Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

While he was speaking I wiped the dust off the plate, shined it, and placed it on the nightstand. It was even more beautiful than I'd thought. White with light-blue flowers and berries.

All the time I was busying myself with it, Sphinx was staring at it and frowning, as if he was also dead set against the unfortunate thing.

“What?” I snapped. “Yes, so it's symbolic to me. Is that so hard to understand?”

“No, it's not that. The thing I don't understand,” Sphinx drawled thoughtfully, “is where did it come from. Has anyone seen this dish before? I haven’t. I can't imagine how it ended up on top of our wardrobe. Now you, Tabaqui, do you remember it?”

I didn't. Neither did Noble, Humpback, Lary, nor Blind. I spent the next two days driving around the House pushing the cracked white-and-blue plate into people's faces, and not a single one of them recognized it. And then it turned out that the House was full of unexpectedly unrecognizable objects. That was the start of my personal quest and of the Hunt that the pack happily dismissed as insanity. After three days of the Hunt, I was chased off the common bed with all my loot. On the sixth day the collection was transferred to the empty classroom.

I wake up in a dark and stuffy place, racked by the Howls that have taken me over and shaking from oxygen deprivation. Someone not very bright has fashioned a sleep nest and shoved me inside. I'm sure they had only the best intentions in mind. You have to have a knack for building nests, it is even a science of sorts, because if you get it wrong it's liable to collapse or smother you accidentally. But whoever's built this poor imitation wasn't bothered about details like that. So I emerge out of it sweaty and half-asphyxiated, and it folds in on itself even before I'm fully out, sending a couple of pillows tumbling on top of me.

Smoker is studying the ceiling. If it were him imprisoned in the nest instead of me, he'd have expired right there, quietly and peacefully.

Lary is making tea. Ginger is scraping off some stuff that got stuck to her bear. I ask where Alexander is.

“He went out,” Ginger says, turning her button-eyed beast to face me. “Feeling embarrassed, I guess.”

I see. A bashful type, our Alexander. Except when he isn’t. Then it's advisable to be as far away from him as possible. Actually, I don't think that way. I wouldn't have missed my own role as an active participant in what has happened for anything. I climb back over the ruins of the nest. This way I can see Noble, sitting on the floor. A proud owner of a beautiful new shiner, he's cradling Ginger's flask and quietly getting piss drunk.

“They say you threw a homemade bomb that blew away half the Coffeepot,” Lary informs me. “Like, said a farewell speech and tossed it. I told them you never had any bombs, but they don't believe me. They say I'm covering up for my own kind.”

“That's nice, Lary. You should always cover up for your own kind. We're one pack, after all. That's serious business.”

He blinks.

“But there wasn't any bomb, right?”

I feel the lump on my head. “Are you sure?”

Of course he's not sure. He sniffles and scratches his chin. Or rather the place where chins are supposed to be located on people. His meditative state does not bode well for the prospects of us having tea in the foreseeable future, but it certainly improves his overall appearance.

“And Alexander got spooked and had a fit,” Lary says, visibly downcast.

“Was that a question or a statement?” I say.

He just sulks silently.

I lie on my belly and squint. The squares of the comforter stretch before me like a wavy chessboard. Like a runway for the stuff strewn on top. The glasses case is an armored car without doors or windows, the comb is a peeling, listing fence, my cap is a flying saucer with pins for portholes. A hauntingly beautiful and uninhabited little world. Well, not completely, as I set my fingers running across to liven it up. As they do, a primitive white contraption lowers itself to the surface, belching steam.

Ginger's voice inquires if I'm all right.

“You seem to be unusually prostrate.”

I sit up and pull the cup closer.

“I just came back from the Blanket Country. A very peaceful place. It's inhabited by a race of snakelike sentient beings. They're pink, blind, and rather nimble. And there's one collective conscience for every ten of them. The Snakers have this myth that their world has a lower counterpart, and on that lower level each Snaker has a double, only shorter and less mobile. Naturally, not everyone believes this nonsense. But there's an even more extreme sect. Its members are convinced that a common conscience unifies not ten Snakers, but twenty, of which ten are from the netherworld. That's widely considered heretical. The sect members also like to use forbidden stimulants in order to expand the boundaries of their universe, and have been mostly hunted down and eradicated by now, one way or another.”

Noble's head emerges from the other side of the bed and positions its chin on the edge.

“I wonder why it is that your tales are always creepy, Tabaqui?”

“Because I'm a creep. And the sleep of my reason produces monsters. By the way, if you're interested in serving as the Voice of God for the poor Twentiers, you can try addressing them. Bear in mind they're deaf as well, though.”

Noble shudders and peers closely at his own fingers, which he's brought together under his nose.

“How am I supposed to address them, then?”

“Tapping in Morse code. They’ll understand.”

“Listen to you,” Lary says indignantly. “You're doing this to confuse me again, aren't you?”

Noble's eyes widen suddenly, Doom billowing up in them.

“You're a bastard, Tabaqui, you know that? How can I tap anything for them unless I'm the conscience of the twenty? That would be against their religion.”

“So you’ll be a false Voice. It's been known to happen.”

“You! It's you who's false! You just enjoy tormenting those poor ...”

“Oh man,” Ginger moans. “I'm so sick of you! How can you stand it, being out of your heads most of the time?”

“It's Tabaqui.” Noble tries to shift the blame, pointing at my fingers splayed over the blanket. “He's a liar. He's made himself into an idol for those... those ...”

“Twentiers,” I prompt.

“Exactly.”

“It's just them trying to confuse me,” Lary insists. “Always the same story. I don't know why they have it in for me. I haven't been here for ages. But as soon as I show up, there it is again.”

“Right! Let Lary address them,” Noble suggests, brightening up. “He would be quite consistent with their dogma. Lary, my friend, be a good man, tap out a message. Tell them that they have got it pretty close, if you don't count the half-baked freaks like Tabaqui and me here, and that we fully support their thirst for knowledge.”

“You know, I almost believe in the bomb now,” Lary complains to aloof Smoker. “Or should I say I believe in it more and more.”

“So? You can believe in whatever you want,” Smoker says, looking at the unfortunate Log out of the corner of one annoyed eye. “Do you even know Morse code?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Then why don't you just say so to Noble? He'd stop pestering you.”

“Slaving for them, making them tea... And this is what I get ...”

“They are ungrateful beasts,” Smoker agrees. “Ungrateful, unintelligible, and unpleasant.”

“That would be us,” Noble translates for me. “Everything he's just said was about us. You heard the words he said, didn't you, Tabaqui?”

“No, unintelligible—that was about you personally. And unpleasant too. Look at that shiner. It definitely interferes with the pleasantness of your visage. Very much. Where'd you get it?”