The Shoggoth Concerto

by John Michael Greer

  Over the weeks that followed, as they stumbled through simple tunes, Mrs. Macallan sorted out the few who had an interest in music from the many who were there because their parents wanted them there, or for any of a dozen other empty reasons. The few got lessons before and after school; Brecken and an eighth grader who also played the flute had Friday afternoons.

  At the end of that first year, the eighth grader moved on to Lincoln High, and for the next two years Friday afternoons were Brecken’s alone. Mrs. Macallan was also a flautist, and she had a gorgeous silver flute, a Powell good enough for the concert stage. When Brecken proved to have talent for music as well as a passion for it, Mrs. Macallan lavished time on her, guiding her through exercise after exercise and piece after piece, until by Brecken’s eighth grade year they were playing works by the classical masters.

  During those three years Brecken caught some of Mrs. Macallan’s love of teaching music, watched the way her face lit up when a student got past the labor of performance to the music itself, or when the band momentarily stopped being eighteen or twenty-one separate schoolchildren fumbling at their instruments and became a unity that could play a phrase or a passage so that it meant something. During those same three years, though, she also came to know the precariousness of Mrs. Macallan’s lonely crusade. To the Woodfield Consolidated School District, nothing mattered but money and standardized test scores, and so year after year, more programs were cut, more teachers laid off. The last two art teachers at Oakmont were packed off at the end of Brecken’s sixth grade year, and everyone knew that music was next.

  Word finally came, in the last weeks of her eighth grade year, that all funding for middle school music had been cut: to pay for improvements in general education, the press release said, but the local paper slipped and let on that the money would go instead to cover yet another hefty raise for the district administrator and her staff. The last day of school that year was a Friday. Brecken and Mrs. Macallan met in the band room after everyone else had gone home, went through two Taffanel and Gaubert exercises, and then played Mozart’s flute concerto in D major, Brecken on flute and Mrs. Macallan on piano. They’d been working on it all year, and it had finally started to come together in the last weeks before break.

  Afterwards, they’d talked. “Don’t you worry about me,” Mrs. Macallan said, with the wistful smile Brecken knew so well. “I’ll be fine. I’ve already got something lined up—and I have a special gift I want to give you, since you’ve worked so very hard these last three years.” Then she’d handed over the Powell flute, which Brecken had loved helplessly since her first weeks in middle school. To Brecken’s stammered protests, she’d smiled again and said, “No, I mean it. It should be yours, because I know you’ll play it the way it should be played. I’ll tell you a secret—I’m going to be getting an even better instrument soon.”

  So Brecken burst into tears, and they hugged, and Brecken went home with the Powell flute to pack for the trip to Trenton and one last summer with her grandparents before they moved into a senior home. She’d been with her grandparents eight days when a school friend, another of Mrs. Macallan’s pupils, called to tell Brecken the news: after that last day of school, Mrs. Macallan had gone home, put an old vinyl record of Bach’s Brandenburg concertos on the stereo, climbed into a warm bath, and slit both her wrists.

  That was the summer when Brecken’s world turned upside down: when she came back from an afternoon with friends to find her grandparents waiting for her with shocked solemn looks on their faces, bracing themselves to tell her that her mother had been arrested and would probably spend a very long time behind bars; when she sat through family conferences on the phone and in person, before everyone decided that she’d move in with her Aunt Mary and Uncle Jim up in Harrisonville for the four years until her high school graduation; when she found out, a few weeks before she went to Harrisonville and her grandparents moved into the senior home, that all the things she’d left behind in Woodfield—everything she owned but her summer clothes, a few trinkets, a few CDs, a stack of sheet music, and the Powell flute—had been seized by the county as drug-related property and was gone for good.

  All that was public, right out in front of family members and friends. Her grief for Mrs. Macallan was not. All she let any of them know about her Friday afternoons was that she needed time to practice. Then the door would click shut, the flute and music stand and music would come out, and she’d spend two or three hours playing the most exacting pieces she could handle, driving herself hard, until exhaustion finally told her she’d done enough that day.

