The Gray House

Then I’m thrown out and therefore free to do as I please. Or, rather, as I do not please. I have to go to the Sepulcher. I swing by the dorm in hopes of finding the remains of Smoker’s feast, but there is nothing but crumbs left, so I slink away, defeated. The corridor rolls by, refusing to tell me anything new. Well, maybe it does, but I float through it like in a vacuum, deaf and blind to its pronouncements. I am pleasantly surprised that this turned out to be possible after all. This goes on until I reach the Sepulcher. Here I shake off the fog. Beyond this threshold is a domain that does not suffer being trod upon in this state of almost terminal exhaustion. The Sepulcher demands an appearance of vim and vigor. Even if you’re already a corpse.

The hallway is immaculately clean and blindingly white. And soaked in this horrible mediciney smell. I am intercepted by two female Spiders rolling out on the glistening floor.

“What’s this? On whose authority? Get out!”

And my unrecognizably plaintive voice pleads, “Just for a moment. A teacher sent me. It’s very important.”

“To the head of the department!”

A plump index finger directing me farther down the corridor.

My tail is sweeping the floor, my lips are stretched in an obsequious grin. I take off again.

The Spider queens stare suspiciously. A person like me is only to their liking when he’s bound, suspended from the ceiling, and stuck all over with wires and tubes. To better suck out his blood. An armless creature running free is a disgrace, verging on a crime. In my mind I give them the finger. My rakes are not capable of that feat, of course. The rest of the way I take at a trot.

Janus’s office. Jan is the nicest, most conscientious Spider there is. I love him dearly, but our relationship has soured a bit lately, so I’m worried. I rap the rake against the frosted-glass door and push it open a bit.

“May I?”

“Oh, it’s you.” He swivels around in his chair. A long-faced, big-eared graying ginger with an amazing smile that he rarely lets out. That’s why he’s called Janus. He’s two different people depending on whether he’s smiling. “Come in, don’t stand there.”

I enter. His office is not as white as the rest of the Sepulcher. You could almost imagine you were somewhere else. Leopard’s drawings in thin wooden frames on the walls. Janus’s office is the only place in the House where you can still see them in a civilized environment. Yes, whatever remains on the walls is closer, more accessible, and all around more fun, but a wall is a wall, it’s hard to preserve things on it in exactly the state they were meant to be when created. Especially if they do go ahead with that renovation, painting over everything everywhere—then the drawings will be lost forever. Only these will be left. These, and the ones I have stashed away. Here, all we have are the spiderwebs and the trees. The largest sheet shows a gloomy white spider, its face unmistakably that of Janus. It’s hanging forlornly from a thread in the middle of a tattered web. There aren’t many people who’d hang a portrait like that in their office. But Janus did. He hung it, and the others, even though they all reek of the hatred Leopard had for the Sepulcher. I approach the glass-covered white desk.

“Can I see Noble?”

Janus doesn’t answer. I can see he’s set against it. But he’s never going to say “Get out” straight off. That’s not his way.

“Who was it you had a scrap with? Come here, let’s have a look at you.” Jan pulls out a desk drawer and starts rummaging in it. “I said come here. Do you enjoy this?”

“Enjoy what?”

“Fighting. Hitting someone in the face with your feet.”

He finally fishes out something and dumps it on the table. A white-and-cyan package of surgical tape.

“That grimy thing over your eye, it needs to be changed.”

Jan gets up, puts me in the swiveling chair, and peels off the strip of Band-Aid on my forehead. I see that it really is on the grimy side. It’s not the end of the world, of course, but I need to be nice to Janus, so I sit quietly and allow him to do whatever he thinks has to be done.

“Now you see,” he mutters, picking over my wounds, “he needs to be by himself for a while. People do need that sometimes. You understand that, don’t you?”

I do. And he’s right. But let him explain this to Alexander. To Blind. To all of them.

“I understand.”

“Good. Go back to your group and tell the guys not to send anybody else. Later, maybe. But not now. Principal’s orders.”

I shudder. “Why? He usually doesn’t interfere with your business.”

Janus is purposefully looking at the landscape beyond his window.

“He doesn’t, and then again he does. In extreme cases.”