The Gray House

by Mariam Petrosyan

  “And what do you know, it’s R One with Tubby. He tosses him over to us, bang! And those screams, screams everywhere . . .”

  It’s dark in the anteroom, but the light is on in the bathroom, and voices are coming from over there. I lean against the doorframe and listen. I don’t have to see them to figure out who’s bullying whom.

  “It was me, but not exactly me,” Smoker explains. “I was scared half to death, and at the same time it was kind of pleasant. I don’t know how that works . . . Knowing that you look like that and not dying right then and there.”

  “What else did you expect, doing junk?”

  I don’t see them, but I know that Black’s chin is suspended now over Smoker’s head like a hammer over an anvil. And when it strikes we’re going to see sparks.

  “A cat, a kangaroo, a dinosaur . . . Whatever’s your heart’s desire, it can be arranged here. All you have to do is ask. Jeez! Crawling over to Vulture and guzzling crap in his hole! He hasn’t eaten anything but dope for the last hundred years! If you need to kick the bucket quickly, then sure, come for a visit and help yourself to his goodies. Just don’t whine afterward that something didn’t go quite the way you figured. You’re lucky to be alive. He was a cat, imagine that!”

  “That’s not what I mean!”

  Poor Smoker. He’s been boxed into a corner and tries to bite back, though timidly. He doesn’t know whom he’s dealing with.

  “That’s not my point . . . I’m talking about how it made me feel. I liked it, you see?”

  “Yes, I see,” Black echoes sourly. “Do you see where this is going, who it is you are trying to buddy up to?”

  “But Tabaqui . . .”

  “Don’t tell me about Tabaqui. Better yet, don’t say anything at all. Just think. Go back to the room, look at them all really hard, and think. What did Blind tell you?”

  “Not to go out at night.”

  “Ha!”

  Black tries to cram his entire stock of irony into that one syllable.

  “But that’s exactly what you’re saying!”

  “Except I was in the room the whole time. While he was—who knows where? Have you seen him? The way he looks?”

  The door squeaks. I interrupt my listening session and take a step back, hiding under the coat rack. It’s someone small and dark, tracking close to the wall.

  “Who?” I call softly to the visitor.

  “Me.”

  Ginger’s voice.

  “It’s me, Sphinx.” Her hand touches me and flees. “Are you hiding?”

  “Not anymore.”

  I come out into the sliver of light on the floor seeping from under the bathroom door. We continue the conversation in whispers.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I have to know. Red. What’s happened to him? People say all kinds of things . . .”

  The Sepulcher is sprouting out of her words. Three kids in a trashed room. Girl’s hair, bright as a flame. And the pillows flying from one bed to the other, spraying feathers.

  “It’s all right. He’ll live. Just got cut a bit.”

  I’m saying what I think is the truth, not what I learned from Jackal. If Jackal is to be believed, Red’s corpse is already cold.

  “Thank you,” the girl whispers in the dark, and starts crying.

  All right, Sphinx, where’s your shoulder? Come on, get it out. That’s about the only thing you’ve got.

  She finds it herself, by touch. We’re standing there in the shadows, her face buried in my jacket. Water is rushing down in the bathroom, and Black’s voice continues tormenting Smoker, pouring poison in his ears. In the dorm Tabaqui is composing a song about the night’s events, and the one event he considers the most entertaining is that the guy that this girl crying into my shoulder thinks of as her brother got cut. A perfect subject for a nice song. I am fuming, even though I’m not sure who or what is more deserving of my anger. Probably this night that refuses to end.

  “Let’s go,” I say to her. “We’ll have some tea.”

  Now how to go about shutting up Jackal?

  “No. I can’t. I only wanted to find out about Red. I knew you guys would know . . .”

  Lucky she can’t hear either the song or Black’s mutterings.

  “Come on,” I say. “You can spend the night with us. Tabaqui is going to tell you all about it. He was there, you know.”

  “But . . .”

  “What is it?”

  She takes a hesitant step back toward the door.

  “Noble is going to take it the wrong way. We had a talk. Today. He came to see me. So if I came to your place now . . . That would look like an answer.”

  “Do you want to answer him?”

  Silence. Of a more confused than an angry shade. At least that’s what I read into it. Maybe I’m just fooling myself.

  “Do you or don’t you?”

  She is still silent.

  “Gingie?”

  “Let’s go.” She grabs my sleeve. “I have no idea what I want now. But I know I don’t want to go back.”

  We go together. Our arrival in the room cuts the song short and causes a state of general confusion in the pack. They come to relatively quickly.

  Tabaqui delivers a welcome oration. Lary waves his hands invitingly from the cups to the coffeemaker and back. Humpback runs out, balancing a stack of ashtrays. Alexander steps into the saucer of milk for the cats and spills it all over. I lead Ginger to the quadruple bed. She sits next to Noble, and Goldenhead’s eyes light up with a possessive flame. He bashfully extinguishes it with his lashes.

  “Ginger is asking after Red,” I explain.

  It sounds like a bad pun.

