SMOKER
The hallway is flooded with the bluish dusk and that familiar scent—of what, I wonder. Plaster? Damp? Rain puddles? I clutch tighter at my skinny bag, containing a change of underwear, a drawing pad, and a box of paints. Also the diary. It is only two days old, but the first entry is backdated by a week. I am going to use this notebook to let R One know of my impressions. Which means I’m a snitch. I am having a hard time coming to grips with that thought. I will write what I see and hear, and he will read my scribblings after fishing the diary out of the trash bin in the common bathroom. And put it back there once he’s done.
He’s probably feeling uneasy right now as well, even if he doesn’t show it. Not that I can see his face. He hasn’t let a single word slip about our agreement, and that’s for the best, because I’d hate it if he started talking about it now.
I am looking very closely at my bag.
We roll past someone’s legs and they jump back to the wall quickly, out of our way. The Crossroads floats by. Monkey the Bandar-Log flies out of the door of the Second and rolls on the floor, screeching indignantly. Then he sees us, springs up, says “Oh wow!” and dashes back in the room. I’m only seeing this out of the corner of my eye, since my gaze is firmly planted on the bag.
Finally we stop. Ralph wheels me around and bangs on the door. The sound makes me flinch.
“’S not locked!” the familiar testy voice answers.
I take a deep breath, but don’t have time to let it out before Ralph uses me to swing the door open. He does in fact use his hand to push it, but I still get an impression that it is me.
The first three days in the Sepulcher flew by quickly. First I was sharing the room with Lizard and Monkey, then with Monkey and Genepool. In the end it was Viking from the Second and his dislocated finger. And then I was the only one left, and that made me realize that having roommates is better than not having them. Even when they’re noisy, play cards around the clock, spit all over the place, and constantly clog the only toilet around.
Once I was left alone I had no defense against sinister thoughts. When, after a routine physical, you’re suddenly told that you’ll be staying in the Sepulcher, “no arguments,” not even allowed to drive over and get your things, it’s not that scary by itself. But when, in a week’s time, still no one is in the mood to explain anything, you start suspecting that your days are really numbered, that you won’t be getting out of here alive. So I was preparing for the worst.
Then I got a visit from R One. That wasn’t a surprise; after all, he was now my counselor. If anything, he could have considered coming earlier.
He sat in the only chair in the room, the “doctor” chair, and crossed his legs. He was holding some kind of package in his hands.
“Well, how’re you feeling?” he said.
“All right,” I said. “Can’t complain.”
“That’s good,” he said. “Anyone visit you here?”
“Black,” I said. “Also Noble, twice.”
R One perked up.
“Noble? That’s interesting.”
“Not really,” I said.
Noble would present me with a packet of gummy bears, say “How’s it going,” and go over to my neighbors’ beds to play blackjack with them. I always thought that if you came to visit someone who’s sick it would be nice to at least have a conversation with them, but apparently Noble had a different opinion. I think the fact of my existence went right out of his head as soon as he handed me the candy.
Now Black, he behaved like a human being was supposed to. Gave me the rundown on the latest news, told me to hold on, and even tried to pump the Spiders for any information regarding my condition. Not that he managed to find out anything, but I was grateful even for the thought. And one time he brought me some tomato salad that he’d made himself, reducing me almost to tears.
I certainly wasn’t about to explain any of that to Ralph. All I said was that Noble’s visits were not really interesting. Which was the truth.
“You would probably like to know why you’re stuck here?” R One asked.
“Of course. Everyone keeps telling me about blood work, but they never did any tests other than the one after which they made me stay. And why couldn’t they go back and recheck that first one? That’s what I don’t understand.”
I suddenly grew very agitated. Because it dawned on me that R One, being my counselor, might have gotten an insight, been told something that no one was telling me.
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” he said. “You’re perfectly healthy.”
I gawked at him.
“You’re here on my orders,” he said. “I asked them to hold you in for a while.”
I still didn’t ask anything. I guess I was too surprised. By the way he was saying that. He was very calm when admitting to these things. To making me think who knows what. I’d been preparing to die because of what he did.
“I had a call from your father,” R One said. “He said that you’d asked not to be taken away. That you wanted to stay until graduation. When did you talk to him?”
“The night after the meeting. I used the phone in the staff room. Someone showed me how to get inside.”
He just nodded, as if he knew that already without my explanations.
“So, you’re curious about the graduation?” he said. “You’d like to see it for yourself?”
I didn’t answer. I try not to answer stupid questions. If I didn’t want to stay, I wouldn’t be calling home asking not to be taken away.
Ralph turned the left side of his face to me for the first time in this visit, and I saw that he had a huge shiner there. It cheered me up that somebody had given him a good one. A sincere one. Broke the skin on the cheekbone, even.
“I am also curious about the graduation,” he said. “I’d like to have some more information about what’s going on in the House. At this particular moment.”
It finally dawned on me what he was driving at. I didn’t let on, though. I made a quizzical face, as if I didn’t understand.
He was looking straight at me, and he had these eyes like it wasn’t him who had said what he’d just said. Honest and earnest. You’d never guess that a man with eyes like that would be trying to make you into a snitch.
“Stop the charade,” he said. “You got my meaning.”
“Was it the previous snitching candidate who scratched you?”
He felt the shiner with his finger and said that he didn’t want to quarrel with me. That was how he put it.
“I also don’t want to quarrel with anyone. So why don’t you tell me up front what’s going to happen to me if I refuse? So that I know.”
I was sure he’d tell me that I was going to be stuck here in the Sepulcher until graduation. That really was worse than being sent home, because it was much more dull. But apart from that, he didn’t have anything else with which to threaten me.
He stood up. Took a thick notebook out of his package, put it on my bed, and went over to the window. Looked out, then came back.
“Nothing is going to happen to you,” he said. “Either way you’ll be discharged tomorrow.”
I couldn’t understand what the catch was. That didn’t sound threatening at all.
“What would be the point of me agreeing to snitch, then?” I said. “For the sheer joy of it?”
He was silent for a while. Then sat back on the chair. Took the notebook and thumbed through it. It was completely blank.
“I’m not very good at stories,” he said. “But I’d like to tell you the story of the last graduation. And the one before that. If, after hearing them, you still refuse to help me, I’m not going to insist. You’ll go back to the Fourth and try to forget we ever had this conversation.”
He didn’t ask if I agreed to listen. Simply started to talk. Without going into detail, pointedly detached and tedious, but it made what he was talking about even scarier. Like an article in the paper—no emotions, just facts.
“Is that true?” I said when he finished.
I already knew that it was. It was all true. I saw Blind kill Pompey. I saw Red on the night when they tried to kill him. And I saw how everyone reacted, or rather did not react, in both cases. I knew that no one in the House called Blind a murderer, because no one thought of him that way. Except me. No one stopped talking to him, no one felt uneasy being next to him. I made myself look like an idiot when I refused to put on his shirt the night of the murder. A lot of things that were beyond the pale for me, they took completely in stride. So yes, I believed that those who had been here before them, who were a bit like them, really could massacre each other in the grand finale of their Great Game. I haven’t abandoned that word, just acknowledged that the Game is not a game, that it is for real, and a “for real” ending for it would probably look something like what Ralph described.
