The Gray House

THE HOUSE

INTERLUDE

The wind rattled the glass. The roof dripped water. Blind heard the faint tinkling and then Beauty’s sigh as he snuggled in the puddle he’d just made without waking up. Stinker’s nose whistled softly. Blind stalked past the beds, clutching the sneakers wrapped in the blanket to his chest. Siamese, side by side in their bed, lay in the exact same pose, down to the clenched fists. Wolf, on the top bunk, hugged the guitar. When he tossed and turned in his sleep, the strings thrummed. The room was full of phantoms. Blind heard them all. Each one was like a clear song to him.

Sleeping Beauty was dwarfed by the snowcapped mountain of the enormous juice maker. It worked continuously, spewing forth multicolored cascades smelling of fruit. The torrents whirled around Beauty’s bed, ushering it into the orange ocean, and the meager puddle of urine was lost in that kingdom of juice, utterly insignificant.

Over Magician’s bed a masked man rustled his star-studded cape, the master of top hats and swimsuit-clad women sawn in half. The squalls of applause from the unseen audience made the other ghosts startle.

Elephant slept silently, like a small hill under the stars. There was a whispering susurration from the top bunks: Humpback’s parents dropped in for a visit, faceless figures in bright clothes. Blind never listened to their conversations. Up there were only them and Wolf’s nightmares: dark labyrinthine corridors, sucking him further and further into their emptiness, and the heavy steps thundering behind. Wolf whined, and the guitar, anchored to the headboard, answered softly, soothing him.

Blind passed the phantom of the juice maker and stopped. From the direction of Grasshopper’s bed came the velvet drawl of that senior girl: “Listen to me. When you grow up you’re going to be like Skull. I know, for I am Witch.”

Blind took a step forward, stumbled over someone’s shoe, and the dream phantoms vanished, spooked by the noise. He pushed the door and found himself in the anteroom. The floor was cold against his heels. He put on the sneakers and went out into the hallway.

He walked lightly in his rumpled clothes, trailing the edge of the blanket after him like a cape blotting out his footprints. Stopping in one particular place, he plucked a piece of wet, crumbly plaster off the wall and ate it. Then another one, unable to resist. His dirty face was now spotted white. He walked past senior dorms and classrooms, went up the stairs and through the counselors’ hallway, dry and clean; walls here didn’t have cracks, were not a source of plaster. A television droned behind one of the doors, and Blind lingered, listening to it. At last he came to Elk’s door. Pushed down the handle gently, assuming a savage crouch, ready to bolt at the slightest sound. The door opened, and he entered, feeling the way ahead with his hand to prevent himself from banging into the bathroom door, but it was securely closed. He quietly crossed to the bedroom door and leaned against it, taking in the silence and the barely audible breathing of the one sleeping inside. Blind listened, at first standing up, then squatting down. He was listening to the soft song that was whispering to him: “He is fine, he is sleeping, his sleep is dreamless.” Then he spread the blanket and lay down by the door, a watcher, a protector of that sleep. No one knew about this, and no one was supposed to know. He was oblivious to the sliver of light under the door, of course, but his sleep was mindful, and when there was a cough and a groan of bedsprings on the other side of the door he shot up like a dog hearing someone’s footsteps. The sound of a match being lit, the rustle of pages. Blind listened.

He read for quite a while. Read and smoked. Then the springs groaned again, released of the weight, and slippers shuffled to the door. Blind flew away under the coatrack. The coat and the rain jacket pressed together, hiding him and the crumpled blanket. Elk went to the bathroom without noticing anything. Back the same way, the click of the light switch. The door slammed shut. Blind emerged from his hiding place, returned to his former spot, put the blanket down, and lay back. He placed his head on top of an open palm and fell asleep. His dreams were clear that night.

The first thing Siamese Rex did when he went down to the yard was to check the traps. There were three, and two of them he’d constructed himself. But this time the one that worked was the third one, even though he’d placed the least hope on it. The concrete hole. It was unclear who had built it and what for, but it sure made for a nice trap. Rex baited it by throwing fish entrails down and then camouflaged it with pieces of lumber. He couldn’t check on it every day because of the rains, but he did visit it from time to time. The smell of the entrails grew stronger each day. Finally he heard a rustle and low growling when he passed by.

