The Gray House

by Mariam Petrosyan

  Suddenly the lamp went off.

  Ralph peeked out into the hallway and discovered that it was completely dark there too.

  “Lights out,” Old Man grumbled. “Just what we needed. And in the most interesting place, too. I have some candles in the desk over there.”

  Ralph pulled out the drawer, felt there for a bundle of thick tapers, and lit one of them.

  “I had a flashlight,” he remembered. “But I don’t anymore. I left it. In the library. In the coat. With the coat. Sloppy, sloppy.”

  Old Man proffered him a saucer. As Ralph started dripping wax on it, he discovered with amazement that it was incredibly hard to make the drips land in the same place. The wax seemed to want to splash all over the desk. Defeated, he returned the candle and the saucer to Old Man and said that he had to go.

  Old Man was already sleeping on his feet, and didn’t protest.

  “You sure? All right. Take a candle. Another candle. And I need to walk you over. Lock the door behind you and all that. Because the keys. I have the keys. I am the guard here, I’ll have you know!”

  Ralph assured Old Man that he would on no account forget that.

  Swaying, they went out into the hallway together. Ralph was holding the former principal under the arm, while the principal waved the candle around, splattering them both with hot wax, and discoursed on the topic of revenge. According to him, the best kind was to sit at the bottom of the river and wait for the bodies of your enemies to float by.

  “Are you sure it’s the bottom?” Ralph said. “Like algae?”

  “Precisely,” Old Man said. “Those ancient Chinese, they knew their stuff. Did I mention it was a typically Chinese way of revenge?”

  When they reached the door, Ralph took the candle from Old Man and tried to use it to light the second one, but Old Man’s excited breathing as he hung limply off Ralph’s shoulder kept blowing it out, until finally he extinguished both of them. Ralph decided that it was for the best. He wouldn’t have been comfortable leaving Old Man here with an open flame. He somehow managed to haul him to the guard’s post, remembered about the cigarette lighter, and with its help found the second copy of the key on the nail in the wall. He dumped Old Man, already snoring happily, on the battered chair in the corner and set off on the return journey.

  After locking the door behind him and coming to the landing, he lit the candle. He was taking the stairs very carefully, step by step, to maintain balance and to keep the candle from going out, feeling like a character from a gothic novel.

  His entrance in the corridor on the second floor was quite spectacular. He shuffled forward slowly, dimly aware of the appreciative whispers from the unseen audience, holding the candle in front of him—white shirt, sunken eyes, hair sticking out. He desperately wished for a candlestick. A graceful antique affair, with a winding stem, he’d look so much more dashing if he had that. Also he wished for some more steadiness. And for the rustling around him to stop.

  The corridor was supposed to lead Ralph straight to the door of his office, but it was playing tricks tonight. It branched three times instead, demanding that Ralph choose which turn to take, and every time he had grave suspicions that he’d chosen incorrectly.

  Finally, in a filthy, garbage-strewn corner—the House had never had such places before tonight, Ralph was absolutely sure of that—an unfamiliar-looking young boy courteously touched him on the arm and offered his assistance.

  “Yes, thank you,” Ralph said. “I seem to be slightly lost.”

  “Where would you like to go?”

  Ralph studied the boy closely. At least he lacked visible wings.

  “I need someone to help me exact a terrible vengeance,” he explained. “But not the Chinese kind. For the Chinese kind I’m not quite ready yet. Would you happen to know anyone of that persuasion?”

  The polite boy said nothing but nodded matter-of-factly and went ahead. Ralph, bone tired, tagged along behind. The candle was half-gone. His fingers no longer felt the burns.

  At length he was brought to a surprisingly cozy room and put in a high-backed chair. There he was provided with a splendid candlestick, a pill for the headache, and a glass of water. Afraid that he might fall asleep, Ralph rushed to explain the purpose of his visit.

  “I am a stoolie,” he said, peeling the flows of dried wax from his fingers. “A snitch. And I am tattling. Betraying my own. Exposing the evil plots of the Outsides.”