“It is true,” he said.
And then asked if I kept a diary.
Everyone kept a diary in the First. Reading them must have been even more of a chore than writing in them.
I said that I still had my old diary, but I only used it for drawing.
“You can draw in this,” he said. “Except you’ll have to write some too. No one would be surprised when they see that you picked up the diary again in the Sepulcher. It can be pretty boring in here.”
“But I haven’t agreed yet,” I said.
“No?” He felt his cheekbone again. “And here’s me thinking that I was reasonably persuasive.”
I took his notebook.
I am sitting in my old place, between Tabaqui and Noble. The lights are out, the boombox is moaning on the other end of the bed, and everyone’s silent. That’s how it’s been for two hours already. Maybe that’s a silent Fairy Tale Night. How would I know? Or are they all simply enjoying the music? It’s better not to ask questions, because either you’re one with the pack and know everything about everything, or you aren’t and you don’t, in which case you’re just getting on everyone’s nerves.
So I am dutifully listening to the music, admiring the blinking red lights of the boombox, and smoking. I’ve already smoked more this evening than in all of my days in the Sepulcher combined.
One of the indistinct shadows slinking around the bed sits down next to me.
“How are you feeling, Smoker?”
It’s Blind. Unusually courteous.
“All right. I mean, pretty good,” I say.
“What happened to you, exactly? If you don’t mind, of course.”
I do, that’s the problem.
“My parents asked them to run a full checkup on me,” I say. “Since classes are over and there’s going to be no exams. And I had this low blood count, so . . .”
At that moment someone switches on the lights. When I open my eyes, everything I was planning to say goes right out of my head.
Because this is my first good look at Blind after my return from the Sepulcher and he looks like someone enthusiastically took a sander to him. To his cheeks, his chin, his neck. In short, it’s me who should be asking how he’s feeling, not the other way around. Which I don’t, of course. I collect the tattered remains of my thoughts and pick up the story about the blood count, but Blind gets up in the middle of the sentence and leaves. As in leaves the room. If he didn’t care about getting an answer, why ask at all? Or is it that he suddenly remembered he was contagious? I light up again, to calm the nerves.
Noble closes his eyes as he yawns and doesn’t open them again. The yawn bounces off him and goes around the room, alighting on the faces. When it reaches me it multiplies, spawning an entire clutch. Must be the nerves. I yawn and I yawn, until my eyes start to water. Through the curtain of tears I look at Sphinx. He’s down on the floor, sitting propped up against the door of the wardrobe. For him to inquire about my health would be too much of a bother. But he is, in fact, looking back at me. With that faraway look that Humpback calls “fuzzy.” When you’re the target of the “fuzzy” there’s always the feeling of a draft somewhere. You’re just lying there, smoking, and there’s all this cold air streaming over you mercilessly.
I decide that I’ve had enough of the yawning and shivering, and ask, “What happened to Blind? Allergy?”
Tabaqui lazily puts away the knitting needle he’s been using to excavate his ear.
“Actually, it’s the Lost Syndrome,” he says. “But you can call it allergy if you’d like.”
I wait.
He also waits. For my questions.
He doesn’t get them, so he picks up the needle again.
“LS is this thing that only we can get. The House people. If we suddenly find ourselves in the Outsides and get lost there. They say it’s a mark the House puts on its own. On those who have no business being in the Outsides.”
I fall for it hook, line, and sinker, and open my mouth to beg him for the details, but Noble is quicker.
“That’s new,” he says, frowning. He had to open his eyes for this, and he’s not happy about it. “You never told me about this.”
“You never asked.” Jackal shrugs. “Or you’d get the same answer.”
Noble furrows his brow, assembling a spider’s web of creases on his forehead. An ominous sign for anyone familiar with his habits. But not for Tabaqui.
“I personally witnessed LS only twice. One time was when Bison went chasing some Outsides kid who was teasing him and then couldn’t find his way back, and the other when Wolf sleepwalked out of the House and something out there woke him up suddenly. All other cases I know are hearsay. Spiders have their own opinion about it, and if anyone’s interested they can drive over and ask them, but I wouldn’t bother. They’ll just present you with a booklet saying, ‘If you have a cat allergy stay away from cats,’ and what do cats have to do with it, or where have they seen an allergy that looks like that, it’s useless even to ask, they’re not going to answer anyway.”
“Wait,” I interrupt Tabaqui’s soliloquy. “How did Blind end up in the Outsides? Does he sleepwalk too? What happened to him?”
“Ralph happened to him,” Tabaqui sniggers. “This is the most heartrending story of the last six months, believe you me. I couldn’t even bring myself to make a song about it, I was so scared.”
He holds a cruel pause before continuing.
“Imagine, if you will, Smoker, one fine day, or rather night, good old Ralph, whom we all held to be a person of certain decency and composure, bursts in, grabs our Leader, and whisks him out of the House. And then, somewhere in the depths of the Outsides, conducts a cruel interrogation. I’d even say torture. Because LS is a very scratchy thing. And when you give in and start scratching it, it’s a very bloody thing.”
I look back at Sphinx. Should I believe Tabaqui or not? Sphinx shrugs. Signs point to yes is how I read it, so I turn back to Jackal, who can’t be stopped now, even by a direct shotgun blast.
“You are going to ask, what could have prompted this barbarity, this inhuman violation of the human rights of our Leader? And I am going to answer: I don’t know. Because Ralph’s true motives have remained a mystery to us. The stated reason was the resignation of counselor Godmother. The girls had her for a while. So she resigned and left, and R One imagined for some reason that we were somehow involved in this, risible as it may seem. We didn’t even know her that well.”
“Then why would he think . . .”
“Exactly,” Tabaqui says. “Why would he?”
“If she only worked with the girls . . .”
“Exactly. That’s what I’ve been saying!”
“But could it . . .”
“It couldn’t!”
I finally blow up.
“Are you going to let me finish the question?”
“No! I mean, of course.”
“Her car was found a couple of blocks from here,” Sphinx joins in. “Then it turned out that no one has seen her since she left the House. So now she’s officially listed as missing.”
“Where does Blind figure in all that?”
“Go ask Ralph.”
“Once a nutter, always a nutter,” Tabaqui summarizes. “I guess he just needed an excuse to torment someone. That’s what nutters do.”
I stealthily pull my bag closer. My snitching diary is in there. Could it be I’m working for a madman now? Or did they really do something to that woman? But hard as I try, I can’t think of a reason why they would. Tabaqui’s right, Blind and the girlie counselor don’t mix. Maybe it was the girls who did something to her?
I lower my head so that no one can see my face and hunt for the cigarette pack in my pocket. When I light up I immediately break out coughing. Should have quit long ago.
