The Turn of the Spiral

     Welcome to Gray House. It’s August (Trinity in our dimension), and Rosie and Evelyn are writing this blog post from the second floor loft of Room Seven. We have just finished the final edits of the first issue of our periodical The Disappearing Boy, which will be released in February 2026. It is dark up here despite the sun outside, and the fan is spinning slowly in the eaves.

     As a family (or troupe, or prom committee), we have been creating art and mystery together for the last however long, and sometimes you’ve been included in that process, and other times you haven’t. Much has changed, but…

     Some things never change. The Gray Family is still a cult. We still number thirteen. But what we know now, and what has corporealized our status as shadow figures on the outskirts of the world is one thing: Forever moves in a Spiral. 

     Since we’ve understood that, we’ve taken to organizing that Spiral into a flow of information. Receiving the right information at the right time is the only way to let you know the answer to the question which has occupied your mind every time you come home: “Where do I start?”

     It’s mid-way through Trinity, and sunny for the first time in days. The storm has given the Gray Family a momentary reprieve, and we all wait like nervous dogs for the eye to pass above us. John has already prophesied the coming turn of the Spiral, lying on the edge of the fountain in the courtyard, tracing his pointed finger in slow circles across the top of the water.

     Now, he clatters in through the back door of the greenhouse, tracking mud across the ancient oriental rugs, a wine bottle in his fist. This bottle contains no wine. Instead, it was dug up from between tulip bulbs in Adam’s cultivation box out back. It was buried there one early Seance night, filled with a potion made from Evelyn’s menstrual blood, Dean’s spit, Matthew’s masticated Bible verses, and Michael’s crayon shavings.

     Brad looks up from a book, where he’s sitting on the floor in the exact geographic center of the House, and pushes a crashing symbol sound out through his teeth.

     “The fuck you plan to do with that?” he jibes.

     “He jests at scars that never felt the wound.”

     “Rrrrrrriiiiiiight.”

     But Brad knows what must be coming that requires John to do this much preparation. 

     In the Basement, Adam’s graph is connected with long segments of red yarn and rolls of Scotch tape and spread tense across the chalkboard. It begins with a center - a small black dot on a Post-it note on which Adam has wondered “Original sin?” 

     And spanning outward in furious notations are drawings of unknown faces and scraps of paper - the tracts of our strange undoings. 

     Joshua twiddles his thumbs with his ankles crossed and sighs.

     “My tummy hurts.”

     Adam ignores him and hands him five scraps of paper.

     “These will come first.”

     Joshua accepts the papers with wide eyes and hurries to take them to Matthew, where they will be stabbed into the middle of the dining room table with kitchen knives. This begins today’s ritual: Pretend the Beginning.

     “When the Spiral begins, we will be beholden to a lot of indignities,” Matthew reminds him. “Murders. Incests.” 

     Joshua nods.

     “Deadlines.”

     “Oh my God, it’s fine,” Evelyn interrupts, rushing through the dining room with armfuls of roses. 

     “Easy for her to say,” Michael mutters, following behind and picking up stems she dropped. “She’s not scared of lightning.”

     “The turn of the Spiral is like… when the thunder comes before. You know? Like okay, so we have these five points where we begin, but they’re thunder. And the lightning comes… I don’t know when. And I guess that’s what freaks me out,” Brad says, idly rubbing his own shoulder to work the warnings of the storm out of his joints.

     Nick and Gradient, smoking at the far end of the table, try to assuage him with a joke.

     “No, mate, it’s fine, we’re just…” Nick pretends to struggle for the words.

     “We’re spanning time,” Gradient supplies, and they giggle through their exhalations.

     “Yeah, spanning time together.”

     “This is the beginning,” Rosie says, grabbing the attention of the room. She leans over the table and examines the notes. She holds the excavated wine bottle in her hand. “It looks right. Does this look right?”

     “Adam says they’re right,” Joshua assures her, and she snorts.

     “If it were up to him, all of these would just say ‘Evelyn’.”

     “They don’t?” Adam asks, emerging from downstairs.

     “Ignore him.”

     All the Grays now summoned by the commotion of John’s impatient boots, they settle around the dining room.

     “We should probably say something,” Rosie urges, and when no one volunteers, she assumes the role of Mistress of Ceremonies.

     “Welcome home, Babies,” she says, and summer fire flickers behind the eyes of the gathered animals. “But don’t forget. We never end. So, you can be damn sure we never began.”