour they became fortune-tellers. They prophesied to each other happy futures and all wishes coming true. Then the cards went flying to the floor and Ginger pulled up her pajama top and showed Grasshopper the tattoo she had on her stomach. The tattoo was made with a ballpoint pen and already a bit smeared, but one could still recognize something vaguely eagle-like, with a human head.

  “What’s that?” Grasshopper asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ginger said. “Death thinks it’s a harpy. I was shooting for a gryphon, actually. What do you think?”

  “Could have been worse,” Grasshopper said politely.

  Ginger sighed and wiped the fuzzy parts off with her finger.

  “It had been,” she admitted. “The previous couple of times. Honestly? A great artist I’m not.”

  They sat in silence for a while. Death was fiddling with an orange. Grasshopper was searching for a topic to discuss.

  “Is it true there are ghosts here, in Sepulcher?” he asked.

  Ginger rolled her eyes.

  “You mean White? He’s never a ghost. He’s just a halfwit. Which is not to say that there aren’t. Except they don’t walk into people’s rooms mumbling nonsense, the way they tell it in your Stuffage.”

  “What do they do, then?” Grasshopper said.

  Ginger directed a demanding look toward Death.

  “What do they do, Death?”

  “Nothing much,” he said shyly. “They just walk the corridors sometimes. You’d be lucky to notice them, really. They’re very quiet. And very beautiful. And White is the opposite of that. He ran in once when it was dark, stumbled, made this awful racket, and then started howling like a dog. I almost died I was so scared.”

  “White was one of the se
niors,” Ginger explained. “He would stick two lit cigarettes in his nose, wrap himself in a sheet, and sneak around scaring kids. They caught him and sent him away somewhere. He was really nuts.”

  Grasshopper imagined a really nuts, sinister senior in a sheet and looked at Death with a newfound respect.

  “I’d surely die if I saw something like that,” he said. “Or at least wet my pants.”

  “I did wet them.” Death smiled. “Doesn’t mean I was going to just admit that.”

  Death was growing on Grasshopper by the minute.

  “What about those, the real ones?” Grasshopper asked. “Have you seen them?”

  “They’re not scary at all. I saw them and I wasn’t afraid. They don’t hurt anybody. They had enough trouble themselves in their time.”

  Grasshopper realized that Death wasn’t making this up, and felt butterflies waking up in his stomach. Death was either crazy himself, or really had seen ghosts.

  “He’s not making it up,” Ginger confirmed. “He’s a Strider, by the way.”

  “He’s a who now?” said Grasshopper, confused.

  “Stri-der,” Ginger repeated slowly, looking disappointed. “You mean you don’t know who they are?”

  Grasshopper was overwhelmed with a desire to lie that he did. But then he remembered that he had actually heard the word used. Once, Splint the counselor had grabbed him in the hallway. They were walking together, the three of them—Splint, Elk, and Black Ralph—arguing about something. Grasshopper said hello and wanted to go past them, but Splint seized hold of his shirt collar.

  “Hold still, child!” he shouted. “Tell me, quickly, do Jumpers and Striders exist in nature?”

  “Who are they?” Grasshopper asked politely.

  The counselor’s face was now very close to his own. The eyes behind the thick glasses were darting back and forth. He seemed scared of something.

  “You really don’t know?”

  Grasshopper shook his head.

  Splint let him go.

  “There,” he exclaimed. “Out of the mouths of babes! He has no clue!”

  “That is not a valid argument,” R One said sourly, and the three of them went on walking and arguing.

  Grasshopper had forgotten all about this incident. Counselors sometimes acted no less mysteriously than seniors. So much so that sometimes it was hard to understand what they were talking about.

  “Are they the same as Jumpers?” he asked Ginger carefully, risking ridicule.

  “Of course not!” she said indignantly. “So you do know?”

  “Only the words,” Grasshopper admitted.

  Ginger looked at Death. He nodded.

  “Jumpers and Striders,” she said in a schoolmarm voice. “Those who visit the Underside of the House. Except that Jumpers are kind of thrown there, while Striders can get there by themselves. And also go back whenever they want. Jumpers can’t, they have to wait until they’re thrown back. Clear now?”

  “Yeah.”

  It wasn’t clear to Grasshopper at all, but he decided he’d rather die than admit it. “What about you? Are you a Strider or a Jumper?”

  Ginger’s face darkened.

  “I’m neither. Yet. But I will be. One day, you’ll see.”

  She started flipping through a magazine she picked up from the pillow, as if she was suddenly bored by the conversation.

  Death just smiled.

  “How did you like Wolf?” he asked. “He’s something else, isn’t he?”

  “You know about Wolf?” Grasshopper said in astonishment.

  Ginger put down the magazine.

  “We know everything about everybody. Even about those who aren’t here. And those who are, we know more about them than anyone else. You did great to hide him. I filched those flowers for you from one senior girl. She didn’t need them anyway, she has like hundreds more of them. And they would at least make you less lonely, and your room won’t look so empty. Except we forgot to put them in water. They’ll go all wilted before you get back.”

  “I thought you invited me just because.”

