This was back in the days before roadies. The venue had a crew of low paid, superstitious stagehands. I knew they were superstitious because they asked after Christopher. This is his “Gentleman Satan” phase—African masks, three-piece suits and stage blood, lots of it. Back then it was very provocative. No, I assured them, Christopher was not a real Satanist, and we were not the devil’s minions. Still, even after that, they showed a certain reluctance to touch our instruments, which was okay because Devon and Nigel were savvy enough to get us plugged into the sound system.
Unfortunately, I was dependent on the stage hands to heft my Hammond organ and the Black Bitch into place.
A pimply-faced teen and I manhandled the Black Bitch onto a cart. I knew with sickening certainly that the instrument would slip off the cart just inside the stage door—and she did. The drop left a scrape on the cabinet, one of the more prominent battle scars from our early tours. I was, even then, not much used to physical activity, so I had to stop for a moment and wipe my brow. Men with repulsive, frightened faces took over and hauled her to the stage, four grown men sweating and groaning under her weight.
But this was a dream. I know it now. And as in the other dreams, the front of the Bitch opens like a split belly. The pale keys line the edges of the new hideous orifice, while the tapes within writhe like thin black cilia. Blood seeps forth and smears the hands of the movers, who drop her on her face with the comical sound of a crashing grand piano. And I laugh. She’s a wounded animal now, lying at my feet. Blood covers the four men, who I now notice are bleeding themselves, the blood from the Bitch dissolving their limbs, melting them like red wax candles. Then Christopher comes on stage. He is always showing up at the wrong times. He walks over, hands on his hips, and looks at the remains of the Bitch, shuddering in her death throes before us.
“Well,” he asks, “what do you have to say for yourself?”
“You should have been here more than an hour ago,” I admonish him.
Then he takes a dreadful step toward the Bitch and the puddle of blood pooling beneath her, and I suddenly know that he will slip if his foot lands in it. I call out in that horrible awkward slowness of dreams. The heat of my anger is gone. I lunge for his arm to keep him from falling, but he shoves me away and laughs. “You think I can’t make it without you? Watch me.” He steps in the blood, but he doesn’t fall, I do.
I awaken twisted in hotel sheets, my hands knotted in fists. I let out the word that fills my mind: “bastard.”
* * *
I was amazed at how easy it was. It had been years since we played together, but seven days of rehearsal time at a secluded farm outside of Cleveland gave us time to reconnect, and it was amazing how much I remembered and how good we sounded. I let Devon run the show. His long established cadre of engineers made fitting in together an unexpected amenity. It was a luxury to sit back and enjoy playing, not like the drama-filled rehearsals that used to end with either me or Christopher storming out. This was comfortable.
When we got final confirmation that we would be inducted, we practiced all the harder. The day before the official ceremony found me restless and in seclusion in my hotel room. My personal assistant Stewart Creswell called from London.
“Paul, I found it.”
“Found what?”
“The Black Bitch.”
My heart stopped. The dreams had ceased since rehearsals started. I had almost forgotten them. My chest grew tight and I tried to swallow but wound up coughing instead.
“Paul? Are you alright?”
I took a bottle of water from the mini fridge and drank deep. I put its chilly plastic to my forehead. “Fine, I’m fine. Where is she?”
“It’s in the Moog Synthesizer Museum in Urbana, Illinois. It’s part of a permanent exhibit. The website says it’s recently undergone a major restoration.”
“How far away is that from Cleveland?”
“About four hundred and fifty miles—eight hours or so, say the online maps.”
“Okay. Okay, thank you.” I was still sweating.
“Are you going to go visit it?
“Am I what?”
“Are you going to go visit it? You might as well. You’re in the area and I bet the press would get a big kick out of it. ‘Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Visits Museum,’ that sort of thing.”
I hadn’t thought of that. I had dreamed of the Bitch so often that it did not occur to me that I might actually see her again. Touch her again. I knew I shouldn’t. I knew I should stay away. That cliché about inevitable criminal behavior came to mind.
