The Dragon's Playlist

by Laura Bickle

  I drew out the last note, tasting how bittersweet and full it was on the back of my tongue. It was as if I’d plucked a blackberry and held it in my mouth, savoring, resisting the urge to bite it.

  When I pulled the bow delicately from the strings, the note seemed suspended in the air, surrounding me.

  I opened my eyes.

  And discovered I wasn’t alone.

  Something rustled in the dense woods off to my left. The hair prickled on the base of my neck. I turned, setting the violin back in its case, peering into the shade.

  “Hello?”

  The rustle repeated, further away.

  I climbed to my feet, clutching my case. Hopefully, the tree huggers hadn’t worked their way back here, away from the road. Maybe it was just an animal. Does had fawns this time of year, but it was the wrong time of day for them to be on the move with little ones. And this sounded like something large. A person?

  I jammed my feet into my shoes and walked carefully to the edge of the brush. The undergrowth was thick with rhododendron, redbud trees, and honeysuckle. Sunlight barely pierced the dense shadow of vegetation. I smelled the sticky sweetness of the honeysuckle and the root beer scent of freshly-crusted sarsaparilla root.

  Something swished away from me. It moved the way I’d seen snakes moving in water, undulating in a sidewinder path. I couldn’t tell what it was, only see the stirring of the plants as it slithered away. Leaves made a hissing sound as they scraped up against something.

  Something not human.

  I remained frozen, heart pounding and palms sweating on my violin case. But not in fear.

  In delight.

  *

  In the early afternoon, boots clomped on the trailer steps and the door squeaked open. I glanced toward the coffee pot, assuming it was Peters, back from making his rounds.

  But it was Jason.

  He stood in his Carhartt coveralls and hardhat. Black dust was smeared on his clothes and one cheek, and he was mindful to stand on the plastic runner that had been laid out on the floor to catch dirt from the workers.

  “Hi, Di.”

  “Hi.” I bit my lip. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. I felt a lot for him. Affection. Sentimentality. Admiration. Resentment. I couldn’t put those feelings into words.

  “I, um...wanted to say that I’m sorry.” He looked me in the eye when he said it. “I didn’t mean to butt in, and I screwed up.”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m just...” I knotted my fingers together. “I’m just having a hard time with the folks right now. And you were in the vicinity when the bomb went off. I had no business laying that on you.”

  He nodded. “I understand. I don’t know what it would be like to be in your shoes, now. But I’ll help however I can. You know that.”

  I did. Jason always did the right thing. That was one thing that had been reliably good in our relationship—he was quick to apologize if he thought he’d messed up. I smiled at him in spite of myself. “Thanks. I just don’t... I don’t know how to put things back together.”

  “It’ll come. And it’ll get easier. I swear.” He put three fingers up in a Boy Scout salute.

  “I hope so.” I wasn’t sure if I meant that.

  He glanced back at the door. “I’ve gotta get back to work. But if you want, we can talk about it. Maybe we could get together at the Mud Devil’s Kitchen?” He looked down at the dirty toe of his shoe, suddenly shy. “I think the Funky Scotsmen might be playing.”

  The Mud Devil had been my favorite hangout in high school. It was the local diner that served amazing cheesecake and hosted garage bands. It seemed like a long time since I’d been there...a lifetime ago.

  “Okay.”

  “Great.” He cracked a smile. “Are you free tonight?”

  “I, um... I can go Thursday?”

  He didn’t push further. He never did. “Great. I’ll see if the Scotsmen are on. Pick you up about seven?”

  “Sounds good.”

  We nodded awkwardly at each other. He waved and clomped out of the trailer.

  I went to the window and watched him walk back to the mine. His hands were in his pockets, and he was smiling.

  I was glad he hadn’t wanted me to go out tonight.

  Tonight, I had a date with Buzzard Bill.

  CHAPTER 8

  “Welcome to the Buzzard Bill Hunt. I’m Alan, your backyard cryptozoologist for this evening.”

