He answered his house phone before he left. It was the coroner calling to notify next of kin. Father Barlow drank too much of the blood of Christ and had been promoted to a higher office.
* * *
Stephen drove to the center and slipped inside through the stage entrance. According to the journal, the concerto drained the raw vitality of life from its listeners, not something Stephen could do one-on-one without suspicion. Tonight, he would play the song for the assembled audience. He hoped it would siphon only a fraction of the energy from each person, a few days of life. Still, the morality bothered him. He’d be stealing their days, maybe a few months, ending lives earlier than would their natural deaths. What right did he have?
The curtain opened. The lanterns glowed. The audience clapped. Stephen left his cane backstage and limped to the piano.
“I am Stephen von Saint. I welcome you tonight, and I ask you all a serious question.” The audience waited in anticipation. “If through some miracle you could give a day of your lives, instead of money, to heal children dying from cancer, would you?”
They applauded, each so sure of their hypothetical choice but probably not seriously considering it, having no comprehension of the dark process he was about to begin. Stephen accepted their gift and played the Nazi doctor’s composition.
As he played he heard the cries of the murdered concentration camp inmates in the background—their screams and sorrows intricately woven into the melody, creating the base for the melancholy music. Shadows danced to the rhythm. His fingers tingled. Blue sparks flew from the keys, and his body surged with diabolical power.
Stephen could sense the souls of his audience meshed into a gestalt, feeling their hurts, their betrayals, lives of fear and joy—all fleeting. He drained their hours. A few hairs turned gray. Extra wrinkles creased their faces. Still, none noticed the casual theft.
When he finished the Nazi concerto, the audience applauded wildly, sending quakes through the floor. Stephen finished his set, having performed his best concert ever. As he steadied his leg to walk off stage, he noticed that the pain no longer shot up through his thigh and into his groin. The concerto had healed him, and he would return to the hospital to share the cure with Martin.
* * *
From the journal of SS-Hauptsturmführer Doktor Otto Kerner
27th December 1944
I’ve refined the experiment, studying how harmonics affect the natural flow of energy in the body. Reichsführer Himmler has ordered a special section be opened in Block 10 for my research. With my research, such great men as the Führer could live forever, to guide Germany, and ultimately the world. To make us all into gods.
I was on selection duty with Doktor Mengele this evening, culling through the new arrivals from parts of the Greater Reich for work parties, Block 10 or special treatment. He always wore a freshly pressed uniform, always looking so proper and disciplined. He stood at the ramp with his riding crop and used it to point out the path to the new arrivals. Mengele would say, “Links,” pointing to the left to send the unwanted to the gas chamber. Or he’d say, “Rechts” to the healthier arrivals to direct them to the barracks to join the work parties.
I refined the concerto before experimenting. We have been ordered to clear out the Soviet prisoners of war so they cannot rejoin their army, and I am uneasy about the weakness in the Slavic heritage. I selected the youngest males, so I could measure the effects of aging, and I changed the tempo of the concerto. This time, the transition happened fast and without resistance. The electrical current in their bodies drained in the first twenty seconds. Body fat ignited. Skin flaked to ash. The energy measured behaves likes electricity. It has a current, probably a wattage and voltage. Magic itself is just a science that is not understood—manipulating the energy of the universe, the basic power behind creation. It transfers from my subjects to me through the air, perhaps as radio waves. The energy transferred into my body but exhaled from my muscles and blood, expelled by my organs before it could renew my age.
I shall attempt a remote transition of life energy through an electrical medium—a microphone at my piano, and a speaker in another room with a subject—and see if the effect is the same. It will go far to help my understanding of the process and nature of the power.
My body has lost another seven kilograms. The shadow moves on the walls when I sleep, so I drink schnapps until I pass out. Yet, I still feel it moving over me, whispering to me. I dream of the concerto in a euphoric and pained state. I hear it constantly in my head, waking or sleeping.
* * *
Stephen changed into a shirt and a pair of jeans at the hospital, but the clothes sagged off his body. He tightened his belt. I must be losing weight from all the stress. When’s the last time I ate?
Now he had to figure out how to play for Martin, and he had an idea. He asked one of the nurses if he could speak to the hospital administrator, and a Mr. Malcolm came to see him—a short man with a beer belly.
“You’ve done so much for my son,” Stephen said. “I’d like to play a benefit to raise money for the hospital.”
“We’d be delighted,” Malcolm said.
“I’d like to play here in my son’s room.”
“I was thinking the auditorium would be more suited.”
“The concert is for my son. You can hook up some audio equipment and play it throughout the hospital on the intercom.”
Malcolm smiled and adjusted his tie. “Playing it live for your son. Powerful. How about in two weeks?”
“Tomorrow.”
“A bit soon,” he said, then looked over at the dying child. “But I guess the sooner the better. We can hustle and have the system installed tomorrow.”
Stephen restrained himself from kicking the man out of the room. In the end, they shook hands, and the administrator departed. Then Stephen sat down at the piano and considered how to transfer the energy to his dying son. He would act as the conduit to drain it from the audience and then pass it on to Martin as the Nazi doctor had outlined.