“Not a bad idea. Fax directions to the hotel.” I ran my hand over my face. “Do you know what time it is?”
“Late, but I knew you’d be up. ‘Keyed up?’ Isn’t that what Christopher called it when you couldn’t sleep the night before a show?”
“Yes, that’s right,” I said, and I smiled that Stewart actually knew me a little. “But hearing your news makes me want to sleep. Odd as that may sound.”
“You go ahead. And take care now. You’re not the rock star you used to be.” He laughed and rang off.
I walked out onto my balcony and gazed into the starry night. Christopher might have called it a forest of night, like he did in “The Revenge of the Corpseflower.” Instead, I saw a sky of open graves, a stellar necropolis, silent as death, and waiting. Later I fell asleep in my clothes and did not dream.
* * *
The next day I abandoned the ceremony, my mates, and the fans by rising early, renting a car and driving from Cleveland to Urbana. I did it with a deep shame and a joyous defiance.
I pulled into the parking lot like any other tourist, any other man, and looked at the squat, nondescript building that housed the Moog Synthesizer Museum. I discovered, as I looked at the hours posted at the entrance, that they were only a half hour from closing.
Inside, polished wooden floors and brightly lit white walls enclosed exhibits of pianos, harpsichords, clavinets, organs and keyboards. There was a harpsichord owned by Louis XIV, the Thomas organ from Shea Stadium, even a calliope. As interesting as these were, my feet followed the path unerringly to the rock music exhibit.
Gelled spotlights of red and blue cast a pall of nostalgia over the room, a hazy light I remembered from our earliest shows in the dives and coffee houses of London. And there, in the center of the room, was the Black Bitch. She crouched like a spider at the center of a web, elevated from the floor by a clean, white dais. The lights were not absorbed by her flat black paint, as in my dreams. She seemed to deflect it, with the colors of an oil slick.
I read the interpretive card:
1964 Mellotron Mark II, Manufactured by Mellotronics. Width: 51 inches. Height: 39 inches. Depth: 27 inches. Weight: 350 pounds. Used by Genesis, 1969-1970 (From Genesis to Revelation, 1969; Trespass, 1970), owned by The Eidolons 1971-1975. (Twilight Knight, 1971; Songs for a Red Planet, 1972; Kaleidoscope, 1973; The Eidolons Live, 1975)
Memories filled me then, of tours and studio work, of takes and retakes and mixes, of arguments and laughs, of the folly of youth, of walking into a studio spent and empty of ideas, and within minutes having that void filled with the genius of collaboration between like minds, young men searching for posterity.
I circled the Bitch slowly, waiting for her to move. She was, in every detail, just as I remembered, as if she had just been rolled off the tour bus that day in SoHo. If I took a step onto the dais, I could place my fingers on the keys and play the beginning chords of the sinister “Yog-Magog” from Kaleidoscope, or the majestic, spaceship landing sequence of “Saturn V” from Songs for a Red Planet. I could almost hear them.
Then the dream takes over and my fingers twitch at my side, pressing chords into my thighs. The shouting starts afresh and we are in the green room, Christopher and I. It is 1975 and he is out of control.
“You disgust me,” he says. “I can do without you. Without any of you.”
This is the moment. I lunge. He sidesteps me, then falls. I w
atch him, as I had in my mind for all these years, watch his neck twisting, his head slicing open on the edge of the Black Bitch, sliding down, ever down, leaving a trail of blood down her side, his mouth emboldened by a grimace of outrage.
And as I stand over him, looking for booze to splash on him and pour down his dead throat, I hear a disinterested voice telling me that the museum is closing. I know I have to stop myself from pushing him, I have to wake up from this nightmare where he is everything and I am nothing.
I don’t retreat this time. I step up to meet the Black Bitch. I sit on her bench and place my fingers on her keys.
