The Gray House

by Mariam Petrosyan

  “What have you done, Alexander?” I ask.

  “I think I’ve killed him,” the soft, toneless voice answers.

  “Why?”

  “I was afraid. My fear could have done it without my knowledge. I never would try to hurt you, you know that. He was horrible inside. I am glad that I said this to you, Sphinx, and that you thought to ask. You can do what you will with me now. If you tell me to go away, I’ll go away.”

  Tubby tears open a pack of cigarettes and hoots excitedly at them tumbling out. He grabs two and stuffs them in his mouth, then immediately spits them out in disgust.

  I get up and walk out. I have no idea where I’m going. I know only that I must move. Doesn’t matter in which direction.

  “Hey, Sphinx, by any chance are those my clothes you’re wearing?”

  A figure looming ahead. Must go around. It’s Black, hugging a huge speaker.

  “Yes. They are yours. Noble and I had a day of reminiscences.”

  I step to the side, but he follows, still blocking my way.

  “Sphinx, what’s wrong? You look like hell.”

  I just stand there, waiting for him to tire of loitering in front of me. I look at his chin pressed against the speaker. Then the speaker drops away, deposited on the floor. The chin disappears along with it. Black assumes a crooked pose, like his spine is somehow damaged.

  “I see,” he says. “You’re a scary sight to behold, but I think I’ll manage. Is there any way I can help?”

  “Sure. Stuff me in a crack somewhere and plaster it over.”

  “Understood,” Black says, straightening up. “Let’s go. I’ve got what you need. The crack, the plaster, and the gravestone. Just hang on until we reach the first floor.”

  He leaves the speaker in the middle of the hallway, as a monument to our momentous meeting. I follow him obediently. We come out to the landing. Go down, continue on. In the lecture hall someone is tormenting the piano rapturously, as usual, and the waves of exuberance crest over the entire first floor. Black leads me to a half-empty room. It seems to be some kind of storage space, with cardboard boxes stacked against the walls. One is ripped slightly, and inside it I can discern a commode in plastic foam. We’re in the graveyard of commodes.

  Black grapples inside one of the boxes, mumbling indistinctly. Produces a bottle, and another one.

  “It is my opinion,” he says, “that you need a drink. Can you hold this? I don’t have any crystal goblets around.”

  “I’ll try,” I say. “What’s in it?”

  “Grain alcohol cut with apple-juice concentrate.”

  I laugh. Black upends an empty box and arranges the bottles on top of it.

  “Your introduction to the Hound tastes. This is their favorite tipple. It’s not that bad once you get used to it. It all depends on the ratio.”

  “For all I care,” I say, “this could be pure alcohol.”

  “I can see that.” Black sits down on the floor and unscrews the cap off one of the bottles. “Now what’s happened? Want to tell me about it?”

  I shake my head.

  He passes the other bottle to me.

  “As you wish. I’m not going to insist, of course.”

  The doggy mix is unlike anything I’ve ever tasted. It’s vile stuff, but after three or four gulps that no longer matters.

  “Lay off a bit,” Black cautions. “It really goes to the head.”

  “Hounds are strange,” I say. “As are their tastes.”

  “Our tastes,” Black notes. “I’m a Hound now too, don’t forget.”

  “That’s right,” I say. “Brown. Shaggy. Very big. Have you ever noticed what color eyes Alexander has? Feuille morte. Fallen leaves. Dappled.”

  “Never thought to look.”

  “Your loss. There’s a lot hidden inside there. Do you know what my deepest secret is, Black? I mean, everyone has their own secret here in the House. And mine is that I can bail out of here anytime. Anytime I want.”

  Black chokes and lowers the bottle.

  “Where would you go?”

  “Also here. But not exactly. The here that’s a little out of here. But it’s a secret, understand?”

  “Got it,” Black says. “Inside the bottle with alcohol and apple juice. Looks like you’ve had enough.”

  I spread myself across the wall and put up my legs on the box. The clamp on the rake is stuck closed, so I’m now doomed to be holding the bottle of Hound Delight until the day I die.

