The two identical fair-haired guys in identical striped vests kept tormenting me. And a boy in front, with a perfectly spherical head, also was somehow familiar. I kept turning the picture this way and that, trying to match the faces to various inhabitants of the House, but wasn’t able to place five of them. Finally I grew tired of this and just looked at the picture.
It was a wild, ragtag gang. Dirty, shaggy. They all probably had worms. You couldn’t make them behave no matter how you tried, but at least no one was making a face. They wanted to look presentable, even though they could probably guess it wasn’t working.
Protective amulets and all that other crap worn around the neck was all the rage, even back then. I counted sixteen pouches, plus talons, teeth, and bones, in bunches and separately; bolts, nuts, nails, rabbit feet, and a wide assortment of tails. Lary and Horse preferred their protection shiny and clanking. Elephant was bedecked in little bells, while the blond twins wore keys. My gaze registered those keys and it finally dawned on me.
I closed my eyes for a second and looked again.
Of course! The cold, round, staring eyes, the hooked noses . . . Little Vultures! So alike that I wouldn’t even venture to guess which of them was the real one.
I wondered where the second one went. Immediately came a thought that even one was plenty, but I chased it away, ashamed, as I remembered the perpetual mourning of the Third.
It could be that Birds were not in mourning for Vulture’s lost twin. That they just liked black. Honestly, I didn’t really want to know. But in any case, Vulture had no twin brother in the House anymore, and thinking that it was good that he didn’t was a foul thing to do.
I put the photograph back and took out the first one again. Looked at it. Then lay back and stared at the ceiling.
The dead inhabited every room in the House. Hidden in every closet was its own decomposing unmentionable skeleton. When the ghosts ran out of space, they moved out into the hallways. Then came the protective sigils on the doors and amulets around the necks, to ward off the uninvited guests, while at the same time the resident spirits were welcomed and flattered, consulted and listened to, serenaded with songs and stories. And they talked back. With scribbles in soap and toothpaste on the bathroom mirrors. With purple-hued drawings on the walls. Also with night whispers, right in the ears of the chosen, while they were taking a shower or bravely catching some sleep on the Crossroads sofa.
The unholy mess of Pheasant stories, superstitions, House proverbs, and silly sayings chased itself around in my head, becoming more and more weird as it went. When I finally tamped it down, I realized with surprise that I seemed to know the House a bit better. A tiny little bit. At least, I understood some things I was never able to before. The passion of the House dwellers for tall tales of all kinds did not spring out of nothing. It was their way of coping, molding their grief into superstitions. Which in turn morphed into traditions, and traditions were really easy to accept. Especially when you’re a child. Had I come here seven years ago, I too might have considered talking to ghosts an everyday affair. I’d sit right there on Black’s old photos, with a crude bow, or a sling in my pocket, proudly displaying an amulet against poltergeists that I’d fortuitously acquired in exchange for some rare stamps. I’d avoid some specific places at some specific times and still go there on a dare. It might have led to a stutter, who knows, but at least my life never would have been boring, unlike the one I actually had, the one that hadn’t been spent here. I was a little bitter that this untamed childhood had passed me by. Yes, it didn’t have any open spaces in it, no rivers or forests or abandoned cemeteries, but neither did my real one. I would have learned all of the House’s rules and regulations, and how to tell ridiculous stories, to play guitar, to decipher the scribbles on the walls, to read fortunes in chicken bones, to remember all the former nicks of all the old-timers. And maybe, just maybe, to love this crumbling building, which I now would never be able to. The longer I thought about this the sadder I felt. I took out the last sacrificial cigarette, lit it, and sat there tracing the tendrils of smoke floating up toward the lamp and dissolving in its light.
THE HOUSE
INTERLUDE
Sepulcher is a House within the House. It’s a place where the world works differently. It’s much younger; when it was created the House was already starting to crumble. It is the subject of the scariest stories of all. It is hated and reviled. Sepulcher has its own rules, and it enforces them without mercy. It is dangerous and unpredictable; it sows discord between friends and pacifies enemies. It unrolls a separate path for each visitor: when you travel it to the end, you’ll be either found or lost. For some it’s their last journey, for others—only the beginning. Time itself slows down there.
Grasshopper looked out the window at the snowdrifts and the black silhouettes on blue. The morning at the hospital wing began with rounds, before dawn. The cars navigating the icebound roads, honking impatiently, the stomping of feet in the hallway, the lit-up windows of the houses—all pointed toward morning. But if the sky were to be believed, it was still night. Classes had been canceled because of the snowfall, and the inhabitants of the House had been celebrating the unexpected vacation for two days straight. The windows of the hospital wing looked out to the yard. Each morning and each night, Grasshopper climbed up on the windowsill and looked at the boys throwing snowballs and building white forts out of the drifts. He could tell them apart by their hats and parkas. The voices did not penetrate the double-paned glass.
It had been two weeks already since he’d been referred here for prosthetic fitting. At first Grasshopper had thought that it would be over in a few hours. He’d be given arms—not real ones, of course, but at least somewhat useful—and then he’d be on his way. Only when he ended up in the hospital wing did he realize how little he knew of these things.
He liked it here at first. The unhurried life, the cleanliness, the silence. The Stuffage boys weren’t picking on him and the nurses were friendly. Sepulcher seemed light, airy, and peaceful, the nicest place on Earth. Elk brought him books and helped with his homework, just like during his earliest days in the House. Grasshopper couldn’t understand why this place was considered bad news. Where did the morbid name “Sepulcher” come from? The word itself used to scare him before he’d come here.
It was fine. Then he started feeling lonely. Especially when the snow came. He missed Blind. And something else too. Grasshopper, now bored, forgot about the books and moved to the windowsill. The nurses would shoo him off, but he climbed right back. He dutifully performed everything he was told to do with the prosthetics, even though he knew that he was unlikely to ever need those skills. They warned him to take care of the prosthetics, and that was when he knew he wasn’t going to wear them. They’d just get broken in the very first fight, either accidentally or on purpose. To spend all this time in the Sepulcher was meaningless. So he was spending it looking out of the window.
“Just like a forest creature on a leash,” the nurse said as she came in. “You’ll soon be back with your friends, don’t you worry. And it’ll be so much more fun playing with them too.”
He was waiting for her to tell him off for sitting on the windowsill again, but she seemed to have tired of that.