The Gray House

SPHINX

Sphinx dreams of the House breaking out in cracks, raining down pieces, bigger and bigger, until they’re the size of entire rooms. The fragments disappear together with people, cats, the writing on the walls, the fire extinguishers, the commodes, and the clandestine hotplates. He knows that many share these dreams with him now. It’s not hard to figure out who. They sleep in their clothes with bulging backpacks for pillows, and they try not to enter empty rooms and not to walk around the House alone.

Which is why, when Sphinx wakes up and discovers the fat cables woven into the bars on the window, with their ends extending in both directions, to the windows of the Third on the right and of the Sixth on the left, he’s not surprised. It just means that someone’s dream mirrored his own. He reverentially studies the knots, as big as his fist, and tries to decide if this can be considered a sign of full-blown panic or if it is still at the level of fear. Alexander is watching the tents of the shaved heads from behind Sphinx’s back and thinking about something sad.

He’s no longer as white as the day before. He has on Humpback’s old hoodie, striped gray and orange, with the hood over his head. A sort of compromise between his usual curtain of hair and yesterday’s opened face.

“This is the first time I’ve looked at them.” He addresses Sphinx, who’s sitting on the windowsill.

“I know,” Sphinx says without turning around. “You have been avoiding windows ever since they came. Afraid?”

“No. Their presence changes me, that’s all.”

Sphinx turns around, trying to catch Alexander’s eyes.

“It sure does,” he says. “Radically so.”

Alexander smiles a haunted smile.

It is hot and stuffy in the dorm. The day is cloudy, and the sky has a curiously yellowish tint. The color of a desert waiting for the coming sandstorm. Sphinx leans his head against the bars. There’s only a solitary figure on a camp stool down by the tents, with a hood drawn tightly.

Mermaid stumbles around the room, in the dusk that filters through the curtains, collecting her clothes. From the chairs, from the bedsteads. The clothes and the six bells. She clutches them in one hand and climbs up on the table. It is going to take her no less than an hour to brush her hair and braid the bells into it, even though she never takes out all of them at once, only six out of the dozen. Ensconced on the bed, head in hands, Smoker is staring at her. The pack likes to watch Mermaid brush her hair. This spectacle never gets old for them.

Down in the yard it’s windy, but not a bit less hot than inside the House. Sphinx sits on the stump in the middle of the parched lawn and looks at the tents. After a visit from Shark, its inhabitants moved back. Not much, just several feet. It still allows them to congregate by the fence and even hang on it, holding on to the wire mesh. And it still allows them to try and attract the attention of anyone who steps out of the House, imploring them to arrange a meeting with the Angel, who “dwells here among you, we know . . .”

“He was this close to not dwelling anymore,” Sphinx says to the young shaved head whom they usually send forward for parleys, more often than any others. The shaved head waves his hand at him cheerfully and invitingly. Sphinx doesn’t move.

The night snowed in the yard under a mound of trash. Among the plastic bags, bottles, and scraps, Sphinx notices a couple of garish booklets printed on cheap paper. They feature a winged angel on the cover, his hands outstretched to the readers, informing them that Sharing in the divine grace is attainable in this life, my brother (sister)! Alexander is the last person whom this creature resembles. Ruddy cheeks, golden curls, and a moronic smile. It reminds Sphinx only of Solomon when a child, and a more disgusting child Sphinx had never seen in his life. And hopes never to see again. He studies the booklet while holding it down with the toe of his sneaker.

Humpback comes over, with a huge backpack slung over his shoulder. He looks like a pilgrim returning from faraway lands. Bronzed and dirty. His hair, sticking up and in all other directions, is full of leaves and twigs.

“I’m moving,” he says darkly. “What kind of life is it when those guys loiter here constantly? I’ve seen them in my dreams tonight, so I’ve just about had enough.”

Humpback sits down next to Sphinx, propping his elbows on the backpack, and peers owlishly at the windows of the House.

“What’s with the ropes?”

“They’re not ropes, they’re cables,” Sphinx says. “You’re not the only one to have bad dreams.”

Humpback frowns, trying to discern the relationship between bad dreams and cables wrapped around the window bars.

“And over there?” he says, pointing at the window of the Coffeepot. To the empty frame with soot spread around it like a palm frond.

Sphinx looks at Humpback in surprise.

“That’s from the fire,” he says. “Where were you yesterday evening? You mean you didn’t see anything?”

Humpback doesn’t answer. Instead he takes out his pipe and silently fills it.

“Tell me, who does this winged youth remind you of?” Sphinx says, kicking the battered booklet.

“Solomon,” Humpback says after the briefest of looks. “Who else? When he was still Muffin, I mean.”

“Me too. And they,” Sphinx says, nodding at the tents, “are sure that it looks like Alexander.”

“It’s not funny,” Humpback says.

“No, it’s not. And the one who thinks so most is Alexander himself.”

Humpback turns to look at the gate, where by now four shaved heads are nodding and leering obsequiously.

“You mean they dragged themselves over here for him?”

“They think so. But at the same time they carry the image of Muffin with them, so I’m afraid they’re not entirely clear on who it is they need.”

Humpback falls silent. Puffs on his pipe, sneaking sideways glances at Sphinx.

“Why aren’t you wearing rakes?” he finally asks.

“Rakes got damaged in the fire. We buried them yesterday, right under your oak. Don’t tell me you missed that too.”

“I was in the Not-Here.”

“You know, I figured as much.”

They are both silent for the next ten minutes. The shaved heads crowded around the gates are desperately trying to attract their attention. The air smells of the coming storm. The sky is almost orange now, and the swifts are flying low. Sphinx takes his foot off the booklet, and it is immediately whisked away by a gust of wind. He starts whistling the Rain Song. The missing eyelashes and the red burns on the cheeks and forehead make him look almost festive. Like a country lad kissed by the sun. Humpback, on the other hand, is sullen.

“What are you going to do without them? They’re not going to bother ordering a new pair for you now.”

Sphinx nods, his eyes still closed.