That’s the House for you. In all its splendor. You sit staring at the wall. Or the ceiling. Listening to music, or not listening. Going crazy with boredom and chain-smoking to have at least something to distract you. While at the same time Leaders roam around covered in bloody scales, the House puts or doesn’t put its mark on you, the only normal-looking counselor suddenly turns out to be crazy, the air is full of viruses unknown to medical science, and all this could very well be Jackal’s fevered imagination, since he’s well known to enjoy scaring people with his stories.
“Was it Blind who prettified Ralph’s face?” I say.
Noble nods reluctantly.
“What did you expect?” Tabaqui jumps in. “You are kidnapped. Subjected to interrogations and torture. It’s only natural to fight back. And it’s only natural that someone can get hurt as a result. By the way, Ralph has opened himself up for liability in court, for unlawful imprisonment. And for premeditated interference with a Leader on the eve of graduation. Because what kind of life is that, when the Leader sleeps and sleeps, like a groundhog or something, and when he’s not asleep all he does is scratch at himself, and can’t even put two words together.”
“Or won’t,” Blind corrects Tabaqui from behind the door that’s slightly open. “Maybe he prefers to leave it to someone who’s better equipped for it.”
“Thank you,” Tabaqui says, not in the least concerned about Blind’s presence in the conversation, and then asks why is it that the voice of his beloved Leader seems to be coming from somewhere below.
“Because I’m lying on the floor. I have this bath towel here and I’m lying on it. Carry on, don’t mind me. Just imagine I’m not here at all.”
Alexander offers me a glass. There’s something dark sloshing in it. Definitely not tea.
“Mountain Pine,” he whispers. “Drink carefully.”
That’s when I remember the diary again. Isn’t it time to start filling it, beginning with Jackal’s stories? I thumbed through some diaries of famous people while in the Sepulcher (Ralph hauled in an entire stack of those from the library for me), and one thing I noticed was that they often skipped days and sometimes even weeks. I don’t have that luxury, because the day after tomorrow I am supposed to present my first report. Which means it’s time to accustom the pack to the sight of me writing in it. The sooner, the better.
Despite Blind’s invitation to continue, everyone’s silent. I put the glass with the brown liquid smelling of pine needles on one of Tabaqui’s plates and take out the hallowed notebook. I open it, write today’s date—and freeze. So here I am, back in the Fourth sounds unbelievably corny, but I can’t think of anything else. I turn it this way and that in my mind and finally write it down, my ears burning with shame. Then I add: The reception was less than enthusiastic.
Tabaqui is reading as I write, snuffling and breathing into my ear.
“Ah, you’ve started a diary! Was it that boring in there?”
“Actually it’s pretty useful,” I say. “In a couple of years I’m going to open it, read the things I wrote today, and remember everything that happened. I mean, not everything, but at least the important events of the day.”
“Like the reception being less than enthusiastic.” Tabaqui nods. “A major event, and what’s more important, one that’s pleasant to remember.”
“It’s a diary, so it’s supposed to be honest. If there’s no enthusiasm, then that’s what you write.”
“What if there were, but hidden deep inside the heart?” Tabaqui persists.
“I write what I see, not what someone’s hiding from me somewhere.”
“Got it. Were you planning to write up my theory? About the Syndrome?”
“I’ll try.”
“You’re going to bungle it. Definitely. You’re going to twist it the way it suits you. Scribblers always do that. Not a single word of what was, only what they thought they saw.”
I shrug.
“I’ll do my best.”
“Nonsense!” Tabaqui grabs the notebook. “You can’t. I’ll do it myself. That’s the only way I can be sure the wisdom survives intact.”
“Hey! Wait! At least let me finish the introduction!”
“What for? You think you won’t be able to figure out that it was me who took it? Were you planning not to open it until you go totally senile?”
The snitching diary is dragged to the other side of the bed, where Tabaqui is free to properly expound on his creepy theories, but not before hiding from me behind a pillow.
That’s surprise number one for Ralph.
I take a swig from the glass and choke. The liquid burns my lips, it’s bitter as wormwood, and it does indeed stink of mutilated pine. It takes me a while to get my breath back.
Noble is swilling the piney concoction like it’s water, with a placid look on his face. Sphinx sips his through a straw the size of a fire hose. Either their Mountain Pines are diluted, or they’re already habituated to the effect.
“Where’s Humpback?” I say.
“He took residence up in the oak,” Noble says. “It’s been a week that he’s living there with Nanette. They call him Druid now, and there’s an established pilgrimage.”
“They leave offerings under the oak,” Jackal adds. “Some of them tasty. Baskets of seeds and stuff.”
“Seeds?” I say. “He lives on seeds now?”
“Of course not, silly, it’s for Nanette. Even though she prefers sausage. So the top two bunks are free now, and we have girls sleeping there.”
This saddens me. I have nothing against Mermaid, but the second night guest is most likely Ginger, and her I can barely tolerate. I take another sip—the Pine really does become less offensive as you go—and add another stroke to the insane pastiche that is the House. Humpback, cast as Tarzan.
There’s a scratching at the door, then knocking, and in comes Ginger with a gray cat under her arm. One of the three that are completely indistinguishable from each other.
“Hi,” she says to me. “Welcome back.”
She drops the cat on the floor with a thud and sits down next to Sphinx.
“What was Blind doing outside the door?”
“Listening in,” Noble explains. “It occurred to him that all the interesting conversations happen while he’s absent. So now he’s kind of here and not here at the same time.”
“Oh, I see. So I probably shouldn’t have noticed him.”
“True,” Noble agrees.
Cat strides back and forth on the blanket, thick tail up in the air, sniffing at our legs. A huge tomcat, the color of ash. Or of backs of mice. The Pine makes the outline of Noble sitting across from me blur suspiciously, while the cat begins to resemble a giant rat. Those cats, all three of them, give me the creeps. I always feel uneasy in their presence.
The door slams again and Vulture stumbles in, with Beauty in tow.
Vulture is holding a pot with a cactus in it. Beauty is armed with a pole, its top swaddled in rags. Blind comes next, carrying his towel.
“Here we are!” Vulture declares coyly. “Four of us this time.”
Noble tosses two pillows down on the floor. Vulture takes one of them. Beauty leans his pole against the wardrobe and remains standing. Vulture has pulled his hair back in a ponytail so hard that his eyes take on an elongated shape. To emphasize that shape he’s put on eyeliner highlights all the way to his temples. It makes him look unfamiliar, like he’s dressed up for a masked ball. Beauty, on the contrary, is wearing slippers.
As soon as everyone settles down and Alexander turns off the lights, Tabaqui screeches that he can’t see squat and that it interferes with his writing. A wall light is switched on for him. I’ve already forgotten that he’s still hard at work over my diary. Pity R One. Crazy or not, deciphering Tabaqui’s chickenscratch is no easy task.
Ginger complains to Sphinx about Catwoman, the owner of the three haughty cats. Vulture lets Blind in on the plans for his funeral.