  This revelation was received with sympathy.

  Ralph, inspired by the reception, told everything he knew about Godmother.

  “Vulture needs to be warned,” he said, concluding the confession. “Tell him he’s in danger.”

  The hospitable owners of the cozy room promised Ralph that they would do just that.

  Ralph remembered nothing about his way back.

  When he woke up he was on his own couch. His insides were burning and his bladder threatened to burst, but there was, surprisingly, no trace of a headache. He shuffled to the bathroom and relieved himself, staring in horror at the wax-encrusted trousers. The shirt wasn’t much better. He washed his face, did his best to scrape the wax off the glove and the shoes, then changed and went out. He needed to get to Shark first, before Godmother had her way with him.

  Shark was in a state of total stupefaction. Godmother was nowhere to be seen.

  “I came to make a statement,” Ralph said.

  “Your statement is just the thing I need right now. Have a look at this,” Shark said, passing Ralph a sheet of paper. “Like it?”

  It was Godmother’s resignation letter, citing “family circumstances.” Ralph stared at the looping signature under today’s date and shuddered, like from a sudden burst of cold wind.

  “When did she bring it?”

  “She didn’t!” Shark roared, jumping up. “No one in this whole damn dump can be bothered to actually bring me something in person! At least she had the decency to take it as far as my office. And staple it to the door! How sweet of her, don’t you agree? Because I know some people who couldn’t manage even that!”

  Shark dashed about the office, frantically kicking the furniture.

  “Who do you all take me for? Your elderly deaf granny? Family circumstances, all right, great! But coming in and explaining what the hell happened—oh, no, that’s not how we do things! We’re in such a hurry we barely have the time to write this!”

  The door opened a crack and Raptor peeked in. He read the situation correctly and realized that the best strategy for him at this time would be to vanish. Ralph waited it out while Shark’s ire peaked and then he said, “Has anyone seen her today?”

  “Not me,” Shark grunted. “And I don’t give a damn about what anyone else saw!”

  He stopped and finally had a better look at Ralph’s appearance.

  “What’s this, a tropical safari? I’ve had it up to here with Sheriff and his polos, and now you come strolling in here in sneakers? We have a dress code, you know. A suit! Trousers, button-down shirt, jacket! And a tie! All right, I’m not going to insist on the jacket when it’s this hot, but jeans and a tee—that’s too much. You’re going to be the death of me, all of you!”

  “My trousers are slightly ruined at the moment. With wax,” Ralph admitted. “And the shoes too.”

  Shark shot a mad look at him and crashed in the armchair.

  “The death!” he repeated and closed his eyes.

  Ralph decided that he’d better go.

  He saw that Shark was in the throes of panic. Godmother’s exit he interpreted as her running away in fear, and the fact that she chose this particular moment for it—that what she feared was the graduation. Shark himself dreaded the graduation so much that no other possible explanation would even occur to him.

  Ralph didn’t believe in the urgent departure either, but his doubts were of a different nature. What did they do to her was the principal question on his mind. That it was something they did he had no doubt, but what was it? What could make Godmo
ther abandon the House?

  In the duty room it was Sheep’s shift. She was sitting there alone, thumbing through a magazine instead of her customary knitting. Ralph’s question about Godmother set her eyes blinking.

  “A letter of resignation? Can’t be! Well, no, I haven’t seen her today, but her shift is not until two and she never comes down before that. The letter must be someone’s idea of a silly joke.”

  By three o’clock Ralph had established that no one in the House had seen Godmother that day.

  Not on the third floor, not on the second, and not in the yard. Her room was cleaned out, her car disappeared from its place in the garage, and there was not a single thing left in the duty room that could have belonged to her.

  Exactly when, in the course of the few hours, she managed to wipe every trace of her presence from the House and leave without anyone noticing remained a mystery.

