The house was sitting on a stool at the bar. I walked up beside him. “And in walks 
,” said the house.
I sat down next to him.
“You stink of moon,” he said.
“Why do you think that might be?”
The house shrugged.
“You didn’t tell anyone where you were going.”
“Didn’t want to be found,” said the drunkhouse. “Who told you where I was? The Lamp?”
I shook my head.
“Or?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said.
“It was Or,” said the house. “That fucking option.”
“You have a job to do,” I said. “You can’t just vanish like that.”
The house belched.
“Nice,” I said.
“Bombs away,” said the house.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” I said. “You’re a home.”
“Home is where the heart is,” said the house.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The past is gone, ,” said the house. “And it’s not coming back.”
“I’m not talking about the past — I’m talking about right now. I need a place to stay tonight.”
“Good for you,” said the house.
“And you,” I said, “have an obligation.”
“Obligation?” said the house. His eyes were watery. “Obligation.”
“Yeah,” I said.
He spun in his stool to face me. “We were a family,” he said.
What was I supposed to say to that? “I’m going back to Converse Street now. Are you coming or not?”
The house slugged its beer, put on its coat, and walked out with me. I unlocked the Bicycle Built for Two and hopped onto the front seat. The house sat down on the back and we pedaled home.
And I guess I thought that was it — that the house’s runaway had changed something, solved whatever problem it was having. In retrospect, of course, that was naïve of me — especially since the memories and bad dreams persisted.
A few weeks after the house’s return, the Memory of Johnny Appleseed asked me to help him plant some apologies in the deadgroves on Old Mill Road; I worked all day with him and then rode the Bicycle Built for Two back to Converse Street. I was really looking forward to getting home and ripping open a bag of rippled barbecue DeathChips.
When I turned my bike onto our street, though, I saw a strange sight at the tree belt: something was attached to the tree. At first I couldn’t see what — it was dark, and my vision isn’t so good. I figured it was some sort of tree-based installation art. Our trees, like most trees, were very creative, always painting and sculpting, and sometimes they chose to work big, beuysing or serraing.
When I got closer, though, I recognized the shape. It wasn’t art—it was my house, 577, hanging by a noose from a tree in the yard.
“Oh. Oh Core,” said the Bicycle Built for Two.
I raced into the yard and dropped the bike. The house was swaying in the wind. Its eyes were closed, its face ghost-white, its roof gray and crushed; houseblood ran down the beige siding and onto the sidewalk.
Then I heard a soft rush of air — a gasp, maybe. Was the house still alive?
I heard the thin wind again — it wasn’t yet dead.
I got down on my knees in the wet earth and I said an emergency prayer. I got an automated response: “Welcome to Appleseed. All Emergency Cones are busy right now. If you pray your name, and the time of your prayer—”
I closed the prayer and stood up. The house was still breathing. I ran through my options in my mind. Could I climb the tree, cut the noose?
There was no way. I was too small.
Could the stars help?
No — they weren’t smart enough.
Then I looked up — way up, past the moon. At your Memory.
Memory of the Reader: Who? Me?
Yes. This house is dying. It’s dying!
Memory of the Reader: I can’t — what can I do?
You need to reach down into the page and lift up the house, loosen the tension on that noose.
“I’m just a Memory,” you said.
Just lift up the page — shift the gravity!
“I’m not the Reader,” said the Memory of the Reader. “I can’t lift anything.”
Where is the Reader?
Memory of the Reader: Reading another book.
Another novel?
Memory of the Reader: Does it matter?
It didn’t — within a few minutes, everything was dead: the house, the words about the house, the noose and the words about the noose. I knelt down on the page and the black houseblood soaked the knees of my white pants.
Shortly after the house took its last breath, Orange Traffic Cones arrived and the hospital followed. The Cones put on crash helmets, climbed ladders, and cut the house down; he landed on the lawn with the terrible sounds of wood splintering and glass smashing. The hospital tried to resuscitate him, but he was dead as a word.
Eventually, the Cones started collecting their tools and talking about where to go for dinner. As I stood in the blood-sopped grass, the hospital approached me wearing a house-sized stethoscope around his neck. The hospital lit a four-foot cigarette and said, “There wasn’t anything I could do, .”
“I know,” I said.
“You can’t blame yourself.”
“Who else is there to blame?” I said.
The hospital took a drag. “That’s a good question,” he said.
A few minutes later, the Cones’ and hospital’s walkie-talkies started trilling and squawking, and they all left for another call. I stood alone with the dead house, its blood blackening the page. The end.
— Fini ~
Memory of the Reader: Wait.
What.
Memory of the Reader: What happened next? What’s the rest of the story?
That’s the end of it.
Memory of the Reader: But where did you go?
I didn’t go anywhere. It was late. I went inside and fell asleep.
Memory of the Reader: You slept in the corpse of the house?
Sure. What was I supposed to do?
Memory of the Reader: Sleep on the page?
And get carried off by a wild sentence, pulled into another bookwormhole? No, thank you.
Memory of the Reader: I’ve never heard of anyone doing that — sleeping in a deadhouse.
People do it all the time. My father was born in a deadhouse.
Memory of the Reader: What was that like?
Shrug. The rooms had gone gray, the house’s dreams silence and soil. New questions roamed from room to room.
Memory of the Reader: Such as?
Yeah, among others.
For a while I just lay there, listening. Then I prayed to the Memory of Johnny Appleseed and told him I needed help.
With what? he prayed back.
Digging a hole, I prayed.
A hole? he prayed. I should borrow some shovels, then?
Yes, I prayed. The biggest you can find.
CHIVER’S DELIGHT
That was in 1993, when language in Appleseed berserked, flabbergasted, broke free of its shackles for good. It began mutating, for one thing. All of a sudden — how do I say this? — the language got bigger.