  “Count the fingers for me, Black. I’m going to name for you the parallel universes suitable for hiding.”

  “Go ahead,” Black says. “Be my guest.”

  The door opens, revealing Noble, swaying elegantly between the crutches.

  “Found you!” he says.

  “Another one wearing my clothes,” Black says in surprise. “What’s with you today? Noble, come here. Looks like he’s already sozzled. Just started talking about parallel universes.”

  “A fascinating topic.”

  Noble floats toward us, flops down on an unoccupied box, and drops the crutches with a clatter.

  I close my eyes, and open them again.

  And find myself in everything at once. The walls, the ceiling, Black, Noble, even Noble’s crutches. I am a vortex into which the world is emptying. The part of me that’s the most intact is alarmed by what I’m doing. It’s alarmed that it revealed the bottle stash to the other me and allowed him, the bald and crazy-eyed one sitting across with his feet up on the box, to partake of its contents.

  This part is also the most convenient to operate, and it says, “Damn. I didn’t know he was going to go to pieces like that. What do you think we should do, Noble?”

  Yet another part of me, the one slowly crushing the cardboard box (the poor thing contained a bathroom sink once, and is now holding on for its dear life), is also irritated and a bit scared, and says, “Why are you asking me? What was it you gave him?”

  I am sloshing inside the bottle, clinging somewhat to the sides, because one of my ingredients is a thick viscous syrup. I am not entirely colorless, and that’s syrup again. There aren’t any others like me, this kind of Me is only made here and exists here and nowhere else. I was stored among the commodes and I seem to remember that this Me is related to dogs in some fashion, as is the Me sitting across, while the other Me, the one looming over, thinks that I am poison.

  My armpits are on fire, sending shooting pains down the rib cage, and my neck is stiff and it takes an effort to turn, and the box under me keeps sagging. I should probably get up before it goes completely flat.

  I don’t want to become the box too, the feeling of it is too unpleasant.

  The Me slumped against the wall says, “The entire world is part of me now, do you understand that?”

  I answer to myself, having jumped over to the buckling box, “Honestly, I would prefer not to.”

  And immediately soar up and crash back down, expand in all directions and solidify, peek through thousands of tiny apertures with a billion eyes. I like this Me most of all, it’s so peaceful and so enormous, a cube that contains all others. It’s rather more like Us, and we are the foundation of the House, we carry and support it. It takes an effort to keep myself within the confines of this single room, because it is more natural for walls to be joined up with other walls, but for some reason I feel that this would be dangerous, even if I don’t remember why exactly. I lose the sense of hearing. The little scurrying We, restless and much too emotional, move and squeak so fast that I can’t pick up the high-pitched sound they produce. I am closer to being asleep than awake, this state is familiar to me, and only the apprehension of joining up with other walls keeps me from giving in to it entirely. But it becomes harder and harder. I am feeling more strain than the unfortunate box, but the Me perseveres as long as it can, and when its strength starts to fail I concentrate on the point where I am coming in contact with the hairless, metal-handed Me. I flow into him and hear Black say, “What do you say we go fi
nd Blind?” and Noble responds, “We can’t leave him here like that.”

  I sit slumped against the wall, feeling its smooth, cold surface with my shoulders and with the tape that’s binding them, and recognizing in it an almost kindred spirit.

  What I’ve just done is forbidden: dissolving in the environment is too addictive and too dangerous. Dissolving in people is safer, but inanimate objects tend to bind to the dreams and it’s easy to get bogged down for years and not even notice. The trick with the walls saved me once, when I was a kid and life had served up a particularly scary episode. I had barely made it out that time, and gave myself a promise never to do it again. But promises are made to be broken, eventually, the way Alexander has broken his. I still can’t bring myself to think of his words, of what he said about Wolf, but his broken promise I can already start to mull over. The short stint inside the walls calmed me enough for that.

  I look back at Black and Noble.

