The streets are cool and foggy. The Holygrail’s red neon sign bleeds its colour into night. The air smells like it did ages and ages ago when I was young and left for school early in the morning. It doesn’t get to me. What gets to me is the sight of the Crooked House up on the hill engulfed in the rage of towering flames.

I see it right away. As soon as the car leaves us on the side of the road and speeds away, revving and squeaking its sparking tires. I see the trail of fire spilling over the slope of the hill.

“Shit,” I say.

“Isn’t too early for it to go?”

The wood moans and bends as the flames eat at it. A howling thing.

“It is.”

“How many times have they rebuilt it already?”

“I’ve lost count.”

Some calamity always befalls it. The walls rot and the wallpaper peels. It floods though it doesn’t rain above it. It’s infested with rats and the attic is a favoured nesting place for all sorts of birds and bats. The floors creak and cave and harbour too many critters. The doors come off the hinges. And once in a while, it likes bursting into a fit of fire - either spontaneously (because why not) or by somehow summoning a single strike of lighting.

“Unholy, unholy, unholy,” the harpies chant, clapping their minuscule hands - if they’re hands, maybe it’s the wings.

We find Alexei sitting on the steps leading up to my room. He greets us with his usual too-long long-sleeves, cuffed baggy jeans and the smell of naphthalene.

“Calliope let me stay,” he confesses.

He’s dusty and worn out. Sleepless like all those who’ve realized they can’t sleep.

“And your mother?” I ask.

“She didn’t want to come out of her room. Tried convincing her but she didn’t even answer me. She’ll be alright. We’ve seen many of these. Although, this one caught me by surprise.”

Alexei doesn’t say but he probably doesn’t remember the last time he talked to his mother. The last time he saw her and heard her voice. He clenches his teeth because his house is too empty and too loud. He clenches his teeth because he can’t stand the brightness of dawn and day. Most things are quite meaningless to Alexei.

In the same vein of in-between machinery, Alexei’s food doesn’t taste, but he knows it could. Just as much as Zosi and I do. He doesn’t eat but taste would escape him anywhere, regardless. He won’t know the taste of milkshakes or burgers or stir-fried noodles. He’s never had home-cooked meals and even if he did, they would be foreign and useless. But he contemplates.

Pain is another. He contemplates sensations because he doesn’t feel any pain, physical or emotional. Not when he pressed his open palm on the reddened coils of the stove or when he tore his leg open on the uneven rocky hill. Not when hurtful insults are thrown his way. He contemplates it in the tightening of his throat when it shows him he can’t speak either, sometimes. So, he’s made his occasional pits of silence into a rich medium of self-expression.

On his appearance - he knows he possesses one. He’s not sure it’s his own. He knows his hair is black and he’s tall and he’s charming, but he’s a liar. He doesn’t flinch or scare easily and has the platitude of a blasé, avant-garde thinker. In his uncertainty he’s closer to us, than he is to the town-folk. In the chaos of the in-between, he's closer to the city's dark dwellers.

“I’ll have to go see the house.”

I say it almost angrily. I don’t want to be but my list’s getting longer.

“I’ve never seen the owner of the Crooked House.”

Alexei scoffs. His messy hair and matted ends stick out in the artificial light. I’d like to keep Zosi away from it but Alexei opens his mouth first.

“You’ve met my friend, Cosmo.”

“Yeah.”

Kind of early for Cosmo, but he brought it up and it’s out of my hands, so I’ll give you a run-down. Cosmo doesn’t like the in-between so he’s off in some palpable city with a real nice beach. The only reason Cosmo’s scary is because he counts heartbeats on his fingertips and listens in on thoughts around him. He’s mostly harmless unless you step on his toes. He’s also a little bit immortal but he doesn’t like talking about it.

“My family used to work at the Crooked House. Before the owner left. Before it burned through the orchard and onto our house. You were put off by Cosmo, so be glad you haven’t met the owner. If you do, give him a wide berth.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s mayhem. And a fucking spook.”

St. Michael’s is the border. It’s a one main-boulevard town but there are still lines. Some you can cross and some lead to imprisonment. Some to irreparable evil and some to the simplest sort of bliss.

“You know him, philosopher?” Zosi asks.

Alexei looks up at me, quite amused.

“I do,” I answer.

Some can walk on water and scoop the moon right out of the sky, bare-handed. Over my shoulder, the fire spreads and Alexei’s house catches in it like a scrapped match. He watches it disappear in the crazed flutter of heat.

“Your mother’s still inside,” Zosi points out.

“Oh, she’ll be fine. You guys should really come to my show tomorrow night,” Alexei says, and the squares of bleak neon crackle. “Not to be weird, but what’s that?”

The twisted space over my shoulder.

“The tiniest black hole,” I explain.

He nods. “Cool.”

Yeah, cool.

Our eyes blink in the fury of the fire and the rupture holds a wake in the night sky, patient as always.