  A large man in a black t-shirt decorated with the words “I Want to Believe” and a screen-printed picture of a flying saucer pushed his glasses up his nose as he read from a notebook. I wasn’t sure “backyard cryptozoologist” was really a career, but I didn’t ask him for his credentials. He continued, “Here are the rules, folks. Number one: nobody walks alone. Grab a buddy.”

  Tittering emanated from the back of the crowd gathered at the Lake Hope park picnic shelter. I glanced back at the group of high school teens who were giggling and making grabs at each other. Most of them were younger siblings of my classmates. There were six of them, three boys and three girls, in shorts and flip-flops. They were only about two years younger than I was, but I felt older. A lot older.

  “Rule number two: every pair gets a flashlight and a walkie.” The leader gestured to a picnic table littered with camping lanterns and two-way radios. “Rule number three: only qualified operators get to touch the recording equipment.” He jabbed a thumb over at a table with what looked like a ham radio set and gear from a DJ booth. The table was guarded by a thin young man in a heavy metal t-shirt and headphones.

  The group of teens groaned.

  “Rule number four: no alcohol, drugs, or smoking.”

  Another groan. This was from a knot of people in their twenties, echoed by the teens. The twenty-something group looked like they could’ve been the environmental protesters or patrons at Julie’s shop. The women wore flowered dresses with bandanas in their hair, and the men were shirtless with beards. They smelled faintly of pot.

  “Rule five: safeties on firearms at all times. No shooting. It’s hard to see here at night, and we don’t want any dead kids.” The leader nodded at a pair of men in the front who were dressed in camouflage shirts and hats. They apparently didn’t take the “concealed” part of the concealed carry permit seriously, as they sat casually with sidearms in holsters.

  “Rule six: No trespassing. This hunt is confined to the park area only, the location of at least two Buzzard Bill sightings.” Alan lifted a fuzzy photograph and shone his flashlight on it. The shot was smeary, but the flash on the water seemed to illuminate a sea-serpent shape in the lake. It reminded me of the photo of the Loch Ness Monster that showed up on tabloid covers at the grocery checkout right next to Bat Boy’s portrait.

  I hadn’t said anything about my own sightings. I guess because I didn’t really want to share. I felt like I was hoarding a candy bar on a boat full of starving people.

  “Rule seven: Carry identification. Everybody got a driver’s license on ’em?”

  The group grunted affirmation.

  “If something happens, we want to know who you are. Sign-up sheet is here. Sign in if you haven’t already.” Alan waved a clipboard.

  “I need to sign in.”

  I glanced at the perimeter of the picnic shelter and groaned inwardly. Will stood at the edge of the pavement, holding the same brochure I’d picked up at the New Age shop.

  Great.

  Alan motioned for him to come up, and I slid from my perch on the edge of the picnic table, hoping to avoid his notice. I scanned the group poring over the flashlights. The hunters had brought their own shiny new halogen flashlights. The teens had paired off and were sweeping the lights up at the bats fleeing the rafters. The group of twentysomethings were a little intimidating, but they were an even number, anyway. I turned back to the guy at the table with the heavy metal t-shirt.

  But Will was standing in front of me with the last flashlight. “Guess it’s you and me.”

  I reg
arded him with narrowed eyes. He probably couldn’t see my distaste in the falling darkness, but he could surely sense the chill I was casting in his direction.

  He lifted a hand. “Truce. For tonight?”

  I didn’t seem to have much choice. “For tonight. Only.”

  He shone the flashlight at me, looked at me in the dimness, and smiled. He had a nice smile, and I hated that I’d noticed.

  “What?” I demanded.

  “Your hair’s blue. I didn’t see that before.” His expression was amused. “That’s the real you?”

  My mouth flattened. I didn’t want to be made fun of.

  “I like the blue,” I said defensively.

  “I didn’t say I don’t. Just...had you pegged for something else.”

  I gave him an exasperated look. “One-dimensional?”

  “Maybe.” He held up the flashlight and walkie-talkie. “Lady’s choice?”