“No, they’re not. But I’m managing so far. It’s even easier in some sense. Like I’m little and helpless again, and not responsible for anything. And no one is allowed to hurt me when I’m that way. I was absolutely convinced of that before I ended up here, imagine. That no one was going to hurt me. Ever.”

Humpback coughs and looks at Sphinx askance.

“You mean you returned to your Outsides childhood?”

Sphinx laughs.

“Almost. Or it’s rather like senility. A person can only be saying farewell to everything around him for so long. Waking up, going to sleep, and even in his dreams. To every face, every object, every smell. You just can’t do it. The day comes when it gets so exhausting that you simply stop feeling. Anything, at all. And then on top of everything else you lose your prosthetics. Say the solemn farewell to them too, and realize that this was the last straw. That it’s time to start saying hello to at least something. And since you can’t actually do anything, you say hello to your own self. The long-ago, helpless self. Whom everyone helped and no one dared to hurt. Cool, isn’t it?”

Humpback shakes his head.

“I don’t think I like your attitude. It smells of the nuthouse, it really does. The way I see it, it’s better to just grieve inside, quietly, than laugh over things that aren’t funny at all. More normal, I mean.”

Sphinx laughs.

“There’s no such thing as normal here anymore. But don’t worry, it’ll pass. By the way, why are your fingers bandaged? Were you banging in nails, from Here to Not-Here?”

Humpback looks at his hands. The left thumb and the right index finger are bandaged. Thickly and sloppily. The bandages are black with dirt and barely holding together. Humpback, slightly embarrassed, begins to unwrap them.

“Oh, that . . . It’s nothing. Just bites. There’s this little tot . . .”

He tears off the bandages and studies the wounds. Sphinx leans in to look as well, and when he straightens up the look in his eyes makes Humpback shrink back.

“You are going straight to the Sepulcher,” Sphinx says icily. “Or rather running. No shower, no changing. No visiting the guys. The backpack you can leave right inside the door. Go.”

Humpback springs up and stuffs the pipe back in his pocket, swearing when it burns him. Straightens out the straps of the backpack clumsily and heaves it over his shoulder.

“You mean like this? Barefoot?” he says, but meets Sphinx’s stare coming the other way again, nods and departs hastily, muttering under his breath.

Sphinx continues to sit motionlessly for a while longer, then gets up and slowly shuffles toward the House. The first drop of rain pecks him on the forehead when he’s already on the steps. He turns to look at the shaved heads, to see if they are leaving yet, and to his surprise sees Red in front of them, on this side of the fence. Rat Leader is talking them up, smiling from ear to ear, all effortless charm. In cutaway jeans, barefoot, and shirtless, but with the bow tie around his neck and a bowler on his head. According to his, that is, Rats’, standards, he is dressed for the occasion. The shaved heads are apparently of a different opinion. It is possible they take the Alpha Rat for a village idiot. Sphinx cannot distinguish the expressions on their faces from this distance, but he’s learned in the past three days that those expressions never change. They listen to Red, clinging to each other tightly, and no one is hanging on the fence anymore. Are they confused? Astonished?

Without a pause in his smiling and blabbering, Red pulls off his glasses. The enchanted zombies immediately take a step forward and get stuck to the fence. Sphinx, filled with contradictory emotions, rushes inside. No, he’s not second-guessing Blind’s decision to send down to them an angel that’s so different from the one they were looking for. He himself was ready to do anything he could to make them go away. Still, he pities them a little. The poor, deluded, poisoned strangers.

There’s a cat huddle by the trash can on the landing between the first and second floors. Smoker is also there. On the wall next to him, a charcoal portrait. A grotesquely scowling, ugly face that nevertheless looks very much like Vulture. Sphinx stops to look at it, and a gaggle of Logs thunders by on the way down, motivated by Jackal barking commands at their backs.

“Atten-tion! Squad A, search the yard. Squad B, reinforce the door defenses!”

Tabaqui notices Vulture’s portrait and puts on the brakes.

“Yechh!” he says. “Sickening!”

Logs, pushing, shoving, and clattering, throng around for a look. Smoker, scandalized, smears the drawing with the palm of his hand, but even in the resulting blob, Great Bird is still easily recognizable.

“Tut, tut,” Tabaqui sighs. “Total disregard for the exalted stature of a Leader, imagine that! Sphinx, I sincerely hope that you shall explain it all to him thoroughly, because I have a much more important task ahead of me at the moment.” He points at Logs. “There. Volunteers. We’re going to reinforce the approaches to the House. Lock ’em down so tight not even a mouse could sneak in!”

The volunteers stand to attention. Horse has a huge padlock in his hands. Monkey is carrying a bunch of wires, probably the remains of the alarm system.

“At ease,” Sphinx says. “It’s just that there’s rain about to start out there.”

Logs exchange excited glances and cascade down the steps, hooting and hollering.

“Quiet! Distance at two paces!” Tabaqui shrieks, rolling down the ramp.

It does become quiet for a spell. Then the door is thunderously thrown open and slammed shut again. Mona, dawdling around the trash can, instantly sprints down and catches the plastic bag blown in by the gust of wind. While she’s busy disemboweling it, as if it were alive and could be therefore killed, Red saunters past Sphinx and Smoker, whistling, but not before saying to her, “Thanks, babe!” There’s so much genuine gratitude in his voice that Smoker’s eyes open wide, and they become almost round when Red, not slowing down and not even taking a good look at the wall, sweeps off the bowler and pays a bow to the dirty spot that had recently been Vulture’s portrait.

“I thought this was a secluded spot,” Smoker says glumly. “I thought I could just sit here in peace.”

“Just sit and just draw,” Sphinx clarifies. “Never draw anyone’s portraits on the walls, Smoker,” he continues sternly. “This is not done. Or were you aiming to start a rumor that you’re putting a hex on Vulture?”

Smoker, deathly pale, shakes his head vigorously.

“Then don’t do this again. And if you are looking for seclusion, keep away from the stairs.”

Sphinx climbs up to the second floor to the accompaniment of the rustling that signifies the hurried and thorough destruction of the portrait.

