“When I would not lay with him, he claimed I was a sorceress, that I had afflicted him with demons. ’Twas slander and libel, and some knew it. No witch had been hanged since the law of the Crown held sway. But they feared me and hated more than they feared. Hags and their cruel masters. They hanged me and burned my body to ash.”
Rachel's nails bit into Billy's wrist, and he struggled to breathe through a throat constricted with fear.
“No consecrated ground for my flesh. No burial at all. They feared that I would blight the crops if I touched the earth. So they fashioned a globe of glass, a witchball, and sealed my ashes within, never to mingle with earth or wind, never again to lie with the Lord of Beasts, never to rest in rain, dirt and dew.”
“What do you want from me?” Billy whispered.
“I hunger for life, for sensation. I scavenge where it spills out its heat. I have feasted this night where the one who treads the serpent path lays the joker in a shallow grave, but it avails me not. I yearn to ride the wind, to kiss the earth, to tremble in the reed pipe. And you, kindred soul have come to free me from the hollow tree where I am bound. You must release me!”
And having issued her command, the price of her council, Olivia Heron released Rachel, who in turn released Billy. There was a crashing, dissonant chord from the piano, and the candles went out as if quenched by the power of that sound, their smoke trails rippling in its wake.
* * *
Echo
When the fever broke, she could see the stars through a window. Orion’s belt. How long must she have wandered for the moon to be dark? The last thing she could remember was trudging through the creek at the edge of the forest, her skirts muddied and torn, and stumbling into the churchyard where Sarah was waiting for her lesson.
“You’re back, ma’am. Oh, I’m so glad you’re back. Can you hear my voice?”
And Sarah was here with her now. A damp cloth touched her head. “I can, child. I can hear you, dear. How long have I been gone?”
“Most of a week, ma’am. I’ve stayed with you. I begged my parents to let me nurse you, and they did, they let me.”
“It was kind of them. You’re a good girl, from a good family.” She reached out to the space beside the bed, feeling blindly about with her fingers. “Is my….”
“Your accordion, ma’am? Yes, it’s here. It’s fine. I found it in the woods after I found you roaming. In a delirium you were.”
She sat up too fast and her vision swarmed. Memory rushed in and shocked her into lucidity. She took Sarah’s hand in her lap. She needed to see the girl’s face when she asked. “Did you see anything else in the woods when you found my instrument?”
“No, ma’am. What do you mean? Did you lose something?”
“The forest can be a dangerous place in the winter, dear, when the wolves are about. You didn’t see any beasts, did you?”
“No, ma’am.”
“And what of me? Have I been talking in my fever?”
Sara looked down at the white wool blanket and bunched it under her fingers.
“You can tell me. I won’t be ashamed if I said strange things to you, only I’ll be sorry if I frightened or offended you. Sometimes a sickness is like dreaming and we can’t control ourselves. It was like that when my husband was taken by the typhoid. Did I frighten you, dear?”
“Mayhap, ma’am. But I wouldn’t let anyone come near when you were in such a state. Not even the doctor they fetched from Kingston. I told them you were modest, that I needed to cool you down with ice before I could clothe you to be seen. Only I didn’t want them to see… what you did. Or hear your words.”
“And the doctor listened to you, did he?”
“He did. I think it was only because I refused to leave your side. He would have seen you naked, but not while I was present, you see.”
“And what did I say that you didn’t want them to hear?”
“The words were so strange, ma’am. I’m sorry, but they were in no tongue I never heard before. Monstrous speech, all twisted and dark, and I was so scared they would think it was incantations.” Sarah’s words accelerated as she told the secret, her voice rising in pitch. Tears spilled from her long lashes onto the blanket as she finished. “You don’t know incantations, do you, ma’am?”
Olivia cradled the girl’s head in her hand and stroked her long hair. “No, dear, I’ve never learned any.”
“I’m so glad you’re back to yourself. I was so afraid for you.”
