The House of Discarded Dreams

“Great,” Maya said. “A ghost babysitter for the Psychic Energy Baby.”



“There are also animals on the porch,” Vimbai said. “Everyone seems to think they are yours.”



“Did you see them when you first came?” Maya asked. “I remember you looking under the porch.”



“No,” Vimbai said. “But I did see them today—they are on the porch now. The water chased them there, I think. They seem cold.”



“What happened?” Maya said. “Do you know why we are floating?”



Vimbai shook her head. “The ocean carried us off.”



“Or it’s a flood,” Maya said, grim. “Has it occurred to you? There’s another flood and the only ones who survived are us and a few ghosts we have along.”



“And your animals,” Vimbai added. “What are they?”



Maya shrugged. “They do not like fish, that much I know.”



Vimbai looked around the room, not because of any pressing curiosity but to distract herself from the sight of the water and the nagging fear that Maya might be right, that the world had simply disappeared overnight and there was no back to go to, no classes to catch, no parents to reassure. Vimbai rubbed her throat to chase away a large and cold stone that suddenly formed there. She looked at Maya’s chairs and the shelf with knickknacks, at the stack of paperbacks, their covers worn into illegibility, and at the beanbag chair that sat in the middle of the bedroom like an imposing toad. It was a simple room, with precious few traces of personality—surprising for a dwelling inhabited by someone as distinct as Maya. In fact, Vimbai thought, the same could be said about Felix’s room as well as Vimbai’s own. In this house, there was no need for posters or furnishings or any other mass-manufactured claims to individuality, there was no need of proclaiming to the house that this was a room belonging to any specific person, with formed tastes and idiosyncrasies. The house took care of that—the very fact of them living here was enough to attest who they were.



“Get dressed,” Vimbai said and headed for the door. “I’ll check on Felix, and you take care of your creatures. Grandma is making breakfast, so we can eat and decide what we should do.”



She avoided looking at the wall of greenery hiding the door to her room—instead she headed for Felix’s room and knocked. Felix opened almost immediately, dressed and as alert-looking as his bloodshot eyes allowed. Vimbai thought that his hair did look a bit like the open maw of some spectral predator.



“Yes,” Felix said. “I saw. And I don’t know what’s going on.”



“Fine,” Vimbai said. “Come and eat breakfast with us. And if you want to see the things from under the porch, you can.”



In the kitchen, Maya had commandeered a few dishes, and fed the three shivering animals canned tuna. Vimbai was glad that they had just made a shopping trip, and at least there were plenty of cans in the cupboard. Despite being separated from the electrical supply, the refrigerator still hummed and sputtered, and the stove worked as well. Vimbai made a mental note to check the TV and the phone as she settled on her usual stool and poured herself a cup of thick, oily coffee her grandmother had made. She waited for Felix to come downstairs and take a seat, and for Maya to finish fiddling with the pack of half-foxes, half-possums. Even the chipoko, the ghost, ceased her shuffling and stood quietly by the stove, the Psychic Energy Baby and all its phantom limbs cradled in the strong crook of her arms.



Satisfied that all the house inhabitants—even the animal, even the immaterial—were present, Vimbai nodded to herself and took her first sip of coffee as a mariner.



Chapter 5



Houses floating on strange and calm seas under frozen skies that only occasionally work up the energy to scare up a few clouds and sift a few snowflakes are bound to be guarded by different laws than ordinary houses. Dimensions, for example—as soon as the house in the dunes became unmoored from the very dunes that gave it its nickname, it grew larger on the inside, sprouting additional turrets and rooms and crawlspaces, often hidden behind the walls and impossible to get to—but existing nonetheless. And the proximity of the black hole of Felix’s hair warped the spaces inside and pulled up additional layers and floors and realities in some phantasmagoric synergy.



At least, this is how it appeared to Vimbai. An act as simple as opening a bathroom door had to be performed with utmost care, because she could not be sure about what she would find on the other side—the best she could hope for was startling one of Maya’s needle-toothed critters drinking out of the toilet bowl; they always turned, glowering, their bright eyes looking over their hunched and almost-human shoulders.



