The Gray House

by Mariam Petrosyan

  He did. Witch was of Moor’s people. Letters were for one of Skull’s people. That much was obvious. It was also bad. And dangerous. For her, and whomever the letters were for, and whoever would deliver them. It would have to be a secret from everybody. So that’s why she asked about him being brave. And that’s why the yard, the twilight, no coat, no hat. She must have spotted him out the window and rushed straight down.

  “I understand,” Grasshopper said. “He’s one of Skull’s people.”

  “Yes,” Witch said. “You got it.”

  She reached into the pocket and took out cigarettes and a lighter. Her hands were turning red from the cold. He noticed loose threads hanging off the patchwork suede vest.

  “Scared?” she asked.

  Grasshopper didn’t answer.

  “Yeah, I am too,” she said. Then lit the cigarette. Dropped the lighter, but didn’t pick it up. Hid her hands under her armpits and hunched over. Silvery water beads glistened in her hair. Witch swayed back and forth on the railing and watched him.

  “You don’t have to,” she said. “I am not going to put a curse on you. If you believe that nonsense. Simple yes or no, that’s all.”

  “Yes,” Grasshopper said.

  Witch nodded, as if she never expected a different answer.

  “Thank you.”

  Grasshopper was swinging his leg, soaked all the way to his underwear. And he didn’t care about being wet anymore. The yard was sinking into the deepening blue. He heard dogs howling somewhere. They might have been the same dogs Humpback and he had just fed.

  “Who is he?” Grasshopper asked.

  Witch slid off the railing and picked up the lighter.

  “Who do you think?”

  Usually Grasshopper liked guessing games, but right now he was too cold, and Skull’s people were too many to recall each of them one by one and try to imagine if she could have fallen in love with them or not.

  “I don’t know,” he said resignedly. “You’ll have to tell me.”

  Witch leaned closer and whispered in his ear. Grasshopper’s eyes opened wide. She laughed softly.

  “Why didn’t you just say so? Like first thing! Why?”

  “Shhh. Quiet,” she said, still laughing. “There’s no need to shout. It’s not really important.”

  “How could you not say it?”

  “To make sure you didn’t agree only because of that. I wanted you to think it over properly.”

  “It will make me so happy,” Grasshopper whispered.

  Witch laughed again, and again hid her face behind hair.

  “Of course,” she said. “Of course it will . . . Still. Don’t you want to think about it?”

  “Where’s the letter?”

  She warmed her hands with her breath and took an envelope out of a vest pocket.

  “Take this to your friend,” she said. “He’ll give you another one, bring it back to me. Tonight. First floor, by the laundry room. After dinner. I’ll be waiting. Or maybe you’ll have to wait a little. But be careful.”

  “What friend?” Grasshopper said, surprised, but then understood. “Blind?”

  “Yes. Try to do it so that no one sees you.”

  “And you didn’t say anything about Blind either. Why?”

  Witch put her hand in his pocket, stuffed the letter all the way down, and then buttoned the flap.

  “You were testing my courage,” Grasshopper said. “Testing me. But I would have agreed anyway.”

  Witch brushed his face with her fingers.

  “I know.”

  “Because you’re Witch?”

  “I’m no witch. I just know. I know many things.”

  She pulled the hood over his head.

  “Let’s go. It’s getting cold.”

  Grasshopper was not feeling cold at all. Quite the opposite.

  “Tell me,” he whispered when they were climbing the stairs. “Tell me, what is it you know about me?”

  “I know how you’re going to be when you’re older,” she said.

  Black tent of hair and long legs. Sharp clatter of steel-shod boots on the steps.

  “Really?”

  “Sure. It’s obvious.”

  She stopped.

  “Run along, my godson. It would be best if we weren’t seen together.”

  “Yeah!”

  He took the rest of the stairs at a run and only turned back when he reached the landing.

  Witch raised her hand in a farewell gesture. He nodded and took off again. He ran without stopping the rest of the way. The soaked jeans clung to his legs.

  What does she know about me? What am I going to become when I’m older?