  The old guard swore to Ralph on his honor that he hadn’t unlocked the door for Godmother, neither at night nor in the morning. Ralph believed him. When he’d left last night, Old Man could have slept through an artillery attack. But the spare set of keys, usually available for the use of the counselors, Ralph had taken.

  Ralph knew that the children of the House could get in and out of the tiniest cracks, but he could not imagine the same arcane paths being taken by an elderly lady. As much as he tried to chase it away, his imagination kept unfolding this surreal picture before him: the boys, resembling at the same time a group of busy black ants and a detachment of sinister ninjas, dragging a listless woman, bound tightly like a mummy, swiftly along the rainwater pipe. Variations on this theme included the body being delivered ceremoniously to the basement or stuffed down the storm drain. Then the ant ninjas soared on their invisible strings to the third-floor windows and went to work on the counselor’s room, filling their capacious backpacks with her personal effects.

  The vision of Vulture thoughtfully putting down the signature at the bottom of Godmother’s resignation letter, carefully checking it against her real autograph on some paper or other, was much less bizarre and much more frightening. In a peculiar coincidence, Bird Leader was known for his advanced ability to forge any handwriting. It was a point of pride for him on par with, if not more than, his talent at picking locks. And the one thing that Ralph could not picture, no matter how he tried, was Godmother stapling an important document to the door of the principal’s office. She’d never do that. It was against her style.

  Ralph made sure to personally examine the basement, the attic, and every empty room on the first floor in both wings. The closer inspection of the storm drain he decided to postpone until dark. He took a break in his investigations to pay another visit to Shark and convince him not to declare an emergency assembly and not to remove anyone from the House unilaterally, since Godmother’s flight clearly indicated that she herself had grave doubts about the success of such actions. Shark made a brief display of reluctance and then quickly surrendered—almost eagerly, Ralph thought.

  On his way out of Shark’s office, Ralph bumped into Raptor, who shook his hand.

  “The victory is ours,” he whispered.

  Sheriff was more direct.

  “Way to go, man, throwing out that harridan,” he said, bathing Ralph in a gentle wave of alcohol reek. “Keep it up!”

  Sheriff had been celebrating the happy riddance of Godmother since morning, and by this time could hardly be called lucid, but it still made Ralph pause. What did the counselors think he’d done when congratulating him? After running through several possibilities of what they might have been imagining, he decided to cancel the dive in the storm drain altogether.

  Ralph hadn’t been back to his office through the day, but when he finally reached it around ten at night, there was a surprise waiting for him inside.

  On the floor in the middle of the room stood a massive bronze candlestick. One of its two cups was empty, but the second contained the lopsided runny stub of the taper.

  SMOKER

  The hallway is flooded with the bluish dusk and that familiar scent—of what, I wonder. Plaster? Damp? Rain puddles? I clutch tighter at my skinny bag, containing a change of underwear, a drawing pad, and a box of paints. Also the diary. It is only two days old, but the first entry is backdated by a week. I am going to use this notebook to let R One know of my impressions. Which means I’m a snitch. I am having a hard time coming to grips with that thought. I will write what I see and hear, and he will read my scribblings after fishing the diary out of the trash bin in the common bathroom. And put it back there once he’s done.

  He’s probably feeling uneasy right now as well, even if he doesn’t show it. Not that I can see his face. He hasn’t let a single word slip about our agreement, and that’s for the best, because I’d hate it if he started talking about it now.

  I am looking very closely at my bag.

  We roll past someone’s legs and they jump back to the wall quickly, out of our way. The Crossroads floats by. Monkey the Bandar-Log flies out of the door of the Second and rolls on the floor, screeching indignantly. Then he sees us, springs up, says “Oh wow!” and dashes back in the room. I’m only seeing this out of the corner of my eye, since my gaze is firmly planted on the bag.

  Finally we stop. Ralph wheels me around and bangs on the door. The sound makes me flinch.

  “’S not locked!” the familiar testy voice answers.

