The Gray House

“Enough of that,” Ralph said, helping him up. “I told you, everything’s fine. We’re going to sit down now and have a nice long chat. You’re going to share your wisdom and experience and provide advice. And I’m going to listen. And so on and so forth.”

“Perfect!” Old Man exclaimed hotly, steadying himself. “What a great idea! That’s exactly what we’ll do!”

For the next hour, Ralph pretended to be listening to Old Man. To his stories of the tangled webs of intrigue from the old days. He even voiced agreement from time to time. The stories became more and more complicated as Old Man’s speech became less and less coherent. After the fourth bottle, the headache returned and the sense of time vanished.

That’s good . . . that’s nice . . . just the way it should be. I need to get really far over the edge to be doing what I’m planning to do. Really, really far . . .

Suddenly the lamp went off.

Ralph peeked out into the hallway and discovered that it was completely dark there too.

“Lights out,” Old Man grumbled. “Just what we needed. And in the most interesting place, too. I have some candles in the desk over there.”

Ralph pulled out the drawer, felt there for a bundle of thick tapers, and lit one of them.

“I had a flashlight,” he remembered. “But I don’t anymore. I left it. In the library. In the coat. With the coat. Sloppy, sloppy.”

Old Man proffered him a saucer. As Ralph started dripping wax on it, he discovered with amazement that it was incredibly hard to make the drips land in the same place. The wax seemed to want to splash all over the desk. Defeated, he returned the candle and the saucer to Old Man and said that he had to go.

Old Man was already sleeping on his feet, and didn’t protest.

“You sure? All right. Take a candle. Another candle. And I need to walk you over. Lock the door behind you and all that. Because the keys. I have the keys. I am the guard here, I’ll have you know!”

Ralph assured Old Man that he would on no account forget that.

Swaying, they went out into the hallway together. Ralph was holding the former principal under the arm, while the principal waved the candle around, splattering them both with hot wax, and discoursed on the topic of revenge. According to him, the best kind was to sit at the bottom of the river and wait for the bodies of your enemies to float by.

“Are you sure it’s the bottom?” Ralph said. “Like algae?”

“Precisely,” Old Man said. “Those ancient Chinese, they knew their stuff. Did I mention it was a typically Chinese way of revenge?”

When they reached the door, Ralph took the candle from Old Man and tried to use it to light the second one, but Old Man’s excited breathing as he hung limply off Ralph’s shoulder kept blowing it out, until finally he extinguished both of them. Ralph decided that it was for the best. He wouldn’t have been comfortable leaving Old Man here with an open flame. He somehow managed to haul him to the guard’s post, remembered about the cigarette lighter, and with its help found the second copy of the key on the nail in the wall. He dumped Old Man, already snoring happily, on the battered chair in the corner and set off on the return journey.

After locking the door behind him and coming to the landing, he lit the candle. He was taking the stairs very carefully, step by step, to maintain balance and to keep the candle from going out, feeling like a character from a gothic novel.

His entrance in the corridor on the second floor was quite spectacular. He shuffled forward slowly, dimly aware of the appreciative whispers from the unseen audience, holding the candle in front of him—white shirt, sunken eyes, hair sticking out. He desperately wished for a candlestick. A graceful antique affair, with a winding stem, he’d look so much more dashing if he had that. Also he wished for some more steadiness. And for the rustling around him to stop.

The corridor was supposed to lead Ralph straight to the door of his office, but it was playing tricks tonight. It branched three times instead, demanding that Ralph choose which turn to take, and every time he had grave suspicions that he’d chosen incorrectly.

Finally, in a filthy, garbage-strewn corner—the House had never had such places before tonight, Ralph was absolutely sure of that—an unfamiliar-looking young boy courteously touched him on the arm and offered his assistance.

“Yes, thank you,” Ralph said. “I seem to be slightly lost.”

“Where would you like to go?”

Ralph studied the boy closely. At least he lacked visible wings.

“I need someone to help me exact a terrible vengeance,” he explained. “But not the Chinese kind. For the Chinese kind I’m not quite ready yet. Would you happen to know anyone of that persuasion?”