  Blind wasn’t in the room. Magician, his bad leg propped on a pillow, absentmindedly tortured the guitar. Humpback’s bunk was topped by a triangular white tent. This tent, made from bedsheets strung over wooden slats, came crashing down every morning, and every night Humpback resurrected it. He liked his privacy.

  Grasshopper looked at the tent. Someone was moving inside it now. The walls bulged and flapped. But the entrance was tightly closed, so that no one could peek in. Grasshopper sighed with relief. Humpback was in and busy with his own concerns, not keeping watch by the door armed with probing questions, as he’d feared.

  Stinker was also busy, stringing pieces of apple, planning to hang them up for drying. Humpback’s coat, wet and plastered with dirt, lay on the floor.

  Wolf dangled his feet off the windowsill.

  “What we need in the yard is a field kitchen,” he said. “For all the stray dogs. Then you and Humpback could don those white toques and the dogs would form a line. Each holding a bowl in its front paws.”

  “Wolf, can you see how I’m going to be when I grow up?” Grasshopper said.

  “Some things, I guess,” Wolf said, surprised. “Why?”

  “No reason. I just thought you might know.”

  “You’re probably going to be tall. And thin.”

  “And covered in spots,” Stinker squeaked. “All the seniors have zits. Face like a strawberry patch. You’re going to be sort of spotty reddish blond. Oh, and sideburns. The unkempt kind.”

  “Thanks,” Grasshopper said darkly. “What about yourself?”

  “Who, me?” Stinker waved the unfinished string of apples in the air and closed his eyes dreamily. “Yes, yes, I can clearly see myself! Six years from now. A fine specimen of a man. No one is immune from the overwhelming charms of my piercing gaze. Women go weak-kneed and drop at my feet. In droves. All I need to do is lean over and pick them up, the poor darlings.”

  “When you do that, try not to trip over your ears,” Wolf warned. “Or they’d think a mosquito fell on them.”

  Stinker turned away, scandalized. Humpback’s tent wobbled and produced a shaggy head.

  “Wolf, this book is disgusting. This one run through with a sword, that one run through with a sword. I’ve had enough. I’m going to have nightmares about them now.”

  “Then stop reading. It’s your choice, no one’s making you.”

  Humpback pulled in his head and angrily fastened the flap. The tent shook again. Wolf and Grasshopper watched it with concern until it stopped listing to one side.

  “They’re going to take me to the Sepulcher for a day or two,” Wolf said. “Tomorrow morning. But only for a short while.”

  “Why?” Grasshopper asked. “I thought you were cured.”

  Wolf lay on the floor with his hands behind his head.

  “They want to stuff me in this corset. So that I go around with the Sepulchral shell on my back. Like a tortoise. Old and wise.”

  He tried to make it sound like a joke, but there was something in his voice that Grasshopper hadn’t heard for a long time.

  “Are you scared?” he asked.

  “I’m scared of nothing,” Wolf said.

  His eyes became very angry. Grasshopper winced.

  “Please don’t, Wolf . . . Your thoughts now smell different than your words. It’s so ob
vious.”

  Wolf propped himself up on his elbows.

  “Say again? Thoughts have a smell now? And you can hear it? I’d understand if Blind was saying this stuff. But the only one who talks like that is you. How come?”

  Wolf was mocking him, but the sharp thorns in his eyes had faded away, and Grasshopper relaxed.

  “Just a shitty turn of phrase,” Stinker mumbled.

  “Shitty yourself,” Humpback countered from within the depths of the tent, defending his friend. “It’s beautiful. Grasshopper talks poetically.”

  Grasshopper laughed. Humpback peeked out again.

  “What do we do if they don’t let you out? Could that happen?”

  “In that case I’ll send over a note with precise instructions,” Wolf said.

  Stinker perked up.

  “We’ll follow them to the letter,” he promised. “The House shall be quaking all the way down to the foundation, or my name is not Stinker. We’ll chain ourselves to the gates of the Sepulcher. Douse each other in kerosene and play catch with matchbooks. Top-notch treatment guaranteed.”

  “I believe you,” Wolf said earnestly. “You’re just the type to pull it off.”

