THE FOYER
The smell of smouldering wood permeates the dark foyer of Gray House. Someone has burned the sigil of the Yew Tree into the inside of the twin doors. It has been done recently enough, the edges still singe with orange embers spidering out into the wood grain without intention to stop. The branches of the tree splay asymmetrically surprised, frozen in the posture of a fleeing child, reaching the top of the door frame.
A murder scene of red paint smears the floor beneath it, and handprints mar the paint spatter where someone has tried to hide the evidence of their crime.
It was decided long ago that the Yew Tree was the symbol of the Grays, being that they are the ones who remember the first fruit the Yew would ever bear: the white apples of Eden. Somewhere in the deserts outside of the Garden, someone had suggested it. Whoever it was is likely the culprit who left the paint bucket standing empty on the bottom stair; a challenge for the others to remember something they’ve been acting like they’ve forgotten.
THE COURTYARD & THE CLOCK OF BEDROOMS
The white coats of the tigers blend them to invisibility on the terrazzo floor of the Courtyard where they lounge in the dim light. The light from the fountain reflects off their faces, bored and expectant. There is a chuffing sound, and one lifts a rough paw and strikes the other with the sound of a broomstick hitting a rug.
There is a chorus of deep grunts, heat from moving fur over limbs, and they rise slow, wide heads colliding with solid force, and one animal is sent rocking into the Courtyard wall, leaving a wide crack in the plaster. He protests to the other, lifting his arms, and they connect in an embrace, and roll into the fountain together, displacing gallons of water in a forceful dash of the waves against the stone.
The struggle breaks the two tigers apart again, shaking water out of their coats and slipping to escape each other on the wet ground to separate corners of the room.
One tiger snarls, and the other yawns a creaking sound louder than any of the doors in the Clock. He rolls over, pretending to be dead.
THE MIDNIGHT ROOM
Behind the door of the Midnight Room, there is Nothing. Through the Nothing floats the impression of a m e s s a g e
Invention of light
green into black and
television snow
If we should escape transmission, which we will not do, there is likely to be a sigh of us left over in a wish that we stole or secretly planned to destroy. But I don’t know, maybe we were too quick to name ourselves. Don’t you… feel nameless?
arcing from one telephone line to the other when the transformer blew above the Chinese place
VACANCY
ring ring
nevaeh fo noitnevni
ROOM ONE
Inside of Room One, there is a rug you can spill on and it just wipes up. We put Play-Doh on it to dry. There is a beanbag, but you can’t do the zipper on it or it will spill, and you are not allowed to eat the insides.
There is an upstairs, too, where Joshua sleeps. We can go up there when there is a grown up to walk up with us. The big light is up there. This is where we always have a snack. Joshua put out gram crackers today with juice. Brad took Michael’s.
You can see in the Midnight from one of the windows but it’s hard to reach. There is four Joshuas in here and one is a blanket. If you have a phone number, you could use a Joshua to call on the phone. Joshua phone.
When he has nap time, everybody wants the chocolate couch. We take turns. Joshua’s dog’s name is Onion Bun. He sleeps on the floor in the bathroom, and Joshua put a nightlight so it isn’t scary at night. There’s a whole month called Nightlight.
Joshua says we can stay up as late as we want to. That’s a lie and I have to apologize now because telling lies is not nice.
Okay.
ROOM TWO
Once opulent, now a pigsty. Beneath the rubble of his compulsions, there are likely beautiful things, treasures mixed into the slow decay of the week’s worth of meals he’s let spoil while Matthew was working. The velvet indigo shade of the walls is now stained with a foot of mold around the floor.
Nicholas dons a mask and gloves, brings in a bottle of bleach and some trash bags. He is old enough and sensitive enough, has done this enough times to understand what inside the room had been created with the potential of art and what had not. He removes stacks of yogurt cups, paper plates with paint-covered sandwiches, broken lightbulbs, and piles of clothes soaked wet with what is probably soda pop. He leaves something which appears to be a chandelier of used tampons to dry on the coffee table.