  I took the walkie-talkie. I could see well enough in the dark. I didn’t trust him any further than I could throw him, and I’d rather be able to call for help.

  The metal dude behind the tech table fiddled with his equipment—he had speakers perched on the table, plus a subwoofer and a tweeter. I edged away from Will. “That’s an awful lot of power to listen to frogs.”

  The metal dude grinned, as if nobody had ever checked out his electronica before. “It’s not for playback. It’s for broadcast.”

  “Broadcast of what?”

  “You know how you can call owls, and ducks, and grouse?”

  “Sure.”

  “This is sorta the same thing. We’re trying to set up a Buzzard Bill call.”

  “How do you know what he sounds like?”

  “We don’t. But we’ve been playing around with some high-frequency sounds he seems to like. The evidence is anecdotal so far. But we tend to get more odd happenings on nights when we try it, rather than when we don’t.”

  My curiosity was piqued. “So...what does he like to listen to?”

  “Oddly enough, tubular bells and cello. Sounds with a lot of rich vibration, with a lot of sound energy density. I’ve been experimenting lately with layering sound.” He tapped on his keyboard, and a rich middle C note echoed from the speakers. He tapped it again, and the sound shifted an octave higher, rolling though the small picnic shelter.

  My thoughts raced. Buzzard Bill might be attracted to sound...and my odd experiences had occurred around the same time as my violin playing.

  “So, Buzzard Bill likes music?” Will asked.

  “He seems to be picky. He likes Yo-Yo Ma, but seems to hate Def Leppard.”

  “He’s a classicist?”

  “Either that, or he hates hair bands.”

  Alan clapped his hands to get our attention. “Okay, folks. It’s now ten p.m. This hunt will run for two hours. We’ll reunite here at midnight and count noses. Keep radio chatter to a minimum. Half of you go around the south side of the lake, half around the north. Keep your cameras ready...and happy hunting!”

  Our lights bobbed out into the darkness like fireflies. Without watching to see if Will followed, I took off to the left, away from the chattering teens. This was also the way the hunters went—I could follow their lights, bright as stars.

  I scanned the flat black mirror of the lake. I hadn’t been here since I was a kid. My granddad had taken me fishing here. I’d never caught anything but bluegill, but the water was deep enough to sustain perch. Lake Hope was fed by the little streams and a network of underground springs. The water tasted like iron and was circled by cattails. I walked up to the edge and stared out at the water, listening to the belches of the bullfrogs and wondering if the deep-frequency call would summon Bill here.

  “So...what’s your interest in Buzzard Bill?” Will asked.

  I shrugged. “Just curious.”

  He pushed further. “You’re not out here to make him a trophy.” He gestured at the distant hunters’ lights. “And you don’t seem like the type who’s here on a lark or who believes in thunderbirds and chakras.”

  “I’m not.” I glanced at his profile. “I could ask much the same of you.”

  “Fair enough.” It was a moment or two before he spoke. “When I was a kid, I lived in a haunted house. So this stuff intrigues me.”

  “A haunted house?”

  “Yeah.” His fingers chewed at the hem of his t-shirt. “My parents bought a house in Connecticut when I was eight. They loved to fix up old, historic houses. This one had been a speakeasy back in the day.”

  “So it was haunted by the spirits of bootleggers?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so. But I think that’s why the ’rents liked it. The romance of it. They were forever tearing the plaster out and finding old newspapers and bottles in the walls.”

  My eyebrows lifted. “So, what made you think it was haunted? Besides the fact that it was old?”

  “They found a body in the wall.”

  He said it with such matter-of-factness it startled me. “Whose body?”

  “There wasn’t much left of it. Things can get desiccated, mummified over time. And this had been in there awhile. My dad found it, shut the door, and went downstairs to call the police. He told me not to go inside that room and to go to the neighbor’s.”

  “But you didn’t listen to him.” Will didn’t seem like the type to do as he was told.