“I am to be displayed in a glass sarcophagus, and the mourning period is not to exceed twenty-four hours.”
“What about the poor Birdies?”
“You may immure them nearby. Them, and my entire cactus collection. But I’ll expound on the exact procedure in my will, so you don’t have to worry about getting it wrong.”
“How are you doing, Smoker?” Beauty asks bashfully.
He puts out his hand and flips over the glass of Pine. And becomes upset. Terribly so. A brownish line trickles down the blanket.
Alexander hands me a towel.
“You seem to have spilled something.”
I towel myself off, shake Beauty’s hand, say, “Hi, nice to see you, don’t worry about this, it’s just alcohol,” and try to crawl away from the pine-scented puddle slowly seeping into the covers—but there’s nowhere for me to go. I am hemmed in by Noble on one side and Jackal’s boundary pillow on the other.
“They had it good in the old times, being buried together with their horses and the entire household,” Vulture says dreamily. “So that’s my request too, to be interred among my cacti. Close my eyes, put two small silver keys on them, and cross two lockpicks on the chest . . .”
“I am so, so sorry, Smoker!” Beauty wails. “It is all my fault! Everything is always my fault! Everything!”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I protest, digging in my shirt pocket for a handkerchief, but grab the smoldering cigarette instead, and it hurts. Very much.
“While we’re on the subject, how is my dear relative doing?” Vulture says to Blind. “Is she well? Has everything she requires?”
I can’t hear Blind’s answer, but as he speaks he shows Vulture the palm of his hand for some reason.
“Tsk, tsk.” Vulture shakes his head. “What an utterly vicious creature.”
I decide that Vulture probably gave Blind a cactus as a present, and now they’re discussing it, so I switch my attention to Ginger.
“I don’t think she’s got much left,” she’s saying to Sphinx. “Sleeps almost all the time, and doesn’t recognize us anymore. Even the cats are avoiding her.”
Sphinx says that this is sad.
“Or not.” Ginger shrugs. “I guess everything’s for the best.”
I knew that the girl was a monster, and so did Sphinx, apparently, which is why he’s not appalled by those words.
The monster extracts a ragged teddy bear from the backpack and puts it on her knee. Playing up the innocent child. I get almost physically sick from her routines and all that talk stuck on death and burials. I lie down and turn my face to the boombox’s speakers, so I can avoid hearing any of them.
But even here I’m ambushed by Lary, jumping out from who knows where.
“Even if Spiders found something really bad with you, it’s still not the end, man, it’s not the end,” he says, handing me my own pack of cigarettes.
“Thanks,” I say. “That’s very comforting to know.”
It is Tabaqui who wakes me up.
There are only two of us in the dorm. It’s very sunny and very hot. One half of the bed is made, exactly up to the place where I am. Tabaqui is wearing three T-shirts of different lengths, with no buttons in sight. None. I remember that yesterday I didn’t see any on him either. I guess that period of his life has come and gone.
I rub my face, scratch my head, and yawn.
“Let’s ride!” Tabaqui demands impatiently. “It’s the perfect time for paying visits! Come on, get dressed! Quick!”
An untidy bundle is aimed at my head. I unwrap it. It’s my shirt, crumpled, covered in brown stains and with the burn mark on the breast pocket. I put my finger through the hole; it’s black when I pull it out. I decide not to change out of my sleeping T-shirt. It also isn’t fresh, but at least I’m not going to look like I killed someone.
Tabaqui crawls to the edge of the bed and noisily tumbles down to the floor. Had he tried that trick in the Sepulcher he’d be put in plaster casts for a week. Arms and legs, both. To wean him off that nasty habit.
The paying of visits begins in the Coffeepot. We take the table by the window, and Tabaqui orders two coffees and some rolls. It’s a sparse crowd today. Four Hounds, yawning, work on scrambled eggs.
“Do they serve stuff like that here? I thought it was only rolls,” I say, not entirely sure because I’ve never been a regular.
“They do now. Almost no one goes to the canteen for breakfast anymore, so Shark has authorized some stuff to be redirected here. It gets reheated, and the result is truly atrocious. I emphatically advise against it.”
“Where is everybody? Why is it so empty?”
Tabaqui extracts a cigarette from behind his ear, sniffs at it, and pulls the ashtray closer.
“Who’s everybody?” he asks suspiciously.
“I mean, our guys.”
“I don’t know. Look, we’ll sit here for a while, have a talk, and then go visit Humpback. Then we’ll be three of our guys.”
We drink the coffee in deathly silence. This is so unlike Tabaqui that I feel more and more awkward.
Hounds finish their reheated eggs and leave. I suddenly remember what it was I wanted to ask Tabaqui.
“Listen, where’s my diary? Where did you put it yesterday?”
“Your what?” he says, looking puzzled. “Oh, the diary. Must be in the room somewhere, I guess. I didn’t put it in with my stuff.”
He slaps the side of the fat backpack strapped to the back of his Mustang. The backpack is so overstuffed that it would have tipped him over if he hadn’t balanced it with small weights attached to the footboards. They jangle and rattle as he goes, and must be getting in the way, but Tabaqui is ecstatic at his own ingenuity and is not planning to get rid of them. One might even think he likes the clamor.
For some reason I start talking about the Sepulcher, how bored and alone I felt there, and how I couldn’t even get down from the bed and crawl around to keep myself in shape. Crawling is frowned upon in the Sepulcher. As is smoking. Or reading at night.
Tabaqui listens with apparent interest.
“Horrors,” he says when I exhaust my complaints. “I don’t know if I can eat properly, now that I know all this. Or at least if I can enjoy food anymore. A scary place, that Sepulcher, I’ve always said that.”
I say that it’s not that bad really, that it’s more comfortable than a Cage, that you only get prodded and bothered during the rounds, and the rest of the day is yours to enjoy peace and quiet, but Tabaqui just repeats that he’s never heard anything more horrible.
“Rounds,” he mutters. “Imagine that. Horror, pure and simple.”
“You mean you’ve never been in the Sepulcher?”
“No, I haven’t. And now it’s unlikely I’d end up there before the end. Which is the only thing that comforts me when I think of graduation.”
Someone slaps me on the back and says that he’s happy to see me. Black. Carrying a pack of milk with a straw sticking out. He sits down on the edge of our table and asks me how I’m doing.
“Great,” I say.
“Horrible!” Tabaqui counters, swaying back and forth in his Mustang. “Don’t listen to him, Black. He’s just been telling me about all the ghastly things happening in the Sepulcher, so ghastly I wouldn’t even venture to repeat them.”
Black winks at me, with the eye that Tabaqui can’t see.
“And what does Sphinx say about it?”
“Sphinx didn’t hear that. He wasn’t here at the time.”
“No, I mean what does he say about him returning, not about the Sepulcher.”
“About Smoker returning he has so far said nothing,” Tabaqui explains readily, “which means he probably won’t be saying anything about it. If he has something to say, he either says it right away or doesn’t say it at all. Anyway, whatever you say or don’t say, he’s been returned, and that’s the end of it.”
