“Horrible,” he mumbles. “Instead of sleeping peacefully I’ve now got to look after this dunce lest something happens to him. He’s going out, don’t you know. In the dark. Possibly in the middle of the Longest. Enough to drive a man crazy.”
“I’m not asking you to come with me. I want to go by myself.”
“Yeah, and there are many things I want too. You’re not going out alone. Either we go together or I wake up Sphinx and he knocks some sense into you. Your choice.”
Before Smoker is able to crawl any farther, Tabaqui is already at the door, aboard Mustang. Still in pajamas. Clutching his socks and a handful of amulets. Despite the threatening voice, Smoker imagines that Tabaqui is looking forward to a ride with him.
“All right,” Smoker says. “We go together.”
Then he has to concentrate on trying to climb into the wheelchair, and when he’s finally in he sees Tabaqui methodically stuffing his backpack. The backpack is already so bloated that it’s impossible to close, but Jackal continues to add to its contents.
“What’s all that for?”
“Sweaters, in case we get cold. Food, in case we get hungry. Weapons, in case we get attacked,” Tabaqui explains. “You don’t just drive out into the night unprepared, silly!”
Smoker doesn’t argue. He follows Tabaqui into the anteroom and then into the pitch-dark hallway, where Tabaqui orders him to switch off the flashlight.
“Otherwise we are going to be seen by everyone who’s already accustomed to the darkness, and at the same time we won’t be able to see them.”
Smoker obediently switches it off and darkness envelops them.
“Let’s ride,” Tabaqui whispers.
The house is spookily dark and seemingly asleep. Eyes do not get accustomed to darkness this deep. Walls loom suddenly ahead in places where they aren’t supposed to be. Tabaqui and Smoker move slowly. Sometimes they think they hear steps, either ahead or behind them. They stop and listen. The steps immediately stop as well. Maybe they’re just imagining it. Then they bump into something and switch the flashlights back on. It’s an empty wheelchair. There’s no trace of its owner, as if he’s been abducted by the spirits of the night. Tabaqui fingers his amulet.
“It’s like someone is trying to scare us on purpose, right?”
His voice is a mix of being terrified and reveling in it.
Smoker does not join him in the reveling part. He doesn’t like this empty wheelchair a single bit. Tabaqui spends some time studying it but is unable to determine the identity of the owner.
“It’s totally faceless,” he says. “Abandoned.”
They put on the sweaters, leave the wheelchair behind, and move on.
Barefoot Elephant in striped pajamas wanders past the Crossroads. His eyes are closed, his face upturned. His long pajama bottoms are collecting the hallway dust as he goes. Elephant is asleep, but his body slowly hobbles from one window to the next, stopping at each windowsill and feeling it with chubby palms before proceeding. The floorboards creak under his weight.
Blind floats along the corridors, not touching the walls. Even the wary rats don’t feel him approaching until he’s almost on top of them. He inhales the scent of damp plaster and the scent of the House denizens ingrained in the worn-out floorboards. When he hears steps he freezes until the night drifter passes by—a large animal in the thickets, crushing the ground underfoot and bumping into trash cans. Then he continues on his way, even more watchful and cautious than before, because those who wander at night drag dangerous secrets and fears after them. He approaches one of the dorms. Under the words carved with a knife, his all-seeing fingers feel for a crack. He presses his cheek against it. This way he can hear even the breathing of the sleepers and the groans of the bedsprings. Everyone’s asleep inside. Blind passes through more empty rooms and comes to another wall. There’s a place here where a large chunk of plaster fell down, and behind this wall nobody’s sleeping. Blind listens for a long time, paying more attention to the voices themselves than to the words they’re saying. He turns his head away at regular intervals, takes in the sounds around him, relaxes, and presses back against the wall.
Someone searching for a place to sleep sneaks down the ante-Crossroads stretch of the hallway. Someone pale and large-eyed, with patchy rust-colored hair.
Red is frightened. Asleep or awake, day or night. He’s dreading and waiting. He gnaws down the caps of his pens and chews up the filter ends of his cigarettes. He thinks and considers. This has got to end at some point. Plump Solomon, and Squib with his face red from the burn. They keep scaring him with their meaningful sniggers. Their smirks, their glances and winks. Squib, Solomon, and Don. The rest of them are submerged in the electronic ocean of sound. They float in it, swaying on the spot when they stand and jerking to the beat when they lie down, and they don’t care about anything that is not coming from the earphones plugged into the thundering emptiness.