The model for that portrait is sitting in the flesh in their dorm, playing solitaire. He has on a gorgeous brocade vest with golden buttons, there’s a gold earring in his ear, and so many rings on his fingers that they barely bend. Next to him on the pillow are two chocolate bars. Great Bird always endeavors to make any visit an occasion by means of small offerings. For him, leaving the Nest for the twenty-step voyage down the hallway is reason enough to decorate himself and come bearing gifts.

“The weather, apparently, promises to be stunning,” Vulture says, sweeping the cards off the blanket.

His sour face sorely clashes with the festive attire.

Sphinx sits across from him.

“Where’s everybody? Was it empty here when you came in?”

“Almost,” Vulture says tactfully.

Sphinx realizes that the “almost” is in fact Smoker, so discombobulated by the encounter with Great Bird that he needed to flush it out by covering the walls of the House with nasty caricatures. It saddens him that without the rakes he can no longer make coffee for the two of them, and also that Vulture is nervous and seems to be preparing to ask him for something but can’t muster enough courage, but most of all that Vulture has dressed up and brought chocolate, trying to conceal the purpose of his visit.

“I wanted to pass a warning to Blind,” Vulture says. “My Birdies, numbering two, say they saw Solomon last night. I thought Blind might want to be apprised of that.”

“He returned? In secret?” Sphinx says, surprised.

Vulture’s shoulders twitch.

“I do not know. Perhaps. Birdies’ tales are generally not to be trusted. However, they did see him independently and their descriptions seem to match. They say he looks fairly bedraggled.”

The news of the raggedy runaway Rat sneaking around the House at night does nothing to cheer up Sphinx, but nothing to scare him either.

“Sad story, if you think about it,” he says. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

The patter of the raindrops against the ledge quickens. The room is darkened. Sphinx gets up and goes to the window. Where the clouds haven’t consumed the sky yet, it is still orange. The yard is flooded with otherworldly light, and Logs, ecstatic at this sudden gift of nature, jump about in the rain. Mustang with Jackal aboard does loops around and between them. Sphinx knows that Tabaqui’s expression is incredibly smug now, making Logs suspect that he was somehow involved in the weather changing.

“Now tell me what it is you really came here for,” Sphinx says, turning around.

Bird has closed his eyes and turned to stone, the way only true birds of prey can. His amber-colored raiment seems to glow in the dusk.

“Sphinx, you are my only hope,” he says calmly and evenly.

The disconnect between his words and the way they have been said is disturbing.

“What happened?” Sphinx says.

“What happened, happened long ago. Only yesterday for me, but long ago for everyone else. We all need miracles, Sphinx. Some of them are possible and some are not, so we choose to pursue the possible. But then, after you’ve chosen, it turns out that you are not strong enough to achieve even that. Do you understand what I am talking about?”

Sphinx does. He would have preferred not to.

“Jackal is a close friend to you,” Vulture says softly. His words are almost drowned in the rustling of rain and the clamor from below. “Ask him for me. He will not refuse if you are the one asking.”

Sphinx comes back to the bed and sits down next to Vulture, to avoid looking in his face.

“He will,” Sphinx says. “Trust me, a thing like that he will refuse. He’ll pretend to not understand what I’m asking. He’ll just be Jackal. The thing is, he wouldn’t even be pretending, not really, because that which distributes return tickets is not Tabaqui at all. And he—it—is an expert in handling situations like that, has been since way before you and I were born. And . . . I swear, there’s no way of reaching it from here. Only from the Other Side.”

Vulture sags, resting his chin on his hand. He has already accepted defeat, but still says, “You are not that easy to refuse when you ask for something.” What he wants the most at this moment is to end this unpleasant conversation, leave Sphinx, and grieve alone, privately. That’s what he wants. But he perseveres.

“Neither are you,” Sphinx says sadly. “Which is why I’ll do what you asked.”

“But he will refuse.”

“But he will refuse.”

Vulture’s devilish yellow eyes stare at Sphinx.

“In that case,” he forces himself to say. “If you are so sure about that . . . Do not concern yourself. I believe you. If it were this easy, it wouldn’t be a miracle. But, you know . . . Sometimes I feel, or rather I used to feel, that it was me who it was supposed to have happened to. Max and I . . .”

Noble chooses this moment to wheel into the dorm, and Sphinx is almost ready to kill him for the unfortunate timing, but Vulture continues as if nothing had happened.

“We were too much of a single person for one of us to remain alive after the other went away. We were not simply close, we were one. After what happened to him, I figured that since one half of me stayed on, and kept staying on, then at least the life I was leading should have some meaning. Which it would, except for my utter worthlessness. I remain a mere Jumper even after all the poison I have forced into myself. On the Other Side the events control me, not I them.”

Noble is frozen near the door. He is looking down at the floor as he listens to Vulture. Sphinx glances in his direction and is filled with compassion. Judging by Noble’s expression, he is unlikely to fully appreciate the fact that Vulture has just accepted him into the closest circle, made him one of those worthy of listening to his innermost secrets. Likely as not he thinks that Vulture simply didn’t notice him.

“And the worst thing is,” Vulture says. “The worst thing is, if it were him instead of me, he would have succeeded where I have failed. He was so much stronger.”

The rain picks up, drowning the screams in the yard below. Beyond the window it’s a uniformly gray curtain. Drops ricochet off the ledge, the windowsill is already soaking wet, and there’s soon going to be a puddle on the floor. Sphinx wishes to simply watch all of this unfold. Or stick halfway out of the window, under the streaking, streaming wetness, and breathe it in. Washing off the pain that’s not his own.

“So I keep thinking,” Vulture sighs. “How did it happen that the one who died was the wrong one?”

The canteen is in a festive mood. The atmosphere is cheerful, noisy, and squelching. The floor is covered in dirt and crisscrossed by the trails of rubber wheels. Those who got a dose of the rain showed up either wrapped in towels or, if they came up directly from the yard, simply soaking wet. Rats have their boombox blaring at full blast, and their table features a likeness of Iggy Pop cut out from a magazine and glued onto cardboard, at the place of honor in the middle. A patron saint, as it were. It is also his voice that’s screaming from the speakers. Birds strut with black towels on their heads and warm themselves by means of sipping from mysterious bottles that they pass around under the table.

