Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

“There are others,” Black continued as we went along. “Other drawings. They're almost all around the Third now. There were even more near the Second, but those were all painted over. Still, Bull is the best. I took a couple of shots using a flash, but they didn't work out that well. I should try again. There's been this talk about repainting the walls for some time now. Then it'd be gone forever.”

At the door, Black fumbled in his pockets and produced a key. This was the first time I saw our dorm locked, and it sharply drove home the fact that Black and I were indeed alone. Black was fiddling with the balky lock and I was illuminating the door. All along the door's edge the wall was covered with the repetition of the letter R . The pattern almost dissolved into a meaningless ornament, but it was still composed of that letter. I remembered that I'd seen it on the walls quite often.

“What does the letter R mean?” I asked.

“That's our counselor,” Black said. “Ralph. He had both us and the Third.”

I'd never heard of a counselor named Ralph, so I assumed that he was no longer alive either. Like Leopard the wall painter. The House was filling up with corpses at an alarming rate in response to my every question. Even if it concerned something that might initially appear entirely innocent.

“Is he dead?” I said, expecting confirmation.

“No.”

Black pushed me in the door and clicked the wall switch, but the light in the anteroom did not come on. He swore, went a bit farther, and switched on the light inside the dorm. Coming back, he tripped over something and swore again.

“Filthy thing!” he was saying when I wheeled in, shielding my eyes from the bright light. “Slipped in, the dirty bitch!”

“What?”

“A rat, that's what! Another one!” Black was peering under the common bed, in a demonstrably hopeless attempt to discern something there. “What do you think I tripped over just now?”

“Could be anything ...”

“There are no anythings when your Leader's blind.” Black straightened up, moaned, and rubbed his leg. “When was the last time you saw something thrown on the floor here? I can tell you that the last thing Blind ever tripped over was Lary's boots. Ever since that time the boots spend each night with Lary, on his bunk.”

I giggled. Black shot me a disapproving look.

“You're one weird guy,” he said. “This isn't funny at all.”

He helped me climb on the bed and put the kettle on. I cleared up the strata left by Tabaqui—he seemed to regard the trip to the Sepulcher as kind of a night out, and the garments he had tried on and discarded were left covering the bed in an untidy mound. I then made myself more comfortable and asked Black where did Ralph the counselor go and why were his initials such a popular motif among the wall artists. In all honesty, I didn't care much about all this, and was asking only to rinse out the unpleasant sediment that was brought up by the conversation concerning Sphinx. I was afraid Black might return back to that. But Black wasn't in the mood to discuss counselors.

“He left,” he said tersely. “About six months ago. Packed his stuff one day and hightailed it out of here. I have no idea why they still write and paint his nick. Could be someone misses him.”

Black's face showed quite clearly that if anyone did miss this mysterious R, it definitely wasn't him.

“I see,” I mumbled thoughtfully.

Black sat down across from me and arranged the cups, the teapot, and a pack of cookies on the tray. I crawled closer. He passed me the cup and turned on the player. Good thing, too. Without music our tea party would have been too gloomy. Even with music it was pretty sad.

I had a strange dream that night. I saw myself in the second-floor hallway. It looked the same as it always did, except it was divided down the middle by this thick plate of glass, all the way from the floor to the ceiling. There were people on the other side. Indistinct figures floated there, like fish in a bowl, bumping into the glass and pressing their faces against it. I saw a pale guy wearing sunglasses, with hair as white as snow, a girl with very long braids, and an ugly, dark-faced creature flying around in a wheelchair. There were a lot of them, and all of them wanted to get in. Some had translucent wings. Their side also had light fixtures on the walls, but theirs looked somehow different: they glowed green, almost emerald, like giant fireflies. I was observing all this from the door to our dorm.

Then Noble pushed my wheelchair aside, walked out of the room, and threw a crystal ball at the wall. The ball hit the wall and bounced off, making a long crack in it, reaching all the way down. Noble walked into it, like between the folds of a transparent curtain, and the glass sealed itself behind him, becoming whole again. He waved to us and walked down the green firefly corridor. On his own legs. He wasn't floating or swimming, he just walked, and the strange winged shadows darted around him and returned back to the glass, to look at us and to try and say something to us, something that we couldn't hear.

There were whispers and commotion behind my back. Then Tabaqui and Blind hauled out this huge cauldron of boiling, bubbling liquid and splashed it at the glass. It made an ugly stain. The hissing, poisonous stain started spreading, growing in all directions, and shaped itself into a smeared letter R . The glass under it crackled, and all the creatures that were flying around on the other side crowded near it and started banging on the glass, while everyone on our side moved away from it, dragging me and my wheelchair with them, the crackling and hissing was becoming louder and louder ...

I opened my eyes and immediately saw the reason for my waking up. The open window was flapping in the wind, and the glass in it rattled noisily. Black, who apparently woke up at the same time as I did, climbed up, slammed it shut, and secured the handle. The wind was so strong that the glass still vibrated, only more softly. Black went back to bed, and I related my dream to him quickly before I forgot. When I finished, I realized that there had been no rush to tell it—it was still before my eyes as vividly as the moment I awoke. Black said that my dream was bullshit. He said it in a very annoyed voice, and I regretted keeping him up.

The next time it was Sphinx who woke us. I guess it was about half past five.

He kicked open the door and yelled, “Behold, a pale rider on a pale horse! Comes the cloud of locusts, and the dead are rattling their bones! Just look at this!” He ran to the window. “The fog is gray like the backs of gray mice! Hordes of mice are advancing! There is going to be no ground left soon, only the fog, clad in gray garments. It started stealing upon you in the night. Look now, before there is nothing to look at!”

Is he drunk? I thought, burying my head in the pillow. Sphinx abandoned his fog quest, mounted the headboard, weaving his legs between the bars, and stared at me. With his crazy eyes in dark circles. I chirpily inquired how Noble was doing.

“He's doing like Saint Francis's favorite chipmunk,” Sphinx said and giggled.

“Sphinx. We are trying to sleep here,” Black murmured.

“Sure, while the fog is creeping ever closer!”

“It can do all the creeping it wants.”

“That what you think? All right. don't say I didn't warn you.”

Tabaqui unloaded himself on the bed, crawled over me, and commenced the construction of his nighttime nest. Humpback, with Nanette in tow, climbed up to his place. Alexander started the coffeemaker. Lary deposited Tubby in his pen, knocking over another bottle and bumping into the nightstand in the process.

“Oh god,” Black moaned, putting the pillow over his head.