The Gray House

by Mariam Petrosyan

  “I think it’s too late for a cleanup,” Rat says. “You won’t be able to pry the brooms off the floor.”

  “So we won’t,” Red sighs. “So? The Hole is going to feature nice broom arrangements. And then—nice Rat arrangements. Like a wax museum, only with live people.”

  Rat shrugs and goes off in the direction of the girls’ stairs. A slender figure in heavy boots too large for her. Red shouts “Bye!” but she doesn’t look back. He purses his lips and turns toward the canteen. Giggling Birds run past him.

  GHOST

  Noble floats in a kind of sparkly black void. He has pulled the covers over his face and is now suffocating in the stifling heat, surrounded by apparitions. Her eyes. Her hair. The slender arm in the grasp of the woven strap of bracelet. Noble is barely breathing, afraid of spooking the phantom, but it grows more and more impatient, restless, melting like wax and soon disappearing. He pushes the blanket off and takes deep breaths. He’s wet as a mouse that’s just been fished out of a puddle.

  The sounds return, now that the air is back. The sniffling and breathing of the sleepers. Black’s snores, waves of aggression rising up to the ceiling. Closer by are the birdlike whistles of Tabaqui and the rustling of the bodies as they turn. Smoker, still fast asleep, pulls a pillow from under Tabaqui and aims to cover Noble with it. Noble manages to avoid it by shifting closer to the edge of the bed. There’s a nightlight on in Lary’s corner. Also in Alexander’s, shielded by a piece of newspaper. Noble looks up into the ceiling, and it seems to pull him in. It grows closer, closer, and now he’s almost level with the wheel, the birdcage, and the narrow eyes of the kite. It’s strange, what’s happening to Noble. He is lying on his back and at the same time standing up. The standing Noble is light as a feather. He sees the ceiling, Lary’s mushroom-shaped nightlight, and the sleeping Bandar-Log with a pink halo around his hair. And also himself, down there, under the crumpled blanket. He sees it all from the height where he’s never been before. His own height. As soon as he thinks about the window and the fresh breeze wafting through it, he’s transported across to the windowsill. Night air soothes his burning face. The air also brings with it a blast of distant noise—the squealing laughter of Rats, having their raunchy fun. Does this mean I can go wherever I want? His shadow floats across the floor, insubstantial, passing through the door and into the darkness beyond. Noble closes his eyes to better see where there’s a path for him and where there isn’t. Darkened walls slide past, then he’s through the yawning maw of an open door. The wintry moon glows in the windows of the Sepulcher, making it almost translucent. More steps, then a different corridor . . .

  Noble stretches out his arm. It flows away into the black emptiness, probing, searching, sweeping through the doors on the way. He falls behind, and when his hand is feeling for the door, the only one he needs, he’s still far away. The hand already glides over the face of the figure sleeping on the floor. Finally Noble catches up with her—no, with it, it’s only his hand; its touch becomes his touch.

  The red-haired girl, the strap of the tank top fallen off her shoulder, sits up on the mattress and peers into the darkness.

  “What’s that? Hey! Get out! Get out of here!”

  Noble startles, back on the bed, gasping for breath.

  There are groans, stirrings, and sighs around him. He lies perfectly still. I was there. I was really there! The palm of his hand still remembers the roughness of the fiery hair. He’s melting above the waist and freezing below. Could it be that in its wanderings about the midnight House my ghost froze its legs off? It hurts. Noble’s face is distorted in a grimace, and he’s glad of the darkness enveloping him.

  Black is snoring. Lary has a light on. Alexander has a light on. On the hotplate down on the floor, the kettle is preparing to boil. Someone seems intent on having tea.

  “Fat chance! Choke on it!” Black enunciates clearly between two snores.

  It’s funny, but no one’s there to hear it and laugh. Noble’s sweaty back clings to the mattress. His face is on fire, his legs are pure ice. It’s happened before, but tonight he knows that it is a payment being exacted for that strange something he has allowed himself to perpetrate. Someone is reminding him what he is. Half a man, with the legs of a corpse.

  “No,” Noble whispers. “I will not think about this.”

  And immediately imagines his legs actually dead, bluish-white, covered in spots of decay. He’s running out of air.