The table of the Fourth is more soulful than merry. Lary, in a striped turban fashioned from towels, slurps his soup with the pinkie of the hand holding the spoon sticking daintily out. Smoker scratches industriously in the infamous notebook, shielding it from prying eyes. Tubby is busy chewing on the napkin. Tabaqui, swaddled in a bath sheet from head to toe, occupies a chair while Mustang is drying next to him, and judging by its look it has a lot of drying still ahead of it.

Sphinx is barely able to sit down before Tabaqui already sidles up to him along the edge of the table.

“The love potion for Mermaid came out great,” he announces above the din. “One hundred percent guaranteed results.”

“What would she want with it?”

“What do you mean?” Tabaqui says incredulously. “For the parrot!”

Sphinx recalls that someone in the girls’ wing keeps an aggressive bird, a female, that’s learned to open its cage from inside. A big chunk of their hallway is now out of bounds as a result, and the inhabitants of the rooms near the parrot’s den do not venture out except with opened umbrellas at the ready. Sphinx lately hasn’t heard anything about the exploits of the old macaw and assumed that the problem had been dealt with one way or another.

“You’ll see,” Tabaqui assures him. “One whiff of the potion, and the birdie is going to trail Mermaid everywhere, moaning passionately.”

“I do not approve of anyone or anything trailing my girl with passionate moans!”

“Your approval is immaterial. Too late, the machinery has been put in motion. The only thing left to do now is wait for the results.”

“Are you trying to lure her away from me?” Sphinx says. “Massaging brush for the cats, that light-up umbrella, the alarm bracelet, now this. To say nothing about your joint hunting trips.”

The music suddenly cuts out, and feisty Rats stop punching each other.

R One has stopped at the door and is looking over the canteen sullenly. A counselor at lunchtime is always bad news, and the room goes almost completely quiet, with only the Insensible continuing to munch happily.

“Please stay where you are.”

Ralph slams the door closed behind him and leans against it, arms crossed.

“The dorms and classrooms are being searched as we speak. Once the search is over you will be allowed to leave the canteen.”

Rats explode with noise. Bespectacled Pheasant Leader is forced to shout to be heard.

“Excuse me! On behalf of the First I would like clarification, please. The search being conducted, does it encompass all of the dorms?”

“Yes, it does,” Ralph says coldly.

The look of deep affront on the faces of Pheasants somewhat raises the spirits of everyone else. Almost everyone. Except for those who clearly have something to worry about. Lary, for example. Looking at his rapidly graying face it’s easy to imagine that the search of his bunk would yield a bloody scalp at the very least.

“Lary, what’s wrong?” Sphinx says. “What have you been hiding?”

Lary is silent, apart from heavy sighs. Then he plugs his mouth with the good-luck bolt he has hanging on a cord around his neck and screws up his eyes tightly. Sphinx and Tabaqui exchange glances. Tabaqui shrugs.

“Hey!” he shouts out to Ralph. “How about some extra food, then? To help while away the hours pleasantly?”

Ralph does not acknowledge the suggestion. He has turned his back to those in the canteen and is holding a muted conversation with someone through a crack in the door. Then he steps aside, allowing Humpback in. Humpback enters, looking around suspiciously, and startles when he hears jubilant shouts directed his way.

“And the hermit home from the hill!”

“The Druid has left the hedge! Yay!”

Tabaqui valiantly crashes down on the floor and crawls to Humpback through the muck. Humpback snatches him up, and they come to the table together, Jackal wrapped around his neck, cooing tenderly.

“What’s going on here?” Humpback says.

“Search,” Sphinx says. “Rain. You?”

Humpback displays the freshly bandaged fingers.

“Everything’s fine. The thumb was starting to ooze a bit, but only a bit. Nothing serious. No reason to go nuts over it.”

“Yes. There. Was. Reason,” Sphinx enunciates.

“All right, there was.” Humpback unloads Tabaqui on the table and pulls a plate toward himself. “I did everything like you said. Calm down, all right?”

Smoker collects whatever’s left of the food on Humpback’s plate. Lary, still plugged up with the bolt, waves his hand in a feeble salute.

Sitting idly in front of empty plates soon loses its attraction. Rats drift off into the corners with their Walkmans. Birds clear the table and start a round of poker. Tabaqui tosses a white cloth on the floor, sits on top of it, and declares that he’s ready to tell fortunes by casting glass beads for anyone who asks. A modest queue forms in front of him.

Ralph steps away from the door, and in come two Cases, each lugging a sleepy Hound. Red dashes over and tries to pump them for news. Hounds yawn and shrug.

Sphinx leans back in his chair.

The dorm searches are nothing new. They’ve also never yielded anything. This time the counselors are most probably after the knives. Or the drugs pilfered from the Sepulcher. It doesn’t matter, really. They are going to find nothing, apart from maybe Solomon, the erstwhile runaway now hiding in the House, if he really is hiding and if they happen to stumble upon him. The only thing that makes Sphinx slightly uneasy is Lary sitting there petrified with the magic bolt in his mouth. He looks like an idiot.

“I have this feeling,” Tabaqui says, shaking the cup with the beads, “that they are not looking for what we think they’re looking for.”

“Meaning?”

Tabaqui purses his lips importantly.

“The details are better left unsaid. That would be more appropriate, in my opinion.”

Lary moans softly.

“Damn it, Lary!” Sphinx erupts. “Are you going to tell us what’s wrong or are you going to sit here with that thing between your teeth?”

Lary shakes his head and looks at Sphinx accusingly.

Cases reappear. This time they bring Noble and Alexander. Red reprises his dash in hopes of acquiring important information and has to retreat again, defeated.

“So what do I do now?” Hybrid asks Tabaqui glumly.

He’s crouching in front of the divination cloth, waiting for some words that would make sense, because he couldn’t find any in what Jackal has just told him.

