The Gray House

Ralph replaced the last drawer he’d taken out.

“I was looking for mentions of those expelled from the House,” he said. “Whose parents took them away shortly before the graduation. Some of them seemed to have developed this strange disorder, the Lost Syndrome, they called it. Do you remember?”

Old Man knitted his brow.

“Lost Syndrome . . .” he muttered. “That wouldn’t be here. You’ll have to go dig in the sick-bay archives. Rare thing, that, but yes, sometimes . . .”

“Were there any cases similar, but not exactly like that?”

Old Man sank even deeper in thought.

“There were lots of things,” he said finally. “All sorts . . . Can’t say for sure.”

Ralph felt acute disappointment. When you start hoping for a miracle you sometimes get it, and then it turns out completely hollow. What did he expect from this old clown? Even in his better times he couldn’t see past his own nose.

As if confirming his suspicions, Old Man waved his hand dismissively at the cabinets.

“What you’re looking for isn’t there,” he said again, tapping his forehead. “It’s all in here, collected and stored. The fount of memory is inside, and all that is just dumb paper.”

With that he grabbed Ralph by the hand and pulled him to the door.

“Let’s go! I will tell you everything I remember, and I remember everything!”

Alarmed by this promise, Ralph shuffled after Old Man while he, not letting his mouth close even for a moment, clicked the switches that gradually restored the library to darkness.

“You see . . . As soon as I saw you today, I immediately thought: Time to come out! It was like lightning! I simply had to come out, that’s what I thought . . .”

The night-guard quarters, the first room from the stairs, turned out to be a tiny nook stuffed to the brim with mismatched furniture, old magazines, and clocks. The clocks filled all available space on the walls. Ralph’s first impression was that the walls were encrusted with glass plaques in lieu of wallpaper, and he had to look closer to realize his mistake. It was indeed mostly clocks, with a few watches here and there, and even some alarm clocks thrown in. He froze in stunned amazement, studying the dials that surrounded him. None of them worked. Their hands pointed at different angles, some had no hands at all. For some reason Ralph’s memory brought up that endless winter night when his watch and the time itself refused to move, an experience he didn’t much like to recall.

Old Man obviously relished his reaction.

“Impressive, isn’t it? Took me fifteen years to collect. Not everything was salvageable, of course, and then I have some I couldn’t fit here. I’ve got two more boxes under the bed, both chock full.”

He hung the cap on the nail in the door, squeezed sideways between the table and the bed, went to the far corner, crouched down, and started rummaging there.

It occurred to Ralph that he was going to be presented with the undisplayed part of the collection, but when Old Man straightened up he was holding a bottle.

“Someone mentioned that the life expectancy of a clock in the House, doesn’t matter what kind, was surprisingly small,” he said, wiping off the bottle with a suspicious-looking piece of cloth. “That was what had set it in motion. I was only collecting the wall clocks at first. The ones in the canteen and the classrooms. I expect others in my position would just give in and stop putting them up, but I was intrigued. It was a challenge of sorts.”

He proudly placed the bottle on the table and admired it.

“Usually we couldn’t find any evidence of them being tampered with, you see. Then it came to me that watches should be out there somewhere too, and I put a word out for the janitors to be on the lookout and bring me any that they found in the trash. Now those were being broken on purpose. Crushed down to dust, almost. The collection got a big boost. After a while I had to stop accepting the ones that were completely destroyed.”

Ralph attempted to read the label on the bottle, but Old Man switched off the light and turned on a feeble desk lamp.

“That better? The collection does make people a tad uncomfortable sometimes.”

“It is better,” Ralph agreed. “And it is uncomfortable. Too sparkly.”

“I’m used to it. It’s all a matter of habit. I would miss them if they went away.”

Old Man presented Ralph with a glass and pulled up a stool, then made himself comfortable on the quilt-covered couch. The glass appeared to be holding wine.

“What is it that you do here, exactly?” Ralph said.

The question sounded somewhat impolite, but Old Man clearly had been waiting for it to be asked and wasn’t too particular about the precise wording. He leaned forward, clutching the unlit pipe in his hand.

“I observe. I track the situation as it develops. Truth be told, I seem to have missed some things in my time.”