  Someone’s quiet steps.

  Alexander sits down on the bed next to him and inserts a hot bottle under the blanket.

  “I was waiting for the water to boil.”

  Noble is silent while the hot bottle works to melt the ice and a faint warmth trickles to his feet. Warmth that would have burned his hands.

  “Thanks,” he says. “I’m a coward. It’s simply blood moving too slowly there, like in a mermaid’s tail.”

  “There’s no need to be afraid,” Alexander says and leaves. The green firefly of the lamp near the head of his bed switches off.

  “Hey,” comes Humpback’s sleepy voice from the top bunk. “I thought I heard a song. Are you guys singing down there?”

  Black stops in midsnore.

  “No,” Noble says. “No one’s singing.”

  What I’ve done wasn’t a song at all.

  He lies quietly now. What he’s celebrating with a fleeting smile on his lips and a hot bottle at his feet is a mystery even to himself. He won’t be able to sleep tonight. He could leave this pointless prone position, escape to the hallways for real now, on wheels, and dull the ache in the squeakily tiled kingdom of the bathroom, in the company of other insomniacs like him, endlessly drawing and discarding card after card. The faces of the queens would acquire her features, and he’d be compelled to shield them with his hands, hide them before everyone could see what he sees: the fire of her hair under the regal diadems, the blackness of her eyes staring at him from the cardboard rectangles. “What’s gotten into you, Noble?” they’d ask, and he wouldn’t know how to answer. So he stays. Lying on his back looking at the ceiling. It’s better to remain that way, bewitched, capable of spawning inquisitive specters. Mutely reliving the ghostly encounter.

  A soft thing springs up, landing on his stomach, and sits down, wrapping its tail around its paws. A cat. Noble doesn’t brush it off, even though he could see it isn’t Mona. It’s a strange cat. Noble’s fingers sink into the fur, deep and luscious like a Maltese dog’s.

  “Where have you come from?” he asks.

  The cat doesn’t answer, as becomes a dumb animal. Instead, with a soft sniffle, Jackal awakens. His hair is standing on end, resembling porcupine quills. He looks like someone ran a jolt of electricity through him while he slept. He stares uncomprehendingly. Gradually his eyes fill up with reason and then with curiosity.

  “Ah, so you’re awake,” he says. Then he looks in the direction of Noble’s knees. “What’s up with Mona? How come she’s so fluffy all of a sudden?”

  “That’s not Mona,” Noble says, smiling distractedly. “That’s not Mona at all.”

  TABAQUI

  DAY THE EIGHTH

  He had forty-two boxes, all carefully packed,

  With his name painted clearly on each

  —Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark

  In the morning we get a surprise. Flyer home from the Outsides, bearing the ordered goods. An exceedingly rare occurrence. Rat comes in before the first class with a black travel bag slung over her shoulder. She drops it on the teacher’s table. The zipper whines. Rat—black lipstick, white makeup, a regular vampire—pulls packages from it one by one and arranges them on the table. Lary snatches the one that obviously contains a record from the general pile and makes off with it. I pick up the heavy box tied with a pink ribbon. After that I am lost to the world until I am able to dispose of both the ribbon and the wrapper and have a peek inside. Oh, the heavenly scent! The chocolate backs all glistening in neat rows. Each in its own crinkly nest, on i
ts own little placemat, covered with delicate tissue. I lift it, touch one of the backs, and lick the finger. Then I count how many there are. Two layers, four chocolates in each row, and the rows are also four. That seems to make thirty-two. I close the box and hide it in my desk. The ribbon goes there as well. Now I’m ready to look at what everyone else got.

  Black has fled to the windowsill with a stack of magazines. Before Blind’s hungry, grasping tentacles Rat pitches three cans of coffee, four cartons of cigarettes, a pack of AA batteries, and dark glasses of an especially ghastly persuasion. Humpback has a set of combs and a meerschaum pipe. There are two more packets on the table, but we don’t get to open them, as R One appears suddenly in the middle of the classroom inquiring what it is we think we’re doing when the class has already started and the teacher is on the way. Rat somehow escapes his attention.

  We quickly whisk away the items, the packaging, ribbons, string—in short, everything that smells of fun and can therefore upset the teachers, who are excluded from it. Rat zips up the bag and leaves.