“It would be best to do absolutely nothing,” Tabaqui says. “The way it came out, I’d hold my breath if I were you, old man.”

Upon hearing this pronouncement, three of those waiting in line for their fortunes quickly disperse. Hybrid remains seated in front of the menacingly glittering pattern, dutifully holding his breath.

The next to be brought to the canteen is Blind. Who appears to have been sleeping and taking a shower at the same time.

“Left . . . Straight . . . There,” Sphinx says as Blind approaches the table. “What’s going on? Are they going to let us out anytime soon?”

Blind carefully positions the chair at some very specific angle, the importance of which is known only to him, sits down, and says that unfortunately the counselors are not in a habit of sharing their plans with him.

“I do not constitute an authority for them.”

“Any prisoners marched down before you? Anyone who smelled like Solomon?”

Blind takes a sniff at the empty plates and shakes his head sadly.

“You have an elevated opinion of me, Sphinx, if you think I can distinguish Solomon by smell from any other Rat. Why don’t you ask Noble?”

Noble, pointedly shielding himself from the world behind a book, doesn’t look like a person in the mood to share information. When suddenly woken up, he is better left alone. Especially if it’s Cases doing the waking up.

“Why would anyone smell like Solomon?” Tabaqui asks. “What is this about, Sphinx? What are you hiding from us?”

Sphinx relates Vulture’s message. Tabaqui reddens threateningly. Lary silently upraises his hands. Blind, in the meantime, homes in on the food that Humpback secreted away for Nanette, relieves him of one of the packets, and contentedly devours it.

“Yep,” he says indistinctly. “Sol has been living in the basement and Red brings him food down there. I didn’t know he ventured out, though. Must have gotten bolder.”

Sphinx is surprised and heartened at Blind’s awareness. Tabaqui is aghast at Red’s behavior.

“The damn murderer!” he fumes. “And there’s Red feeding him! You guys are completely mental! This, after everything that happened between them! It’s a miracle Solomon hasn’t finished the job yet. On the other hand, who’d feed him then? On the other other hand, depends on what the feed is. If it’s the scraps like what Blind’s been gobbling, might as well cut him. Nothing to lose either way.”

Blind puts the empty packet aside, unbuttons his frock coat, extracts the bedraggled crow from its recesses, and places her on the table.

“Almost forgot that I brought her along,” he says. “I thought I’d better. Those Cases don’t exactly inspire confidence.”

Humpback snatches his pet and straightens out her feathers.

“What were you thinking, Blind? Keeping the bird under your clothes all this time! She can barely stand, poor thing!”

“I’m sorry. I told you, I forgot.”

The pack solemnly regards the Leader who is capable of forgetting about a crow hidden on his person.

“He’s not a completely lost cause yet, tempting though to think he is,” Tabaqui says to Sphinx soothingly. “Believe me, he’s still full of surprises.”

“Of that I have no doubt.” Sphinx stands up. “I’ll go ask Red why he’s so jumpy all of a sudden. I hope he isn’t holding a horseshoe in his mouth that would interfere with his ability to speak.”

Sphinx starts in the direction of the windowsill occupied by Red, but is intercepted by Black, rising up from the Sixth’s table; his desire to have a private conversation is so obvious that every Hound in the vicinity immediately makes himself scarce to allow him the opportunity. To the extent it’s possible in a room crammed with people.

“Sphinx, can I have a minute?”

Sphinx waits resignedly for Hound Leader—decked to the gills in the regalia of his position, including the collar that for him is not a required accessory—to approach.

“I need to tell you something . . .” Black’s chin thrusts forward, his pale eyebrows bunch together over the bridge of the nose. “I have finally done it!”

This sounds so ominous that Sphinx is reluctant to clarify what he’s talking about. He’s overwhelmed by the desire to cry out “Why, oh why have you done it, Black”—so strong that he’s barely able to stop himself.

“You are probably going to laugh . . .”

“No,” Sphinx says firmly. “I’m not. Whatever else, this I can promise.”

Black’s eyes glaze over.

“I found a bus. A small one.”

Sphinx nods, says “I see,” and uses his shoulder to wipe the sweat off his face. Then he says “Why?” in exactly the plaintive voice that he successfully fought off not a minute ago.

Black looks around and begins to whisper confidentially.

“I had to distract them with something, don’t you see? Buck them up a little. I couldn’t just sit on my hands looking at how they were all running scared half to death. And then there was all this talk about a bus. So I figured I’ll get them their bus. I’m their Leader, after all, right? Remember how I told you that I knew where to find one? Well, I didn’t get it from there exactly, there was this other place. Doesn’t matter, anyway. The important thing is, it exists.”

Sphinx nods.

“Right. That’s the important thing. I get it, Black. It’s great, it’s wonderful. But what are you going to do if they take it into their heads to actually use it?”

“That’s exactly what I wanted to talk to you about,” Black says pensively. “Because, you see, I can’t just go and tell them that it was all for show, so that they wouldn’t go stir crazy on me. I parked the bus near the dump and tossed some trash over it. You wouldn’t believe it, but they used to visit it three times a day, every day, until those guys with the tents showed up. So now they don’t anymore, of course, but the fact of it being there is what’s keeping them together, you see?”

Sphinx looks at Black like it’s the first time he sees him. The blue icicles of the eyes framed by the pale eyelashes. The dancing skeletons on the black pirate bandana.

“What I see is that you’re screwed,” Sphinx says. “That’s what I see.”

Black sighs.

“I know that. So, what do you think I should do?”

Sphinx itches to give him Jackal-like advice. To live holding his breath. To sing noiseless songs. To wash his face with softer water. But Black is a Leader, and this is not the kind of tone to assume with Leaders.

“Tell them that the bus is useless without a driver, and a driver is useless without a license. This they have to understand. It’s common knowledge.”

Black shakes his head and sighs again. Takes off the bandana, scratches his head. His unhurried movements make Sphinx break out in an itch between his shoulder blades.

“Remember how I said I learned to drive? I mean, not that I’m an expert, but I’m pretty decent. And now I have the license too. Fake, of course. Rat got it for me. But the point is, I have it.”

