When she opened the notebook the next morning, she saw all at once how the sequence could harmonize, not with some other sequence of notes, but with itself. As she struggled to put that insight into notes on staff paper, her eyes widened as she realized what it was that the sequence was reaching toward—or was it her mind that was doing the reaching? She could not tell, but a fugue, the most precise and demanding of the classical forms, began to take shape on the page. Sho was familiar enough with her habits by then that she flowed up against her, settled into place with an affectionate flutter, and drifted over onto the dreaming-side; Brecken slipped an arm around her and kept on writing.
Thereafter the fugue came together in bursts and fragments, with plenty of false starts and blind alleys. After bursts of concentration so intense it left fingers of pain clutching her scalp, Brecken was glad to set the notebook aside to cook a meal, practice flute or piano, or spend time with Sho; but measure by measure, the piece took shape in a dance of harsh discords resolving into harmonies. Sunday’s church service offered a respite of sorts, but as Brecken walked back to her apartment afterwards all her thoughts were on a difficult few measures early on, and she spent much of the rest of the day getting those right.
Monday morning the wind sent long thin streamers of cloud sweeping across the sky from somewhere beyond Hob’s Hill as Brecken walked to campus. The Cave was as crowded as usual, and the sky syrup from the loudspeakers overhead cycled aimlessly through a series of four drab chords ornamented with random notes. At the familiar table, Rosalie sat hunched over her phone, texting with a look of utter concentration. Brecken sat down quietly, slipped her composition book out, brooded over her fugue, got another two measures worked out.
Rosalie looked up finally, and blinked in surprise. “Hey, girl,” she said. “Sorry about that. I didn’t even see you sit down.”
“Let me guess,” said Brecken, laughing. “You were texting Tom.”
“Yeah.” She grinned. “I’m going to his place for the weekend. He’s really sweet.”
“That’s good to hear.”
Rosalie gave her a sidelong look. “You know, if you’re ever interested, my cousin Rick really does want to meet you.”
It wasn’t much of an opening, but Brecken took it. “Ro, there’s something you need to know about.” She drew in an unsteady breath. “I’m going to be leaving Partridgeville at the end of the semester. I’m transferring to a university in Massachusetts to study composition.”
“What?”
Brecken nodded.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Rosalie said then. “Look. You just need to stop, okay? You know as well as I do that you aren’t going to do anything like that.”
Astonished, Brecken tried to break in. “Ro—”
“I get that you like composing,” she went on without stopping. “I get that you’re okay at it. But you’ve got to be realistic. You’re not going to be able to make any kind of living doing that, you know, and that means—”
“Ro—”
“—you need to buckle down and get back on track with music education, get yourself some job skills that can support you. You’ve had your semester of daydreams, okay, but now it’s time to get real—”
Brecken lost her temper. “Ro, will you please just shut up for a moment and listen?”
That got her a moment of shocked silence. Brecken went on in a rush: “I got my acceptance letter from Miskatonic University Thursday. I had my audition there over spring break, and passed. I’ve already got an apartment rented. There’s a summer composition program, invitation only for undergraduates, and I’ve been invited. It’s not a daydream, Ro. I’m going.”
She stared at Brecken, then said, “But—but you can’t—” Her voice trailed off.
“Yes, I can,” Brecken told her with some asperity. “And I am.”
“But—” Rosalie swallowed visibly. “But you won’t have any kind of steady job—”
Brecken, exasperated, said, “Look, I’m just doing the same thing you’re doing! Why is it okay for you to follow your dream and not okay for me to follow mine?”
Rosalie winced as though Brecken had slapped her, and then looked away, hard. Brecken stared at her for a long silent moment, and finally understood. In a quieter voice she asked, “That is what you’re doing, Ro, isn’t it?”