  It was dark and lonely down at the laundry room. Grasshopper sat on the floor by the locked door, waited for Witch, and tried to think about nice things. And not about hearing someone’s ragged breath nearby. Or how that someone seemed to be creeping closer. Or how that hole in the wall glinted suspiciously. Like there was an eye behind it.

  The hallway here smelled of bleach. The feeble lamp hardly illuminated it, and the library stacks a little farther on were shrouded in complete darkness. Grasshopper tried not to look in that direction, to avoid seeing the inky shadows of the revolving racks where seniors dumped old issues of magazines. He didn’t like those shadows a single bit. And the more they stayed motionless, the less he liked them.

  The groaning of the elevator distracted him. Grasshopper listened intently. The doors clanked, and someone’s steps swished over the linoleum floor. He got up.

  Witch stepped out into the pool of light.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said. “Must be scary waiting here all by yourself.”

  The shadows of the cabinets and the eye in the wall went right out of Grasshopper’s head.

  “What’s scary about it? There isn’t anyone here,” he said. “I have the letter in my pocket. And I gave that other one to Blind. Just as we agreed.”

  Her hand slipped into his pocket and took out the envelope. Grasshopper expected her to hide it, but instead she ripped it open and began to read. Grasshopper kept his eyes down. The letter apparently turned out to be very long.

  “Thank you,” Witch said as she finished reading. “I hope you weren’t too cold back in the yard. It was darn freezing out there.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  He watched as she produced a small lighter and put the flame to the corner of the envelope. The fire sprang up in her hands. She turned it this way and that with the fingers, dropped the last remaining scrap, and stomped on it.

  “So that’s that,” she said, rubbing the ashes with her heel.

  That was when Grasshopper got really scared. He knew that the letter was a dangerous thing to be carrying, but only now that Witch had burned it did he realize that he’d been walking around with that danger in his pocket and had even managed to forget about it sometimes.

  “It’s all right,” Witch said, guessing at his horror. “Don’t think about it. We’ll try writing each other less frequently. But you and Blind shouldn’t be talking about it. Even when you’re alone.”

  “Blind wouldn’t be talking about it even if we were alone in the middle of a desert,” Grasshopper said. “Blind never talks about things that don’t concern him. Or those that do, actually.”

  “That’s good. Come out into the yard from time to time. After dinner. Alone. If you see me there, don’t try to talk to me, just walk by so I can put the letter in your pocket. Deal?”

  Grasshopper nodded.

  “Is it hard . . . being Skull’s girl?” he asked, blushing at his own indiscretion.

  “I don’t know,” Witch said. “Compared to what? Probably not any harder than being Moor’s girl, I guess.”

  Grasshopper chewed on his shirt collar a bit.

  “You said you knew what I’ll be like when I grow up. Could you tell me? It’s kind of important.”

  “It’s hard to explain,” Witch sighed. “It’s more like a feeling than a picture. But I can promise you that girls are going to like you.”

  “They’re going to drop down at my feet,” Grasshopper said wretchedly. “Defeated and helpless. I’d only have to pick them up without stepping on my ears. My zits and patchy sideburns will drive them crazy.”

  Witch gave him a puzzled look.

  “I’ve no idea who it is you just described. It definitely has nothing to do with you. Go back. I’ll hang out here for a while.”

  “Good night,” Grasshopper said.

  She thinks I’m stupid now, he thought dejectedly. All because of Stinker.

  Grasshopper was fighting the typewriter. He only had the first few lines of the letter: Hi, Wolf. How are you? We are good. Waiting for you. One day is already over, and the second is half-over. So tomorrow we are waiting for your note with . . . The word instructions was giving him trouble. Grasshopper had already found and discarded two different ways of spelling it. Humpback hovered over his shoulder, sighing loudly but not daring to offer help.

  “I think it has two i’s,” he blurted finally.

  “You mean iinstructions?” Grasshopper said acidly.

  Humpback went red.

  “No. I didn’t mean that. Not both of them in the beginning.”

  “Keep it to yourself, then.”

  “Send my regards,” Stinker squeaked from the bed.