“Black?” Sphinx says, looking into his eyes. “You’ve already decided, haven’t you? What else do you need? Everything’s in place, all that remains is to load whoever takes you up on the offer in that bus and drive into the sunset. What is it you want from me?”

Black shuffles his feet. Wipes the face with the scrunched-up bandana and says without lifting his eyes, “Nothing. I just had to tell you. That there’s another way, you know. In case any of you guys would like to use it. I’ve already talked to Lary, he and Needle are definitely going. But maybe someone else?”

Sphinx looks at Black and thinks that this man in front of him is undoubtedly the same old Black that he’s known for years, and at the same time someone completely different. That his Leadership has pushed him to the edge of inspired madness, beyond which even familiar people turn into strangers. He considers whether that’s good or bad, and cannot decide definitively. It’s probably bad for Black himself, but Sphinx likes this new unpredictable stranger much more.

“Thanks, Black,” he says.

Black shrugs.

“Not at all. I just wanted you to know. OK . . . I’ll see you.”

Black walks away in his swaying, bearlike gait. Clutching the bandana with the skeletons in his hand, wearing a quietly heroic expression. As Sphinx looks at Black’s receding back, Noble drives up to him.

“What was it he wanted?”

“You know what,” Sphinx says, ignoring the question, “I seem to be acquiring a philosophical attitude.”

The search is apparently over. Counselors and Shark mill around the entrance to the canteen, arguing hotly. They come to some sort of agreement, haul Pheasants’ table to the door, barring it, and Shark announces that since many of the things known missing haven’t been discovered, the backpacks of everyone currently in the canteen will have to be searched as well. No one can hear anything after that. Shark’s speech is drowned out by indignant howls and whistles. Even Pheasants join in, discipline be damned. Shark makes a couple of futile attempts to finish his thought, then shrugs and goes back to the counselors. They are huddled together at the table, waiting for the outrage to subside, but if anything, it keeps growing. Rats start throwing crockery. Plates and cups explode on the floor a couple of feet from the counselors, so it can be argued that Rats aren’t aiming directly at them, but it still looks threatening, and Sheriff’s nerves are the first to snap. He snatches the starter pistol from his pocket and empties the clip at the ceiling. He fires until everyone’s ears start ringing.

Rats pipe down a little, especially since they ran out of things to throw. Pheasants, tableless, decide they’ve had enough and line up for the inspection, backpacks open and ready.

Smoker whips out the notebook again and feverishly scribbles in it like an obsessed reporter who suddenly stumbled upon a sensational scoop. Nanette, shaken by the gunshots, flutters away, but not before decorating the tablecloth with greenish squiggles of guano.

“They are especially vicious today, aren’t they,” Noble says. “I wonder what it is they’re missing, apart from all the things we know about?”

Sphinx looks at Tabaqui, who has been saying the same thing, but he is half-stunned with his own screams and neither hears Noble nor notices Sphinx’s look.

One after the other, Pheasants’ backpacks spill their frighteningly uniform contents on the table before the counselors. Packs of tissues, first-aid kits, daily organizers. Every backpack is then turned inside out and shaken repeatedly. The pockets are turned out separately, yielding only handkerchiefs and combs, neatly numbered.

“The way this is going, might as well settle in for the night,” Noble says. “Not that I relish the opportunity. How about letting Tabaqui go first? He’s got that evil backpack.”

“Don’t do that. That’ll just make them mad,” Humpback says.

Sphinx looks around the canteen. It brings to mind the aftermath of an explosion in a pigpen even more than usual. The shards are still glinting by the door. The oilcloth snatched off Rats’ table lies crumpled on the dirty floor. Curtains have been stripped off the windows, and several people pretend to be sleeping now wrapped in them. One corner is occupied by anxious Logs holding an emergency war council, in the other Birds are constructing a screen for a makeshift latrine, harried by Elephant squeaking miserably, “Want pee-pee! Want pee-pee!” at regular intervals. When Sphinx imagines the stench of urine added to the overall conditions in the room, he flinches disgustedly. And all the while the Leader of this entire joint is dozing off contentedly under the serving window, with his frock coat for a bed. As Sphinx observes the peaceful scene he imagines himself screaming, shaking Blind, kicking and trampling him. He starts walking, overflowing with these emotions.

He walks past Tabaqui, busily forcing something into his backpack that would make it even more deadly. Past the flowerpot containing an acid-green plant, made of plastic but still visibly gnawed on. Past the conspiratorial Logs watching the door warily. He’s almost there when Blind speaks without opening his eyes.

“Sphinx. You’re stalking me like a hungry tiger stalks a lamb. If you want to catch people unawares you’ll need to make your walk less expressive.”

Sphinx pushes the urge to scream and kick deeper down and sits next to him.

“Let’s talk. I have a lot of questions.”

“Let’s. Where do we start?”

Blind’s unruffled attitude should be infuriating to Sphinx, but instead it saps the fight out of him. The fight and the desire to discuss anything at all.

“Black’s bus. I don’t like this business with the fake license. He can’t be any good at driving. Even if he did take a couple of lessons, that still isn’t enough. He has no experience. He’s going to kill himself and everyone else stupid enough to join him.”

“I don’t think so. He’s a very responsible person. Besides, it’s not like I can stop him from doing something after graduation. I can’t even stop Lary after graduation.”

“But you wouldn’t even if you could.”

Blind shrugs.

“That’s right. I wouldn’t. It’s his decision. He’s a Leader. Why in the world would I want to stop him?”

“I see. I had the feeling that this was going to be useless.”

Blind opens his eyes, sends his arm under his shirt, and scratches himself furiously.

“I thought you said you also had a lot of questions,” he reminds Sphinx.

Sphinx looks at him probingly.

“I did. It’s just that I’m not sure anymore if I should be asking them.”

“Try me,” Blind suggests.

“Do you know why they are being so thorough with the searches?”

Blind straightens up.

“I do.”

“And?”

“They’re afraid of the graduation. They are making sure no one’s assembled a stash of explosives, poisons, and so on.”