  “One of the variations of the Game,” I tell them, “is being in everything. You are in everything and everything is in you. It’s dangerous, though.”

  Black and Noble exchange glances.

  “Never tried,” Noble says. “You’re an extreme guy, Sphinx. That’s not good.”

  “He looks a bit more sober,” Black says hesitantly, pointedly addressing Noble, like a Spider within earshot of a patient.

  I nod. A bit, yes. But not completely, because I’m still in the Game. Both Black and Noble look slightly unusual. Black must be forty-something. An imposing figure of a man, naked above the waist, with an axe tucked into his waistband for some reason. Handsome. Head balding in the front, face more lined than might be expected, but still. A Conan the Barbarian in his middle age.

  Noble is younger, and not that impressive. A sharp, severe face without any trace of his usual beauty. A slight overbite. The eyelashes white as if powdered with dandruff. He’s clad in disgusting rags that come apart at the seams every time he moves.

  The rules of the Game are not the same for everyone. Black is the way he wants himself to be. Noble is the way he feels himself to be.

  This might be interesting.

  Black gets up, crowding half the room.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he says to me. “We’ll take you out for a little spin. Now let go of that bottle, will you?”

  I unclasp my long and very human fingers, and the bottle falls down and rolls on the floor. I’d be interested to know what I look like, I mean the whole of me, but there are no mirrors here. Black bends down, bathing me in dog reek, grabs me under the armpits, and hoists up.

  “There we go. Easy does it. One step at a time.”

  I shuffle to the door obediently. You don’t argue with Conans, now do you? I feel his breath on the back of my head. The Alpha Hound. The door is mossy, overgrown with mold and lichens, armies of ants traverse it, and in place of a handle there’s a splintery branch.

  Black’s paw framed by the spiky bracelet grabs it and breaks it clean off. The door flies open and we march out to the abandoned highway under the inhospitable gray sky.

  Fields stuck with telephone poles, cracked asphalt, the white dividing line barely visible, half-buried in blowing sand. The wind twists Black’s jersey, which I’m still wearing, tickling my belly with its icy fingers. Noble tries to put up the collar of his coat, but it immediately tears off and remains in his hands. He flings it away in disgust.

  “Ready to go?”

  Black rushes forward purposefully, shouting, “The speaker! I left it in the middle of the hallway. Better go pick it up before someone swipes it!”

  I look back at the door, but it has already disappeared. Of course. Noble hobbles ahead, catching the crutches in the cracks of the pavement and digging them back out, cursing and swearing. Through the rips in his pants I can discern something green and leafy springing up.

  The clouds loom threateningly. It’s going to rain soon. Black is already far away. This endless highway for him is just a few feet of wooden floor. That’s the reason he’s moving with such an astounding speed, throwing surprised looks back at Noble and me.

  “Where are we going?” I ask Noble.

  “How would I know?” he says indifferently. “It’s your Jump, you figure it out.”

  He notices something in the grass, stops and pokes it with his crutch. There’s a cigarette end stuck to the rubber tip when he brings it back. Noble peels it off and carefully stashes it in his pocket.

  “That’s nice,” he says. “Forgot my backpack. A couple more like that, and there’s a whole smoke right there. You be on the lookout for them too, so that we don’t miss any.”

  I peer into the withered grass.

  “You’re catching on fast, Noble,” I say. “Like it’s an everyday thing for you.”

  Noble laughs, exposing sharp teeth.

  “Not every day. But not rare either. Wasn’t it you who explained that there was nothing special about me doing it?”

  “It was,” I agree. “But it looks like I’ve bungled the explanation if you keep shuttling back and forth. I should have scared you more thoroughly.”

  “Oh, you have,” Noble says. “Don’t worry. But we’re on the boundary, not inside. We can go back anytime we want.”

  “Boundary has its own dangers,” I keep pressing.

  He looks at me in surprise.

  “What dangers? It’s only our own guys here, isn’t it?”

  I choose not to argue further.

  A purplish bolt of lightning suddenly splits the sky above us.

