The Gray House

I decided not to waste any more time with him and asked Mermaid and Needle what they thought about all this.

“Nothing,” Needle squeaked. And in case I didn’t get it the first time, repeated: “Nothing, nothing, nothing . . .”

“I liked Noble’s tale,” Mermaid said dreamily. “So beautiful.”

I could not see the expression on her face, but I could imagine it in detail.

“Blackwood . . .”

“What was that?” I said.

“Blackwood. That was the name of the town. Did you forget already?”

It could be that Noble had mentioned it. Probably at the beginning, when I wasn’t paying attention. In any case, there wasn’t anything beautiful about the place the way he described it, apart from that name.

“Los Angeles would be even cooler!” Lary chimed in.

“How did you like Black’s tale?”

I did it on purpose, calling it a tale when it wasn’t that at all. I wanted one of them to say it. But Mermaid just sighed, Needle mumbled that it was very nice, and Lary got to chomping even louder.

“Nice? You call that nice?”

Needle snuggled up to Lary, and instead of an answer they started kissing, even though Lary’s mouth most likely was still full of sandwich.

“Don’t worry about it,” Mermaid whispered. “It’s not that bad, really.”

I tried to explain to her what it was I didn’t like in this whole bus business. Mermaid listened very attentively and nodded in the right places, but I got the impression she was doing it only to humor me.

Tabaqui declared the break to be over, and all the thoughts about the bus went right out of my head, because the next to speak was the woman from the tent camp.

She must have been really uncomfortable to be doing this. She was barely audible, and she remained where she was instead of climbing the stepladder. Her story couldn’t be called a fairy tale even by someone who’s never heard a single fairy tale ever.

She told us about herself—fifty-seven, not married, no kids, no bad habits. She was a veterinarian by trade, working with cattle. She also rattled off a list of her various ailments. I didn’t catch all the names. She looked stout and healthy, so it was strange that she had so many things wrong with her. Then she told us how she became a member of this sect that coalesced around the Angel, and how happy she was there, how she realized that she had finally found her place in life, and how the Angel, who had the appearance of a tender youth, had cured her of all infirmities “with a single touch of his heavenly palm.”

Then she started talking about their weekly prayer meetings and all the other great things they got to do, and here her story started to grate on me, because she was now talking in a sonorous, not-quite-human voice, preaching almost, and stuff like that makes me gag, to be honest.

There was also this Holy Elder who was supposedly taking care of the Angel, and also, as I understood, of divesting the “blessed devout” of their money. Then he croaked, and that was the end of the good life. The Angel had been taken away by some “evil people” who claimed to be his parents, and the commune fell apart. But not completely, because some of them desired the continued communion so badly that they resolved to seek the Angel and free him from the evil clutches. It wasn’t easy. They were being persecuted, called “fanatics,” even arrested and involuntarily committed.

Her voice began trembling and gave out in some places, and I vividly imagined the man in fatigues clutching her shoulder, and her putting a hand over his and patting it comfortingly, like “it’s all right, I can handle it.” Sometimes my imagination runs out of control, but in this case I wasn’t even ashamed of it, they were so fake. It was as if they had invented themselves. Badly.

Long story short, they had found their Angel. Those who were the most fanatical. And as a reward for their fortitude and perseverance the two of them had been allowed to witness the Angel ascending to Heaven.

“Testify!” the man interrupted in a resonant baritone, making Mermaid startle.

“Wreathed in fire and light, the divine sword pierced the Heavens and returned as a falling star,” the woman explained. “Does this not prove that he was being sent to us, to those who followed him faithfully, so that he could lead us forth?”

She fell silent.

And everyone else kept silence too.

“Creepy,” Needle whispered.

I said nothing. Because it was. Creepy and scary. I finally put two and two together and got four. Understood who the angel was they were talking about. And why they’d pitched their camp against the fence of the House, and were now sitting on Alexander’s bed.

He worked as an Angel, and he got really fed up with it, Sphinx’s voice repeated in my head.