E. Michael Lewis
Musical Inspiration for “Eidolon”
“Eidolon” is essentially a love letter to one of my favorite bands, Genesis—and the nearly forgotten instrument, the Mellotron. I have long been a fan of the “art rock” or “progressive rock” of the 1970s, and I find the Peter Gabriel era of Genesis fascinating. The Mellotron shaped the sound of an era, from the beginning notes of the Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever,” to the romantic yearnings of “Nights in White Satin” by the Moody Blues. Genesis actually owned a Mellotron they called the Black Bitch, and keyboardist Tony Banks played it to sinister and chilling effect, especially the intro of “Watcher of the Skies.” It's that unearthly, almost off-key sound that opens for a Morse-code like rhythm, the song’s dynamic arrangement, and its nearly comprehensible lyrics that makes it unforgettable. There are others—“Fly on a Windshield” and it's wall of pulsing sound; “The Chamber of 32 Doors,” creating a sense of discomfort no matter what the time signature; the angelic instrumental “Silent Sorrow in Empty Boats”; the twenty-three minute epic “Supper's Ready.”
Genesis frequently wrote about supernatural topics, penning such songs such as “The Lamia,” “The Return of the Giant Hogweed” and “The Fountain of Salmacis.” Thankfully, Peter Gabriel never joined the 27 Club, a morbid collection of artists such as Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain, who all died at the age of twenty-seven.
Patty pulled the .38 from the glove compartment when the radio, even jacked to maximum volume, failed to block out the waitress's screams.
“Goddamn it, Thomas,” she muttered, throwing herself from the car. The cellphone tower loomed over her as she stepped into the underbrush. Route 15, close by, was dead at this hour. The woman's screams had silenced all the cute little woodland creatures in this godless patch of nowhere scrub forest.
There—to the right and not really going anywhere. The waitress's screams kept hitching and turning to gasps as she tripped over deadfalls and roots.
Patty smiled, but it felt empty, and she dropped it.
She headed off on a diagonal. The moon, sliced to ribbons by tree branches, turned everything to grayscale. She picked her way through the brush easily. The .38 felt sure and heavy in her hand.
A flash of white blurred past the corner of her eye.
The woman.
And, still, no Thomas.
She hissed. Where the hell was he? They didn't have time—and she didn't have the patience—for him to play his Master of the Dark shit. If he needed to fucking feed—
Should've done that back at the motel.
Patty shook off the thought and corrected her course.
She stepped between two trees and onto a deer path, the woman stumble-bumbling away from her.
“Hey,” she called.
The woman spun, mouth half-open in a stupid, useless yodel, and nearly lost her balance. It was funny, but not even an empty smile ghosted across Patty's features.
The woman lurched to her, uniform torn and dirty, eyes still glassy from the ether Patty had dosed her with.
“Help me,” the waitress screamed, throwing herself at Patty. “Monster! Monster's after me!”
“Bitch, I know,” Patty said and, placing her free hand on the waitress's chest, shoved. The woman went flying, ass skidding across the dirt.
Patty raised the revolver. “I'm the one who brought you here, remember?”
She shot out the woman's kneecaps and the sound boxed her ears. She didn't mind.
If nothing else, she couldn't hear the woman's fresh screaming.
She raised the revolver to put a round through the waitress's yawning mouth when the ringing in Patty's ears faded, losing power as a strange humming arose, like the kind heard when you leaned against a utility pole. It brought a chill that tightened the flesh. Shadows grew darker, the moonlight less illuminating. The woman froze mid-scream, her mouth a perfect capital O.
And then, Thomas's voice floated across the air.
“Leave me my meal.”
The humming dwindled and branches were snapping all around them, closing in, as if a group of steamrollers were headed their way.
Patty turned and started back toward the car. “Whatever, dude,” her voice lost in the noise. “Figure we got all night for this Christopher Lee shit.”
Behind her, the waitress was screaming again, and then abruptly stopped.
* * *
A noxious mixture of wet mold and sulfur drifted through the open cruiser window as John pulled into Mae's Motel. He braked hard enough to jerk against his seatbelt. “What the Christ?”