Still holding the back of Sarah’s head in her palm, Olivia looked into her eyes and asked, “And what did I do, Sarah? What did my body do while my speech ran away?”
Sarah closed her eyes, squeezing fresh tears out onto her freckled cheeks. She shook her head slowly in denial.
“Tell me, Sara. You must tell me.”
“You’ll want to confess it and you can’t. They can’t know.”
“Tell me and we shall never speak of it again, I promise.”
Whispering fiercely, rushing to get it all out in a single breath, she said, “You were like a bitch in heat. It was horrible, straddling the bedpost or the broomstick or anything you could reach.”
“Oh! Forgive me.”
“I thought to tie you to the bed, but I’m not strong enough. So I locked the door to keep you in.”
“Thank you, Sara. Thank you. You have done me a great kindness, and I am in your debt. I am so sorry you witnessed it.”
“When the doctor did see you, he said it was a very strange fever. He never saw its like before and all we could do was give you water and wait for it to pass.”
“I should be thankful he didn’t try to bleed me.”
“I wouldn’t have let him. My mum says that it doesn’t help and they should know better. But this was a city doctor, so maybe he knew.”
“You should go to your mother now, Sara, and tell her I won’t be needing nursing anymore. You can sleep in your own home tonight.”
“Are you sure you’re well enough?”
“Yes, dear. You can visit me tomorrow.”
* * *
When the girl had gone, Olivia looked at the stars again, reading the time of night by their positions. The village would be sleeping. No one would see her pass under the dark moon in her black cloak.
She had to go back.
She needed to hear that strange and beautiful music again. The sound of it had been a balm for her sorrows, had been all honey of the sun and milk of the stars in her bones, foam of the blue ocean in her blood, and never mind how grotesque the player, how dark the stench of his presence.
She remembered. Walking the Indian paths, spinning and dancing with her accordion and following the sound of her own echoing melodies deeper into the wood. And then, what she had taken to be an echo unfolded, revealing a counter melody, teasing her with sound and silence, encouraging her accompaniment, leading her deeper into the shadows until she came at length to a sun dappled glade where the mountain creek swirled in pools and eddies at the base of a rowan tree, where mushrooms and wild berries abounded, and bees meandered amid the floating pollen.
There was a face in the shadow of the tree, human only in the most rudimentary sense. The sight of it had flooded her with panic and she fled to the sound of hooves splashing in the water and thundering over the rocks.
Somehow she had escaped, but the music was still with her. Haunting in its beauty.
Her father had been a storyteller as well as a fiddler, but she knew now that one of his tales was flawed. The old sailor had cried a lie when he passed the Palodes in the days when Tiberius reigned over the Aegean. The great god Pan was not dead. He had crossed the ocean at the helm of some strange vessel. He had come to the New World and fashioned fresh pipes from the reeds of the Hudson River.
Twenty
Billy Moon was singing with a gun to his head. The song was “Black Curtain,” and the gun was held by Rachel, who was pressing the muzzle of it against the back of Billy's head while he knelt in front of her l
ike a condemned man in a Chinese prison, a microphone on a low stand before him. Jake was watching the meters, thinking that the reels were turning too slowly because the end of this take could not come soon enough. Jake was thinking that this had all gone too far, had crossed a line, was utterly fucked up. Jake was also thinking that the vocal sounded awesome.
Are you sick with fear? Then you are not alone
The end is near, I can feel it in my bones
Whispering in my ear 'til the big black curtain falls
The end is near, I can feel it in my balls
Billy repeated the lines over and over through what would be the fade-out. Jake only had to keep an eye on the needle and a finger on a fader, but he felt like he was driving an eighteen-wheeler through an icy mountain pass. When the beat finally broke down at the end, his palms were slick with sweat.
Rail said, “That's the one. Put a star on it.” Then, into the intercom, “Bravo, Billy. Another inspired performance. Isn't it amazing the difference it makes, just knowing it's there? Knowing it's loaded?”