  Exhaustion hadn’t yet arrived when she finished the Telemann piece for the third time. She played two etudes from Rubank’s Selected Studies, working on details of technique her flute teacher had pointed out the evening before, and then put something really challenging on the music stand: Bach’s Partita in A minor for solo flute. The cascading sixteenth notes and the wickedly complex fingerings demanded every bit of her musicianship, but after a year and a half of hard work she could play it creditably. After the fourth pass through, though, Brecken’s shoulders had begun to cramp from the sheer intensity of her effort, and her fingers felt like lead. She put the flute down, cleaned it and put it in its case, stowed Mrs. Macallan’s picture in the top drawer of her dresser, and then stumbled over to the futon to sit down.

  Pale green eyes looked up at her. ♪Has much time passed?♪ Sho asked.

  It took Brecken a moment to figure out what she meant, and a glance at the lexicon turned up no way to talk about numbers. ♪Yes, it has been summers since she died.♪

  ♪And you sing for her still.♪

  ♪It still hurts,♪ Brecken said.

  Sho regarded her for a time, then flowed a pair of pseudopods around her, squeezed. It took Brecken a moment to recognize the gesture as an imitation of the hug she’d given the shoggoth earlier that day. ♪Thank you,♪ she whistled, and returned the hug.

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON, BRECKEN got out her music education homework, and Sho settled down next to her with a quilt pulled over most of her to make her feel sheltered. The shoggoth’s eyes rose and sank more slowly, and Brecken guessed that she had—what was the phrase?—gone onto the dreaming-side. A slow rippling moved through Sho’s body, setting faint prismatic patterns of color flowing across her outer layer, and Brecken watched her for a time and tried to remember why she’d thought the shoggoth looked hideous the first time she’d seen her.

  Sho didn’t look hideous at all, Brecken thought; she looked fragile, like something made of living glass. Then she stifled a laugh, realizing that it was her own attitude that had shifted. Don’t get between Brecken and her strays, she thought. The words had changed from stinging to comfortable, a simple statement of fact.

  She opened the textbook, tried to make sense of the stilted academic prose and the empty abstractions that claimed to have something to do with the raw reality of people learning music, and had just begun taking notes when a knock sounded at the door. Six of Sho’s eyes popped open at once. Brecken, startled, had the presence of mind to whistle ♪hide!♪ in a low tone. She had almost forgotten how fast the shoggoth could move; before Brecken could get up from the futon, an iridescent black blur flung itself into the kitchen and vanished down under the sink.

  Once she was sure Sho was out of sight, she went to the door and opened it. Mrs. Dalzell stood outside, and just behind her was a middle-aged man with a military haircut and a genial smile, dressed in a nondescript jacket and slacks, and holding an equally nondescript tablet in one hand. “Oh, good afternoon, Brecken,” Mrs. Dalzell said. “I was hoping you’d be in. This is Mr. Metzner from the state animal control office.”

  He put his hand out, and Brecken shook it. “John Metzner,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.” She said something polite, but by then Mrs. Dalzell was talking again: “Do you remember what day it was that those wretched raccoons got into the trash?”

  Brecken thought for a moment. “The night of the seventh,�
� she said. “Remember how I came out and found you cleaning up the mess? That was last Monday morning, so it had to be the eighth, and the raccoons did their thing the night before.”

  “Oh, of course,” said Mrs. Dalzell, blinking. “How could I have forgotten? Of course you’re right, because I went to visit my cousin Della that afternoon.”

  “Did you smell anything unusual around the yard then or later?” Metzner asked.

  “No, nothing,” Brecken replied. “Well, unless tomcat pee counts as unusual.”

  Mrs. Dalzell choked, and began to laugh. Metzner nodded, thanked them both, headed back to the street and then to the next house on the block. Brecken managed to detach herself from Mrs. Dalzell’s further chatter without too much difficulty, and went back inside.