The motel was dark and empty, every door closed, every curtain pulled. Even the security lamps were black. Only the yellow MAE'S MOTEL sign—with its flickering NO VACANCY—was still on.
He saw Eric's cruiser at the end of the lot, and he instantly forgot the smell.
John coasted his cruiser up to the dark lobby, his eyes locked on his brother's car. Even from here, he could see it was empty.
John glanced at the darkened motel. Then where did he go?
As he got out, he touched the St. Anthony's medallion beneath his shirt. Something pinged in the back of his mind. The cop part of him told him to call Steve, who was probably snoozing through his shift on dispatch. Make this official. Make this procedural. Instead, he took a step towards Eric's cruiser on legs that didn't feel quite there. His brother part was stronger than the cop part.
Eric had last reported in at midnight, when he'd reached Mae's. That had been three hours ago, and Steve hadn't noticed.
He took a second step, then another. The hairs on his arms and neck stood up. The noxious stink made his head light.
The thread of early-morning-empty Route 15 passed along his left. Who called in a noise complaint here? And why call the Colton police when this place was way the fuck out of town and under the jurisdiction of the Highway Patrol?
And why is my brother's car still here and where is he and why didn't he call in again?
Curtained windows on his right. He imagined people behind them, pale people, watching him through the fabric.
Stop it.
He reached Eric's car and peered in. John's eyes ticked off the MDT and laptop, Eric's citation book, the locked shotgun under the dash. Eric's own St. Anthony medal dangled from the rearview mirror.
Nothing disturbed, everything wrong.
He straightened, looked at the room the car faced. That feeling of being watched intensified, making the skin on his arms tingle, the hair on the back of his neck stand to attention. The mold-and-sulfur odor more pungent. He felt like every dumbass in every horror movie, the one who went where he obviously shouldn't go and got his stupid self killed.
If that was the case, then Eric—
“You just shut the fuck up right now,” he said aloud, and that, oddly, made him feel a little better. He was a cop, for Chrissakes.
But he still wasn't calling this in. Not yet.
He made himself walk to the door and knock, feeling stupid for doing so, but whoever had last closed the door—
My brother? Someone else?
—hadn't closed it all the way because it opened an inch, revealing a wedge of black.
“Anyone here?” he called.
He reached in and fumbled for the light switch, trying not to imagine a pale hand grabbing his, yanking him into the darkness.<
br />
Stop it, goddammit.
He found the switch, flicked it as he toed the door open the rest of the way.
“Hel—” he started to say, but couldn't finish when he saw what was in the room.
The only reason he didn't scream was because he suddenly couldn’t find the air.
* * *
Patty paced around the car, a stream of cigarette smoke trailing behind her.
Why are you so angry?
He didn't notice.
What’s changed?
He never notices.
What's happened?
I'm just his familiar, and he's lord of all he surveys, and all that horseshit.
“Fuck,” she hissed. She raked her hands through her hair. She'd tried the radio again, but switched it off almost immediately, right in the middle of Tom Petty's “Runnin' Down a Dream.” That song had come After and, as such, it was all static and roar. Now, if that puny little station out of Nipton had been playing “(I Just) Died in Your Arms”…
She looked towards Route 15, but didn't know what she was looking for.
Did the trucker see me?
“Stop it,” she said.
Is this because of the motel? Or the waitress?
Or how he's always fucking around, and it's always what he wants, and we've been doing this for goddamn decades—
“Stop it!” she yelled.
That inner-ear hum arose and she stiffened. The night was still and silent, the moon full and high above, a spotlight on a stage of a play no one had bothered to attend.
Slowly, she turned.
The shadows were darker in the underbrush, almost oily.
“Everything all right, dear?” Thomas asked from everywhere, and she felt that fish-hook tug in the back of her mind; it always reminded her of a cruel dog owner jerking a leash.
Flashing neon—
—guilt-guilt-guilt-guilt—
—in her head.
Patty took a drag of her cigarette and couldn't stop her hands from shaking. “I'm fine.”
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