Black finishes the milk in one gulp, crumples the pack, long-tosses it in the trash bin, and says, “What I mean is, if he decides to say something after all, I’m ready to take Smoker. Anytime. Tell him that when you see him.”
He gets up from the table, smooths out the tablecloth, says “See you around,” and leaves.
“How incredibly kind of him,” Tabaqui fumes. “He’s always ready to add another Hound to the eighteen he already has, but only if Sphinx starts behaving like a crotchety old maid and says something untoward. I’m so touched I’m going to cry!”
“Listen, you promised to take me to Humpback,” I remind him. “Could we go already?”
“We could,” Tabaqui mutters darkly. “Unless you are of the opinion that I am now required to pass Chief Hound’s message to Sphinx while it’s still steaming.”
“I am not. The message can wait.”
“Let’s ride, then.”
Tabaqui takes a battered acid-green baseball cap out of his backpack, shakes it out, and shoves it down on top of his shock of unruly curls.
“I’m ready. Don’t leave the cigarettes, they’d be gone before we get two feet away.”
It’s warmer out in the yard than inside the House. A group of fully clothed Bandar-Logs are sunning themselves, splayed theatrically against the wall. They quietly acknowledge us from under their drawn-down caps as we drive by.
“Like a firing squad’s just been,” Tabaqui notes. “Except there’s no blood.”
The oak gives a dense, almost purple shadow. The dappled sun plays on the gnarly trunk. Tabaqui turns off the path into the grass, stops, and rummages in his backpack.
“He’s got a whole system set up,” he explains. “With every visitor having a distinct call, and a way to communicate the reason for coming over. As a hint that we shouldn’t bother him too much. Because you know how it is, there’s this rumor now that he can see into the future, so they started coming here in droves. Ruined the lawn. It’s strange, really. All it takes is climbing up a tree, and suddenly you’re a prophet.”
Not pausing for a second, Tabaqui takes out his harmonica, wipes it off, puts it to his mouth, and starts tootling the Rain Song.
I look up at the oak. From here it’s hard to tell where Humpback’s tent is, let alone Humpback himself. It’s all vaguely canvas-y, half-hidden in the canopy. I peer at one flap, shielding my eyes from the rays piercing the mass of leaves, and imagine that those are Humpback’s underpants drying on the clothesline, and somewhere higher up he has pots and pans hanging off the branches, and strings of dried acorns, and maybe right now he’s working on some mysterious concoction of oak leaves, June bugs, and crow guano. While I’m picturing all that, here he comes, in the flesh, tanned almost black, shaggy and half-naked, looking very much the hermit, the whites of his eyes flashing and some trinket on a string around his neck jingling.
He sits down in a fork of two thick branches and crosses his bare legs. Not high and not low. Too high for us. A walker could probably reach him.
“Hi!” Tabaqui waves the harmonica. “See? Smoker’s back. And he’s staying until graduation. Who would’ve thought, huh?”
“Who indeed,” Humpback says.
He’s only got his boxers on. The hair is cinched on the forehead by a grubby-looking cord. I don’t think he’d be able to see anything otherwise. He isn’t surprised by what Jackal has just told him. No wonder, since he surely spotted me before coming down.
As Tabaqui rattles off the latest news, he keeps looking over the oak and its inhabitant in a proprietary sort of way, like a native guide showing off a famous landmark to a chance tourist. I am the tourist and Humpback is the landmark, so we’re both silent. Humpback keeps his eyes on the lawn and the Logs in the distance. I’m watching the lower branches of the oak and his bare legs.
“So, what do you have to say about all this?” Tabaqui demands, having disposed of the news.
“Say?” Humpback looks up distractedly. “I’d say that it’s all probably for the best. What else can I say? Excuse me, this is not a very comfortable place for sitting.”
He nods at us, with not a hint of a smile, gets up, and disappears in the branches. We hear the rustle as he climbs up, and quickly lose sight of him.
“Hear that? The oracles of antiquity got nothing on him,” Tabaqui says admiringly. “That’s why he’s so popular. Because he can toss off tired truisms and sound good doing it.”
We make a couple of rounds of the yard, looking at the oak now and then, at the canopy where Humpback is hiding from the world. Suddenly Tabaqui stops dead.
“There’s one other thing I think you need have a look at,” he says. “Give me five minutes and then come to the classroom. That should be enough for me to prepare it.”
“Prepare what?”
Jackal smiles mysteriously and drives off.
I watch with apprehension as he’s approaching the ramp. The weights are not going to be enough to hold the wheelchair upright when he’s on the incline. The backpack will tip the whole thing over.
Without slowing down, Tabaqui reaches over, extracts from the pocket on the back of Mustang a length of rope with a grappling hook on one end, unspools it, and makes a deft throw, catching it on the railing on the first try. He even neglects to give it a tug to check if it is lodged securely, simply flies up the ramp hand over hand on the rope. On the porch he can’t help himself and looks back at me. Have I seen that? Have I admired that?
I have, and I have. Tabaqui, looking very pleased, stows his siege weapon and disappears inside.
On the stairs between the first and the second floor I bump into Lary. He’s also plenty tanned and managed to grow a patchy beard. I didn’t get a good look at him yesterday.
“Hey, Smoker,” he says. “So you’re, like, healthy now? Nothing hurts?”
I tell him I’m fine and ask if by any chance he knows what that wondrous thing is that Tabaqui is planning to show me in the classroom.
“Oh. His collection.” Lary waves his hand dismissively. “It’s nothing. A pile of junk, if you ask me. But don’t even think of calling it that. Tabaqui’s going to kill you if you do.”
“Thanks for the warning,” I say.
“Anytime, man.”
He continues down, for his sunbathing session, and I go up to look at the collection.
Which turns out to be a pile of junk. Literally. Dumped in the middle of the classroom. The desks have been pushed against the walls, probably to give it more space. Mermaid has chosen one of them to sit on, completely cocooned inside her hair so that only the very tips of her sneakers peek out. Tabaqui, frozen in anticipation at the bottom of Mount Rubbish, almost seems like a part of the collection himself. A living exhibit.
“Well?” he says. “What do you think about all this?”
I make my face reflect deep cogitation and circle the collection. It is not exactly overwhelming. A garage sale. A couple of paintings, two huge photographs of the Crossroads glued to wooden frames, a rusted birdcage, an enormous high boot, a battered ottoman, a dusty box of cassettes, and assorted knickknacks spread on chairs: small boxes, books, pendants, trinkets.
I make another go-round.
Further driving seems pointless, so I tell Tabaqui, “Looks nice. What’s it supposed to mean?”
“What? You don’t remember? You were there when I started assembling it! Those are all nobody’s. Completely, totally no one’s. No one admits to owning them. No one remembers anyone else ever owning them. They just appear in odd places all by themselves, under mysterious circumstances.”
“Oh. I understand now.”