  The moment she closed the door she blinked and shook her head. It hadn’t been the seventh at all, she realized. Thunder had rolled over Hob’s Hill on the night of the fourteenth, and the trash cans had been disturbed the morning of the fifteenth, but somehow her memory had insisted otherwise with perfect certainty for those few minutes when the man from the state animal control office was asking about it. Nor could she remember ever having smelled tomcat urine around the converted garage. The only smell that she recalled, in fact, was the one around the trash cans that same morning—

  That was when it occurred to her that she had never heard anyone mention a New Jersey state animal control office before.

  Cold fear gripped her. If people were hunting for Sho, trying to find her and kill her, it made sense that they would pretend to be doing something more ordinary, like tracking raccoons. What didn’t make sense is that something had made her and Mrs. Dalzell both remember the wrong date and the wrong smell, and say exactly the right things to cover Sho’s trail.

  After a little while, she glanced through a gap in the window shades, made sure neither Mrs. Dalzell nor John Metzner were anywhere nearby, and went into the kitchen. ♪Leaf On Wet Stone,♪ she whistled. ♪They have gone.♪

  After a moment of silence and another moment of low rustling noises, Sho flowed a part of herself up through the gap in the boards. ♪It is well?♪

  ♪Yes, but something really strange happened.♪

  They got settled on the futon again, and Brecken tried to explain the way her memories had suddenly lied to her and just as suddenly told the truth again. Sho watched her with three eyes, then four, then five. Finally, when Brecken was done, she said, ♪I think I understand. The one who told me to abide, the dweller in darkness, he has such powers. I do not know why he chooses to protect me, but I am grateful.♪ In a low, shaken whistle: ♪I do not wish to burn.♪

  ♪I don’t wish you to burn either,♪ Brecken whistled in reply. ♪I don’t know what it’ll take to keep you safe, but I’ll do whatever I can.♪

  ♪You are so very kind to me,♪ said Sho. ♪And the dweller in darkness may help you.♪

  That was when Brecken finally remembered where she’d read about a dweller in darkness before: remembered, too, the name Halpin Chalmers had used for that strange being. “Nyogtha,” she said aloud.

  ♪Yes,♪ said Sho, and repeated the same trill she’d used earlier when she’d spoken about her dream. It sounded, Brecken thought, uncannily like the name “Nyogtha” spoken aloud. Then, in a low tone: ♪I do not know if he will protect you. There is a pact between him and my people; he has aided us and and we have served him for ages of ages, but I do not know if your people have ever had dealings with him. I hope he will protect you, but I do not know.♪

  EXCEPT FOR THE FACT that she had a shoggoth for company, the evening that followed could have belonged to any other Friday since Brecken moved into the little converted garage at the start of the semester. She put another hour into piano practice and several more into studying for her classes, wrestling with the assigned readings for Intro to Music Education I until the haze of abstractions made her head hurt. Dinner was a welcome relief; she made mashed potatoes from scratch, a chicken gravy to go over them, and buttered carrots on the side, all the while carrying on a whistled conversation with Sho. They ate sitting on the floor as before, and Sho’s simple words of praise—♪It is very good ♪—made Brecken blush. Afterwards she got out her copy of The Secret Watcher and read through everything she could find in it about shoggoths, until she was ready for sleep and Sho slid away to the kitchen and vanished into the crawlspace below.

  The next morning, again with the obvious exception, was an ordinary Saturday morning. After breakfast, Sho sat on the carpet watching as Brecken packed her tote bag with music, a folding music stand, and her flute. ♪I’m going to sing with others of my people,♪ she explained to the shoggoth. ♪We do this often. This time I’ll be late—I won’t get back until long after dark. I hope you won’t get hungry before then.♪

  ♪I am well fed,♪ Sho piped in response. ♪You are very kind, but it will be well with me. I will go to the dreaming-side and wait below until you call.♪

  ♪That’s a good plan.♪ Brecken shrugged on her coat. ♪Be careful.♪ A few moments later she was out the door, heading for Danforth Street beneath a cloudy sky. From there it was an easy walk to the Student Union Building on campus, a sprawling irregular shape of brick and concrete with windows poking out of it at intervals. As she neared it, it occurred to her that the building looked a little like a shoggoth, with the windows for eyes; the thought amused her.