He crept to the edge of the hole, got on all fours, and peeked under the plank. The stench of rotted fish hit him full in the face. A ginger cat, ragged, dirty, and wet, arched its back and hissed at him. Rex whistled excitedly and toddled away. When he returned, his pockets were full of stones. The cat must have figured what was in store for it and attempted to jump out. Rex shot it down with a piece of brick. Then he proceeded to toss the rest of his haul. The planks interfered with his aim, and most of the stones missed the target. Rex was afraid that the cat would either bolt or start screaming. The cat was indeed yelping now, drawing attention to itself. Rex was slow to notice Lame, and once he did it was useless to pretend that he’d just happened near the hole by accident.

Lame, the hunchback with golden curls, an unpleasant stare, and a twisted leg, was one of Skull’s people.

“Having fun?” he said, stopping next to Rex and looking down into the hole.

The cat was frantic, throwing itself against the smooth concrete walls. It might have gotten out if not for the injured paw. Three legs were not enough for the jump.

“Get the animal out,” Lame said, lighting up.

Siamese started to back away. Lame grabbed him by the scruff of the neck.

“I can’t. It’s too deep. If I take the planks away it’ll get out by itself.”

Lame didn’t say anything. Rex began to take off the lumber. Once the last plank was gone, he looked back at Lame.

“Get it out,” Lame repeated indifferently. “Before I throw you in.”

Rex leaned forward and made a plaintive purring sound, but the cat did not respond. It was hiding somewhere. Siamese sighed and slithered into the hole. He was afraid to jump. Because of the leg.

Lame stood right at the edge. Rex shot him a glance, saw the evil slit of the lipless mouth, closed his eyes, and crashed down to the bottom of the hole.

The cat went completely berserk. It took to the walls, mewling and scrabbling for purchase. Rex felt the leg, making sure it was intact, and then tried to grab the protesting cat.

“It scratched me!”

“Get it out,” the implacable voice said again.

The cat drew zigzags in the air around Rex. He tried to catch it by the tail. It doubled over with a muffled yelp, claws out, then jumped on Rex’s head and out of the hole, leaving ginger hairs in his hands. Its scream trailed off in the direction of the garage and then ascended to the sky.

Rex crouched, waiting. His scratched face and hands smarted. At first he saw only the sky above him, but then Lame appeared, surrounded by his golden halo of hair, in a striped blazer the color of mustard. He was holding a piece of brick. Siamese stared at it in horror.

“Let’s play,” Lame said. “You’re going to be the cat, and I’m going to be you. It’s a great game. Ready?”

He flung the brick down. Rex gasped and shielded his head.

“Isn’t that fun?” Lame said. “But if I were you I’d try to duck instead. Or you might get hit, you know.”

He tossed two more stones and then yanked Siamese out by the collar. Reeking of fish, limp as a rag, Siamese sagged in his hands, eyes closed. But as soon as Lame lowered him to the ground, Rex perked up and dashed toward the House sideways, like a crab. Lame gave him one last look and sat down on the plank, smoking and dropping the ash down into the hole.

The boys of the Poxy room were playing catch with the boxing glove. The radio screamed. Magician covered the hamster with his top hat, then pulled the hat back and sighed sadly. The hamster, still not used to the top hat, was gorging itself on potato peel to calm its nerves. Siamese Max, wearing a polka-dot shirt, was sitting on the windowsill, pressing his nose and lips against the glass and looking fretfully down at the yard. He was worried. So worried that he was ready to throw up.

“Blind went away somewhere in the night again,” Stinker said, hugging the glove he’d just caught. “Where, I wonder?”

“If you’re so curious, go follow him sometime and see for yourself,” Wolf suggested.

The glove smacked him in the jaw, and he swatted it away.

“I was going to,” Stinker said. “Except he’d hear me. So there wouldn’t be any sense in my doing it.”