He swipes the cobwebs from the blank canvases, forgotten. He refreshes the ant traps and the roach hotels. Long ago having dispensed with discretion, he tosses tree-shaped air fresheners into the closet where Matthew’s shoes are rotting.
Matthew will not acknowledge or thank him for this action when he comes home with a paper bag full of broken glass from a car windshield. He will dump it on the nightstand, where it will glitter in the single light of his television.
ROOM THREE
When Room Three is empty of humans, its insides flicker and flutter in the dark. The light from the Courtyard slivers over the gold Turkish rug dappled with dead leaves. The insects hold court and promenade in the damp windowsill, hang their larvae inside of Adam’s guitar, and conspire their next chess move while he is absent from their standing game. The sound of wings rustle like loose pages falling from the broken spine of a book.
The moths pretend not to take notice of the new resident of Room Three - a heavily-stickered and badly beaten violin case, inside which they can see a ruinous violin, bleeding black shellac in drips along the ribs. The violin sits silent, unplayed and unseen by Adam as of yet, shoved into one of his wardrobes and buried under sweaters he will not retrieve until Wist.
ROOM FOUR
The sign outside of the chapel, hanging crooked on the doorknob, reads, “Confession 12-2a.”
Light coming from within the sanctuary is neon pink, shining under the door and across the Courtyard tile.
Inside, the heavy smell of the roses is obnoxious. They’re close to rotting with soft white fungus forming in the vases which punctuate the pews. A full ashtray rests on the podium next to a tome open to an illumination of Psalm 35. Highlighted in lipstick is verse 6.
In Gray House, one can never tell if the decorations are for a wedding or a funeral.
ROOM FIVE
In the crackplaster and clean space of Room Five, under the high industrial lights, there is a snow of white feathers falling. They oscillate slow and drift in the air from a lazy ceiling fan. They collect on the cement floor and settle soundless there.
ROOM SIX
The girl starts awake, having finally fallen asleep in the twentieth hour of her vigil. The blood on her skin has mostly tried to stiff flakes, but remains shiny in the sticky pool he left on the floor beneath her. She cannot see the wound, but feels blood spout from it fresh as she struggles against the ropes.
The pain is dull but consuming, distracting her focus with ever throb of her tired, frantic heart. There are no windows in the room, but she misses the digital clock above the metal sink because the pain is ferrously cold, through every bone in her body.
He left hours ago, which means he could be on his way back. So she fights her eyes open, fights her arms awake from their dead hang over her head, and lifts her weight back to the bottoms of her feet.
A loose rope lets her struggle to release one of her arms, her shoulders screaming as it drops. She unties the other hand, blood soaking the rope and making it hard to release. All around her, in the red light of this bizarre darkroom, he has developed pictures of her suffering, dozens of photos of her screaming face covering the walls to dry.
ROOM SEVEN
The second floor is dark, Rosie and Evelyn piled into the massive bed. They are watching Friday the 13th, all of Rosie’s blank ceramic masks watching with them. They’ve seen the movie before; the girls and the masks. From the wall behind the television, the violinist in the Harlequin mask bends down low, to see the action in the frame: Annie falling down in the woods, tragic.
Rosie dons her mouse ears, finds lipstick on the shelf beside her, and puts it on her rosepetal mouth.
As their favorite scene approaches, Evelyn sits up in the bed and wraps the velvet bedspread around her, her face now haunted and wan.
“I’ve been afraid of storms ever since I was a little kid,” they recite, along with the dialogue. Kevin Bacon is enchanted with them.
“No, really?”
“Yeah,” the girls convince him, as every girl does. “I had this dream about five or six times where I’m in a thunderstorm.”
The girls laugh and sit back on their stomachs, watching Jeannine Taylor descend behind her eyes to the place all girls know how to get to. Rosie picks her nailpolish and Evelyn twirls one tail of her hair around her finger. Someone knocks on the door, and they ignore it.
ROOM EIGHT
John stands still in Room Eight, determined to not touch anything but the floor with his shoes. Once an empty shrine of Nothing, clean of all implication, historyless, it has since his last visit been filled. Every available surface has been crowded with objects he recognizes as having been found at sea. Ship planks have replaced his frameless bed. Nets have been cast over corners and there is sand collecting next to the bathtub.