  Through the main entrance, down the stair, along a corridor to a door near the far end marked DEBATE CLUB, which was what the room held when it wasn’t being rented out by the club as practice space: she’d been that way so often that she scarcely noticed the route. Beyond the door, a long rambling space held bookcases full of reference works, and past that was a big open room with two antique oak desks on one side and a rack of equally well-aged folding chairs on the other; between them, most of Rose and Thorn Ensemble were busy getting instruments in tune. Brecken crossed to the nearer desk, fielded greetings from other members of the group, pulled out a stack of sheet music and started sorting it.

  “Breck?” Donna crossed the room, gave her a wary look. “I want to apologize.”

  “It’s okay,” Brecken told her, not meeting her eyes.

  “No, I mean it. I got way out of line—and I didn’t know about your folks.”

  Brecken looked up, and nodded. Then, seeing the expression on Donna’s face: “Ro ripped you a new one?”

  That got her a sharp little laugh. “You better believe it.” The laughter guttered. “But I mean it, about your folks. I can’t imagine what it would be like, not to have family around.”

  “I’ve got an aunt and uncle in Harrisonville.”

  “Well, that’s something. Still—I’m sorry.”

  Brecken met her gaze then. “Seriously, it’s okay.” Donna nodded, managed a taut smile, and went back to her violin.

  A glance that way showed Rosalie busy with the tuning wrench, getting her harp ready. On one side of her, Jamal Williams, lean and dark, shaved head making a nice contrast with a fine Mephistophelean goatee, had his violin already tuned and balanced it negligently on his arm. On the other Walt Gardner, a big rawboned farm kid with wheat-colored hair and watery blue eyes who came from some little town a stone’s throw from Pennsylvania, fussed with his cello.

  Then the door clattered shut. Brecken turned and put on a smile for Jay: he was always the last one there and always shut the door when he arrived. “Hi, Breck,” he said. “Hi, everybody.” He fielded their greetings, crossed to the desk, let Brecken kiss his cheek and then put down his viola next to her flute. “Good to go?”

  “Waiting for you, boss man,” said Jamal.

  Jay grinned. “The wait is over.” He turned to Brecken. “Anything new?”

  “Of course.” She handed him a stack of pages, which he glanced over.

  “Sweet,” he said. “Okay, listen up. I’ve confirmed next Sunday, eleven o’clock at the Belknap Creek Mall. I’ve got five gigs lined up for winter break, and I’
ll have more by the time we get there—I’ll send a schedule around as soon as I get a couple of details set. Today we need to work on the playlist for Sunday, but we need to get going on the holiday stuff too.”

  “Kill me now,” said Donna.

  “People love those,” Jay told her. “You want to make it in music, you’ve got to give people what they want.” He got his viola out and started to tune it, while Brecken retrieved the sheet music and handed each of the others their packets.

  Finally everyone was tuned up, and Jay said, “Okay, first up Sunday is Pachelbel. Ready? Rosalie, start when you’re good.”

  She grinned. “I’m always good.”

  A moment’s pause, and then she began playing her harp, setting up the steady rhythmic pattern that underlay Pachelbel’s Canon in D. Walt started in after the second measure, Donna after the fourth, and the others followed in turn, weaving a fabric of sound out of the threads Pachelbel had set out for them. Before long Brecken and Jamal were passing the melody line back and forth over the steady rhythm of Rosalie’s harp and the bass line of Walt’s cello, with Donna and Jay filling in the harmonies between, acting out the dance of tonality, moving around the tonic note that gave direction and meaning to the whole. The piece was familiar enough that Brecken could watch Jay’s face as he played, and see him frowning slightly with the effort, all pretense pushed aside; it was at such moments that she loved him most.

  The Canon wound up crisply, and Jay grinned again and said, unnecessarily, “Great.” They went straight into the next piece, a Bach minuet. That went almost as well, and so did the one that followed. They had to work harder on the fourth piece, a tough Vivaldi selection, but three passes through got the rough edges off, and then it was on to the next piece of music.