  “Of course not. I reached up and turned that glass doorknob. Sunlight flooded the room, which was full of plaster dust and the tracks my father had made as he’d worked. I stepped over the saws and trowels and crept up to the gaping hole in the wall.

  “And she was there. Stuffed between the wall studs like old insulation. Part of the lath had been torn away, and I could see some blond hair, brittle like straw. Her arm reached over her head, and her face was turned to the side.” His hands sketched a picture as he spoke. “It was like a mummy’s skin, sunken and tanned.

  “A gust of wind pushed through the room, disturbing all that plaster dust. The wind was so strong, it obliterated my father’s footprints. Like being in a sandstorm. When it died down, it was flat and perfect as snow.”

  “Wow,” I breathed.

  “I think we woke her up that day. I don’t know how else to explain it. The police came and sawed her out of the wall, leaving a huge cavity in the side of the house. And that door was always shut from then on. It was going to be a guest room, but they never finished it. I think my parents developed something of a blindspot in their vision for that room.

  “But I didn’t forget. I began to dream about the girl in the wall. I knew things about her that the police didn’t find out until later. They guessed she’d been there since the sixties, but weren’t able to identify her. Maybe she was a transient of some type. Maybe a prostitute. She wasn’t very old. Judging by the bones, they were able to say she was probably in her early twenties.

  “But I already knew that. Late at night, I’d creep to that room and peer inside. She’d be inside the wall, like a spider. Breathing, moving. Like having a nest of raccoons behind the plaster.

  “She never left that room. I’d see her sometimes outside the hole, looking out the window, with her hands behind her back. Her hair was down to her waist, and she was wearing a flowered mini dress. She was always barefoot, and she never spoke.”

  “Why didn’t she leave the room?” I asked, rubbing goose bumps from my arms.

  “I don’t know. I only know that I kept coming back to it. It was like picking at a scab, maybe. I kept opening the door because I wanted the excitement of something...something that wasn’t...” He faltered.

  “Something that wasn’t ordinary,” I said.

  “Yeah. She was my secret, whoever she was. Proof that there was something else here, beyond this.” He gestured at the land and sky, the tangible world. “I never told my parents she was there, but I think, on some subconscious level, they knew. Why else would they have shut the door and never gone back in?

  “But I think
that’s what people do. They shut the door and don’t look. The bizarre things in the world don’t just stop existing because we won’t look at them.”

  I wanted to believe that. I really did.

  “Did things ever change?” I wanted to know if the house was exorcised, if anything had happened to eject him into the reality of everyday life.

  “We moved when I was seventeen. I went to say goodbye to her. I mean...I’d grown up with this spirit. I’d grown and changed, but she’d stayed the same. I remember... I remember standing at the window, watching the movers pack up our stuff. And I went to the hole in the wall, knowing the new owners would probably fill it back in.”

  He lapsed into silence.

  “What then?” I asked, under the spell of the story.

  “There wasn’t anything there,” he said, hollowly. “I don’t know if she went back to sleep or faded away. She just...wasn’t there. It’s funny.”

  Sadness was thick in his voice. If I’d known him, I might’ve taken his hand or patted his shoulder to soothe him. But I didn’t, and my hands remained balled at my side.

  “And is that why you’re here?” I asked. “To find the magical things?”

  He gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Isn’t that why we’re all here? To prove to ourselves that ghosts or thunderbirds or whatever exist?”

  “I’m not sure about that.” I picked out the blue halogen lights of the hunters at the far side of the lake, heard a crackle of laughter from the teens.

  I gazed out across the water. It was a slightly lighter black than the surrounding land, reflecting the paler darkness of the sky. A breeze pushed ripples along the surface, sending slivers of reflected moon shivering in the cattails.

  And something else moved. It moved in a sidewinder pattern just under the skin of the water, like a snake. I knew that pattern.

  My breath caught in my throat. I grabbed Will’s jacket sleeve, exclaimed: “Look!”

  A dark shape crested the water, a shape with eyes that glowed as white as pieces of the moon.

  And that’s when it all went to hell.

  CHAPTER 9