  I take a deep breath, but don’t have time to let it out before Ralph uses me to swing the door open. He does in fact use his hand to push it, but I still get an impression that it is me.

  The first three days in the Sepulcher flew by quickly. First I was sharing the room with Lizard and Monkey, then with Monkey and Genepool. In the end it was Viking from the Second and his dislocated finger. And then I was the only one left, and that made me realize that having roommates is better than not having them. Even when they’re noisy, play cards around the clock, spit all over the place, and constantly clog the only toilet around.

  Once I was left alone I had no defense against sinister thoughts. When, after a routine physical, you’re suddenly told that you’ll be staying in the Sepulcher, “no arguments,” not even allowed to drive over and get your things, it’s not that scary by itself. But when, in a week’s time, still no one is in the mood to explain anything, you start suspecting that your days are really numbered, that you won’t be getting out of here alive. So I was preparing for the worst.

  Then I got a visit from R One. That wasn’t a surprise; after all, he was now my counselor. If anything, he could have considered coming earlier.

  He sat in the only chair in the room, the “doctor” chair, and crossed his legs. He was holding some kind of package in his hands.

  “Well, how’re you feeling?” he said.

  “All right,” I said. “Can’t complain.”

  “That’s good,” he said. “Anyone visit you here?”

  “Black,” I said. “Also Noble, twice.”

  R One perked up.

  “Noble? That’s interesting.”

  “Not really,” I said.

  Noble would present me with a packet of gummy bears, say “How’s it going,” and go over to my neighbors’ beds to play blackjack with them. I always thought that if you came to visit someone who’s sick it would be nice to at least have a conversation with them, but apparently Noble had a different opinion. I think the fact of my existence went right out of his head as soon as he handed me the candy.

  Now Black, he behaved like a human being was supposed to. Gave me the rundown on the latest news, told me to hold on, and even tried to pump the Spiders for any information regarding my condition. Not that he managed to find out anything, but I was grateful even for the thought. And one time he brought me some tomato salad that he’d made himself, reducing me almost to tears.

  I certainly wasn’t about to explain any of that to Ralph. All I said was that Noble’s visits were not really interesting. Which was the truth.

&nbs
p; “You would probably like to know why you’re stuck here?” R One asked.

  “Of course. Everyone keeps telling me about blood work, but they never did any tests other than the one after which they made me stay. And why couldn’t they go back and recheck that first one? That’s what I don’t understand.”

  I suddenly grew very agitated. Because it dawned on me that R One, being my counselor, might have gotten an insight, been told something that no one was telling me.

  “There’s nothing wrong with you,” he said. “You’re perfectly healthy.”

  I gawked at him.

  “You’re here on my orders,” he said. “I asked them to hold you in for a while.”

  I still didn’t ask anything. I guess I was too surprised. By the way he was saying that. He was very calm when admitting to these things. To making me think who knows what. I’d been preparing to die because of what he did.

  “I had a call from your father,” R One said. “He said that you’d asked not to be taken away. That you wanted to stay until graduation. When did you talk to him?”

  “The night after the meeting. I used the phone in the staff room. Someone showed me how to get inside.”

  He just nodded, as if he knew that already without my explanations.

  “So, you’re curious about the graduation?” he said. “You’d like to see it for yourself?”

  I didn’t answer. I try not to answer stupid questions. If I didn’t want to stay, I wouldn’t be calling home asking not to be taken away.

  Ralph turned the left side of his face to me for the first time in this visit, and I saw that he had a huge shiner there. It cheered me up that somebody had given him a good one. A sincere one. Broke the skin on the cheekbone, even.

  “I am also curious about the graduation,” he said. “I’d like to have some more information about what’s going on in the House. At this particular moment.”

  It finally dawned on me what he was driving at. I didn’t let on, though. I made a quizzical face, as if I didn’t understand.

  He was looking straight at me, and he had these eyes like it wasn’t him who had said what he’d just said. Honest and earnest. You’d never guess that a man with eyes like that would be trying to make you into a snitch.