The Gray House

RALPH

A SIDEWAYS GLANCE AT GRAFFITI

He went up the stairs and entered the hallway, certain that he was not going to see anyone there. The canteen buzzed with voices, coming through to him muted, like a bee swarm humming in an old hollow tree. When it is inside the hollow, and you’re outside, and you haven’t yet realized what that hum is, there, in the tree, and what are those strange spots darting around you, and once you do realize you’re already at a full run . . . He walked slowly, the duffel bag weighting down his shoulder. Open doors revealed the empty classrooms, laying fallow before the last period. The doors here could sometimes open so suddenly as to deliver a good smack on the forehead, so he’d long ago acquired the habit of walking on the other side, the one that used to have windows, keeping his distance from the doors. He remembered it and almost laughed at that thought.

Thirteen years. Enough time to blaze a trail, had the floorboards underfoot been something else, had they been earth and grass. A wide and permanent trail. His own. Like a deer might make. Or an . . .

This place used to have windows. There was much more light in the hallway. No one would have even considered boarding them up if not for the writings. The windowpanes were completely covered with them. They would cover the entire surface with scribbles and ugly drawings, and as soon as the windows were washed or replaced, the whole thing repeated itself. The windows never had a full day when they looked presentable. And it only happened in this hallway. The first floor never had windows looking out on the street, and the third housed too many counselors. He remembered it well, how one time, after the windowpanes were once again replaced (hoping against hope that this time they would finally see reason, except that had never happened), they simply slathered black paint all over the new, squeaky-clean glass. He remembered his feeling that morning, when he first saw the disgusting black-framed rectangles. It was the feeling of dread, the horror of the dawning recognition—he understood what those windows represented to them, literally demanding this barbaric treatment. At the next general meeting he voted for the windows to be eliminated.

It was not childish pranks. Oh, it looked that way at first, but even then there were signs—they never did anything like that in dorms and classes. Seeing the blacked-out glass, he realized to what degree his charges were afraid of those windows and how much they hated them. Windows into the Outsides.

He was now walking on the side that formerly had windows. This made the hallway a little too dark, but he doubted anyone in the House remembered that it had not always been so.

The windows debacle taught him a lot. He was young then, and he wanted to share his apprehension with somebody. Somebody who was older and more experienced. He wouldn’t think of doing that now, but back then it had seemed like a good idea. So he did it, once, for the first and the last time ever. After that he never talked about things he felt.

They shielded themselves from the side that was looking out to the street. The other one, the yard side, did not bother them, even though it seemed to open up to the Outsides just the same. But the yard and the houses visible from there and the vacant lot and everything around it they had already accepted, included in their world. There was no need to surround the yard with a concrete fence, the other houses worked fine in that capacity. There was nothing like that on the street side. They are trying to erase everything. Those were his words. He remembered saying them, even though it had happened long ago. Everything except themselves and their own domain. They refuse to acknowledge the existence of anything that is not the House. This is dangerous. Elk laughed and said that he was imagining things.

They know perfectly well what the Outsides is and how it looks. They go to camps every summer. They enjoy watching movies.

He knew then that he’d never be able to explain. The danger was not in ignorance. It was in the word itself. The word “Outsides” that they had stripped of its former meaning and pressed into their service. They had decided that House was House, and Outsides was a thing apart, instead of being something that contained the House in it. But no one had understood. No one had felt anything even when looking at the blackened windows. It was only he who became scared when they had sprung the trap, taking away his ability to look at that which they refused to see. Elk was smart, but even he had never understood them. The poor kids, they were hard done by . . . Elk had believed that. And the graduation of the window tormentors hadn’t taught him anything either, even though in the days before their exit the House had been saturated with sticky horror, making Ralph gasp in its noxious fumes. He had already wanted to run even then, but he kept hoping that as soon as those seniors were gone everything would change, the others would be different. It even worked for a while. A very short while, as the next batch was still too little to fight reality seriously. Then it turned out that they were just as good at it as their predecessors, maybe even better, and all he had left was to watch them and wait. He insisted that they were given too much freedom, but anytime he mentioned this he got the “unfortunate children” reply, and those words made him wince, just as they themselves winced when they heard something like that. So he watched and waited.

Waited until they grew up, molding themselves and their territory. Until they reached the age of leaving. Their predecessors had tried to throttle the passage of time in their own way: twelve suicide attempts, five of them successful. These had simply dragged everything around them into the maelstrom of their exit. That vortex had claimed Elk as well, even as he still thought of them as harmless children. It was possible he had understood something, but by then it was already too late.

Ralph often wondered what had been going through Elk’s mind in those last moments, if he had time to think about anything at all. They had just brushed him aside like a grain of sand, a piece of debris that for some reason clung to them as they ran. They didn’t mean it, they loved him, to the extent they were capable of love. It’s just that they didn’t care. When their personal Apocalypse had struck, one counselor was of no consequence. No one could have stopped them, not two, or three.

Had he survived that night, he would have understood what I figured out long before then. The world into which they are thrown once they turn eighteen does not exist for them. So if they have to leave, it is imperative that they destroy it for everyone else too.

That graduation left behind a blood-soaked void so horrible that it frightened everyone. Even those who had no direct connection to the House. The management had been replaced, and once it had been, all the teachers and counselors left. All except Ralph. He stayed. And getting to know the new principal, a man very far removed from humanistic ideals, proved the deciding factor. Those who had not run away after the June events rushed for the exits after the first talk with the principal. Ralph was convinced that this time everything was going to be different. That he would be able to do everything in his power to stop them when the time came. He had that opportunity now, knowing that there was no one who would interfere with him by playing the “poor little kids” card.