Rosalie didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. In a silence that the noises of The Cave couldn’t touch, she could hear everything Rosalie wasn’t saying, everything she hadn’t said for most of two years, and knew in a moment of cold clarity that her friend wasn’t going to follow the dream she’d talked about so often, had known all along that she was never going to follow it. Rosalie would finish her music degree, she guessed, then get a job with her father’s brokerage or something similar, and settle into the comfortable life she’d played at abandoning; marriage, children, promotions, there would always be another reason to put off the dream; her harp, gathering dust in a closet somewhere, would become an anchor for dreams and might-have-beens, a place to put her fantasies of the life she’d left untouched; and when she lay dying, maybe, however near or far in the future that turned out to be, she’d still comfort herself with the thought that she could have followed the dream and become a professional musician after all.
“Ro—” Brecken’s mouth was dry, but she forced the words through. “It’s okay.”
Rosalie looked up at her with bleak wet eyes, said nothing.
“We should probably head for class,” Brecken said then.
A wordless nod was the only answer she got. The two of them left the table, headed for the elevator and Composition II. As the elevator lurched upward, Brecken looked at Rosalie and Rosalie looked at the floor. Neither of them said anything until the elevator was nearly to the tenth floor, when Brecken said, “It really is okay.”
Rosalie glanced up at her, then looked away, closed her eyes, nodded.
THEY GOT TO THE class a few minutes early, settled into their seats. Julian Pinchbeck sat with his shoulders hunched, staring at nothing; Darren Wegener, in back as usual, had one of his mathematics textbooks open and an intent look on his face; most of the others hadn’t gotten there yet, and so Brecken pulled out her composition notebook again and got back to work on the fugue. By the time the others had arrived and Professor Toomey came through the door she’d worked out a countersubject she could play against Julian’s twelve notes, one that would give her the bitter discords the fugue demanded but still give her room to resolve everything into harmony before the final cadence.
She glanced up then, and saw the look on Toomey’s face. His eyes remained unreadable but the hard set of his mouth told her instantly that something dreadful had happened.
“Everyone’s here?” the professor asked. “Fair enough. I’ve got some very bad news to pass on.” The room went utterly silent. “I think most of you probably know a freshman named Barbara Cormyn. She was found dead this morning.”
That sparked a sudden shocked murmur, then a deeper silence. “You can get the details from the newspaper,” Toomey went on. “I’m not going to go into them here, but they were pretty grim. The Partridgeville police are investigating it as a homicide. Obviously they want to hear from anybody who knows anything that might be relevant.” He went on, talking about the free counseling the university was providing for students, the arrangements for improved security the campus police had promised to put in place, but Brecken barely heard any of it.
Once the class was over and they’d returned to The Cave, Rosalie mumbled an excuse and hurried away. Brecken watched her go, then went to Vivaldi’s, and spent the hour before her counterpoint class sipping coffee, wrestling with a few measures of free counterpoint in her fugue, and trying not to think about Barbara Cormyn. Word had clearly spread through the music department, to judge by the conversations in low voices and the shocked silent expressions around her. When she went to her next class, Toomey repeated the same announcement in the same words, got the same reaction
, went on to lecture on details of counterpoint that Brecken had already picked up from Johann Joseph Fux. Finally, when the class was over, she headed out the glass doors into the open air, and then happened to glance at a vending machine where that day’s edition of the Partridgeville Gazette yelled the news:
GRUESOME “CULT KILLING” DOWNTOWN
Headless Body of Student, 19, Found in Own Bed
Police: Crime Likely Linked to Occult Beliefs
Brecken stared at the headline for a moment, then hurried home. When she checked the Gazette website later that afternoon, it took only a single glance at the story to confirm her fears:
...found Cormyn’s nude body sprawled on her bed. Her neck had been completely severed, and her mangled head had been placed grotesquely on her chest. Her upper body and arms were covered with an unidentified blue gel, the source of the odor that filled the room...
♪What does it say?♪ Sho asked. A pseudopod with a single pale eye at its tip craned over Brecken’s shoulder, considered the screen of the laptop.
♪A human I knew is dead,♪ Brecken said in response. ♪And I think the way the others found her means that something really terrible killed her.♪
♪Tell me what they found,♪ said Sho. As Brecken translated the words of the story into whistled notes, the shoggoth hunched lower and lower on the futon, and the acrid scent of dread surrounded her.