  “There’s no such thing as an invitation just because.” Ginger smiled. She was silent for a while before saying, “And not only because of that either. Also because you’re a bit ginger too, like Death and me. We gingers need to stick together. We’re a gang, get it? We are different, not like everyone else. They always try to blame us for everything, and nobody likes us. Well, most of them don’t—there are exceptions, of course. That’s because we’re descended from Neanderthals. I mean, we’re their children, and those who are not ginger are descended from Cro-Magnons. It’s all there in this one magazine, scientific. I can show it to you if you want, I stole it from the library.”

  Grasshopper wasn’t sure about the “gang” business. Or that it was the right word. But he was ready to be descended from anything if it meant so much to Ginger. Her mind and her words were jumping around too fast, the topics changed too abruptly for Grasshopper to catch up, but he did notice that Ginger was admitting to theft a bit too often and that she wasn’t too bothered about it. He tuned out for a moment and stopped listening to her, which turned out to be a mistake since she started talking about Wolf.

  “I let him out. And I’ll do it again if need be. I hate it when people are being locked up, especially kids, that’s just cruel, that is . . .”

  “So the true soul he was talking about was you?” Grasshopper said, relieved.

  “Of course. By the way, if you get locked up someday, you can count on me. I help lots of people in lots of ways. Pass some notes, or even bring in visitors at night. Stuff like that.”

  “How come the nurses haven’t killed you yet?” Grasshopper said.

  Ginger dismissed this with a wave of her hand.

  “They are not allowed to touch me. They’re afraid.”

  Death giggled and looked at the girl admiringly. “When they punish her, I get really sick. Right away. And I can’t get sick, or I’ll die. I can’t even risk getting upset. Like at all,” he said.

  “Can’t do nothing about me,” Ginger said. “Death is their favoritest patient, they’re always fussing around him like crazy. And I’m his best friend. So they don’t bother me.”

  Grasshopper finally understood why this room was such a mess, why Ginger was free to invite anyone she pleased, and why nobody had come in yet to check on what they were doing. The nurses’ proscriptions and rules had no power here. Being not long for this world certainly has its advantages, Grasshopper thought.

  He spent the rest of the evening in this room. They dined on oranges. They played every board game they could dig out from under Death’s bed, and when it was time to return to their rooms they staged a pillow fight and upended the budgie’s cage. The feathers from the busted pillow floated in the air and settled down on the floor next to the chips, cards, and Monopoly money.

  Grasshopper felt good. He liked both Death and Ginger, even though Ginger was on the bossy side and Death was too timid to ever go against her demands. As soon as Grasshopper reached his own room, dark and empty, he went straight to bed. This was the second happy night in a row that he’d spent inside the Sepulcher. Only one thing preyed on his mind. Wolf was still locked up somewhere, all alone.

  The nurse was pointedly aloof the next morning.

  “Jumping around all night, like a savage. In someone else’s room, too,” she ranted, pushing spoon after spoon of oatmeal into Grasshopper’s mouth. “Dinner, bedtime—all by the wayside. And the way you left that room! A regular pigsty. What a disgrace!”

  Grasshopper swallowed dutifully and thought that no one was feeding Ginger in this fashion, and that Death was surely eating by himself too. Although to him they might be doing something else, something even more disgusting. The nurse kept grumbling and frowning and then suddenly froze, spoon in hand.

  “Who, pray tell, showed you to the bathroom? Or didn’t you go at all? Held it in?”

  “I did go,” Grasshopper said, surprise
d. “Ginger helped.”

  The spoon dropped. Nurse Agatha upraised her hands and let out a very strange muffled yelp. Grasshopper was watching her with interest.

  “You! A big boy! A girl helping you to . . . do it! Shame on you! The horror!”

  Elk entered just in time to hear all about horror and shame.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  This infuriated the nurse even more.

  “These children have not an ounce of modesty in them!”

  Grasshopper stared sullenly at the oatmeal smeared on the covers.

  “Why are you yelling like that? You help me all the time.”

  Something went plop in the nurse’s throat.

  “I am a woman!” she said. “And a nurse!”

  “That’s even worse,” Grasshopper said.

  Nurse Agatha stood up.

  “All right, that’s enough! I am going to tell the doctor. It’s well past time we put an end to this nonsense. And you! A counselor! You should be ashamed for your charges!”

  The door slammed, but Grasshopper was able to catch the beginning of a diatribe concerning good-for-nothing counselors like Elk. The end of it got lost in the distance. Elk used a napkin to scrape off the oatmeal and gave Grasshopper a sad look.

  “Kid, I think you have terminally disappointed Nurse Agatha. You’re too forward.”

  Grasshopper sighed.

  “We turned off the lights so I wouldn’t feel weird. And she didn’t look at all. What’s so bad about it?”

  “All right,” Elk said, rubbing his forehead. “The bit about the lights we’re going to keep to ourselves. Deal?”

  “Deal. I won’t tell if you won’t,” Grasshopper said and then frowned. “Am I . . . perverted?”

  “No,” Elk said irritably. “You’re normal. Are you going to eat this?”

  Grasshopper made a face.

  “I see,” Elk sighed. “I’m not making you.”