  “We’re going to get wet,” Noble says, looking up and shivering under his rags. “Black must have found his precious speaker by now. Not falling through has its benefits.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “I’m not blaming you. It was my idea to follow you here.”

  Five or six crumbled milestones later we finally get a bearing. The sugar cube of the roadside diner, still far away. Surprisingly, there’s no rain yet. But it starts to get dark unnaturally fast.

  The closer we get to the diner, the more attractive it looks. The white building with a steep-pitched roof and striped awning. There are a lot of cars in front of it, one more ancient than the next. A parade from the dawn of the automobile era. I used to collect cards with cars like that. Here they look decrepit. The most rickety rust-bucket convertible is occupied by two half-naked girls who start to squeal and wave as soon as they see us.

  “Hey, big boys, wanna ride? Wind in your hair! We can jump off a cliff, groovy, man!”

  One of them has Marilyn’s face, and her breasts under the skimpy faded bikini top bring to mind soccer balls. She parts her pouting lips and licks them expectantly.

  “How ’bout it? A ride?”

  We make our way around them and enter the diner, diving into the noise, commotion, and beguiling meaty scents. The small square room amazingly manages to fit an entire throng of people. They sit at the wooden tables, but they sit under and on top of them as well.

  The tables haven’t been sanded and they are full of splinters; some of them still have patches of bark. The faces around me look unfamiliar. In reality I know all of them, of course. Colorful slogans blaze on the walls. As soon as I concentrate on one of them, it starts swelling, growing in size and obscuring its neighbors.

  Noble and I grab a miraculously free table against the wall, under the unchanging woodblock print of a seascape. Someone in a chef’s toque and a golden carnival mask with a long beak drops a couple of plates off the tray as he rushes past.

  I look closer. Finely minced meat over something grainy and yellow, like corn mush. Noble unzips his tattered coat and tucks in. He has a huge, glowing heart pendant around his neck, enclosing a flaming lock of hair of truly frightening proportions. I gulp the food in the same greedy fashion as everyone else. There’s a display attached to the wall underneath the print, its screen flashing green numbers, 2 and 2. Two times two. That’s the number of our table.

  My plate is almo
st empty. The next table gets swarmed by a raucous gang of old farts in black leather, with unkempt beards. Their snorting and laughter drowns out everything else. Still, even over the din they’re causing I can clearly hear something angrily banging at the window.

  Its insistent knocking finally attracts attention. The window is opened and in flutters a big-eared creature, resembling a half-baked hyena with faceted wings made out of flower petals. It flaps futilely under the ceiling and crashes down on our table, overturning Noble’s plate and sending up a cloud of pollen that makes my nose itch.

  “Look at them,” the hyena says indignantly. “I’ve been searching all over for you. Where have you been, you bastards?”

  “Nowhere special,” I say. “We’re having a lunch, as you can see.”

  “A lunch, huh,” the winged hyena drawls menacingly and breaks into a coughing fit. His open maw drips saliva that crystallizes and cascades down with a glassy tinkle.

  “Where’s my grub?” the flyer demands hoarsely. “And after that I’ll deal with you, and it’s not going to be pleasant.”

  Noble drums his fingers on the table.

  “Hey, Sphinx. You think it’s time we got out of here? Before the rest of them arrive?”

  The hyena transforms into a frail, pensive, middle-aged Sikh. No sign of wings. Black suit, snow-white turban. He unfolds the napkin and takes a plate off the tray.

  “I am very sorry if I seem intrusive,” he says politely. “But if I were you I would refrain from sudden movements at this time.”

  “We will,” I assure him. “I’m waiting for someone. And if that someone isn’t here in the next half an hour we’ll try to scramble out. I just need some time.”

  Noble sighs and takes out the cigarette butt he salvaged. The pendant around his neck is pulsating in sync with his breathing. The Sikh, humming softly, produces a gold-plated hookah out of thin air.

  Blind’s soft hands rest on my shoulders, giving me a substantial electric jolt. I startle.

  “How are you?” he asks considerately.