He watched them from the very beginning, and he began to see the ways in which they were changing even before the transformation started happening. He took the Third and the Fourth, the strangest and the most dangerous, even though it was silly back then to think of them this way. He waited for a long time, not knowing what he was waiting for, until finally he noticed it: something was out of place in their rooms. The rooms were somehow different from others. And as the rooms changed, so too did their inhabitants. The change was subtle, untraceable for any but the most sensitive observer; it had to be felt on the skin, inhaled with the air, and there had been times when weeks passed before he was able to really once again enter the place they were creating for themselves, creating by imperceptibly transforming the one that actually existed. With time he became better and better at it, and then, to his horror, he noticed that this domain, this invisible world, was not immune to incursions from other, completely random people. There could be only one explanation: this world came to exist on its own, or was on the threshold of existence. That’s when he ran. But even as he was running, he knew that he would be back, to see this through, to watch the credits, to find out how it ended this time. He had accepted that there was nothing he could do to stop whatever was going to happen, he just needed to know what happened. Because even while he was learning from those who came before, they were learning too, and much faster. They wouldn’t need to paint over the windows. He was sure that they only had to convince themselves that the windows weren’t there. And then, likely as not, the windows would cease to exist.

The Crossroads piano was glinting, unsheathed. He stepped on a piece of tape, a red snake curled underfoot. He was treading the middle of the hallway now. Still his own trail . . . The three letters R jumped out at him from the wall. Bold as a signature, as a badge of his presence.

He froze. His name wasn’t Ralph at all. This nickname, name-nick, he’d hated from the moment he got it. Precisely because it was a name. He’d much prefer to be called Shaggy, or Pansy, whatever, if only it sounded like a nick instead of a name that could be mistaken for his own. So naturally, because of this, of his loathing of “Ralph,” it had stuck to him for this long, outliving all of his previous designations. Those who had christened him had left, and then those who had been squirts when it happened had left as well, and now the ones who hadn’t even been there back then were grown up, and still he remained Ralph. Or just a letter, a capital letter with a number. The letter was even worse. But it was the only way they wrote him up on the walls, and even talking among themselves it came up more and more often, the loathsome nick being made uglier by the even more loathsome abbreviation.

He stopped in front of the door that didn’t have a number on it, with the glass transom on top. Here one more R, done in soap on the glass, greeted him. He slammed the door behind him and thus rid himself of his own nick until the next time he needed to go out into the hallway. This was both his office and his bedroom. He was the only counselor who spent nights on the second floor. Shark firmly believed that it constituted a colossal sacrifice on his part, and Ralph did nothing to suggest to him otherwise. It was enough to mention in passing, “I am at my post at all hours,” and he received everything he wanted, right away.

Ralph made a point of maintaining the heroic image of selfless service, even though the fear of the second floor he saw in other counselors and in Shark himself almost made him laugh. You had to have an extremely hazy understanding of them, or rather none at all, to imagine that they would go busting into a room and sticking a knife into a counselor just because. Because they were generally wicked, or because they had nothing better to do. He guessed at the existence of the Law. No one told him anything about it, of course, but by observing certain patterns in their behavior he deduced not only that the Law existed, but even some of its tenets. One, for example, made teachers and counselors untouchable, and it protected him unswervingly. The exceptions to it could come raining down only in that fateful time, the two weeks before graduation.

So it was useless to think about that, much less fear it, and he wasn’t going to move to a different room now only because something could possibly happen in six months’ time. He’d already committed the biggest folly of all by returning. Compared to that, worrying about his personal safety would be ridiculous. And whatever else, he wasn’t about to spend his last months in the House in interminable conversations with Sheriff, or inebriated Raptor, who were both known to barge into any room on the third floor as if it were their own. Two bottles of beer were, in their opinion, reason enough to come for a visit, so once armed with those they didn’t even bother to knock. The counselors traditionally drank. They weren’t drunks, like Cases, they just drank. The difference was subtle and, admittedly, rather hard to notice at times, but they would all certainly take offense should someone have pointed that out to them. Cases were much harder to rattle. But there were some things even they resented. For starters, they didn’t like being called Cases.

There weren’t many people in the House who knew that Ralph was the one who’d given Cases their name. He didn’t mean either their overall shapes or their mental state, as the common interpretations ran, but exactly cases, of bottles. Pinning a name on someone in the House was easy. All you had to do was walk out into the hallway at night, choose an appropriate place on the wall, scribble something on it, either illuminating your way with a flashlight or by touch, making sure that your entry did not stand out too much. It was going to be read anyway. The walls for them were the newspapers, the weekly magazines, the road signs, the advertising supplements, the communications office, and the museum of fine arts. All he had to do was put his word in and wait for it to have an effect. What happened next wasn’t up to him. The name could have been forgotten and painted over, or accepted and taken up. Ralph never felt himself younger and more alive than when he went prowling in the night armed with a can of spray paint. That was all you needed, a flashlight and spray paint. Once he moved to the second floor, the task became even easier, but then he was almost caught, twice in a row, and had to stop adding his two cents to the House names, fearing that sooner or later he would be discovered and unmasked. He did not want to undermine their trust in the walls, since he himself received much that was useful from the same source. It required only diligence in reading and deciphering their scribbles. The wall was his entrance into their world, a ticket without which the admission would have been completely impossible. He learned to grasp new messages at a glance, distinguishing them from the tapestry of the old ones, once he knew the lay of the land. He never stopped to look closer—that could arouse suspicion. One unfocused glance, and he carried a riddle with him until the time when he could decipher it at night in his room, at his leisure over a cup of tea, the way others spent their time on a crossword puzzle.

Sometimes he succeeded, other times he didn’t, but he never despaired, because he knew that the next day would bring another crop of messages worthy of thinking over. One thing bugged him, though, the abundance of swearwords, since they also demanded careful reading in case they concealed something important. Once the House inhabitants started hitting puberty, he even had days when he regretted his habit of reading everything they put out on the walls. Later the swearing abated, except around the Second, where it was still easy to drown in it.

He wasn’t looking at the walls as he was walking down the corridor now. The intervening half a year changed the landscape to the point of unfamiliarity. He didn’t want to overload his brain on the very first day of his return, trying to peel away everything they’d added in six months—where the crop of a single night was sometimes more than enough. But he still could not shield himself from the proliferation of the R. The letters jumped out at him, outlined and separated from the common muddle that was snaking over itself in places where the concentration of words and drawings was highest.