♪I understand,♪ Sho said when she was done. ♪There were stories among my people about things that did that, hunting-things from a different kind of time. We called those things those-that-hunger, and feared them.♪
They are the deeds of the dead, hungry and athirst, Halpin Chalmers had written. “The Hounds of Tindalos,” Brecken said in English, then: ♪That is what my people call them.♪
All at once, the realization broke in on her. ♪When I was gone and another human broke the door of this place and came in and took the writings away,♪ she said, ♪the human had a light-colored head. Am I remembering that right?♪
♪Yes,♪ said Sho. ♪Not like yours.♪ A pseudopod stroked Brecken’s hair.
In the copy of The Secret Watcher she’d had, carefully handwritten in blue ink in the margin next to the words about the Hounds of Tindalos, there had been a recipe, Brecken recalled—a recipe and a warning. She thought of Barbara’s blonde hair, and started to wonder how anyone could have known that a copy of The Secret Watcher was in the little apartment, but the answer came before she’d even finished framing the question. Sorcery could have done it, she guessed, and anyone who knew enough to be able to make sense of the recipe for the Liao drug would probably know enough to locate the book by some uncanny means.
She thought of Barbara Cormyn then, the pale blue eyes wide with a perpetual look of surprise, the cold selfish purpose moving behind them. It was just too easy to imagine those eyes reading the marginal notes in The Secret Watcher and finding the recipe for the Liao drug. Had Barbara deliberately risked taking a larger dose than necessary, and convinced herself that she could escape Halpin Chalmers’ fate? Or had something gone wrong when she made the drug, so that the dose she thought was safe was enough to set the Hounds of Tindalos on her scent?
Brecken didn’t try to guess. She closed the browser window, shut down the laptop and put it on the end table. ♪I think she took the writings,♪ she said to Sho. ♪I’m sorry for that, since I think they killed her, but I’m not sorry they’re gone. There are things in them I don’t want to have to know.♪
SIXTEEN
The Sign of Koth
WHETHER ROSALIE WAS THE one responsible or not, Brecken never did find out, but word of her impending departure spread through Partridgeville State’s music department in the days that followed. Some of the reactions were predictable enough. Molly Wolejko called out “Hey, congratulations!” from halfway across The Cave, and later spent half an hour later in Vivaldi’s grinning as Brecken filled her in on the details. Julian Pinchbeck, for his part, gave her a dismissive look the next time she came into Composition II and said, “I hear you can’t handle the program here at Partridgeville.” A year before, that would have left Brecken flustered, but now it simply made her roll her eyes.
More than once, though, someone who’d been on the side of her critics came over and said something friendly. Susan Chu and Mike Schau were among them, but the one whose words left Brecken reeling was Professor Kaufmann, who motioned her over after a session of the orchestral arrangement class and said, “Carson tells me you’ve been accepted at Miskatonic. Congratulations; that’s a solid program by all accounts and I think you’ll do well there.”
Brecken managed to stumble over a few words of thanks, and the professor said, “Are you still doing your neoclassical music?”
“Modern Baroque,” said Brecken, who’d settled on that label. “Yes.”
“Well, I hope that works out well for you.” Something like uncertainty showed for a moment in Kaufmann’s eyes, and Brecken found herself wondering just how far Kaufmann had followed her own advice to stay on the cutting edge, and whether she’d turned her back on her own musical tastes in order to get anywhere in composition. The professor pasted on a smile, though, and said something forgettable as she gathered up her notes and headed for the door. Brecken watched her go and then headed for the stair.
Word even found its way to the First Baptist Church. The next Sunday, Carl Knecht met her at the entrance to the worship hall, asked politely about her week, walked with her past gossiping church ladies to the organ, and all the while his slight uncanny smile creased his face. “I understand you’ll be leaving Partridgeville quite soon,” he said as they got to the little waist-high wall around the organ.
