The Gray House

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?