There might well have been intent behind this. But then, who was the target of it, he or they themselves? What was it supposed to be—a remembrance or a greeting? Something they were afraid they’d forget, or something they wanted to forget but couldn’t? He was gone, but at the same time he was still here. Never before had Ralph encountered the nicks of the dead written on the walls. They were never spoken of again, their things either distributed between the living or destroyed. Closing the gap, that’s what it was called. One night of mournful vigil and then every sign of the person’s existence was erased, especially from the walls. The same thing happened to those who left the domain of the House. They were convinced of the inevitable annihilation awaiting them in the Outsides. The departed were treated the same as the dead, while he’d managed to both move out and still remain embedded in the walls, by their own hands. They must have known he was going to be back. But how could they? How could they be so sure of something that he himself had doubted until the last moment?

Ralph dropped the duffel on the floor and sat on the sofa. Of course they knew. And now I know that they knew. Even though I haven’t really studied the walls yet. They deliberately wrote it so that it caught the eye, so that once I was back I’d see immediately that they were waiting for me.

I might even start acknowledging that they pulled me in, wrapped me in the spell of the letters. Start imagining them dancing around those writings, mumbling incantations and drawing magic sigils. Thinking that the only reason I returned was because they willed me to. I’ve only been here for a couple of minutes and the insanity is already setting in. Or maybe that’s what it takes, that anyone here needs to be at least a little mad? That this place does not tolerate those who aren’t?

He knew he was right, at least somewhat. One couldn’t just walk out of here and then walk back in again. The House might not accept him. This had happened to others, he himself saw it not once and not twice, so he knew what he was talking about. Something might not accept him. It could not be put in words, it could not be subjected to logical analysis, this Something that was the House itself, or maybe its spirit, its essence. He wasn’t looking for the right word, or for any word at all. It was just that, coming back, he knew that the final decision was not up to him. Not to him, not to them, and to Shark least of all. The House would either let him in or it wouldn’t. So maybe it was the House they tried to placate, marking its walls with his initials. To accustom it to the idea of him returning.

“All right,” Ralph said resignedly. “You can consider yourselves thanked.” I wonder what it is they need from me. Or is it just that tradition now demands the sacrifice of a counselor before graduation?

He got up and tried to chase the silly thoughts out of his head. If all they needed was a counselor, they’ve got plenty already, I’m just one more . . . And by the way, no one needs a crazy counselor, not them and not me. He went to the window, tugged at the latch, and opened one of the panes. The cold gust burst into the room, banishing the staleness of the unlived-in space.

The crumpled clouds were hanging level with the top of the window, filling midday with the shadows of an evening-like dusk. He wiped the dust off the windowsill, sat down, and lit a cigarette, relaxing. Then threw away the end and listened. The hallway was alive with voices.

The House songs and whispers . . .

He heard feet thundering past his door, then the wheelchairs squeaking. Ralph moved to the sofa and switched on the radio. Music. He increased the volume.

Someone stopped in front of the door. Two of them. Then more. He heard the muffled conversation but couldn’t make out the words. The meeting ended. The heavily shod boots of the Log messengers disappeared with the reports, and Ralph switched off the radio. He went to the door, one of those delivering a smack to the face when opened. But they were in time to jump away.

“Oooh . . . Oooh . . .”

At the opposite wall, two awkward, big-eared Logs were bowing to him respectfully.

“You are back! You are listening to the radio . . .”

“Yes,” he said. “As you can see.”

They proceeded to simultaneously bow and shift imperceptibly to the right. Quick, run, tell, be the first to inform everyone! The biggest story of the day was standing right there, in the flesh, but the rules of etiquette prevented them from storming off, racing each other and yelling at the top of their lungs, announcing the news to the entire House. They suffered in silence, flaming ears, bitten lips, and all, while their eyes continued the feverish examination of Ralph. Whoever noticed something extraordinary would be king for the day. Those who already left were the first to know and were now going to be the first to tell, but those who stayed were the first to see, and they were trying to squeeze out every last drop of this feeble advantage now that the option of surprise was taken from them. The eyewitness accounts were supposed to be elaborate and deeply moving, and Ralph felt himself being mined for the moving and elaborate details, the greedy tentacles of their probing eyes burrowing under his skin.

“Dismissed,” he said.

Bandar-Logs didn’t move an inch, only upped the degree of passion in their stares. He decided to take mercy on them.

“I am going to the Third.”

Logs gasped and galloped away, treading on each other’s feet, all glistening black-leather vests and clanking rivets.

Ralph walked slowly, giving the couriers time to fulfill their purpose. Walked and looked at the walls.

The domain of the Second. Headless female forms, impossibly ample hips, spherical buttocks, bountiful breasts . . . The spaces between those were given to public criticism of the artists’ abilities, verses discussing the same basic concepts, and, of course, swearing.

BY HIS OWN TAIL, SOLOMON RAT

LOOK OUT! YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN!

Swim canceled due non-stndrd clthng

DID IT AGAIN. WILL DO AGAIN.

Rats were standing in the open doorway of their classroom, giggling, bowing and scraping in unison, as if their strings were being pulled simultaneously by one invisible inebriated hand.

“Good afternoon . . .”

Fresh from a dive in the dumpster. Scalded gray fur, glassily vibrating whiskers, the stench of garbage and naked tails covered in slime.

“Welcome back. How are you?”

Ralph walked past.

Foreheads, cheeks, and chins covered in drawings. Dark shades of any and all shapes and sizes. Rats detested bright light and shielded their eyes from it.

“Welcome back,” the wall sneered at him next. The greeting was accompanied by a veritable picket fence, eight exclamation points in a row. When did they have time? He left the Second behind. The scenery changed to red triangles, bulls, and antelopes. The writings here were few and compact. Leopard’s drawings were protected from encroachments. Ralph did not look too closely. A green arrow, pointing straight ahead:

THE PATH OF THE DRUID. FEEL THE GROUND IN FRONT WITH A POLE.

S.CE EVERY FRIDAY AT FULL MOON.

What does “S.ce” mean? Could it really be “sacrifice”?

The doorframe of the Third remained unoccupied. Ralph entered and immediately heard the crunch of seeds underfoot. Seeds and dead leaves. Pods bursting noisily as he stepped on them, spreading whitish dust. Birds in the shadow of verdant vegetation, smiling. Fleshy leaves and thick trunks of various plants masking the window frames. And the smell of freshly dug earth.

Enormous, red-cheeked Elephant nodding his head, surrounded by potted violets. Purplish end of the spectrum. Beauty over the withering geranium, Butterfly under the lemon tree. Vulture perched on the stepladder, floating over the classroom all the way up to the ceiling. Two small pots with cacti kept him company there. Lizard’s desk, home only to a plate of sprouted wheat, looked austere.

