The Gray House

He spent six months there, making acquaintances with the local hobos, chatting up old crones at the market, and befriending stray cats infesting the guesthouse. The residents of the Roach Motel were of two sorts: temporary and permanent. The first kind they called tumbleweeds, the second, transients. All of them lived in the present day, never mentioning the past and never planning for the future. To have enough food on the plate for the night, that was the one and only goal worthy of their attention.

He worked odd jobs all over the place. It was easier in the summer. He helped the photographer install the bulky cardboard backdrops, depicting sailboats and dolphins, on the river beach. Made bracelets from colored wire for the two sisters who then sold them among other trinkets on the same beach. In the mornings he raked the sand in front of the riverside diner before it opened.

Autumn came, and the first downpours turned the river murky and wild. Trash overwhelmed the beach, the cafés and diners closed. There still were the gas station and the car wash, but they had enough help without him. He went there only rarely. They never let him into the repair shop. Neither him nor the other transients. Car parts were worth their weight in gold in Blackwood, so even the most run-down repair shops hired armed guards.

He was surprised when one day these two guys from the repair shop turned up at the Roach Motel and asked for someone to help with a car. He was even more surprised by the reaction of the tenants. Some immediately made themselves scarce, others pretended they couldn’t hear or understand a single word. They marched him away before he could figure out what was going on.

There was a black car in the yard behind the shop. The first decent-looking car he’d seen in the last six months. The first not appearing to be ready to fall apart right that moment. No dings, no dents, no stickers covering the rusty patches, no flaking paint. They said he was to wash it. Nothing more. The hose was right there on the ground. Also a bucket and two sponges.

He knew he was in trouble even before he took a peek inside. The car wash was right around the corner. It was useless to ask why they couldn’t just drive the car over there. Useless straight off, and even more so after he saw what he saw. They helped him detach and haul out the seats. That was it. When he found a severed finger under one of the rubber mats, he didn’t try to hide it, just threw it in the bucket full of dirty water. For four hours straight he washed blood out of the car. He was sure they were going to kill him as soon as he finished.

Later that night, back in the Roach Motel, Filthywings told him that his troubles were only beginning. And that he needed to disappear. He knew it himself.

“Would you like me to darn your shirt?” Mockturtle asked. She was always kind to him.

He gave away all of his belongings—the hotplate, the kettle, the warm coat he had won in a raffle. Picked up his backpack and left the Roach Motel. Its denizens, it seemed, breathed easier. Now they wouldn’t have to witness his death and be upset by it.

When he put enough distance between himself and the guesthouse he sat on the low railing in front of some house and thought about what he was going to do next. His legs hurt. In fact, they were getting worse. He wasn’t going to get far on foot. Hitchhiking meant endangering other people who didn’t have anything to do with what happened. Buses were out for the same reason. Besides, their usefulness was very limited. They moved at a speed barely above that of a trotting horse. He could only wait. They had promised to pay him the next morning for washing the car. When he didn’t show up for his money they’d start looking for him, and the search wouldn’t take long.

He knew that if he managed to survive this, he was going to remember it as an exciting adventure. Even though there wasn’t anything particularly exciting about his stay at the Roach Motel, and his daily quest for a paying gig wasn’t very adventurous either. Or was it? He tried to remember everything that seemed amazing to him here. Everything that was unusual.

The talk of the Forest, for one. The first he heard about it was from a chatty drunken tumbleweed who spent one night at their place, wouldn’t shut up the whole time, and in the morning left him the hotplate and a compass before moving on.

“You’ll need that, mate,” he said. “You could find yourself in the Forest at any time, and what are you gonna do then, huh? At least this way you’ll know which way is north.”

The hotplate was now with the girl who had mended his shirt, but the compass was still in the backpack somewhere.