Brecken gave him a startled look. “Yes, I’m transferring to a school up in New England as soon as the semester’s over. How did you know?”
His expression didn’t change at all. “Oh, word gets around.”
Just then another old man came up toward them and said, “Why, Carl, you haven’t yet introduced me to your lady friend.” Brecken glanced his way and blinked in surprise; it was the proprietor of Buzrael Books, looking at her over the top of his gold-rimmed glasses.
“Thaddeus, Miss Brecken Kendall,” said Knecht, smiling as always. “Miss Kendall, this is my old friend Thaddeus Waldzell.” They shook hands. The whole time, Waldzell watched her over the top of his glasses with a look she couldn’t read at all. A few pleasantries later, Knecht and Waldzell headed elsewhere; Brecken stared after them, and then sat on the organ bench, turned switches to get the blowers started, adjusted the stops, and began to play a Bach organ piece with the swell pedal pushed low to keep the volume down, just background music for the moment. The church ladies gossiping in the pews paid no attention Brecken could see.
Carl Knecht’s comment wasn’t the most unexpected reaction Brecken fielded, though. That reached her a little later the same day. As she got home from the church, her landlady came bustling out the front door of her house and said, “Brecken, oh, there you are. You got the oddest letter—no stamp, no address, just your name on it. I have no idea how it got here.”
“Somebody probably just stuck it in your mailbox,” Brecken suggested.
“Why, yes, I suppose that would explain it,” said Mrs. Dalzell, evidently disappointed by so prosaic an explanation. “Here it is.”
It looked to Brecken like a card rather than a letter, and her name showed on the envelope in a hand that almost struck a chord of memory. It went on the endtable once she got inside, and later that afternoon she found time to open it. The card turned out to be a pleasantly understated congratulations card, very much to her taste, but what was written inside made her stare in astonishment and nearly drop the card:
Brecken,
Congratulations on getting accepted at Miskatonic! Couldn’t happen to a better musician or a nicer person.
Could you handle having me stop by at your place very briefly sometime soon? I know we parted on bad terms, and that was my fault; I owe you an
apology for that, and when you leave Partridgeville I’d like you to have at least some good memories of me.
Best,
Jay
Sho gave the card an inquisitive look. ♪What does it say?♪
♪It’s from Jay,♪ Brecken told her. ♪He wishes to say he is sorry for the way he behaved.♪
♪Do you think he means that truly?♪
♪I don’t know.♪ She read the message in the card again, and then set it on her endtable. She had too many other things to think about, and putting a few finishing touches on her fugue before the beginning of class the next day was at the top of that list.
THE FAMILIAR ROOM WAS more than half full when Rosalie and Brecken took their usual seats. Darren gave Brecken a nod and his ungainly smile, Molly cast an amused look her way and then turned back to something she was writing, Julian and a few of his cronies glanced up to see Brecken come in and then looked pointedly away. That was as much notice as anyone gave her, which left Brecken feeling relieved. There would be plenty of angry words spoken by the time the class was over, she guessed, and even more in the weeks to come, but that didn’t matter now. The semester was nearly over, and for Brecken, so was Partridgeville State University. The sense of freedom that fact woke in her left her dizzied.
Professor Toomey came in a few minutes early, sat in a chair beside the podium, and got busy with his phone. When the clock showed 11:30 exactly, he got up and said, “You all know the drill. We’ve got just three pieces to take in today, and I happen to know that one of them is longer and more complicated than anything you’ve heard so far. Any questions? No? Fair enough. First up is ‘Sonata in F’ by Susan Chu.”
At that, Brecken looked up sharply from the comment form on her phone. It seemed utterly improbable that Susan would compose and play anything in classic sonata form. Still, there she was, getting her viola out of its case and deftly adjusting the tuning of the A string, while Wendy Bergdahl sat down at the piano, stretched out her fingers, and then turned and waited. Susan nodded, Wendy began playing, and a few notes later Susan’s viola joined in.
The Shoggoth Concerto Page 27