  “I haven’t gotten to the regards yet. And stop interrupting! Or I’ll never finish.”

  Grasshopper conquered “instructions” and paused to think about what was next, absentmindedly gnawing at the finger of his prosthetic hand.

  “You’re going to break it,” Humpback warned in a whisper.

  Grasshopper put away the finger.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Enter,” Stinker yelled in a high-pitched voice.

  The door squeaked and admitted bashful Siamese, the pride and horror of Stuffage. Both of them at once, pressed against each other.

  Grasshopper directed a panicky look behind their backs, waiting for Sportsman to come barging in on their heels, and the rest of Stuffage with him. But the twins were alone. They took a few more steps and froze, still inseparable, glued together. Same clothes, same face—indistinguishable like two coins.

  “What do you want?” Grasshopper asked.

  Blind stopped caressing the book with the indented pages and raised his head.

  “We need to talk,” Siamese said.

  “Very suspicious,” Stinker noted. “I don’t think I like the sound of that at all.”

  Siamese apprehensively shuffled their feet. Tall, lanky, thin lipped, and . . . kind of hinged, Grasshopper thought unkindly. Aquiline noses peeking from behind flaxen bangs, round gold-colored eyes, cold and unblinking, almost a seagull’s stare.

  “Did Sportsman send you, or are you by yourselves?” Blind asked.

  “By ourselves,” Siamese said in unison. “We came because . . . we wanted to ask . . . could we also . . . move to your room?”

  They seemed to press their sides against each other even tighter. Sighed loudly several times and fell silent.

  “Where did that come from?” Humpback said.

  Siamese didn’t answer. Outside of their domain they looked subdued and not as ghastly as they usually did, but nowhere near pleasant either. The elbows of their white hoodies were of a blackish tint, and each had a badge on a chain around his neck. One with the letter R, and the other with the letter M. The badges always turned themselves blank-side
up, making them pretty useless for distinguishing which of Siamese was which.

  “So you’re not letting us?” the left Siamese asked glumly.

  Grasshopper didn’t have time to answer. The door slammed open and excited Magician, looking past Siamese, waddled into the room.

  “Wolf’s coming!” he shouted. “Honest! They let him go!”

  “Hooray!” Stinker said.

  Everyone transferred their attention to the door. Grasshopper thought with relief that now he didn’t have to finish typing the letter. Humpback huffed jubilantly right behind him. Stinker grabbed the binoculars, for some reason. Siamese stealthily shuffled to the side, whispering among themselves and throwing sullen glances at Grasshopper.

  “I am the knight in armor of purest plaster!” Wolf declared, appearing at the door. “And I seek a squire, loyal to the end and properly fit to kneel and bind my shoelaces, for I, clad thus in armor, am akin to a tortoise fettered by its carapace.”

  He approached Grasshopper and poked him with an umbrella handle.

  “Come, be my squire, noble youth. A bag of gold rewards each year of your service. And should I perish, this splendid armor passes on to you, and you can fetch good coin for it.”

  Wolf lifted his sweater and tapped on the plaster.

  “You won’t regret it. Your life shall be filled with wonders beyond measure.”

  Grasshopper nodded.

  “I gladly accept. But we have Siamese here . . .”

  Wolf squinted at the twins.

  “My trusty helmet obscures my vision,” he said. “But tell me, noble youth, isn’t this just evil spirits tempting me by choosing to assume two visages so like each other and reveal them to my gaze?”

  Siamese exchanged glances.

  “Spirits, of course.” Stinker giggled. “Who else? And now they want to live with us. If we agree.”

  Wolf thumped the umbrella on the floor. It opened.

  “Sorcery,” Wolf muttered, closed the umbrella, and turned to Stinker. “Your words are indeed puzzling to me, young friend. This cave where we have assembled does not belong to us. By God’s infinite grace any vagabond is allowed to enter, dry his cloak by the fire, and regale us with tales of his adventures. Thus he repays us for our hospitality. If these two are not an infernal apparition, even though the similitude of their faces burdens my senses heavily, by all means do invite them closer to the fire and assure them of our goodwill.”