“Leave the poor rodent alone,” Humpback said to Magician. “Can’t you see, it’s eating like crazy because of you?”

“That means it’s working,” Magician enthused. “It must be eating to put on some extra weight, because it’s afraid of disappearing!”

Siamese Rex came in, covered in dirt and scratches, steeped in the stink of rotted fish. He stumbled to the bed and lay on it, face to the wall, without even glancing at his brother.

I knew it, Max thought miserably. Something happened to him down there. Something bad.

Sissies tactfully avoided asking questions. Hamster, free of the attention, sneaked under the bed. Wolf started drawing a tattoo on his cheek.

Siamese lay very quietly. The only part of him that was moving was his hand, scratching words into the wall with a razor: DEATH TO LAME. Max came closer and looked over his shoulder.

The House was awake. The teachers and counselors might have been sleeping, the dogs and the television, but not the House. From its bowels, from right under its roots, music emerged, seeping through the walls and ceilings, making the House tremble slightly. The nexus was in the basement.

The dark figures of Poxy Sissies crawled along the dark hallways. Magician’s crutch thumped softly. Elephant huffed, burdened by the weight of Stinker on his shoulders. The cavalcade of white nightgowns proceeded down the stairs. They opened the front door and went out into the yard, blackened by the moonless night. Still in lockstep they stole closer to the basement windows and sat down on the ground next to them. Then lay flat. The basement had been turned into a bar, and the seniors were going wild down there. The windows flashed orange and green, the glass vibrated to the jumps of the dancers. It was a crazy kaleidoscope with human silhouettes whirling inside. The boys looked in breathlessly.

There was only one thing more awesome than the seniors’ fights, and that was their entertainment. Beer benders, otherworldly dances of the glued together, wheelchair waltzes, and the wild, screeching music. Who knew how and where they got it from. Sissies peered intently into the low windows, desperate to prove to themselves and each other that they could see something there, even though nothing could be discerned apart from the changing lights. But they were free to get both deaf and blind, and to die of envy. They lay with their noses patiently stuck to the cold grating, blinked in unison with the flashes, and after some time started to truly believe that they did see something.

Grasshopper, wedged between Siamese and Magician, inhaled the colors: now orange, now green, white, blue . . . and the wailing music. Every time the song rose to a high-pitched squeal he expected that, right at that moment, accompanied by the din and clatter of this beautiful orgy, a senior girl would burst out of the basement window astride a broom and soar into the black sky, trailing sparks and unbridled laughter. It would be Witch, of course.

“I GOT TO RAMBLE, OH, YEAH, BABY, BABY!” the song shrieked.

She would leave a jagged hole in the glass, and then everyone else would fly out of that hole. They would glide down to the ground and then spike right up—one, then another, and another, streaming along the ragged clouds, turning into laughing demons as they went. And the only thing left of them in this world would be their amulets on torn strings. That’s what the song was about. The seniors swayed, jerked, flamed in different colors, but remained rooted to the floor. They could not fly away, the basement was holding them, tethering them to itself. There was no one to break the glass for them.

“OOH, BABY, BABY!” The song was ringing in Grasshopper’s ears. The colors flashed. Orange! Green! White! Blue!

His breath was ragged in the throat, his mouth open, he was coiled like a spring.

“IT’S CALLIN’ ME!” Green! White!

Grasshopper gasped, turned over on his back, and kicked out with his feet as hard as he could, right at the glass. It rained shards, and then Grasshopper was lifted bodily from both sides and hauled away, but not before freeing his legs, stuck in the grating. After just a few steps he managed to spring up and run with the others, even ahead of the others, because the song continued to scream at him: “OOH! OOH! OOH!” Except now it urged them to flee. They flew up the stairs, with him still in front, and thundered down the hallway, tripping and chortling loudly. The three lame among them imagined that they were racing the wind, the two hauling the third thought that they were really fast, and even the largest one, huffing miserably behind, was sure he was running. And all of them heard the clatter of the hot pursuit on their heels. They burst into the dorm, crashed on the beds, and burrowed inside, the way lizards disappear in the sand. The suppressed laughter was trying to get out of them. Then there wasn’t a stir anywhere, except for the shoes being taken off under the covers. The first shoe hit the floor, then another and another, and every time they froze and listened. But everything was quiet. No one chased after them, no one came in to check if they were really sleeping. Taming their breaths, they pretended to be asleep until they got tired of it, then slowly, one by one, climbed down from the beds and crawled to the middle of the room, the place where the invisible fire was always lit in their cave, surrounding it in a barefoot semicircle.