  “How’re you feeling?” Ralph asks, stopping at Noble’s desk.

  “Good,” he says with a shrug.

  Ralph nods, walks away, and hovers over Smoker’s head.

  “What about you?”

  Smoker blushes and blinks.

  “All right, I guess.”

  Ralph gives him a look, as if he has deep suspicions concerning Smoker’s all-right feelings, before scampering to his own chair.

  During lunch break I keep pestering Sphinx until he relents and directs Alexander to take the map of New Zealand off the wall. We have two pictures stapled under it. Big ones, each almost the size of half the map.

  One of them, done in black ink, is of a tree, gnarly and sprawling, almost denuded of leaves. On the bare branch there’s a lonely frazzled raven, and underneath it, by the roots, what looks like a garbage pile. Even though the garbage is just regular human trash, it’s still somehow obvious that it was the raven that’s assembled it—the bottles, the bones, the concert tickets, the wall calendars. And the reason it’s so sad appears to be that the whole of its life has turned into that waste. So the picture is actually about anyone and everyone, funny at first sight and somber at all the subsequent sights. Like every picture Leopard’s ever drawn. The second is in color. A scrawny, sand-colored cat in the middle of a parched desert. It’s got emerald-green eyes and looks a bit like Sphinx. Apart from it, there’s only the cracked earth and ghostly brush populated by yellowish-white snails. On the ground near the cat’s paws are broken snail shells. The shards are covered with scratches that are actually notes and Latin proverbs. Also on the ground, someone’s footprints. Could be a bird, could be an animal. The prints straggle by where the cat’s sitting, loop around the brush, and disappear somewhere in the distance.

  We look at the pictures for a while. They make us a bit depressed. The first drawing belongs to me and the other one to Sphinx, but they are in fact communal property of the pack. So valuable that we never leave them out on display, to make sure we don’t get used to them. We look and remember Leopard. They’re his present to us. Blind usually takes part in the ritual as well. He has his own ways of reaching the right frame of mind, and we could only make wild guesses at what those are. But he never skips the picture-viewing sessions. The animals in the corridor are accessible to his fingers and he knows them as well as we do. Before filling them in, Leopard always scored the outline into the wall. But these he only knows from our descriptions.

  So here we are, sitting and standing before our treasure. Looking at it and not looking, at the same time. Seeing it. Listening and thinking. Then we put the map back and return to the daily grind. Smoker isn’t asking questions, which is a bit strange. Could it be that he too is finally growing up?

  THE LONGEST NIGHT

  Guide to Mobility for Wheelers

  29.b.

  In some cases repositioning to the windowsill can be achieved by utilizing the services of a helper if the latter is already situated on said windowsill. For the person being repositioned this facilitates a quicker achievement of his goals. Safety tip: the weight of the lifter should exceed that of the liftee.

  —JACKAL’S ADVICE COLUMN, Blume, vol. 18

  Smoker, on the floor, flips through old issues of Blume, slowly coming to the realization that the overwhelming majority of the articles had been written by Jackal. Noble is counting the hours until the card players’ meeting in a secret location. Blind is also waiting. For the House to settle down. For the transition into the night. For the time when he can go out in search of the Forest. Humpback is inviting slumber by playing his flute. Sphinx listens. To him and to Smoker, who is arcing with irritation.

  There are two toxic zones in the room. Around Smoker and around Black.

  “I’ve got this hunch,” Tabaqui says, finishing up the pre-repose batch of sandwiches, “that we’re having the Longest tonight.”

  “Could very well be,” Sphinx agrees. “I’d even say more likely than not.”

  He jostles Blind with his knee.

  “Hey! What do you think?”

  “Yes,” Blind says. “Quite possible. It’s a bit early this year, for some reason. Or maybe we’re going to have more than one.”

  “That’s a new one to me,” Tabaqui says. “I’ve never heard of that happening before. So, why and wherefore did you get this idea?”

  Smoker studies them warily, suspicious that they are deliberately talking nonsense to make him feel stupid and provoke him into asking questions. So he isn’t asking them.