Birds smiled. Chirping in the thickets . . . There was no fear, no hostility. It could almost seem that they were glad to see him again.

Ralph sat down at the teacher’s desk. A thick, whitish sprout plopped in front of him, like a grub that’s lost its grip somewhere above.

Vulture dismounted from the stepladder, hobbled to the desk, muttered “My apologies,” grabbed the sprout, swallowed it, and added, “Told you time and time again: if it’s rotten, prune it back!”

He passed his handkerchief over the desk.

“Thank you,” Ralph said.

Vulture smiled beatifically.

A cup of coffee appeared from nowhere in front of Ralph. As he was regarding it in surprise, duckweed sprang up on the surface.

“As you can see,” Vulture said, “one is hard pressed to keep track of everything at once. It pains me greatly, it really does.”

Ralph tried to get his mind back together.

“While I was away . . .”

“We all missed you,” Birds announced happily.

Vulture beamed with pride.

“And this Pheasant flew over to the Fourth,” Elephant said, picking his nose. “Who knows why. Not us, but them. Who knows . . .”

“The affairs of the Fourth are not our concern,” Lizard snapped. “Keep your mouth closed!”

Angel struck a pose.

“The House is not quite the House without you, esteemed Ralph. So I keep telling them, constantly! Just ask them, go ahead, ask . . .”

“Happy to hear it,” Ralph said. “Anything else?”

“A song!” Angel crowed, delighted. “Dedicated to you! Finished rehearsing it only yesterday! Permission to perform?”

Finished rehearsing . . . yesterday? A song?

“Denied,” Ralph said. “Songs will have to wait.”

Birds sighed in disappointment. Angel, infuriated, sank his teeth into his own arm.

“Excuse me?”

There was a small man at the door, bald, wearing a blue suit. He was studying Ralph, squinting myopically.

Ralph rose up.

“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” the small man said, stepping inside.

“I am a counselor,” Ralph explained. “Back from vacation. Just came to visit with the boys. I won’t interfere with your lesson.”

“Not at all,” the teacher fussed, “please, talk all you want. I’ll come later.”

“We have already talked. I don’t want to disrupt. I’m sorry.”

Ralph went around the bald man and into the hallway.

The teacher squeezed out after him.

“You are their counselor, aren’t you?” The pudgy hand grabbed the sleeve of Ralph’s jacket. “Would you agree”—the teacher’s eyes opened wide and his voice went down to a whisper—“would you agree that they are rather . . . unusual? This smell . . . and this . . . prevalence of plant life. Would you agree? The sheer amount of it . . . And the smell . . .”

“I certainly would,” Ralph said politely, unclasping the teacher’s fingers. “But it’s time for your lesson.”

“Yes,” the teacher said, looking despondently at the door. “It is. But I am certainly experiencing a palpable discomfort. Please don’t misunderstand me. This is vexing.”

The cloying scent of a bog wafted through the crack in the door.

“You’ll get used to it,” Ralph promised. “Give it time.”

The teacher slumped and disappeared inside. Vulture immediately filtered through the door in the other direction.

“Lay it on,” Ralph said. “Everything that’s happened. And make it brief.”

Vulture leaned against the wall.

“Nothing has happened in my pack,” he reported. “And prying into other people’s business—that would be against my upbringing.”

“No one’s asked you to do any prying.”

Vulture smiled, exposing red gums.

“The biggest news is that Pompey is no longer with us. Untimely succumbed to a stab wound. Might be considered a suicide, but then again it might not. I would call it that.”

“Would others?”

“The others could regard it differently.”

Ralph thought it over.

“So it was not, in fact, a suicide?”

Vulture shook his head pensively. “It is a question of semantics. When a person spends a considerable amount of time and effort digging a hole in the ground, carefully installs sharpened stakes on the bottom, and then finally jumps in with a cheerful shout, I call that a suicide. But people are free to express a different opinion.”

“All right,” Ralph sighed. “Anything else?”

“The rest is trifling. I am having a hard time imagining what could be worthy of your attention. Maybe the one about the Pheasant transferring from the First to the Fourth. Sphinx’s godson. He is yours now. Also Noble was taken away to the Outsides. The Fourth is in mourning . . .”

Vulture stumbled and fell silent, wincing as if his own words disgusted him for a moment.

“Is that all?”

“Well,” Vulture sighed. “If we are to include the happenings of an earlier time, Wolf died. Back over the summer, soon after you left.”

“What happened?”

“Now this, no one really knows.”

A gangling, blondish apparition with bugged-out eyes suddenly came into view.

“I’m sorry,” it muttered, squeezing in the door past them.

“You’re late!” Vulture screamed testily. “You son of a Log, will I ever see the end of this?”

Horse moaned, shaking his hair, and disappeared inside. Vulture spat a chewed-up lemon leaf after him.

“Bastard,” he said. “Useless weed!”

His face suddenly contorted; he clutched his knee and hissed in pain.

Ralph watched him intently.

“Anything else?”

Vulture was looking up at him impassively, with unseeing eyes. He descended into the pain and locked himself in it. This conversation was over.

“All right, you may go. You don’t seem to be feeling too well.”

There was no one who could tell for sure if Vulture was faking it or if he really was in such bad shape. He lowered himself to the floor, hugged his leg, and bent over it as if it were a sick child, swaying gently back and forth and singing to it softly through clenched teeth. Ralph waited, not sure if he should offer help. Then shrugged and continued down the hallway.

It was empty. Teachers’ voices droned monotonously from behind the classroom doors. A faucet was running somewhere.

Birds . . . He probably should have listened to that song. The song that they allegedly just finished rehearsing. Now he’d never know if it really existed or if it was entirely Angel’s spontaneous invention. On the other hand, it was possible that under the inspired direction from Vulture’s ringed fingers they would have closed their eyes and opened their mouths, and the voiceless singing would go on and on, whipping them into a frenzy . . . And he’d have no idea how to react.

Ralph stopped and studied the wall and a trail of smeared black footprints. They went up vertically, from the bottom to the ceiling, then across it and down the opposite wall. Someone had expended a lot of time and energy to make it look like Spiderman had dropped in for a visit. That, or someone figured out how to walk upside down.