“Yeah. So you got what you need? I can go now?”
“You may go.”
Through the glass, Rachel looked sweaty and horny and on the verge of tears, running her hands over Billy's chest, the Ruger now lying atop a wooden stool like just another instrument: a harmonica or a microphone. Billy kissed her, but then gently removed her hands. Jake knew Billy was going to pick up his acoustic guitar like he did every afternoon now and take off for a walk in the woods. Alone. She didn't look too happy about it.
They were in the final days of the project, and it was all about the vocals now, but there were only so many consecutive hours they could expect Billy to perform without diminishing returns, so they had established a routine: mornings were spent tracking, followed by a break for Billy in the afternoon when Jake and Rail would sift through the day’s catch, making charts on the dry erase board and marking up lyric sheets with three colors of highlighter. Once the best takes were identified, they would cut and paste a seamless, stellar performance. After dinner, they would play the edits for Billy and then move on to gathering raw material for the next song.
Keeping meticulous notes was crucial now, so Jake didn’t know if it was a blessing or a curse that Gribbens had simply stopped showing up for work. He couldn’t really blame the guy; after all, he had been shot at in the studio, and witnessing Kevin Brickhouse's death was bound to catch up with him sooner or later. Considering the pressures, Jake wasn’t even sure if Eddie would fire Ron for going AWOL. An assistant wasn’t strictly necessary at this stage, although there were times when Jake wished he could just ask Gribbens what some bit of notation on a track sheet actually meant.
Rail was pushing hard for the deadline, and tension was reduced on only one front during those long days: Billy seemed to have surrendered fully to the producer. He showed up and sang each morning, then vanished into the winter woods. Jake couldn’t help wondering if he was out there jamming to the impossible sounds of the pan flute every afternoon as the light waned. Rail showed no interest in what Billy might be writing out there, because whatever it was, it wasn’t going on this album. Anything new was too late, and anything acoustic didn’t fit Rail’s vision. Sometimes Jake would stare at the row of blue knobs labeled L PAN R, and wonder what Billy's vision was.
Over lunch, while Billy was on his walk, Jake summoned the nerve to ask Rail a loaded question. In the breezy tone of trivia, Jake said, “You ever hear about the ghost who supposedly lives here?”
Rail glanced up at the loft where Rachel was watching TV. “Of course,” he said, “that’s why I chose this studio.”
“How do you mean?”
“To inspire Billy's dark muse.”
“So you believe in it? The ghost?”
Rail said, “Let me tell you something about producing. All that matters is what the artist believes. I believe Billy Moon does his best work when he’s fucked in the head. Some people come to a remote studio like this for a safety zone, but we’re here for quite the opposite.” Rail bit a cherry tomato in half in a way that somehow conveyed that the conversation was over.
As Christmas week dawned, Jake found himself avoiding the apartment. He kept a few things in the church refrigerator and went to work earlier in the morning, the housekeeping staff still cleaning around him as he made his breakfast. At night he would linger after Rail had retired to the house on the hill, obsessing over edits and telling himself it was natural to want his first project as principal engineer to be blemish-free.
God only knew what star mixer Rail would call on to finish the record, and whoever it was would be scrutinizing his work. He should take the time now to make sure he was delivering the best tracks possible, to double-check that the documentation was in order. After all, he didn’t have anything to go home to. Not even a dog to feed.
Two days before Christmas, Eddie popped in to check on the clients and to apologize for the absence of the cleaning staff. “December is a pretty dead month for us. Here’s my home number. I’m right across town if you need anything.”
Rail asked if J.T. would still be available to cook for them.
Eddie scratched his ear and said, “Well, gee, not on Christmas, I’m sure. He has a family. But I’ll call him and see if he could do Christmas Eve for you. Bring you some trays you can heat up when the restaurants are closed.”
“That would be grand,” Rail said.
Turning to Jake, Eddie asked, “Still no sign of Gribbens?”
“No. He hasn’t called you?”