He is aware of who has sought this specific revenge, and standing stock-still in the room, the sound of the ocean rages in his ears. He recalls the birth of every starfish now dried on his bookshelf. He writes every word onto the pages of the waterlogged journals. He experiences forty seven distinct nights of drunkenness, poured from the bottles propped along the hallway. His fingers itch stiff having knotted each of the nets himself. He tastes the shifting salt of the water on the day the ship of his bed went down into the sea.
It rises from his throat, the water, and he coughs and spits wet onto the wood floor. He vomits ocean water in silent heaves, and it soaks into the boards and rolls along the floor to the ruined carpet. Because she wants him to drown.
ROOM NINE
Brad smokes a cigarette on the fire escape, blowing smoke out into the night air. Michael puts his elbows on the window frame and leans out to ask him, “Have you seen my Cramps album?” and he shakes his head.
Inside, Michael and Matthew are arguing about the music to play on Evelyn’s ancient record player, ignoring Joshua on the floor, passing them suggestions from a wooden crate of options. Eventually, he gives up and lays across the threadbare rug using a pile of laundry as a pillow.
Michael’s scars are shadowed ghoulish in the soft yellow light of the stained-glass lamps. The circles around Matthew’s eyes are tinted purple-green. Nick slouches past them, robe in hand, to climb into Evelyn’s bathtub. He pats as he walks by it the head of a massive black and white rabbit, watching the proceedings with disdain.
Adam enters late, when the music has finally been decided on. He passes Nick who has fallen asleep in the water, and joins Brad on the fire escape. They speak in hushed voices while inside the others play New York Dolls and fight the late hour with sound.
ROOM TEN
From a naked pipe near the ceiling, water pours across brick and sinks down the manhole cover in the floor. A bee fights near the window, looking for an exit.
THE BASEMENT
The sound of a toilet flushing upstairs and rushing down the pipes is loud enough it drowns out the soft murmur of the Twilight Zone episode. Dean, his face marked with clean tear streaks, heaves into a large green plastic bowl, and Gradient presses his hand on his shoulders and shushes him.
“Okay, okay, it’s good, it’s all good,” he comforts Dean, who wretches wet and starts to sob. Dean’s hair is dark from the lack of washing and looks wet with sweat. Gradient’s eyes are calm and kind.
“I’m gonna have to get some restraints, man,” he says to Dean, who moans and slumps sideways onto the couch. Gradient doesn’t relent.
“You know what’s coming. It’s gonna be okay, I’m gonna stay with you.”
Dean nods, his face contorted with an internal pain. The windows of the Basement start pattering with the rain, and the noise seems to bother him.
“Oh, God,” he cries, and Gradient rises from the couch to dig up the metal shackles from the storage room they’ve used for this purpose in the past. He gets them onto Dean’s wrists and ankles with gentle speed, just in time before Dean’s torso strains and flexes, and his leg kicks toward Gradient’s face.
“We all been here, hermano,” Gradient whispers, holding Dean’s head in his hands while he struggles.
THE
LABORATORY
On the middle table of the laboratory, under the light of several lamps, there is a damaged Ouija board. The lights vary in color and wavelength, and a section near the top left fluoresces with ultraviolet light, dust and smears evident on the surface.
The section of the board which reads, “Goodbye,” is covered with a solvent, and the paper is lifting from the wood beneath. Around the board, there are glass slides marked with various findings, each then recorded in a notebook in a messy and spidery handwriting. Underlined in the notebook is the single sentence, all in capital letters, “NO CONTACT MADE.”
THE LIBRARY
Sometimes there are books in the library, but tonight, there is only one. It’s housed in a gray linen cover with black ink stamped into the shape of a rose. There is no title on the book, and no author listed on its early pages. It has been placed with care onto a mahogany stand in the center of the room, as if to demonstrate it’s supreme importance among the empty shelves, still marked with tracts of dust where the vast Gray library once lived and has now vanished.