Pheasant in the Fourth. Sphinx’s godson. That by itself didn’t tell Ralph anything. He knew very little about Pheasants. Wolf. And Pompey. Mentioning Wolf made Vulture’s leg hurt. Pompey . . . Jumped into a hole of his own making . . . Made a mistake? Maybe went against the Law? A riddle wrapped in a mystery. But Ralph knew he was not in a position to demand more. Vulture never snitched. Everything he said, Ralph would have found out anyway. From talking to Shark, if no one else. But when told by Vulture, the information took on a greater importance. Unlike Shark, Vulture knew what he was talking about and always gave Ralph a chance to decipher his pronouncements.

It became a secret game for the two of them, a game in which Vulture played on his side, his only partner in the whole House. This was the measure of Great Bird’s gratitude for the night he had spent in Ralph’s room—that night two years ago, following Vulture’s attempt to gnaw through the walls of the hospital wing and devour its inhabitants. He should have earned himself a one-way ticket to the madhouse, but had ended up instead in Ralph’s room. Ralph kept a souvenir of that night, a bloodstained towel. He had scraped Vulture’s mouth with it, trying to stifle his howls. Ralph had been too busy to think about anything except keeping his hands out of harm’s way, but when, through the opened windows, he had heard the Third respond, he realized what it was—a funeral lament. The towel, and the upholstery on the sofa ruined by Great Bird’s teeth. Once he started crying, Ralph let go of him, and for the rest of the night Vulture sobbed with his hooked nose buried in the pillow. Ralph watched and waited. In silence, not making any attempts to soothe him.

At dawn Vulture got up, all swollen and somehow blackened, hobbled to the shower, and stood there until the morning bell rang. And then he left. Ralph spent the morning in the hospital wing with Birds, liquidating the aftermath of Vulture’s performance. The Leader of the Third was nowhere to be found for three straight days. On the fourth day he appeared in the canteen in the blackest mourning and had been wearing it ever since. He might not have had many praiseworthy qualities, but he never forgot his debts and those to whom they were owed. This was how the game started, the game of “If you’re so smart, figure out what I meant by that.” Ralph also knew that, were he to stumble, there was always going to be a clue left somewhere. It might not be obvious, more in the manner of the wall puzzles, but a clue nonetheless. And besides, Vulture was always concise and to the point, and never talked in poor verse, the way walls sometimes did.

He called Pompey’s death a suicide. Pompey had dug a hole for himself and jumped into it, getting a stab wound. Doesn’t really sound like a suicide. Too circumspect. Allegorical. Not exactly wall verse, but close.

Noble is a whole other deal. Him and his mother. Who would never voluntarily take her much-too-mature son back home. So, not home, somewhere else. Where? Who knows?

And the most unpleasant one is, of course, Wolf. After mentioning his name Vulture didn’t let slip even a vague hint. And that was exactly the moment when his leg started hurting. Coincidence? From what little Ralph knew about Vulture, nothing was ever a coincidence with him. Bird was certainly capable of enduring sudden pain without batting an eye. And Wolf had been one of those who’d changed reality around them. One of the strongest in that regard. A potential challenger. Could this be the answer?

The dull lights cast a yellowish pall on the hallway. Sheriff was hobbling toward him—the Second’s sugar daddy and horror show. In a word—Rat, only older and bigger.

“Wow.” Sheriff winked from under the bill of his cap and dissolved in a big smile. “Why, hello, pardner! What the hey are you looking for in this stinkin’ swamp?”

Ralph momentarily faked surprise and joy upon meeting an esteemed colleague and effected a high-five.

“Guess I couldn’t stand being away from you.”

Sheriff burst out in a fit of laughter and disappeared behind the door of the Second, still giggling. The tail, thick as a rope, slithered in after him, and Rats stepped aside to make way for it . . . Rats giggled too, rubbing their hands.

When Ralph returned to the door of his room he found a note stuck to it with a pushpin: This is insulting. You could have dropped by. It wasn’t signed, but there was no mistaking Shark’s hand. Ralph teased the pushpin out, stuffed the note in his pocket, and went to see the principal.

Shark was waiting for him in the nonbusiness part of his office, sunk in a low armchair upholstered in cheery chintz with yellow-blue flowers. Knees above his chest, nose in the TV. He shot Ralph a sideways glance with his mottled eyes and gestured at the chair next to his.

“So you’re back.”

Ralph sat down and immediately sank in up to his chest as well. Shark’s countenance provided irrefutable evidence of the approaching end of the working day.

“I’m leaving soon,” Shark confirmed, as he sucked in the clear liquid sloshing in his glass without the help of the straw and stared at Ralph. “I don’t see any reason to be waiting here for the classes to end. No reason at all. Do you see any reason? Because I don’t. Nobody does. But that’s the deal, apparently. I’m supposed to sit here until I’m blue in the face, even though no one cares if I do or not. No one comes, no one knocks, no one asks anything. Ever. But here I sit. Performing what’s left of the principal’s duties. Chained here like a dog, from eight till four, and don’t even think of taking off the tie, because who knows what might happen! I have to be ready for whatever it is. If this looks like I have it easy, trust me, I don’t. It is far from easy. Welcome back, dear fellow. These past years have been kind to you. Still spry.”

“Six months is years now?” Ralph said, surprised.

“It is.” Shark nodded. “In combat situations each month counts as a year. So, all in all, you’ve been AWOL for six years, which means that you should’ve been terminated long ago. This is not to reprimand you in any way, mind. I’m just keeping score.”

“Thanks.”

Ralph looked at the screen.

Shark didn’t appreciate being ignored. He reached for the remote. The screen blinked off and Ralph turned the chair to face the principal. Shark’s finger was waving at the bridge of his nose.

“What was the duration of your leave supposed to be? Two months. Two. Not six. You realize, of course, that you’re through here. And have been for a while. But”—the finger made a circular motion—“I forgive you. Do you know why? Because I like you. And I understand why you decided to scram. Why is it that I understand? Because that’s the kind of person I am. Caring and understanding.”