  “Oh, Red! What about Red?” Tabaqui switches gears, instantly reviving all of the corpses he has inventively piled up. “Nothing much happened to him, really. Ralph came in just in the nick of time and saved him. Here’s how it all went down . . .”

  BOOK THREE

  THE ABANDONED NESTS

  THE HOUSE MALE STUDENTS

  FOURTH

  —

  BLIND

  SPHINX

  ∞ TABAQUI

  NOBLE

  HUMPBACK

  ? ALEXANDER

  (LARY)

  SMOKER

  TUBBY

  THIRD

  BIRDS

  —

  ∞ VULTURE

  LIZARD

  ANGEL

  DODO

  (HORSE)

  BUTTERFLY

  DEAREST

  GUPPY

  (BUBBLE)

  BEAUTY

  ELEPHANT

  FICUS

  SHRUB

  SECOND

  RATS

  —

  (RED)

  VIKING

  CORPSE

  ZEBRA

  (HYBRID)

  (MONKEY)

  MICROBE

  (TERMITE)

  SUMAC

  PORCUPINE

  CARRION

  RINGER

  WHITEBELLY

  TINY

  GREENERY

  DAWDLER

  >SQUIB

  SOLOMON

  AS OF THE END OF BOOK THREE

  SIXTH

  HOUNDS

  —

  (BLACK)

  OWL

  CROOK

  (GNOME)

  SHUFFLE

  (WOOLLY)

  >LAURUS

  RABBIT

  (ZIT)

  SLEEPY

  (GENEPOOL)

  >DEALWITHIT

  SPLUTTER

  >HEADLIGHT

  HASTEWASTE

  >EARS

  >NUTTER

  (RICKSHAW)

  (BAGMAN)

  TRITON

  FLIPPER

  FIRST

  PHEASANTS

  —

  GIN

  PROFESSOR

  STRAW

  STICKS

  BRICKS

  CRYBABY

  BITER

&nb
sp; GYPS

  HAMSTER

  KIT

  >BOOGER

  >CUPCAKE

  >SNIFFLE

  PIDDLER

  LEGEND

  —

  STRIKETHROUGH:

  WENT OVER COMPLETELY

  BOLD:

  MOVED TO THE OTHER SIDE (THE SLEEPERS)

  UNDERLINED:

  WENT INTO THE OUTSIDES

  (PARENTHESES):

  LEFT WITH THE BUS

  >:

  LEFT BEFORE FAIRY TALE NIGHT

  ∞:

  MOVED TO ANOTHER LOOP

  ?:

  UNKNOWN

  SPHINX

  I am stretched out on the damp grass, feet up on the bench, face turned to the sky, which has just finished weeping. My feet in muddy sneakers are crossed up there on the seat of the bench, and the mud on them gradually lightens in color as it dries out, flaking off onto the rickety slats. Too fast. The summer sun is relentless. In another half hour there won’t be any trace left of the short rain, and an hour later anyone who’d want to lounge here would do well to bring sunglasses. But I still can look at the sky with impunity for a while. It’s bright blue behind the spiderweb of the oak branches. Below them is the gnarly trunk, a jumble of interwoven ropes turned to stone. The oak is the most beautiful tree in the whole yard. Also the oldest. My gaze slides down from its top, from the thinnest twigs all the way to the fat roots. I notice a thin, faded scrawl scratched into the rutted bark just above the back of the bench: “remember” something and also “lose.” I raise my head to see better. I’ve learned to decipher writings much less legible than that.

  Remember L. N. and never lose hope.

  L. N. The Longest Night.

  Apparently for some people it means hope.

  I’d laugh if it weren’t so sad. To flee from the House, where similar writings snake along the walls, intertwining and twisting themselves into spirals, biting their own tails, each of them a scream or a whisper, a song or an indistinct muttering, making me want to cover my ears as if they were really sounds and not simply words—flee them only to end up here admiring this very small but very scary sentence.

  I am a tree. When I am cut down, make a fire with my branches.

  Another one. Also cheerful.

  Why do they have this effect on me? Maybe because they’re out here, not in there on a wall, lost within the tangled web of other words. Here, unfettered, they sound more sinister.

  And I really wanted to get some rest—from the House, from the words. From the exhortations to make merry—“WHILE YOU STILL HAVE TIME!” . . . From the hundred and four questions of the “Know Thyself” test (each one more vapid than the one before it, and don’t even think of skipping subparagraphs). I ran away from it all. Out of the chaos and into the world of silence and of the old tree. But someone came here ahead of me, dragging along his fears and hopes, and mutilated the tree, forcing it to whisper now to anyone who comes close: “Make a fire with my branches.”

  The oak spreads those knobby branches majestically toward the sun. Ancient, beautiful, serene, like all its brethren ready to suffer the worst of the indignities inflicted on it by humans, without fear and without reproach. I suddenly get this picture very clearly in my head, of it standing amid the ruins of the demolished House, up to its knees in brick rubble. It stands there, still stretching upward. The letters scored into it still implore not to lose hope.

  A cold shiver runs down my spine.

  “Do you sometimes experience an irrational fear of the future?” This is question number sixty-one. They told us that all questions on the test were significant. That each added important detail to the psychological profile. In our case they could’ve very well started and ended the test with this one.