“Then why today? The graduation is not until . . .”

“Tomorrow. All we have left is this evening and this night. And also a bit of the morning, but I wouldn’t count on it.”

It is now Rats’ turn at the inspection table. The Pheasants have been checked and cleared, along with Elephant. It is likely that he managed to reach the toilet before it was too late.

“Where . . . ,” Sphinx begins, but has to clear his throat. “Where did you get that information?”

He speaks very softly, his outward appearance is completely serene, he does not make a single sudden movement, but the heads of those sitting at the table slowly turn in his direction. Tabaqui. Noble. Humpback.

Counselors extract condom packets by the fistful from Red’s backpack. It appears to hold an inexhaustible supply of them. The melancholy smirk of Rat Leader quivers and floats in Sphinx’s eyes, as if he were looking at it through a thick layer of water.

“Tomorrow morning they will call another all-hands,” Blind says. “Assemble everyone in the lecture hall and declare it. And about ten minutes after that the parents will start arriving.”

Sphinx is silent. He is counting the days that have been stolen from them, from him . . . from all of them. Seven. No, six and a half. A pittance. They would’ve flown past quickly. But now, robbed of them, he is so shocked that he’s unable to speak or react to what Blind is saying.

A lamp inside a pink shade switches on above them. The shade has the form of a glass flower, and there is a crack across the translucent bell. There’s something dark attached to the winding stem. Sphinx looks closer and realizes it’s a switchblade, hidden there to avoid the search. It’s an ingenious spot. He sees the knife, and also something on top of the frame around the locked serving window, something that’s been left there. He suspects that were he to stand up and look around he’d be able to see everything that’s been concealed around the canteen, all the invisible objects, dangerous and not, valuable and worthless, everything that counselors are trying and failing to discover. He is doing his best to avoid looking at people. Looking at them the way he used to, the way Ancient taught him to. Now is not the time. But when did he stop doing that? Simply looking. Simply seeing. Simply living in the present day. Not yesterday and not tomorrow. When did his hours and days grow diminished with the fears and regrets?

“How long have you known?”

“Since they settled on the date. Last Monday.”

The pink reflections of the lamp in Blind’s eyes, two tiny pink flowerlets. Under them, the somber grin. His fingernails tease and scratch the palm of the other hand. The hands are as restless as the face is calm. He used to know to look at Blind’s hands first, and only then at his face. There are a lot of things he used to do right, and doesn’t anymore.

“We have a Fairy Tale Night ahead of us,” Blind says. “It will also be Long. And then it will be morning. All things come to an end.”

Sphinx slumps against the wall and closes his eyes. He’s out of practice of seeing everything at once, and it’s tiring for him. Anyone who looks at him now would assume he’s dozed off, but even through the closed eyes he still feels the alarmed glances of the pack. Even Smoker’s, seemingly.

“I wonder if they are ever going to leave me alone,” Sphinx whispers.

As he opens his eyes he sees the canteen wobble in and out of focus. The wind is howling through the fence he’s sitting next to, as if playing on the harp with strings of rebar. The battered road overgrown with weeds, the telephone poles stretching out to the horizon, the sunset sky splashed purple—all of that combines into a semitransparent hologram through which he still distinguishes the shape of the canteen and the spectral figures ambling aimlessly around it. This overlapping of the two worlds, the real one and the ghostly one, makes Sphinx nauseated. He knows that if he concentrated on seeing one of them, the second would immediately blink out of existence, but something is not letting him choose between them, so he tries to keep both pictures going, even as the nausea and the vertigo grow more intense.

“Sphinx! Stop it right now! What do you think you’re doing? This is not a game!”

The habit of obeying Blind works at the level of reflex. A very old habit. The canteen fills out with color and volume, the road and the fields on both sides of it disappear.

“Sorry,” Sphinx says. “It happened kind of by itself. I didn’t want to.”

“Exactly,” Blind sighs. “You either want or you don’t. Choose the direction before you start running.”

Sphinx is amazed at how precisely Blind read his actions. That what he really wanted was to run. But not where the House wanted him to.

“I am so sick of being cooped up here.”

“Why didn’t you just say so? Easily accomplished.”

Blind stands up resolutely and pulls Sphinx after him, striding toward the inspection table almost at a run and sending the conspiratorial Logs scattering, frightened by the abruptness of his movement. Sphinx runs after him. He’s afraid that Blind is going to crash into one of the counselors and then they will regard it as the beginning of the assault. Fortunately Blind stops a couple of paces short of Sheriff’s blubbery belly.

“Could we please be excused?” he asks politely, earnestly staring into the empty space above the counselor’s head. “We do not have any backpacks with us.”

The queue does not raise any complaints, and neither does Sheriff, already beyond nervous. They are perfunctorily searched and pushed out.

“The entire House is yours,” Blind whispers as soon as the door closes behind them. “Except for the First, but you’re not exactly eager to go there, are you?”

“I’m not,” Sphinx says sullenly. “I’m not eager to go anywhere except my bed. I need to grab some sleep and get my head together. It’s going to be a long night.”

Blind slows his pace. “I’m sorry,” he says, “but there are some questions that I need to ask you too. The bed will have to wait. We can go to the Coffeepot. Or we can go to another place, where you’ll have enough time to sleep, watch the sun rise, have a breakfast, and collect your thoughts before we have our talk. Your call. The second choice would save us a lot of trouble.”

Sphinx stops and looks at Blind intently.

“No,” he says firmly. “I prefer the Coffeepot.”

“As you wish.”

There isn’t a single soul inside the Coffeepot. Blind goes behind the counter and rummages there, searching for coffee. Sphinx directs his actions. After having obtained two cups of black coffee, they independently choose the same table, under the window that no one’s bothered to reglaze. Somebody has put a rag under it, but didn’t think to push away the table, and now the oilcloth features an elaborate puddle of grayish rainwater. Blind plops an ashtray in the middle of it and is surprised when he has to shake the droplets off himself.

Sphinx looks out, at the cloudy sky.

“Looks like there’s going to be more rain tonight,” he says.