Ralph relaxed and stretched his legs. Listening to Shark’s crazy talk was a part of every counselor’s job description, and had long become a matter of routine. He was thinking about Wolf. And Pompey. And the hole. What exactly was the “hole” that Pompey, according to Vulture, had dug for himself? What did Great Bird mean by that? Still, thinking about Pompey was easier than thinking about Wolf. He didn’t want to think about Wolf at all.

“But who’s going to understand me? Nobody, that’s who. I stand alone, abandoned by everyone. Now one of my subordinates returns after a six-month absence and he doesn’t even consider stopping by to say hello. I have to write notes to him! And only then does he come. What’s the best word to describe this? I’ll tell you. That word is ‘shit.’ Everything that surrounds me is shit.”

“I’m sorry,” Ralph said. “I would’ve come even without the note.”

“When?” Shark’s mottled eyes lit up angrily. “Tomorrow? Or maybe the day after? I demand respect. Or you can all go to hell. I’m the boss here! Am I right?”

The principal fell silent, sighing heavily into his glass.

Ralph stole a look at his watch. There were less than twenty minutes left until the end of the last class, and he wanted to drop by the Sixth before Hounds scattered throughout the House. That meant arriving there directly after the teacher left.

“You,” Shark said, placing the glass on the floor and slumping dejectedly in his chair. “You’re the only counselor worthy of the name in this entire hellhole. And you just up and left, ran away to the coast. Abandoning us here to be carved up.”

“No one’s carving up anyone.”

“That’s what you say.” Shark’s scratchy voice was pouring soft sand into his ears. “And you’re the only one to say that.” He sniffed at the palm of his hand and frowned.

Ralph waited patiently. The principal wasn’t drunk. He was in the state that the less politically correct counselors dubbed his “period.” There was no sense in trying to debate him now.

“I am very sick,” Shark volunteered suddenly, staring directly into Ralph’s eyes. “They don’t believe me, but it’s just a question of time.”

Ralph affected concern. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s cancer,” Shark said darkly. “That’s what I suspect.”

“You’ve got to go and have it checked. Might be serious.”

“No use. I prefer to remain in the dark. So that when I’m killed, at least that will save me from a more drawn-out and miserable death. Which is a comfort. A rather cold one.”

“There are different ways of being killed.”

Shark flinched. “No kidding. Are there also different ways of saying nasty things to a terminally ill man, instead of, oh, I don’t know, maybe trying to cheer him up?”

He sat there for a while, looking like he was ready to breathe his last right that moment, then looked at his watch and stirred nervously.

“Oh . . . There’s a game on today. Damn! Forgot all about it!” He jumped up and looked around the office. “Right. Switched off everything. Now only the lights. And the door.”

He searched his pockets.

“Want to go grab a bite?”

“No. The trip took it out of me. I think I’ll turn in early.”

Ralph took the keys proffered to him and turned off the lights. Shark was looking at him proudly.

“It’s good to have you back. We’ll fill you in tomorrow morning. Don’t think your vacation is not going to really cost you in the end.”

“I have no doubt it will.”

Ralph locked the door and returned the key ring to the principal. He jangled it, hunting for the key to his bedroom.

“Why did Noble’s mother take him away?”

“You know already,” Shark said with admiration. “As usual. One foot in the door and already knows everything. I’ve always said you weren’t quite normal. In the best possible sense, of course.”

“So why did she?”

Shark finally located the key and painstakingly separated it from the others.

“Lost confidence in us. We weren’t watching the guy closely enough. That’s how she put it. And something about the climate here being unhealthy. A stunning woman. Hard to argue with her. I didn’t even try.”

“Did she take him home?”

“I don’t know. None of my business. I never asked.”

“She could have switched schools . . . If this one wasn’t good enough for her.”

Near the canteen they were greeted by a piercing bell. Ralph couldn’t help wincing. Shark looked at him disdainfully, like a crusty captain might look at a former sailor long out of practice.

“You’ve gone weak,” he observed. “Weak and lazy. And here’s me holding you up as an example to the youth.”

Still grumbling, he mounted the stairs. Ralph stood there on the landing for a while, watching him go, and then returned to the hallway.

The Sixth was never quiet. Even when all of them were silent, a trained ear could still catch a kind of buzzing, the hum of a spinning engine hidden in the walls. That invisible swarm.

The voices died down as he entered. Hounds spit on the cigarettes, extinguishing them, cascaded down from the windowsills, rolled back toward the chairs, and attempted to switch on the silence. This enabled him to hear the droning: the susurration of their thoughts that never quieted down, since there were always too many of them in this place. The song of the Sixth. They wore bright colors—not quite at the Rat level, but close—assaulting the eye with the splashes of scarlet shirts and emerald-green sweaters. But the walls of the classroom exuded a dull grayish sheen, trapping them in an impenetrable airtight rectangle, so that the windows started to seem like crude drawings stuck on the gray substance.

As soon as he closed the door behind him, he felt how stifling this vacuum was, robbing him of breath and movement. The ceiling hung too low over his head, while the walls moved slowly inward, flowing into the floor and pressing on him with a rubbery colorlessness. They can engulf you completely, trap you like an insect, and then when the next visitor comes you’ll already just be a part of the decoration, a mural indistinguishable from the rest of them, a stuffed specimen of the Sixth.

“I want to speak with the new Leader,” he said. Waited until the bout of coughing from those who choked on the smoke subsided and added, “Or with whoever considers himself to be one.”

They shifted and looked down. All of them in leather dog collars—store bought and handmade, with studs and rivets or decorated with beads. He knew the answer even before anyone spoke. There was no Leader. The Leader of the Sixth was the only one of them not obligated to wear this token of belonging to the pack. Only he could walk around with his neck open. Of course, a collar could have been serving as a kind of disguise, hiding a Leader who didn’t wish to be exposed to outsiders. But not a single Hound even glanced at another, no one became a momentary center of attention. There was no one among them who had taken the place of the late Pompey.

They cringed and studied their hands, as if ashamed of something. What of? That they can’t find anyone to rise above the others? Their headlessness? Their loss?

“There is no Leader,” someone in the back offered. “Haven’t elected him yet.”

“When did Pompey die?” Ralph asked.

“A month ago,” long-faced, bespectacled Laurus said. “A little less than a month.”

“And no elections yet?”

