The Gray House

I was lying in the dark and listening. It was hot. My head was swimming from the cocktail, in which I could vaguely discern vodka, lemon juice, and something like pine-scented shampoo. The boombox, buried under the layers of blankets, was playing organ music. Everywhere around me were someone’s arms, legs, pillows, and bottles. It was the first time that I’d experienced the room with all the lights off. The stories kept coming. Some were interrupted just when they got going, others started instead, and then the earlier ones returned when I’d already lost the sequence of events, and the overlaying snippets wove themselves into fanciful patterns that were very hard to keep track of. I tried, though.

. . . it is the hour when the bighorns venture out on the glistening paths leading down to the water, and they bellow. Trees bend from their calls. And then the hour comes when all the fools are placed in boats and sent up the moon river. It is said that the Moon takes them. The water near the shore becomes sweet and remains sweet until sunrise. Those who catch this hour and manage to drink the water turn into fools themselves . . .

I laughed and spilled some wine on my shirt.

“Why would anyone want to drink it,” I whispered, “if it’s so dangerous?”

“There is none happier than a true fool,” the invisible storyteller said.

The voice sounded like Sphinx. But I didn’t think I was distinguishing the voices correctly. I’d drunk too much, I guessed. The glass kept refilling itself, and an empty bottle was sticking in my ribs on the right side. I couldn’t be bothered to push it away.

There aren’t too many basilisks left in the Black Forest. They have mostly gone to seed, and their gaze is rarely lethal. But if you trek farther in, where the moss covering the tree trunks glows purple, the ones you meet there are the real ones, since they’ve never seen light. That’s why no one goes there, and of those who do, few return, and of those who return, none had seen any basilisks. So how do we know that they still exist there?

Someone jostled me.

“Hey, your turn. Tell us something.”

I rubbed my face. My fingers were sticky. I licked them. The drowsy apathy was carrying me away, up the moon river. To where the bighorns were waiting.

“I can’t,” I said honestly. “I don’t know anything that’s like these stories. I’d just spoil everything.”

“Give me your glass, then.”

I thrust the glass in the direction of the voice.

“I’ll have the pine, please. But not too much. I’m already tipsy.”

I specified the pine because I saw Tabaqui splash some of the contents from the jar with the chili peppers into the other three bottles. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to survive a sampling of the resulting brew.

“There isn’t much left anyway. Don’t drop off, though. No sleeping on Fairy Tale Night. That would be bad manners.”

“Do these nights happen often?”

“Four times a year. There’s one every season. And also the Monologue Night, the Dream Night, and the Longest Night. Those are once per year. You’ve missed the first two.”

The glass returned.

“The Night of the Big Crash, when Humpback falls out of his aerie,” the voice continued to mumble indistinctly. “The Night of the Yellow Water, when Lary remembers his childhood . . . We should check in on him, by the way. He skipped two rounds already.”

Someone at the foot of the bed started checking in on Lary. Judging by the sighs and moans reaching me from over there, he was fast asleep.

“Hey you, sleepyhead. Wake up, you owe us a penalty story.”

Lary yawned broadly, like a tiger. There was a pause.

“There was this pretty girl who once got run over by a train . . . ,” a husky and desperate voice finally said.

“Right, shut up. Go back to sleep.”

Lary snorted contentedly, crashed back wherever it was they had just excavated him from, and began snoring immediately. I laughed. My shirt was clinging wetly where I’d spilled the liquor. The boombox stared at me with its red eye.