Blind sits next to him, lights a cigarette, positions it on the edge of the ashtray, and immediately lights a second one. He leaves it in his left hand, picks up the first one with his right and holds it in the air with the filter pointing away. Sphinx doesn’t have to bend or even turn his neck, the cigarette is hanging directly in front of his lips. To take a sip of coffee, Blind lowers both cigarettes into the ashtray and lifts his cup with one hand while simultaneously holding Sphinx’s cup in the other. All of this he does reflexively, without giving it a single thought, and just as reflexively Sphinx drinks the coffee and smokes in sync with him.

“Well?” Sphinx says when there’s less than half remaining in the cup. “Ask. Let’s get it over with.”

“You already know what I’m going to ask.”

“I do,” Sphinx says. “Am I staying or leaving?”

Blind nods.

“I am leaving. I’m sorry, Blind.”

His hands. Look at the hands, not the face, Sphinx says to himself. Then he looks up and sees the puzzled grimace. It dawns on Sphinx that what he said could have sounded to Blind as exactly the opposite of what he meant. If he’d said, “I am staying,” Blind would have understood right away. He still understood, but not because of the words, purely by the tone and the apology, he needs a couple of seconds to square it with the meaning of Sphinx’s “mistake,” and when he does his face turns to stone.

Sphinx wants to apologize again but stops himself. It would be worse than silence. He realizes that the way he misspoke, purely by chance, told Blind more than any explanation he could come up with. Maybe it’s for the best.

“Is this final?”

“Yes. And I don’t want to talk about it.”

Blind frowns.

“But I do. It’s because of them, isn’t it? Those who can’t leave?”

“No, not because of them. All right, maybe it is. But I wouldn’t have stayed even if everyone else did.”

He probably shouldn’t have said that. But he’s trying his best to be honest. Just as Blind is trying his best to remain calm.

“Why?” Blind says.

“It’s my life,” Sphinx says. “I want to live it. It’s no one’s fault that for you the real world is there, and for me it’s here. That’s just the way it is.”

“Does Mermaid know yet?”

“No.”

Sphinx turns away, to avoid looking at Blind’s face suddenly lit up with hope.

“But it doesn’t matter,” he says. “She will choose what I choose.”

“Happily, I suppose?”

Blind’s subtle clarification remains unanswered, to his delight.

“You sound very sure of yourself,” he says. “I get it, it’s love . . . for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer and all that. But what if she doesn’t have the same choice?”

“That can’t be.”

“It can. Believe me, it can.”

Sphinx feels a fleeting prickle of fear. Of a cold, hungry void. But then he sees the trace of a triumphant smile on Blind’s lips and realizes he’s toying with him.

“Blind, stop it,” he says. “I am not staying. And you are very bad with threats.”

“She can’t remain here,” Blind persists. “She is of another world, there is no place for her in this one.”

Sphinx looks at him, heavily and darkly, trying to gauge the degree of his sincerity, and can’t decide if Blind is lying or telling the truth. As usual.

“So be it,” Sphinx says. “If that is true, then we weren’t meant to be together. But admit it, you invented that a moment ago.”

Blind’s face remains unclouded. It’s his breath that sounds suddenly ragged, as if someone has just hit him.

“Yes,” he says after a pause. “I invented that a moment ago. To scare you. Of course she’s just a common girl. There are thousands more like her. The Outsides is lousy with them.”

The vengeful notes in his voice make Sphinx sit up.

“Do you know something about her? About where she came from?”

“From her parents, where else?” Blind feigns surprise. “Otherwise you’d have to assume she hatched out of an egg, right?”

Sphinx closes his eyes resignedly.

“I asked you once, and I’m asking you again. Stop this,” he says. “Enough. I am tired of living in the shadow of the House. I don’t need any more of its gifts, of its worlds that turn out to be traps. I don’t want to belong to it. I don’t want anything from it. No more lives that unfold before you as if they were real, and then you find out that you’re old, your muscles have atrophied, people look at you like you’re a reanimated corpse and celebrate your ability to tell the right hand from the left. I hate this, I’m afraid of it, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, even you, but you don’t see me pleading with you to stay here!”

It’s almost completely dark now. The wan strip of light in the sky has been extinguished. Wind is walking freely in and out through the empty frame. Blind is hunched over, clutching his head.

“Why did you refuse to go there with me just now? Were you afraid I’d drag you somewhere you can’t crawl out of? Leave you there and run away?”

Sphinx nods. “Something like that. You got it. Do you mean to say you wouldn’t?”

Blind raises his head.

“I don’t know,” he says fiercely. “I might have. Except it’s not that easy. You are stronger than you think. You’d get out. There are no doors there that wouldn’t open before you. But you are choosing to stay here and live out the rest of your stupid life as an armless cripple.”

The last sentence convinces Sphinx that Blind is teetering on the edge. He’s never used those words before. Never said them out loud. Blind is having a harder and harder time holding himself together. Sphinx is having a harder and harder time observing him in this state.

“People live with this,” he says.

“Of course they do,” Blind says. “Go ahead, live with it. I hope you don’t have an occasion to regret the choice you’ve made. I could have brought you over completely. You know that. Even Noble could have done it. Think about it.”

“Noble has others to take care of.”

Sphinx stands up.

The House is looking at him through Blind’s empty, translucent eyes. The House does not want to let go of him. For a fleeting moment Sphinx imagines that there’s no Blind in the room. Only someone, something, that would stop at nothing to keep him in. He feels a cold knot in his stomach. It passes as quickly as it came, and he again sees Blind, who’d never do anything to hurt him.

“Go away,” Blind says. “I don’t want to hear you again.”

If Sphinx had arms he would have pounded his fist into the table now. Maybe it would’ve helped a little. But there are no arms. The only thing he can do is leave. Everything that needed to be said, was.

He walks out into the hallway and stops as he hears a crashing noise from behind the closed door. Blind has done what he himself couldn’t, smashed his hand against the table. Sphinx closes his eyes and stands quietly for a while, listening intently, but there are no more sounds coming from inside the Coffeepot.