Hounds crouched, exposing the backs of their heads, trying to hide something disgraceful, something that pained them. The quiet hum in the walls grew in intensity. The walls advanced on Ralph, shielding the Sixth, but before the slippery curtain closed in on him . . .

The lamps behind the wire mesh spilling yellow light. The glistening green lake of oily paint, then a scream . . . A dark silhouette writhing on the floor, spraying blood . . .

Then the walls took over, blotting out the flying shards of the vision, discoloring and erasing them. Ralph had seen enough to understand that whatever happened to Pompey, they were all there, the entire pack, and the memory of what they saw, the bitter taste of it still in their mouths, was poisoning their existence. He was now carrying their pain and their fear—of whom, he could not yet see. They were too closed, too resistant to his attempt to understand more fully.

Every pack was built like a ladder. On every step a living soul. If the top step broke, the next one became the top. A headless pyramid immediately grew a new head. This happened everywhere and always, excluding Pheasants, of course. Every pack had not only a first, but also a second. Even Birds, with Vulture being an enormous distance, seventeen unoccupied rungs at least, above everyone else—even Birds had Lizard, ready to take the place of the Leader should anything happen to him. The only way for this order to be broken was to have someone from way below usurp the power. But then he became the Leader himself. The fact that neither of these things had happened with Hounds pointed to a third possibility. And whatever it was, it had nothing in common with the first two. Ralph hadn’t the slightest idea what it could be. I wonder what the gym has to do with all this?

“Curious,” he said.

He only realized how long he’d been standing there thinking about all of this when he saw the darkness outside the windows and felt that the pack had been exhausted by his presence. The more nervous gnawed at their fingers and made faces. The wheelers fidgeted quietly, bringing their sallow faces together. The engine in the walls buzzed in fits and starts. Everything around him was completely gray. The Sixth was stuck in its protective fence, they all now looked as if they were drowning—or had long ago drowned—in a fish tank that hadn’t been cleaned in the last million years.

Ralph went out without saying a word. The Sixth’s relieved exhalation was cut off from him by the door slamming back. It was immediately pushed open again, and the pale visage of Bandar-Log Zit appeared in the crack as he traced Ralph’s steps.

Between the Sixth’s classroom and their bedrooms Ralph moved slowly, reading the walls. Sloughing away the fresh writings like the skin off an onion, revealing old ones, smeared and by now barely visible. Dogs’ heads with collars. The appeal to the “members of the umpire committee” to assemble in the yard on Saturday night. He squinted. There it is. A cat with a human head, crossed out with red paint. A black triangle with a hole through it. An eye inside a spiral, covered in jagged notches. All of them new. Not less than a month old. He looked again to make sure he saw what he saw. The meaning of these symbols was no harder for him to read than his own nick. The cat was Sphinx. The triangle, Black. The spiral with the eye, Blind. All three signs had been used for target practice. That was no coincidence.

Blind was crouching in front of Ralph’s office, tracing invisible circles on the floorboards with his finger. His long black hair fell over his eyes. The knees peeked out of the ripped jeans. He raised his head when he heard the steps. An emaciated figure with colorless eyes, faceless and devoid of a discernible age, like a drifter who had long forgotten the date of his birth. At the same time as he was standing up, he was also getting younger and younger with lightning speed, and when Ralph reached him he was met by a mere boy.

Anyone would have written this off as a trick of light in a dimly lit corridor, a mirage that disappeared when seen up close. Anyone but Ralph.

“Hi,” Ralph said, unlocking the door.

“Hello.”

Ralph let him in and followed.

Blind froze once inside. Ralph had to fight the urge to take him by the hand and lead him to the chair or the sofa. He’s blind, helpless in unfamiliar surroundings, and look at that oversized sweater, the sleeves going down to the tips of his fingers, and those holes at the knees. He closed his eyes, trying to evict the insidious image out of his head. This is the master of the House in front of you, you dummy!

Ralph went to the window and said over his shoulder, “Have a seat.”

And immediately turned around, not sure of what he’d see: a futile search, ineffectual grasping for solid objects in the surrounding emptiness—or a sure swiftness of motion. Ralph wouldn’t have been surprised if Blind were to stay frozen in place, either. Or asked him for help, stumbling over the words. But Blind just did as he was told—sat down where he was standing, cross-legged by the door, and secreted his hands under his armpits.

“I can’t see you this way,” Ralph said, rummaging in the stuff piled on the sofa in search of his cigarettes. “Only the top of your head. How much hair falls on your plate every time you have lunch?”

“I never thought to count,” Blind said. “Is it important?”

“It is slovenly.”

Ralph found the pack, lit a cigarette, and sat on the sofa.

He smoked in silence, allowing Blind to get comfortable. Or uncomfortable. Blind wasn’t moving. It was obvious that he could sit here like this forever. If this is the game you want to play . . . The only thing betraying Ralph was the cigarette; otherwise he had turned into stone as comprehensively as Blind. The ash growing at the end of the cigarette prevented him from disappearing completely. Blind didn’t have any ash to worry about. The bog-green sweater, exposing glimpses of body through its chunky braiding, had turned into parched lizard skin, the cyanotic eyelids folded over the eyes. Blind was no longer there. Ralph imagined that he was entertaining an ancient reptile, or a fancifully turned tree knot, or even a shadow of the knot. Whatever it was could remain motionless for a very long time. Ralph never had enough patience to find out exactly how long.

“Tell me what happened to Wolf. And how it happened.”

Blind immediately flowed back into the boyish persona and eagerly leaned forward.

“He did not wake up. No one knows why.”

Ralph looked at his cigarette, or what was left of it—a column of ash miraculously clinging to the filter.

“Is that all you can say? Try again, please. In more detail this time.”

Blind shook his head.

“We were sleeping,” he said. “In the morning everyone woke up, and he didn’t. He behaved normally the night before, didn’t complain of anything.”

Ralph tried to imagine this.

