The Gray House

GHOST

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Someone’s quiet steps.

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

“I was waiting for the water to boil.”

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

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

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

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

Black stops in midsnore.

“No,” Noble says. “No one’s singing.”

What I’ve done wasn’t a song at all.

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

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

“Where have you come from?” he asks.

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

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

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