“I’m sorry,” Vimbai said after the scattering footfalls of clawed and splayed paws. “I have to use the bathroom.” Secretly, she was relieved that the bathroom remained as is, for now at least.



Peb lolled in the bathtub, half-filled with cold water. Vimbai regarded him and decided to pee despite his presence—the thing that now had absorbed all available phantom limbs, save for the one in Vimbai’s room, always appeared in unexpected and inopportune moments, popping through the walls or the floor or the ceiling.



“And what are you up to?” she asked Peb as she sat thoughtfully on the toilet. “Grandma is probably looking for you.”



Peb shrugged its shoulders and several legs. “She treats me as a child.”



“You look like one,” Vimbai parried. “You told me you were a baby.”



“Not in any regular sense,” Peb answered. “Do you know what it is like, in other planes?”



“Same as in Felix’s hair?” Vimbai guessed and flushed the toilet. Miraculously, it acted as if it was still connected to a septic tank, but Vimbai felt guilty because she suspected that now it was connecting straight to the ocean.



“No,” Peb said. “The planes are radiant and singing. Felix’s hair is a dark and desolate place.”



“But it is a place,” Vimbai said. “An actual place, bigger than it appears to be.”



“Oh yes.” Peb sank underwater and spoke in small exhalations of bubbles. “I think it’s a plane of some sort too, but not a very nice one.”



“What’s there?”



“Find out yourself,” Peb said, suddenly petulant. “I am busy.”



“You’re awfully cranky for a ghost,” Vimbai said.



No answer came and she exited the bathroom, ducking just in case there was a tree suddenly growing outside the door. With no classes to go and not much else to do but to explore the house, Vimbai headed for Felix’s room.



He let her in. He had changed the least of them all, Vimbai thought, and it was probably a good thing—any more weirdness added to Felix, and he would be closer in nature to the ghosts and Maya’s animals than to Vimbai and Maya. Maya, on the other hand . . . but that was something to consider later.



“Felix,” Vimbai said, politely. “May I take a peek inside your hair?”



His eyes rolled wildly, like those of a spooked horse. “Why would you want to do such a thing?”



“Curiosity,” Vimbai said. “And considering that we are in a floating house that sprouts new rooms every day, I think there may be some insight gained.”



Felix slumped, and shuffled over to his bed, to sit on it in a pose of defeat and remorse. “You’re blaming me,” he said. “I tried to tell you.”



“No one is blaming you,” Vimbai said. “What was it that you tried to tell me?”



“That there are forces in the world,” Felix answered. “Forces that run along invisible wires—like phone wires of the spirit, and sometimes you get trapped in them like Peb, and sometimes you stumble in the middle and get caught like a fly in a spider web…” He fell silent, shaking his head; the hair undulated along, with a barely noticeable delay—as if air provided too much resistance.



“You’re telling me you know what’s going on.”



Felix shook his head again, with greater vehemence. “I only know that there are forces, and we are crossing their conduits. And we probably shouldn’t. Like you shouldn’t look in my hair—there’s nothing there for you, nothing at all.”



“I shouldn’t or you won’t let me?”



Felix sighed. “I’ll let you but I do not think it’s a good idea. But go ahead, look, see what I care.”



Vimbai felt a cold wave of hesitation rise in her stomach. “I’m not going all the way in,” she said to Felix as much as herself. “I’m just going to look, okay?”



“Whatever,” Felix said and slumped some more.



Vimbai approached him in small childish steps. The black mass undulated closer to her face, and in it she saw quiet seething, like the surface of a cauldron full of boiling pitch—or at least what Vimbai imagined one would look like. It took an enormous effort for her to stretch her neck until her face—her eyelashes, her nose, her lips—touched its surface. It felt like sinking her face into a basin full of cold water—she was shocked at how cold it was, at how it singed her skin with frost.