Strictly speaking, Blind wasn’t lying, but the incongruousness in his words was akin to a lie. Ralph was well aware of the connection they had to each other. It cemented them into packs, it drove the Third to the doors of the hospital wing the night Shadow died. Why were they compelled to come there on that day and at that hour, all of them, even the blockheaded Logs? Was it like a bell tolling, a bell that only they could hear? He’d seen them more than once, the hunched figures by the walls of the Sepulcher. They weren’t smoking or talking, they were just there, sitting quietly. It wasn’t exactly a wake, rather a way of participating in what was unfolding in a place where they couldn’t be. Was it possible that they, who could sense death through thick walls, might not sense it in their own room? That they wouldn’t wake up when one of them was dying?

“He was dying five feet from you and you felt nothing? Nothing was bothering you?”

“It wasn’t even five feet,” Blind countered. “We wouldn’t have been sleeping if we’d felt anything.”

“I see,” Ralph said, getting up. “Why do you think I wanted you to come? Anyone from your group could have told me exactly the same thing. If you’re going to insist on continuing this charade, there’s the door right behind you.”

Blind crouched lower.

“What should I have said so that it’s not a charade? What would you like to hear?”

“I would like to hear what you, the Leader, have to say about a member of your pack not waking up one morning. If I am not mistaken, it is your responsibility to make sure they do wake up. Yours and no one else’s.”

“Strong words,” Blind whispered. “I cannot be responsible for everything that might happen to them.”

“How about knowing why it happened? Or are you not responsible for that either?”

Blind did not answer. As soon as Ralph made a motion toward him, Blind’s posture changed, dissolved in a deceptive softness. A familiar trick. Poor little House kids. This is precisely how some of them react to a perceived threat. And this is exactly when one has to be extra vigilant. Blind relaxed, but his eyes, those clear pools stapled to fair skin, froze. Turned into ice. A chilly, snakelike stare. Blind didn’t know how to hide it.

“If you want to look harmless, get yourself some shades,” Ralph said, surprised at himself.

“The pack becomes nervous if I wear them,” Blind said, his voice tinged with regret. “Sphinx especially. I can’t ignore him.”

“What does he think about Wolf’s death?”

“He tries not to think about it.”

“As far as I know he was rather attached to him, wasn’t he?”

Blind laughed unpleasantly.

“What a strange turn of phrase . . . Attached. Yes, he was. With a steel cable. A very thick one.”

“What happened to this cable that night?”

“I don’t know. And I am not planning to ask him.”

“Are you a heavy sleeper? Would you wake up if someone moaned next to you?”

A shadow of rage flitted across Blind’s face and was gone.

“I would wake up if a mouse scurried next to me. Wolf did not moan. There was no sound from him at all. He had no time to even realize . . .”

“Ah, so that’s how it is!” Ralph straightened up. “Now we’re getting somewhere. How would you know what he did have time for and what he didn’t? To hear you say it, you were fast asleep along with the rest of the pack.”

“I just know. He was also asleep. Or his face wouldn’t have been so peaceful. His fear would have awakened us all. It must have been the most peaceful death in the entire history of the House.”

“If it were Sphinx instead of Wolf, and if I were to tell you of his death using the exact same words you’ve just used to tell me about Wolf’s, would you be satisfied with my story?”

Blind hesitated before answering.

“I don’t know. You’re asking too much of me.”

“Are you glad he died?”

He shouldn’t have said that. Ralph realized it as soon as the words had been spoken. Too late. For a quick couple of seconds Ralph really expected Blind to spit pure poison at him.

“Don’t you think there are things about me that do not concern you? What I feel when someone from my pack dies is my business. Don’t you think?”

Blind closed his eyes, listening to something that only he could hear, and then changed his tone of voice completely.

“I am sorry. I did not mean to offend. If you needed to ask me that, then I owe you an answer.” And then obligingly—Ralph caught that external force, something almost palpable making Blind strip naked in front of him—added, “I was not glad. But there is no one else I’d rather exchange for him. Not one. If this is what interests you. If it’s what you meant when you were talking about me being glad. I am also innocent of his death, if you meant to ask that. And if you meant my dislike of him—yes, that was true. I did not like him. Just as he, me. There were times when I imagined that I would have been glad if he . . .”

“Enough,” Ralph said. “I apologize. That was tactless of me.”

Blind hugged his shoulders. Ralph could not shake off the feeling that he was witnessing Blind being skinned alive. Or having his carapace cracked open. And that Blind was doing it to himself.

“All right,” Ralph said. “Your honesty is even worse than your silence. And if I asked you about Pompey, you’d say that you have no right to be talking about the affairs of the Sixth. Is that correct?”

Blind nodded.

“And you also haven’t the foggiest idea how he died?”

“I do. But I am not allowed to say.”

Ralph sighed.

“Right. So why do you suppose I ask Leaders to come here when I need information? Well, I can tell you, it’s not because I enjoy listening to them brush me off with empty talk. Dismissed. You may leave.”

Blind got up. “You forgot to ask about one more person.”

“I didn’t forget anything. It’s just that I am no longer enjoying this conversation. I’m not in the mood to continue it. Go away.”

Blind did not go anywhere. His face clouded with apprehension, as if he knew he had to undertake a daunting task with no hope of being able to accomplish it.

There, Ralph thought with relief. He’s going to ask for something, and I’ll learn what can make Blind turn himself inside out.

“What do you want to ask me for?” he said.

“Noble. For you to find out something about him. It’s been a month since they’ve taken him, and we haven’t heard anything. Where he is, or how he is.”

Ralph did not answer, trying to hide the astonishment. The nicks on the walls, painted over; the things, distributed; the funeral laments, performed—all this he had seen and heard and known about. Those who left the House were a part of this knowledge, one of the facets he was absolutely sure of. And yet what Blind had just asked for, even the mere mention of someone who was supposed to have ceased existing, to never have existed the moment he was taken from the House, blew that sureness completely out of the water.

Blind waited patiently. Ralph’s cigarette suddenly burned his fingers.

“You’re dismissed,” he repeated. “Go.”

“What about Noble?”

“I said you may go.”

Blind’s face froze. He opened the door and disappeared. Ralph did not hear anything; Blind moved soundlessly.

Ralph remained standing, looking up at the glass panel on top of the door. The letter R, inverted back to front, oozed into the room, a warning and a caution, reminding him that he was but a part of the House.

Maybe that’s the real reason for my return. To find out what happened to one of them now that he’s gone where they can’t reach him. And to bring them the answer . . . They’ve been waiting for me.