The Gray House

I spy with my little eye that Sphinx, who’s been affecting boredom all this time, is suddenly no longer bored. He’s frozen, coiled like a spring, pupils dilated. Anyone else wouldn’t have noticed, but I do. I prick up my ears and sniff at the air intently, trying to determine if something’s changed in it.

Not obviously. It’s a bit less stifling than before, or maybe it only seems that way because I’ve simply gotten inured to it. The window drapes sway and snap back. And Alexander, having dropped off the cups, suddenly grabs the edge of the table, as if someone’s trying to pull him away.

“You missed the best bit,” Noble says to Sphinx.

“I’ve already gathered that.”

“And it’s you who’s at the bottom of his complexes, if you dig deep enough.”

“Tabaqui doesn’t grow up, because he knows the secret,” Owl says to Gnome, but loud enough so that everyone else can hear it too. “He’s just said so. ‘But Jackal is Jackal’ and so on.”

Alexander is staring at the window, all strung out under his white vestments, like an arrow that’s already chosen its target. Like something winged, cooped up uncomfortably in a closed jar. The gnawed fingers, now clenched on his own shoulders, elongate and darken before my very eyes, turning into talons. The sand-colored clouds of the Outsides cross his face, flashing the unfallen rain when they reach his eyes.

“Ow. Ow. Ow,” I mumble, not able to look away.

Tired, cross, and not a little scared, Smoker asks if he understood it correctly that my cassettes contain recordings of various night noises.

“They contain evidence of an otherworldly phenomenon,” I tell him patiently.

“You mean they don’t.”

“Which is the same thing. Ghosts cannot be captured on tape.”

And no Howls in my subconscious, not one. Leached out. Only a helpless grunt. The stuffy Coffeepot air, viscous with smoke, begins to luminesce faintly, setting the silhouettes of its inhabitants trembling. Mermaid retreats behind her hair, like a frightened bird. Ginger turns to stand up. The universe around us floats outward in spirals, like invisible waves from a stone thrown in water. Hound Rickshaw crosses the Coffeepot hobbling lamely, trying to outrun them.

“So the fact that there’s nothing there proves the existence of ghosts?”

Smoker’s voice is desperate and betrays his almost final conviction in my mental incompetence. When a person talks in this fashion he is definitely in need of being rescued, except I can’t decide who needs saving more: Smoker, who’s on the verge of desperate wailing, or Alexander, who’s on the verge of flying out the window, breaking both the glass and the bars outside. Because I definitely can’t get to both of them in time.

“I’ve had it! You are just trying to drive me insane, all of you!” Smoker shrieks, his pallid eyes bugging out.

He drives right at me, clearly intent on running me over. But at the same moment there’s another shriek, and something fiery-scarlet singes the ceiling, flying across the room with a blinding flash. All sounds fall away.

“Avast!” I yell, pushing away from the table, and to the disjointed accompaniment of the fading echo of my own “vast-vast-vast,” I keel over.

Disgustingly slowly. Judging by the clatter, Smoker’s wheelchair crashed into Mustang, weights and all. I am on my back, observing the curious crystal rain fanning out across the floor. The small beads hang in the air, suspended over the faster, bigger shards. I reach out with my hand, mesmerized, trying to catch one of them, but miss. Obviously, I comprehensively squandered my chance to get to Alexander, and obviously it was him I needed to rescue first and foremost while Smoker could wait, because it’s one thing when someone is cracking because of loneliness and it’s quite another thing when someone else turns into a dragon and scoots off. Having realized this, I attempt to climb out of the wheelchair and do at least something, which puts me straight under Smoker’s wheels. My universe is temporarily dark, boring, and stinking of soot.

When I come to, I’m under the table. How I arrived here is a mystery. Next to me is Owl, and there’s a muddy coffee rain dripping peacefully off our common roof. There’s also an ample goose egg on my forehead, spreading down over the eye. I feel it, remembering the glass rain, and gasp.

“You know what,” Owl says irritably, glasses flashing, “your pack is completely out of bounds. It’s an outrage what you’ve been up to lately.”

“Right. The guy had a fit. What were we supposed to do? It is a sometimes occurrence with epileptics.”

“A fit? Epileptics?” Owl cackles unpleasantly. “So that’s what you call it in the Fourth!”

I endeavor to explain to Owl where exactly he can stuff his indignation, preferably in written form and wrapped with razor wire.

“Screw you,” Owl mumbles as he extricates himself from under the table.

The coffee drops, now less frequent, plop on his scruff.