“What did you do that for?” Magician asked.

“They dropped me,” Stinker squeaked. “Twice! One time was on the stairs. I could have fallen to my death.”

Elephant just shuddered, sucking his thumb.

“I wanted to let them out,” Grasshopper explained. “So they could fly.”

The hands of the Poxy Sissies, dirty from the asphalt and the rusty grates, reached out to feel him.

“Hey. Are you all right?”

“It all comes from the fuzzy looking,” Humpback said. “I knew it.”

“Someone had to let them out,” Grasshopper said. “Set them free. That’s what the song was about.”

He fell silent, straining to hear the song again across the two floors dividing them. But it felt different now, like someone just listening to music in the distance. No one was calling him to action.

“I’d give anything,” one of the Siamese moaned, “to be grown up now. And to be there. Like them. Why do we have to grow so slowly?”

“I saw him. Skull,” Magician bragged.

“No you didn’t,” Wolf said. “You’re just making it up.”

Beauty was hugging the juice maker.

“It was . . . It was like juice,” he said dreamily. “Like it was all covered in juice. Orange. And then strawberry. And then I don’t know what kind.”

“As soon as my letters get there, we’ll have all of that too,” Stinker said. “Dancing at night. Big deal. They just guzzle beer and scream. Some entertainment. We’ll do loads better.”

“You can still hear them,” Wolf said. “Down there. Maybe they didn’t even notice that busted glass. Or maybe they don’t care when they’re having fun like that.”

“Let’s have fun too,” Humpback suggested.

“We haven’t got girls,” Grasshopper said. “Or the basement. Or the record player with the stereo system. But once we get all that, we’re not going to just shuffle in place. We’ll fly away.”

“Right.” Stinker nodded. “You’re going to kick out the glass for us, and we’ll just soar into the sky. In white nightgowns. Like ghosts! You gave your word, so remember that.”

“No one is going to make me wear a nightgown, ever,” Humpback grumbled. “Not when I’m grown up. Just let them try . . .”

Grasshopper edged along the wall, constantly stepping in the piles of sawdust. Pearlescent smoke permeated the café; clouds of it drifted from table to table. Music oozed from the speakers. The seniors were in conversation mode, elbows spread on the table mats, heads close together, smoke curling out of nostrils. He stole by them silently and found a corner between the switched-off television and the fake palm tree. There he crouched down and froze, letting his gaze wander among the tables.

Those actually were classroom desks with tablecloths on top. The ashtrays took over for the pencil holders. The seniors had thought up this café themselves, and designed all the furniture. The counter they made out of crates covered in fabric. Behind the counter, Gibbon, a long-limbed senior, tended to the sizzling, spitting coffeepots, juggled sugar bowls, cups, and spoons, poured, mixed, whipped, and arranged his creations on the waiting trays.

The audience on the slender-legged stools placed all along the counter observed him rapturously. They leaned on it, wiggled corduroy-clad bottoms on the mushroom seats, teased the half-moon coffee stains with their fingers, raided the sugar bowls. Those were the delights available to the walkers. Wheelers had to make do with the tables.

A cardboard monkey on a string hung from the palm branch over Grasshopper’s head. He looked at it. Then looked back at the seniors. The speakers on the walls hissed idly. There, in the distance, among the clouds of smoke behind the counter, Gibbon wiped his hands on the bar towel and changed the record. Grasshopper buried his chin in his knees and closed his eyes. This was not the song. But he believed. Believed that if he sat here quietly, not going anywhere, they’d put the song back on.