“Nope. His brother has an apartment in the city. He’s probably down there drowning his sorrows or something. Christ. Call Brian if you really need help, okay?”
“Sure thing.”
* * *
At four o’clock on December twenty-fourth, J.T. arrived in a Santa hat. Jake helped him carry the trays and Sterno burners into the kitchen. It was a perfect spread: carved turkey with gravy and garlic mashed potatoes, coleslaw, cranberry sauce, stuffing, steamed veggies, and the best biscuits Jake could ever recall eating.
Rachel turned heads when she descended the stairs from the loft in a simple black dress, her hair newly cut and dyed black. Without the goth makeup and blood red mane, she almost looked like a girl you could bring home to your mother for Christmas Eve dinner.
After J.T. left, Rail went into the kitchenette and returned bearing a tray laden with four crystal goblets of dark-red wine. His resemblance to a waiter standing at attention was almost enough to make Jake laugh, but then the flawless beauty of the crystal caught his eye. He wondered if Trevor Rail traveled everywhere with them in a foam-lined metal case.
Rail set the tray down on the white linen tablecloth covering the farmhouse table. He handed out the goblets, then held his own aloft. Jake found it unsettling to watch Trevor Rail raise a sparkling chalice of red wine before a backdrop of stained glass. The moment must have felt pregnant with poetry for all in attendance because they laughed easily when he simply said, “To coming in under deadline.”
There was scant conversation during the meal, and somehow the silence made them feel like a real family for a little while. But Jake didn't trust any of it. To him, it felt too much like the calm before a storm.
Afterward, Rachel cleaned up. Jake offered to help, but she shooed him away, so he took the chance to make his exit while Billy was outside having a smoke under the stars. Jake stood beside him on the front steps for a moment before asking, “You’re not gonna offer me one?”
“I noticed you stopped smoking after your girl took off,” Billy said. “Most people, it’d be the other way around.”
“I didn’t tell you she left.”
“Man, it’s written all over you.”
“Well, she didn’t like me smoking.”
“Yeah, it didn’t suit you, anyway. I hope her leaving didn’t have anything to do with me showing up at your place.”
Jake considered telling him that hell yes, it had a little s
omething to do with that, but refrained. After all, the guy was breaking out in a rare case of empathy. He just said, “It might have sped things up a little, but she would have gone anyway.”
Billy flinched slightly, or was that just smoke in his eyes? Then something new and sweet occurred to Jake, and he smiled. He asked, “That why you’re smoking outdoors now? Because you noticed I stopped?”
Billy shoveled some snow aside with the instep of his boot and said, “Nah, I just like a little fresh air with my cancer these days.”
They exchanged a smile.
Billy swayed slightly and said, “Actually, the air’s not helping like I thought it would. I’m feeling a little light on my feet. That wine must be good, ‘cause I can hold my liquor.”
Jake frowned and put a hand out to steady Billy’s shoulder as the singer sat down on the church steps. “You’ve been getting a lot of fresh air lately,” Jake said. “How’s that going?”
Billy fixed his eyes on the center of Jake’s chest and bobbed his head up and down. “Good,” he said, “It’s going good. Really fucking good. I sit there and listen, the flute gives me the melody and I find the chords. I’m getting a lot of songs.”
“No kidding.”
“Yeah. I’m never gonna let Rail touch them.”
“I guess that’s good… Billy?”
Billy’s faraway stare floated from Jakes chest to his eyes.
“If Rail’s the Devil,” Jake said, “who’s the piper at the pool?”
“I dunno. I think he might be my soul,” Billy said with a laugh.
“I don’t get it.”
“Me neither. But I thought I’d lost my soul, and now, out there in the woods, it’s like I’m finding it again. Like, check it out: I can’t find my pills, right? Don’t know where I put ‘em. And it doesn't even fuckin’ matter. That should be a crisis for me, but I’m doing alright. Because I found my soul.” Billy laughed again.
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