  It’s night. Only two wall lamps out of the dozen are on. Everyone who’s left in the dorm is asleep. Except for Smoker. Smoker is on the floor next to the pile of magazines, deep in thought. He wants to do something he’s never done before. Take a drive around the House after lights out, for example. This could be the old magazines talking. He’s not sure. With bated breath he starts inching toward the door. He almost makes it when there’s tossing and turning on the bed. A shaggy head leans down from it.

  “What?”

  “Going out,” Smoker whispers back.

  Tabaqui tumbles onto the floor.

  “Horrible,” he mumbles. “Instead of sleeping peacefully I’ve now got to look after this dunce lest something happens to him. He’s going out, don’t you know. In the dark. Possibly in the middle of the Longest. Enough to drive a man crazy.”

  “I’m not asking you to come with me. I want to go by myself.”

  “Yeah, and there are many things I want too. You’re not going out alone. Either we go together or I wake up Sphinx and he knocks some sense into you. Your choice.”

  Before Smoker is able to crawl any farther, Tabaqui is already at the door, aboard Mustang. Still in pajamas. Clutching his socks and a handful of amulets. Despite the threatening voice, Smoker imagines that Tabaqui is looking forward to a ride with him.

  “All right,” Smoker says. “We go together.”

  Then he has to concentrate on trying to climb into the wheelchair, and when he’s finally in he sees Tabaqui methodically stuffing his backpack. The backpack is already so bloated that it’s impossible to close, but Jackal continues to add to its contents.

  “What’s all that for?”

  “Sweaters, in case we get cold. Food, in case we get hungry. Weapons, in case we get attacked,” Tabaqui explains. “You don’t just drive out into the night unprepared, silly!”

  Smoker doesn’t argue. He follows Tabaqui into the anteroom and then into the pitch-dark hallway, where Tabaqui orders him to switch off the flashlight.

  “Otherwise we are going to be seen by everyone who’s already accustomed to the darkness, and at the same time we won’t be able to see them.”

  Smoker obediently switches it off and darkness envelops them.

  “Let’s ride,” Tabaqui whispers.

  The house is spookily dark and seemingly asleep. Eyes do not get accustomed to darkness this deep. Walls loom suddenly ahead in pl
aces where they aren’t supposed to be. Tabaqui and Smoker move slowly. Sometimes they think they hear steps, either ahead or behind them. They stop and listen. The steps immediately stop as well. Maybe they’re just imagining it. Then they bump into something and switch the flashlights back on. It’s an empty wheelchair. There’s no trace of its owner, as if he’s been abducted by the spirits of the night. Tabaqui fingers his amulet.

  “It’s like someone is trying to scare us on purpose, right?”

  His voice is a mix of being terrified and reveling in it.

  Smoker does not join him in the reveling part. He doesn’t like this empty wheelchair a single bit. Tabaqui spends some time studying it but is unable to determine the identity of the owner.

  “It’s totally faceless,” he says. “Abandoned.”

  They put on the sweaters, leave the wheelchair behind, and move on.

  Barefoot Elephant in striped pajamas wanders past the Crossroads. His eyes are closed, his face upturned. His long pajama bottoms are collecting the hallway dust as he goes. Elephant is asleep, but his body slowly hobbles from one window to the next, stopping at each windowsill and feeling it with chubby palms before proceeding. The floorboards creak under his weight.

  Blind floats along the corridors, not touching the walls. Even the wary rats don’t feel him approaching until he’s almost on top of them. He inhales the scent of damp plaster and the scent of the House denizens ingrained in the worn-out floorboards. When he hears steps he freezes until the night drifter passes by—a large animal in the thickets, crushing the ground underfoot and bumping into trash cans. Then he continues on his way, even more watchful and cautious than before, because those who wander at night drag dangerous secrets and fears after them. He approaches one of the dorms. Under the words carved with a knife, his all-seeing fingers feel for a crack. He presses his cheek against it. This way he can hear even the breathing of the sleepers and the groans of the bedsprings. Everyone’s asleep inside. Blind passes through more empty rooms and comes to another wall. There’s a place here where a large chunk of plaster fell down, and behind this wall nobody’s sleeping. Blind listens for a long time, paying more attention to the voices themselves than to the words they’re saying. He turns his head away at regular intervals, takes in the sounds around him, relaxes, and presses back against the wall.