  The crunch of gravel underfoot. I close one eye.

  The sky . . . The branches . . . The legs in black trousers.

  “You comfortable?”

  Ralph, his jacket unbuttoned, the knot of his tie askew, sits down on the bench and lights a cigarette.

  “Very.”

  I don’t get up. I’ve already said I was comfortable, so now I have to look up at him from where I’m lying. Ralph is cool with that. He puts the lighter back in his pocket and takes out a folded piece of paper. Unfolds it and puts it under my nose. It’s a list. Six names.

  I know three of them well. Squib, Solomon, and Don—the Rats who split from the House, went to the Outsides. The first time they did it was back in the winter, after the Longest, but were caught quickly and brought back. They ran away again almost immediately. Over the next month they got returned twice more. For thirty days the inhabitants of the House gleefully ran a pool on how long they’d manage to hold out. Their names on “Wanted” posters became a fixture on the first floor. It was as if Shark finally cracked, went totally nuts and started to equate the first floor with the street, imploring the imaginary passersby from its walls: “Anyone with information regarding the whereabouts of the above-mentioned youths . . .”

  Then they brought back Squib, alone. What happened to the other two “above-mentioned” no one had ever found out. Squib couldn’t muster the courage to run away by himself and remained in the Den, a grotesque shadow of his former self, shrinking from even the youngest Ratlings.

  “Yes?” I say. “The first three names are Squib, Solomon, and Don, and I’ve never seen the rest. Have they also run away?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Ralph turns his list over and studies it carefully, apparently trying to make sure he’s got it right.

  “The rest are from the First,” he says. “They haven’t run away yet, but are rather keen to try, for some reason.”

  I sit up. Warm and toasty from the front, damp and freezing from the back. All covered in sand and ants. I brush them off, trying to get my spinning head under control.

  “They call their parents,” R One continues, eyes buried in the list. “They write letters to the principal. They demand to be released from the House immediately. One might assume that, were they not so . . . limited in terms of movement, they already would have followed the example of those first three. Almost like they are being terrorized. You wouldn’t know anything about that?”

  “No,” I say. “First I’m hearing of it.”

  Ralph puts the list in his pocket and leans back. He is clearly not happy with my answer. But I really have no idea why all of a sudden three Pheasants simultaneously have decided to get as far from the House as possible. In fact, from what I know of the First, the question is what took them so long.

  Ralph admires the view of the sky through the branches, enjoying the dappled sunlight on his face. He’s got this face of a cartoon villain. No one who’s really evil would have a face like that. Only in the old movies. And not even a trace of gray in his hair, not a hint of a bald patch, even though he’s been working here for . . . what, thirteen years? At least. Iron Man.

  “All right,” he says. “Let’s assume you don’t know. Let’s hear what you think. What is it they fear? What are they trying to run from?”

  I shrug. “I don’t think it’s a question of fear. They’re being squeezed out. The First is good at that. And not only the First . . .”

  I can’t stop myself in time because I remember Smoker. His name could have been right there on that piece of paper without even that much of an effort from us. But then, we’re not Pheasants.

  “Who are you thinking about?” Ralph perks up. He has this goofy look, like a bloodhound that finally has picked up the scent.

  “Smoker. You can add him to your list if you’d like.”

  “Oh. I see . . .”

  R One goes silent and pensive.

  I probably shouldn’t have told him about Smoker. Counselors are unpredictable creatures. You never know how they are going to interpret the information you give them. On the other hand, I doubt that my mentioning Smoker could do us any real harm.

  “Do you remember much of the last graduation?”

&n
bsp; I wince. There are things that just aren’t mentioned. Rope in the hanged man’s house and all that. Ralph knows this as well as I do.

  “No,” I say. “Very little. Only the night in the biology classroom. We were locked in it. Almost nothing of the morning. Bits of it. Here and there.”

  He flicks away the cigarette.

  “Were you expecting something different?”

  “Probably. I myself wasn’t expecting anything at all.”

  To get up and leave now would be impolite. Even though it’s the most logical thing to do. I’m very uncomfortable with the whole setup, my head being at the level of his knees. So I move onto the bench next to him.

  “You are a Jumper, aren’t you?”

  I look Ralph in the face. He is completely out of all imaginable and even unimaginable bounds. What did I do to provoke this? Actually answered his questions? That might be it. Anyone else in my place would just tell him to get lost. There are countless ways of doing it without resorting to open insolence. Ralph wouldn’t bat an eye if I were to say “What was that? A jumper? How do you mean? Do I look like a kangaroo to you?” He’s most likely expecting exactly that. But as I run through the possible responses in my head, each feels more repulsive to me than the last. It’s better to simply tell him to go to hell. But I can’t do that, now can I. Because last winter when we sent Blind to him, asking him to find out at least something about Noble, he didn’t tell us to go to hell. He didn’t feign surprise. He didn’t even tell us off for being impertinent. He went who knows where and did so much more there than we ever could have hoped. If I played dumb right now and started prattling about kangaroos I’d lose all respect for myself, however much I have left of it.