The respirators pushed air into Martin’s lungs. The IV pumps keened, feeding fluids and medicines into his blood. His feeding tube dripped. Then, Martin’s face twitched, showing the first independent response in weeks. He grunted. Pain could be so intense through the coma that it would show on his face, and he’d twist a bit in his unconscious state. Stephen pressed the call button to the nurse station.
“Nurse’s station,” a man’s voice answered.
“My son’s in pain,” Stephen said into the intercom. “Get in here now.”
No one came. After a few minutes had passed, Stephen nearly left to confront the desk staff, but was stopped when a doctor arrived.
Shadows preceded the man, running harbinger, spilling down the hall and into the ICU room. They bled under the curtains that shielded the Plexiglas walls of the ward. Stephen choked on the smell of ozone, the reek of industrial chemicals. The doctor, less medical professional and more shadow, wore an old coat of black leather. A wide-brimmed black hat covered his head, a pair of dark goggles shielded his eyes, and a metal crow’s beak grew from his face. He carried a syringe and leaned down at Martin’s side.
“Poor, poor boy,” the shadow doctor said, his voice muffled by the hideous mask.
“Halloween costume?” Stephen asked. “I don’t appreciate it.”
“It is the old garb of the plague years,” the man said. Stephen detected a German inflection.
He’d met most of the interns, nurses and specialists in the hospital, but he couldn’t place this one. “Are you new here?” he asked, wishing the man would remove the mask.
“Just arrived,” the dark doctor said. “Brought back into service recently, so to speak.” He pressed the needle into Martin’s arm, and the boy’s face relaxed.
“Thank you, Doctor . . .”
“I can’t recall my name.”
“You’re not on staff here?”
“Do I look like I’m on staff, Herr von Saint?” He set th
e syringe down, and Stephen understood. “It was you who called me here. I heard the lovely music and returned. So long have I slept.”
“I have brought such demons into my life,” Stephen said, closing his eyes.
It had taken years to build a life and mere seconds to destroy it with a choice—an extra glass of wine, or a single word to bring death. He recalled the journal entry about Mengele. Links: life goes on a few more days. Rechts: his wife was gone, his cousin paralyzed and his son soon lost to lymphoma.
“Do you need to confess?” the doctor asked.
“Are you a doctor and a priest?”
“I was both in my own way. Do you wish to confess and be healed?
“I deserve neither.”
“No one does. That is the heart of forgiveness.”
“I can never forgive myself,” Stephen said.
“Then this will never end. I understand it well. I sacrificed my soul for the good of my country, for what I believed. I destroyed myself and many innocents. Now I am notes in a concerto, awakened only when it is played. I long to sleep again. And this is what becomes of you.”
“I deserve it,” Stephen said. “My wife was a child of light, and I drowned that light.”
“You had a few drinks that night?”
“Schnapps,” Stephen said.
“Ja,” said the physician. “An old family tradition.”
Stephen could never clearly remember that night. His recent album had gone platinum, and with friends looking after Martin, they’d gone out to celebrate, driving out to Penn’s Inn in Lansdale, near where Elizabeth had grown up. She wore her strapless, midnight blue dress and a white sweater, had curled the ends of her red hair. Stephen had a few drinks with dinner, pouring the schnapps like the falling rain. Rain tapped on the roof of the car, splashed the windshield. His eyes kept shutting, so tired after the long promotional tour and too much alcohol with dinner. Barlow had talked about a woman he’d met at the bar. Stephen was pretty sure she’d given his cousin a fake number. He and Elizabeth had laughed about that. He had turned his head, reached across to the passenger side, grabbed her knee and whispered of his love. He hadn’t seen the other car idling at the light and only caught the red taillights from the corner of his eye. The liquor slowed his reflexes, blurred his vision. He woke up in the hospital.
“Two years ago…” Stephen said. “They told me my blood-alcohol level was just under the limit. My fans blamed the rain. They called it a tragedy, and my sales doubled.”
“You have lost some weight,” the doctor said, waving at Stephen’s stomach.
“I don’t eat very well.”
“It is a side effect of the process. There are new notes.”
“Is this what I’m becoming?” Stephen asked. “Show yourself to me.”
The physician cackled and cawed as a raven through the mask, screeching through the leather. He peeled off the goggles to reveal a gulf. He pulled off the mask, and black ink spilled from the container. His gloves worked the latches on the suit, and piece by piece, he removed his shell from this world, sloughing off his body. Darkness poured from its frame into the hospital room. The voice of the crow came again from every corner of the room. Disembodied it cawed. Finally, it was silenced, and Stephen found himself once again alone in the room with Martin in the bed beside him.
He thought about the shadow doctor’s warning and paged through the journal, finding the finalized version of the concerto. He studied the notes, playing the music in his head, and discovered new notes trailing at the end. The pen strokes appeared customary to the previous ink, aged and cracked, written in with the same penmanship.
Kerner must not have been the first person to discover the concerto.
Stephen now realized that the music had the power to consume all who performed it, and that he had brought Kerner back when he had turned the notes into music.
