The Gray House

Lary looks around stealthily and leans over to me. The squint in his left eye is really horrible.

“The questions you’re asking, Smoker . . . Strange questions,” he says in a low whisper. “I don’t like them, all right? Why don’t you just go on your way. I’ve got some business here. I have no time for you now, all right?”

Found on the walls:

“Through unrelenting meditation discovered the Law of Non-action. Inquiries welcome, the Sixth from 3:00 to 3:05.” Big Brother.

Ratling Whitebelly comes up to me and timidly asks that I write about him “in that notebook you have.”

“Why?” I wonder.

“So that I’m there too.”

A beseeching look, chocolate smears on his cheeks. He looks at least five years younger than everyone else.

“Listen, how old are you, anyway?” I say.

“Sixteen,” Whitebelly says, darkening. “So?”

“Why do you need to be in my diary? The truth, please.”

“This is my first loop,” he says in a flat voice. “I need to anchor myself everywhere I can, or I’ll get thrown out.”

“Where?” I am almost wailing now. “Thrown out where?”

Whitebelly looks at me in abject horror and backs away. I drive at him, but I don’t think he understands that my intention is to apologize, so he turns around and legs it away without looking back, ignoring all my shouts of “Wait!” and “Hey!”

Sphinx says that if I continue driving around scaring the kids I’m going to get it from him personally.

“It was he who scared me, not the other way around.”

In the morning there’s some unusual activity by the window, and it wakes me up. I open my eyes and see them all crowding there, discussing something. Arguing loudly.

“I’m telling you, it’s Solomon and Don! They have returned!” Jackal screams. “With a posse of like-minded avengers! You’ll see!”

“And I think they are from the nearby houses,” Lary suggests. “Came to demand the House be demolished right now. Because they’re tired of waiting.”

“It might be someone’s parents,” Ginger frets. “Only parents can pull something like this.”

“You think our grandmothers could be down there too?” Blind says, visibly worried. He is also there at the window, but isn’t peeking out, of course.

“Why grandmothers?” Ginger says.

“What is it?” I call to them. “What happened?”

The only one to turn to me is Sphinx.

“Tents. Right next to the House,” he says. “Four of them.”

“It’s a camp!” Tabaqui screams, hanging onto the window bars. “A camp of revenge!”