The windows darkened gradually. Most of the tables were already occupied. The seniors’ voices droned in the background, dissolving into one rustling stream. This song danced, clanking the tin cans and squeaking from time to time. It was like a conga line of cheerful people, wiggling their hips, stomping in the sand, and shaking tambourines.

Grasshopper took in the smells of coffee and smoke. Could it be that coffee was the potion that made you a grown-up? That if you drank it you became an adult? That’s what Grasshopper thought. Life had its own laws, they were innate, not invented, and one of them was about coffee and those who drank it. First they let you have coffee. Then, as a result, they stop insisting that you go to bed at a certain hour. No one actually lets you smoke, but there’s not letting and then there’s not letting. Which is why there aren’t any seniors who don’t smoke, and only one junior who does. Seniors who smoke and drink coffee become very excitable, and next thing you know they’re allowed to turn a lecture hall into a bar and not sleep at night. And to skip breakfast. And it all started with coffee.

Grasshopper, still with chin between knees, closed his eyes drowsily. The cardboard monkey swung on its cord. Someone tossed a beer can in the air and caught it again. A web of cracks ran down the windowpane. Rain. The rumble of thunder crowded out the music. Those at the tables laughed and looked at the windows. Gibbon wiped down the counter.

Grasshopper waited patiently.

The dancing people were still drumming and singing, relentlessly vivacious, alien—to the rain, the dusk, the faces at the tables. Only the smell of coffee was in tune with them, and the fake palm. Why is it that no one hears how out of place it is here? Them and their sunny songs? Finally, with the last shake of the hips and the last rattle of the tambourines, the dancers departed, to Grasshopper’s relief, leaving behind only an empty rustle, like the crackling of a dying fire. That soft sound was soon drowned out, as the rain took over.

Gibbon changed the record again. A guitar lick, overlaid on the rain. Grasshopper perked up and raised his head. The voice he recognized immediately, as soon as it came in. It was a different song, but the voice was the same voice that had screamed at him from the basement. Grasshopper sat up straight. The voice whispered and moaned over the tables and the heads of the seniors. The setting sun pushed aside the streaming water and the low clouds, and the room turned to purple and gold. It didn’t matter that this wasn’t the song. Grasshopper was sure that he knew this one too, had always known it. Knew it like he knew himself, like something that always had been, that he and everyone else needed in order to simply go on existing. This was the café, not the basement, but the voice kept on calling. Inviting to come with it, out into the wall of the rain. Where? No one could know. And there was no need to break the glass this time. Just step out through it, parting it like water, then through the rain, and up from there. The tables dissolved in the music, leaving only the checkered puzzle of the tablecloths. Time stopped. Rain beat out the drum solo on the faces and hands. Then the purple faded, the gold melted. Only Grasshopper’s hair still flamed in the dark corner.

That song came to an end, but the voice on the record had others. More magic for those who knew how to listen. Grasshopper listened until Gibbon changed the record, and it had a different voice, one that couldn’t make him recognize it. The heads of the seniors resumed their swaying, the fingers busied themselves with glasses and ashtrays. A cat with a glossy back slinked under the tables, mewling pitifully, and got a cigarette and a mint thrown down for its troubles. Grasshopper sighed. This new song didn’t even have coffee people in it. It didn’t have anything. Only a shrill woman.

Two girls wearing bright-red lipstick wheeled away from their table. One of them picked up the cat and cradled it. Someone turned the light on, and there was a short burst of switches clicking. Lights under green umbrella shades were coming on everywhere. The woman was singing about being dumped. Two songs in a row now.

Grasshopper got up, separating himself from the wall and the warm nook behind the television. The palm tree swayed. The monkey turned its empty, unpainted side to him. He threaded his way between the tables, a white streak in the cloud of smoke. An underwater kingdom of green shades and green faces. He went to the counter and asked a question.

The seniors leaned down from the mushroom stools and said, “What was that?” Gibbon, in his white apron, regarded him from above like he was something not worthy of attention.

Grasshopper repeated the question. The faces of the seniors scowled sarcastically. Gibbon took out a marker, scribbled something on a napkin, and placed it on the edge of the counter.