It didn’t matter. He’d bring his son back and then consign himself to whatever oblivion awaited.
* * *
From the journal of SS-Hauptsturmführer Doktor Otto Kerner
31st December 1944
Tonight we celebrate New Year’s, but I do not have time to toast with champagne. My work has reached a critical stage. The remote experiment was a great success. The vital energies transferred over, and I experienced the surge of life, though it proved temporary as had the previous experiments.
I feel I am close, though, to understanding the nature of the process. I have theorized that the music opens a harmonic gateway into the natural energy fields of the planet. All energy can be transferred. This is basic thermodynamics. Life itself must exist in the body as some type of harmonic resonance, and it can be drained or renewed. I need to understand and measure the relationship between two separate human bodies. As I work upon the music, judging the energies of the body—the ancient chi and centers from Asian medicine—I realize that perhaps I am misjudging the transference. It already exists in nature, and to that end, I’ve decided to focus my research on a pregnant subject. These females transfer their life force into a new vessel, and this is what I hope to perfect with this crude music.
I have also come to realize that I have been a puppet, and not of the state or National Socialist Party. I have become the vessel of a far greater power, an ancient wisdom. Music is the oldest form of incantation, a force strong enough to create spirits, draw them from just intentions—will floating sans form. I’ve witnessed the shadow walking.
My own dark twin has attached itself to my body. It manifests and grows. I continue to lose weight at a rate too fast to be normal. It feeds on me like a cancer, and my skin darkens, scales petrify my body, turning me ashen.
The music of the concerto, most of it my composition, refined and revised through my experiments, constantly plays in my head, beyond my control, beyond a nervous tick or a song stuck in my thoughts. Each time it plays, it drains me further.
I go now to seek a pregnant test subject.
1st January 1944
I believe I have finally succeeded. I surgically attach electrodes to the fetus of the pregnant subject to measure the variances, and it provided me with data, though I draw from intuition. I scribed down the final notes, employing the old magic and alchemy, possessed by the dark spirit coming. It aids in my final work, whispering to me the final key to unlock the melody. Did I discover this secret science, or has it guided me all along, fooling me through my own vanity?
These are my last hours. The weight drains fast from my body, and soon nothing will be left of me but my shadow. My new self reminds me of the outfits worn by physicians during the plague years—black leather coats and long, crow-like beaks full of burning herbs to stave off the bad air.
Artillery thunders in the distance—the calling card of the merciless Soviet army, sweeping over the German empire like the mobs of Genghis Khan. The Führer’s wunderwaffen, his missiles and flying bombs, only inflame the enemy’s ire, and now they will destroy all that is pure.
The ovens burn all day and night, filling the sky with ash—the new German sky. The remaining inmates are rounded up for a final march. I will not be joining them as so little of me remains—just a few strings of flesh and a cup of blood. I will play my masterpiece until I become one with the music. And then, I’ll sleep.
As my last act, I will give this journal to an assistant who will deliver it to my wife, Anna, in Berlin. If she survives the war and the coming Red hoard, I want her to understand what compelled me to break my promise to her and my children. I know I should destroy it, but I need someone to understand why I sacrificed my soul. I have cursed the name of my family for all time, and I hope future generations will forgive me and understand my motives.
I now write a plea to anyone reading this journal to let these demons sleep and not enact these notes. I will never rest, and that is just.
* * *
Preparing for the performance at Saint Mary’s, Stephen read Kerner’s passage about electrical energy over and over. Current c
ould be transferred through the body. Even he had a basic understanding of how that worked.
As promised, the administrator installed a microphone and audio system and patched it into the hospital intercom. The staff looked healthy and would provide the yield of the energy, though some of the energy would be drained from the patients too; however, he believed that would be minimal. A couple of those on life support might not make it, but what was Stephen really robbing from them but a few days of agony from their mindless existence? He’d play until Martin opened his eyes and the color returned to his face, not just awakened but brought back to the world.
Mr. Malcolm oversaw the preparations for the concert. “We have family members of patients waiting to hear,” he said, adjusting his bowtie.
Good, Stephen thought. More meat.
“I will perform alone,” Stephen said.
“Of course, Mr. von Saint. We will let you be with your son. Everyone will be touched. We are honored you’d let us be a part of your solemn moment.”
“I’m not praying,” he said, leaving the room to fetch some coffee, holding the journal and files under his arm.
Stephen tried not to think of Elizabeth, what she would say about what he had to do. Would she love him for the monster that he’d become in order to save their son? His life had changed so fast. He’d changed so fast.
Links. Rechts.
He filled the cup from the machine, but before returning to perform, he dropped the journal and all the material from Doctor Otto Kerner down the incinerator chute. Tonight, it would end.
Stephen walked back up the hall, sipping the stale coffee. The staff had cleared the room.
“Good luck, Mr. von Saint,” Malcolm said as he passed the composer to leave. Stephen nodded and entered Martin’s room.
The lights of the ICU section flickered, bright but drained away, draped in a cloak. The darkness swayed, sipped by the shadow figure standing over Martin. The doctor whispered into the boy’s ear.
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