I don’t understand anything, of course. How could things be nobody’s? So those who had used them are no longer in the House, so what? The House has gone through so many people and things that it’s impossible to claim to know who owned what.
“All right,” Jackal grumbles. “Out with it. I can see the direction your thought process is taking.”
“Good for you,” I say. “I hope your collection happily grows and multiplies.”
Mermaid jumps off the desk and runs to me, the bells in her hair tinkling.
“You don’t believe us? But it really is nobody’s, all of it.”
I like Mermaid. She reminds me of a kitten. Not those postcard-ready fuzzballs, but a homeless, scrawny one, with hauntingly beautiful eyes. It’s impossible not to pick one up even if it isn’t asking you for it.
So I say that of course I believe them, I believe that everything they’ve assembled here really and truly does not belong to anyone, and that it must be amazing and odd, finding things like those, except I don’t understand why they need to do it.
Tabaqui’s eyes fill with disdain.
“You see,” he says, “life does not go in a straight line. It is like circles on the surface of the water. Every circle, every loop is composed of the same stories, with very few changes, but no one notices that. No one recognizes those stories. It is customary to think that the time in which you find yourself is brand new, freshly made and freshly painted. But the world only ever draws repeated patterns. And there aren’t that many of them.”
“But what does this old junk have to do with that?”
He sighs, visibly hurt.
“It has to do with the sea, for example, always bringing up the same things that are nevertheless always different. If this time you got a twig, it doesn’t mean that the last time it wasn’t a seashell. A wise man brings all of it together, puts it with what’s been collected by those who came before him, and then adds to it the stories of what came up in the olden days. And this way he would know what the sea brings.”
Tabaqui isn’t mocking me. He’s deadly earnest. Even though what he’s just said sounds like he’s delirious. Mermaid is hanging on his every word, eyes open wide, almost glowing from the inside. I think about how she’s still just a child, really, and so is Tabaqui.
“These things are nobody’s things,” Tabaqui insists. “They don’t have an owner. But there must have been a purpose to them lying forgotten and lost in some corner all this time, right? And then being found suddenly? They might contain some sort of magic. The answers to all our questions are right around us, all we have to do is find them. And then the seeker becomes the hunter.”
The sun forces its way in through the glass panes. I look out the window. It would have been easier were Tabaqui alone here, but they, the cracked hunters of junk, are two, and the other one is a girl who likes stories.
“Very interesting,” I say. “I’m not sure I understood everything, but it is all very likely just the way you described.”
Two tiny furrows appear on Mermaid’s forehead. Very light, almost insubstantial. Tabaqui cringes.
“You know, there’s no need to pity us,” Mermaid says. “We didn’t call you here so you could pity us.”
I take one last look at Tabaqui’s hunting trophies and drive out of the classroom. Looks like we just had a falling-out.
I spend the next thirty minutes looking for my diary. The notebook is nowhere to be seen. I check the desk drawers and the bookshelves, I open and close nightstands, I crawl down on the floor peeking under the beds. It’s not there. Finally I ask Alexander.
“Is it a thick brown notebook?” he says. “I think I’ve seen it somewhere around.” He goes to Tubby’s pen, leans over it, and says, “There you go. He’s been stockpiling fuel again. Give this back, you hear? Hey! It belongs to someone else.”
Tubby responds with indistinct cooing. Alexander turns back to me, holding the diary, wipes it off and says contritely, “Looks like he tore it up a bit. Is that all right? I should have watched him better. I’m sorry. I didn’t check what all that rustling was in there.”
I accept the mangled diary. The cover has been chewed, and it’s missing half of the pages. Empty ones, fortunately. Tubby started from the back.
“Thanks,” I say. “I think it’s still usable.”
Alexander just shrugs.
I thumb through the filled pages. There seem to be entirely too many of them. I read a random paragraph: The stems of cacti are susceptible to rot, viral infections, and infestations of the cactus moth and various aphids. The proper care for those is pruning the affected areas and spraying them with preparations containing cupric ions. Did Tabaqui unconsciously switch from Blind to cacti?
“I don’t understand,” I say. “What’s a viral cactus doing here?”
Alexander takes a look.
“That’s Vulture’s handwriting,” he explains. “I guess he chanced upon your diary yesterday and decided to put in something to remember him by. Does this upset you?”
I flip the pages, horrified. One, two, three . . .
Summarizing the above-mentioned circumstances, it is fair to assert that the highly targeted nature of the said disorder does not lend itself to any explanation within the framework of conventional medical science, affecting as it does almost exclusively those who are the least suitable for integration within the society that for the purposes of this discussion may be, within certain limitations, broadly described by the controversial term “Outsides.”
Dear Smoker, Tabaqui told me to write a message for you in this notebook so that you can read it and remember me. I don’t really know what to write . . .
The glochids of the Opuntioideae easily detach from the plant and lodge in the skin, causing irritation. The tender white prickles of some Mammillaria and the silvery threads of the Cephalocereus, the Old-Man Cactus . . .
“I think they’ve all had a hand,” I say. “It’s not a diary anymore, it’s a yearbook.”
I flip to the empty pages and notice some strange marks, tiny holes punched through and arranged in rows.
“And someone bit on it here,” I say. “Or maybe not. At least the back portion was definitely gnawed by Tubby.”
Alexander looks closer and then feels the holes with his finger.
“This is Braille,” he explains. “Blind wrote you something. He has this tool, like a thing with a nail in it . . .”
“Oh,” I say. “A remembrance. I’m going to read it in my old age, when I lose my sight and learn to read Braille. Cool.”
“Listen,” Alexander sighs. “Can I just give you another notebook? Almost like this one. Tubby spoiled the cover too.”
“I don’t need another one. I’ll manage,” I say. “I’m sorry for all the grumbling. It’s not like you had anything to do with it.”
He shrugs.
“As you wish. We could place it under a stack of books, then. Straighten out the pages a little.”
Alexander brings some glue and we mend the bedraggled cover the best we can. Then we put all the books we could find in the room on top of the notebook. Then Alexander makes some tea. Tea is not the best thing to be drinking when it’s so hot out. In the Sepulcher I was getting it cold-brewed and with ice, but it’s time I forgot about life in the Sepulcher.
Alexander shows me Tubby’s bag. It’s a toddler backpack, and it overflows with little balls of chewed paper.
“Food for the fire,” Alexander says. “He’s been saving them for a while.”
Then he says that I should tear out the page with Blind’s message.
“Why?” I say. “How is it better or worse than Tabaqui’s?”
“But you have no idea what he’s written there,” Alexander persists. “And for whom.”
“What do you mean, for whom?”
Alexander’s gaze goes right through me. It’s directed somewhere above the bridge of my nose. He shrugs.
“You know . . .”
I break into a cold sweat from the hints he seems to be dropping.
“Nobody reads Braille here in the House, do they?”
He shrugs again.
“Some people do. Ralph, for one.”
He looks away tactfully.