“Read this,” he said.

Grasshopper looked at the words.

“Led Zeppelin,” he said timidly. “Where is it led?”

The seniors sneered.

“Everywhere! It’s made of lead, dummy!”

Grasshopper blushed.

“Why?”

“To better smash the windows with,” Gibbon said indifferently, and they broke out laughing again.

The laughter chased Grasshopper out, burning with shame, but not before he stashed the wad of the napkin in the grip of the prosthetic.

How did they know? Who told them?

Across the walls of the Poxy room, animals were flying. Goblin lurked in wait, ready to ambush an unwary stranger. Grasshopper sat down in front of the nightstand with the typewriter and relaxed his grip. The napkin wasn’t there. The not-quite-hand could not make a proper fist. Grasshopper shut his eyes tightly, then opened them and rattled out the words that he remembered even without the aid of the napkin. Then pulled out the sheet of paper and stuffed it in his pocket. He was upset. By the zeppelin. Because he didn’t understand what a zeppelin could possibly have to do with it. They were bulky and unwieldy, and they’d been extinct for a long time. And also because the seniors knew about the glass. About him breaking it.

“The most hurtful thing,” he said, “is that it was one of you who told them.”

“What?” Humpback said, leaning down from his bunk.

“Nothing,” Grasshopper said. “Whoever did it heard me.”

Beauty was wearing a paper crown with rounded edges. His smile was missing a tooth. Stinker, in a crown exactly like Beauty’s, also grinned, but with inquisitive anticipation. His smile was abundantly toothy. One of the Siamese was cutting pictures out of a magazine. He raised his icy stare at Grasshopper and turned back to clicking the scissors.

“Who said what to who?” Stinker blurted out. “And who was supposed to hear?”

Humpback leaned over again.

“About the glass,” Grasshopper said. “That it was me who broke it. The seniors know.”

“It wasn’t me,” Stinker protested. “I’m blameless. Never, not to a single soul!”

Siamese yawned. Humpback shifted angrily under the covers.

Elephant was fiddling bashfully with the pocket of his overalls.

“I told them. That Grasshopper . . . wanted to let them out. Very much. Was very upset. So I told them.”

“Who?” Stinker said, shifting the crown askew and picking at his ear. “Who did you tell?”

“Them,” Elephant said waving his hand vaguely. “That tall one. He asked. And also the other one, he was standing there too. Was that wrong? They weren’t angry.”

Elephant’s guileless blue gaze sought out Siamese, and his thumb moved in the direction of his mouth.

“Was that wrong?”

Siamese sighed.

“How hard did you get it?” he asked.

“I didn’t,” Grasshopper said, approaching Stinker and nodding at a pocket. “Take this out, please. I wrote something, for your letters. For you to mention.”

Stinker tugged at the pocket, snatched out the sheet, and peered into the words, then brought them right under his nose and sniffed greedily.

“Wow,” he said. “I’d say . . . You think that would be useful to have around?”

Humpback climbed down, took the paper from Stinker, and read it too.

“Zeppelin? What’s that mean?”

“I could, of course, write that a poor paralyzed baby is desperately into the lighter-than-air craft,” Stinker drawled dreamily. “No problem at all. But how can we be sure they’ll understand it correctly?”

“That’s the name of the song,” Grasshopper said. “Or the band. I’m not sure. That’s if Gibbon wasn’t trying to pull a joke on me.”

“We’ll find out,” Stinker said, putting away the paper. “And then it’s going on the list.”

Elephant trampled heavily to Grasshopper’s side, right over the magazine cuttings.

“I want a crown too,” he whined, pointing at Beauty. “With pointy bits, like this one.”

Stinker handed over his crown.

Elephant quickly put his hands behind his back.

“No! Like this one. Beautiful!”

Humpback took the crown off Beauty’s head and slapped it over Elephant’s. He had to push it down a bit to make sure it didn’t fall off. Elephant went back, beaming and holding very straight.

“No bawling this time,” Humpback said happily. “We’re in luck.”

Elephant sat on the bed and felt around his head gingerly.