I’m silent. It’s stifling in the room. The sun is melting the glass in the windows. Alexander is not looking at me and I am not looking at him. I know what I am ashamed of, but I don’t understand why he should be ashamed as well. Why he should look guilty.
“Thanks,” I say. “You’re right. That’s what I’ll do. Tear it out.”
He nods.
Smoker’s diary (excerpts)
It might seem that nothing much changed in the House. The lights-out and morning bells keep getting ignored just as before. The pack spent half the night feverishly discussing the subject of “Jerichonies,” whatever they are, that are supposed to “presage the end,” and then shortly before dawn Tabaqui woke up everyone with a scream: “Here he is, I’ve got him!” When they switched on the lamp he was sitting under the table, flashlight in hand, surrounded by the shards of a smashed flowerpot.
Mermaid is knitting a rug, or something similar. It looks like a chessboard. Every night before going to bed she puts it up on the wall and then sleeps under it. According to her, this kind of netting protects from bad dreams. According to Sphinx, it steals the dreams and makes intractable tangles out of them.
Humpback is still living up in the oak. Lary spends his nights on the first floor. Logs created something like a tent city down there and are “keeping watch.” That is, they discuss their pocketknives all day and paint on the nearby walls all night.
No one talks about graduation, except to mention some kind of bus. “When we are on the bus,” “When the bus comes for us,” or something about life on four wheels. I could never get out of them any details about this bus, or whether it even exists. Could be just a figure of speech, to avoid saying the word “Outsides.”
Since the day I failed to give Tabaqui’s collection its due he only refers to me as “child” or “that youth.”
Jerichonies are these tiny creatures that are invisible under artificial light and at the same time afraid of the sun, so spotting them is an almost impossible task. There are more and more of them in the House every day, and right before graduation they will assemble in multitudes and start shouting with a great shout. And that’s going to be the end of us, since the walls of the House, naturally, will fall down flat.
—Tabaqui, “Common Wisdom for the Inquisitive Youth.”
Today in the Coffeepot I asked Red, draped over the counter, what his tattoo meant. He didn’t have a shirt on, and I saw this man with a dog’s head on his chest. I was only looking for what Tabaqui terms “a friendly chat,” but got way more than I bargained for. He said it was Anubis, the god of the dead. “In short, the protector of all stiffs.”
Then Red lowered his head into the crook of his elbow and went all gloomy for some reason. I suspect that he wasn’t quite sober. On the other hand, he only had a cup of coffee in front of him. Everyone turned to look at us. That was unpleasant, and I tried to wheel away. But Red suddenly perked up, peeled himself off the counter, and grabbed my sleeve.
“And I am his angel in the Upper World! His freaking emissary, get it?” he screamed, tugging at my clothes. Gawkers started gathering around, and then he let go of me and ran out. I think he’s depressed from the overdose of green. From not taking his green glasses off.
Found on the walls:
“Brothers and Sisters, stop fooling around. IT is near.” Know-it-all.
“Cleansing campaign tonight. Presence mandatory, except for those on the third loop and above.” The Inside Man.
Alexander stashed a pile of cups and pans under his bed. But not before spending a whole hour scrubbing and washing them.
“Might be useful,” he said when I peeked under the bed for the third time.
“Useful where?” I said.
“Anywhere, I think,” Alexander said and pulled the cover lower to hide his treasure.
Even though graduation is never discussed (apart from the bus and those Jerichonies), the inevitability of it is in the air. Girls, for example, cry often. Their eyes are red and swollen, at least from what I notice on the three girls I see every day. Mermaid lives in our room and Ginger sometimes spends the night. Needle comes in the evenings to borrow the coffeemaker for Logs. And they’re all really touchy, so that I’m afraid to say even one word to them. Ginger especially. Everywhere she goes she drags this ancient teddy bear with her, with one glass eye and a shirt button in place of the other. If you jostle it you’ll get a cloud of brownish dust, and it smells so old that it is immediately clear that this must have been her great-grandmother’s favorite toy, and even back then it was already the way it is now. This nightmarish teddy always ends up lying next to me, and if I ask her to put it somewhere else she gets this miserable look, like I’ve just deeply offended her.
The House is in mourning, on the occasion of the repairs that they were threatening us with for as long as I can remember. Stepladders everywhere, and the plasterers are hard at work scraping the drawings and the messages off the walls. People apparently can’t stand such a blatant violation of their living space and have retreated to the rooms. The wave started from the hospital wing and is slowly rolling toward the Crossroads. I ventured out to have a look. Don’t know what it looks like, but definitely not like our corridor. The walls are all dirty and feel somehow injured, covered in great gouges. If they thought this would make the atmosphere brighter, it didn’t. It’s even more depressing than before.
“Blood! Revenge and blood!” Tabaqui screams at regular intervals. Just as I finally calm down and start thinking about something.
Everyone’s busy packing. They drag the backpacks out into the hallways and back to the rooms, take everything out and put it back in. Whoever it is, you can be sure that they’re packing. The weather is hotter and hotter.
“The War with the Girls” means Jackal wheeling in shouting “It’s them! Again!” Everyone jumps up and then sits down and returns to whatever they’ve been doing. In the meantime a group of surly maidens storms the Coffeepot and occupies it for the next two hours, only to vacate it afterward in the same belligerent fashion. It’s not entirely clear why they call it “war,” and why the guys insist on hiding in the dorms and ceding the hallways to the girls, and then sulk that the hallways have been forcibly taken from them. I have a strong suspicion that this is yet another invention of those who don’t know how to amuse themselves. Like Lary and Jackal, who seem to require nonstop excitement of the scary variety.
The plasterers have scrubbed and smoothed the walls and moved to the first floor. The stepladders and the protective plastic remain, though. They say that the painters arrive tomorrow.
Logs struck their camp temporarily. Lary’s back in the dorm. Logs spend their days out in the yard now, because the new hallways creep them out, and they’re already out of habit of being inside a room.
“I’m out to hunt,” Tabaqui says, maneuvering his way out of the room in the morning. Every day the footboard of Mustang acquires one more weight, but the backpack is gaining bulk faster. Tabaqui clanks and rattles as he drives, like a hardware shop on wheels.
“He’s like the White Knight,” Noble says. “Tumbling down every couple of feet. It’s only a question of time before he hurts himself.”
“His luck seems to be holding so far,” Sphinx counters. “You’re not suggesting we take that backpack off him? That would be equal to at least two invasions of Jerichonies.”
“Of course not,” Noble says in a frightened voice. “Better to go on the bus than that.”
“What is that bus?” I ask Lary after breakfast. “You know, the one they keep talking about.”
He yawns widely, like a crocodile, and stares at me dumbly.
“What bus? There is no bus, what’s gotten into you? Where would they find it? It’s just people talking stuff. Someone’s joke. And now here you are spreading it around.”
“But you’re spreading it around too. You talk about it all the time.”
“Me?” He takes offense for some reason. “I never did. Why would I? I’ve got enough problems as it is.”
“You mean you don’t care. Whatever happens, you’re content.”
Lary darkens.
“Of course I am. I mean, why not. If they tell me ‘Here’s the bus, get in,’ I will.”
“Get in the imaginary bus?” I attempt to clarify.
“If that’s what they tell me, yeah.”
Lary looks around stealthily and leans over to me. The squint in his left eye is really horrible.
“The questions you’re asking, Smoker . . . Strange questions,” he says in a low whisper. “I don’t like them, all right? Why don’t you just go on your way. I’ve got some business here. I have no time for you now, all right?”
Found on the walls:
“Through unrelenting meditation discovered the Law of Non-action. Inquiries welcome, the Sixth from 3:00 to 3:05.” Big Brother.
Ratling Whitebelly comes up to me and timidly asks that I write about him “in that notebook you have.”
“Why?” I wonder.
“So that I’m there too.”
A beseeching look, chocolate smears on his cheeks. He looks at least five years younger than everyone else.
“Listen, how old are you, anyway?” I say.
“Sixteen,” Whitebelly says, darkening. “So?”
“Why do you need to be in my diary? The truth, please.”
“This is my first loop,” he says in a flat voice. “I need to anchor myself everywhere I can, or I’ll get thrown out.”
“Where?” I am almost wailing now. “Thrown out where?”
Whitebelly looks at me in abject horror and backs away. I drive at him, but I don’t think he understands that my intention is to apologize, so he turns around and legs it away without looking back, ignoring all my shouts of “Wait!” and “Hey!”
Sphinx says that if I continue driving around scaring the kids I’m going to get it from him personally.
“It was he who scared me, not the other way around.”
In the morning there’s some unusual activity by the window, and it wakes me up. I open my eyes and see them all crowding there, discussing something. Arguing loudly.
“I’m telling you, it’s Solomon and Don! They have returned!” Jackal screams. “With a posse of like-minded avengers! You’ll see!”
“And I think they are from the nearby houses,” Lary suggests. “Came to demand the House be demolished right now. Because they’re tired of waiting.”
“It might be someone’s parents,” Ginger frets. “Only parents can pull something like this.”
“You think our grandmothers could be down there too?” Blind says, visibly worried. He is also there at the window, but isn’t peeking out, of course.
“Why grandmothers?” Ginger says.
“What is it?” I call to them. “What happened?”
The only one to turn to me is Sphinx.
“Tents. Right next to the House,” he says. “Four of them.”
“It’s a camp!” Tabaqui screams, hanging onto the window bars. “A camp of revenge!”
I start dressing. In a great hurry, for some reason. I wouldn’t be able to climb to the windowsill even if all the rest of them climb down from it, but I still behave like I’m going to get up right now, muscle my way through, and have a look for myself.
Noble is the only one besides me who stayed back on the bed. Smoking and pretending like he doesn’t give a hoot.
“It’s unlikely grandmothers would want to live in tents,” Ginger says. “At least that’s what I think.”
Ginger is standing with her feet on the windowsill, in a cut-off spaghetti-strap top and briefs. The top does not even come down to her navel. The undies are bright red, the color of her hair. The moldy bear is in its usual place, under her arm. I realize that Noble must hate what he sees. That the reason for him sitting glumly on the bed is Ginger parading herself half-naked in the window. If I were him I’d be grateful she at least has something on. She could have just as easily climbed up there topless. I happen to know that for a fact.
“Blind is just paranoid.” Tabaqui giggles. “Imagining grandmothers lurking behind every corner. They have robbed him of his peace of mind.”
“Why not grandfathers?” Mermaid says.
“I wonder when they’re coming out,” Lary says.
I am already dressed, so I crawl closer to the edge of the bed. If I can’t see it, at least I can listen to them talk. Alexander notices my movements and comes over to the bed.
“Would you like to have a look? Come to the window, I’ll lift you up.”
“Never mind,” I say.
As I crawl toward the window, Mermaid slides down from it. She is wearing men’s pajamas, about three sizes too big for her. She turned up the sleeves but the pants legs still flop around. Ginger gives me a hand and hoists me up on the windowsill, almost without any help from Alexander, who’s pushing me from below.
I see them now. Four tents. Two camouflage green, one orange, and one dusty blue. They really are right against the fence, as if the House has sprouted them overnight out of itself, like mushrooms.
“I wonder if it’s not the survivalists from the Sixth,” Sphinx says uncertainly. “Could be that Black decided to train them for the rigors of the Outsides. In stages.”
“Who’s coming down to the yard?” Ginger calls. “To look at them up close?”
“What about breakfast?” Jackal says indignantly. “You have all been neglecting it! It’s boring, going to the canteen by myself.”
I end up looking at the tents longer than anyone else, because I was the last to see them and because I can’t climb down. Gradually they tire of discussing this event, and soon I am alone on the windowsill. When Alexander comes to help me, I notice that he is very careful to avert his face.
“What’s wrong?” I say.
He shrugs.
“Nothing. I’m just not interested.”
It doesn’t sound very convincing, not at all.
Once in the hallway everyone darkens, and some put on sunglasses. The walls are not scary anymore. They are uniformly the color of malted milk, smooth and squeaky clean. The stench of paint is overwhelming.
“We are a continuation of the Sepulcher now,” Lary says ruefully. “You call this life?”
No one else says anything.
A good half of the House is already down in the yard. Many are still in pajamas. At least it’s clear that Sphinx was wrong. Hounds of the Sixth have nothing to do with this. They are as eager as everyone else to find out who’s been hiding in the tents. Even the Brothers Pigs are here, all in a row, wheel to wheel. Identical stares and identically opened mouths. No one has risked approaching the wire fence yet.
Finally the flap on one of the tents is thrown open, disgorging three inhabitants. Bulky camo overalls. Cleanly shaven heads. Empty eyes, staring exactly like Ginger’s bear. It doesn’t look like anyone is eager to make their acquaintance. On the contrary, those closest to the fence take several steps back. When I look around a couple of minutes later, I feel that there are significantly fewer of us here.
One of the tent people presses against the fence, contorting his face in a smile. I zoom backwards toward the porch. Only when the wheels bump into the lower step do I realize that never before in my life have I driven backward at such speed. Lary overtakes me and flies up the stairs.
“An empty skin,” he mumbles as he runs. “An empty skin!”
Logs quickly disappear inside.
The tent man puts his fingers through the netting and says something. Still smiling. I wish he’d stop doing that. I’d prefer it if Ginger’s bear smiled suddenly instead of him.
The Brothers Pigs drive by me, each jostling my wheelchair, because I’m right there in the way at the bottom of the stairs. Then Zebra and Corpse run past, pushing crying Elephant before them, and almost flip him over. One of the last to evacuate is Jackal.
“What do they want?” I ask him. “Who are they?”
“Empty skins,” he answers, busily unspooling his hook on a rope. “They are looking for someone who they think would fill them.”
“I don’t understand!” I cry after him, but he’s already up on the porch, hotly arguing with Red.
He doesn’t hear me.