by Mark All
He wasn’t sure why he’d even gone to David’s. He had a good career now, made decent money doing something challenging and rewarding. He had friends he could jam with when he felt the need—playing music for a living had nearly ruined music for him, whereas an easygoing jam session once a month quite fulfilled his artistic longings.
He had, in fact, had a bad feeling about the evening to begin with. He’d learned through the years that if his second sight gave him a warning, it was better to accept it sooner than later, or it would bite him in the ass big time. Now, in the silence of his house, his ears still ringing from the music, he began to realize the extent of the danger they were in.
He’d always downplayed to the band that he was psychic, or more precisely, gifted with precognition, and had never actually admitted it. There would’ve been no end to them giving him shit about it, especially since it was not always reliable, and often manifested as a feeling rather than a specific vision. He’d have a hunch to take a different route to the grocery store and later learn he’d avoided a traffic snarl, or suddenly know exactly what to get a girl for her birthday. Sometimes it didn’t pan out, and that made him wonder about alternate possible futures and quantum physics. Most of the time though, his intuitions were on the nose, particularly when he felt them strongly. Like the vision of the wreck.
Tonight, the feeling was exceptionally potent.
Still shaking, he poured another double and dropped onto the couch. Being stoned heightened his anxiety, but he was uncomfortably aware that paranoia did not preclude the possibility of something actually being out to get you.
The Hellish music kept playing in his head, so he picked up the remote for the surround sound system and started the CD player in an attempt to crowd the damned sounds out. The disc, Steely Dan’s Aja, filled the room, picking up where he’d left off, with Peg. Though he’d hoped some mellow jazz-rock would relax him, instead it created a cacophony in his mind with Penumbra’s insistent heavy metal. He fought to concentrate, but his consciousness had become a battlefield for dueling bands. Vince’s music was winning.
“Stop it.” John thumbed the Power button, creating an abrupt, eerie silence in the room. In his head, Penumbra thundered on, now joined by a looping phrase from Steely Dan: It will come back to you. It will come back to you. It will come back to you.
When David had started Vince’s music back in the studio, the ominous foreboding John already felt had intensified. The songs Penumbra had recorded together seemed foreign, as if his part was played by someone else, though he recognized his characteristic touch and phrasing. When Vince’s own original song began, John felt as if he were listening to a fatal car crash, compelled and unable to tear his attention away.
Then he’d gone somewhere.
A possible reality; a terrible, imminent future.
A global slaughterhouse.
He shuddered and involuntarily blocked out the overwhelming images he’d seen. They were too horrific for a man to be exposed to for long and remain sane, and he had no idea how much time had passed while he’d drifted in that mystical world, seeing the knives and axes and blood.
He cast a restless glance around the living room, seeking reassurance he was really home and not back in that Hellish dimension. When his gaze reached the studio door, a chill ran down his spine.
The light in his studio was off.
He was certain he’d turned it on.
He didn’t like the darkness. Too many things might be hiding in the shadows.
He hauled himself weakly to his feet and approached the door to the studio, the house’s second bedroom, cautiously.
Leaning in through the door, John flicked the light switch.
The studio hadn’t changed; it looked the same as always. But there was a breath of something more here. He could almost smell something foul and rotting. John returned to the living room, downed the rest of the Scotch, then splashed more into his glass. The whiskey warmed him down to the core. It was probably not a good coping mechanism to rely on, but he was hardly an alcoholic. Like Alan for instance.
The singer had looked spaced out. Surely he wasn’t considering participating in this insidious project? Mike surely was.
Well, it wasn’t going to happen. No way in Hell would John let this album be unleashed on an unsuspecting world. He hadn’t been kidding about calling his lawyer. He actually had one now, a smart lady who vetted his contracts for him. He’d be damned if he let them use his bass parts and the passages he’d composed for such a project. Hopefully he could prevent it from being released at all. He had to, or the consequences would be inconceivable.
John noticed something change at the edge of his peripheral vision. He looked around to see that the light in his studio was off again. With a growing unease, he got up and went back to the studio, hesitated a moment at the threshold, then entered and flipped the light switch once more.
Everything was the same—except for his bass, which was now out of the case, sitting on its stand in the middle of the room.
The Fender Precision had absolutely not been there before. He always replaced it in its case, because the bathroom was next door to the studio and he worried about the steam and humidity from the shower affecting the instrument. The second time he’d turned on the lights, when he’d checked the room for anything unusual, he would have noticed the bass being out.
His grasp on reality, tenuous since the listening session, loosened further. The lights turning themselves back off, the bass magically appearing. His eyes closed and the horror of the vision he’d had in David’s studio gripped him again.
“No!”
John tore his consciousness from the sight of a dense crowd of people bearing knives, axes, and broken bottles and glasses, hacking and slashing each other to bloody pulps.
When he opened his eyes, the bass called to him. He wanted to go to it, to become one with it, to produce an alternate reality of sound again; he wanted it more than he ever had. The sudden desire was even more frightening than the fact that the bass had gotten itself out of its case and posed itself like a beautiful woman, beckoning, begging for his attention, his love, yearning to coax his essence from him.
He abruptly found himself standing before the bass, his hand reaching out for the instrument. He didn't remember having taken the six steps across the room to it. It was as if he’d been transported there instantaneously.
With a startled cry, he pulled his arm back and hugged himself. He told himself none of this was real, none of it was happening. His vision was a hallucination.
Then memories of the car crash that had killed Vince came to him in a rush. They overwhelmed him, blending with his vision of the crowd tearing itself to pieces like a free-for-all dog fight, and he threw up on the carpet, barely backing away from the bass in time to avoid drenching it.
His eyes wet, his body wracked with sobs, he collapsed.
John's premonition of the wreck had come true. He remembered the crash unreeling like a dream he hadn’t been able to stop even though he’d seen the series of events as clearly as if he’d already lived them. He knew this vision of carnage was real as well. He knew Vince was behind it.
He would not let it happen this time.
Chapter Nine
Saturday early morning
Jessica burped her goodnight to Charlene and slammed the cab door. Penumbra’s “Ass Over Teakettle” still rummaged around her brain, looking for a space to settle in. Her head throbbing, she made it through the revolving glass doors into the foyer of her apartment building, and wobbled across it to the elevator. She felt fine until the elevator lurched into motion, jiggling her stomach.
“Whoa. One Mojito too many. Maybe many too many.” She snorted. “Say that five times fast!”
She had another bad moment as the elevator shuddered to a stop at the tenth floor and she spilled out into the corridor, nearly turning her ankle. Almost home. After only two tries she got her key into the lock and let herself in. She fumbled t
he hall light on.
“Whew!”
In the living room, she switched on the indirect track lighting by rolling the dimmer switch. She relished the quiet. Well, the apartment outside her head was hushed. The Penumbra song still looped inside her head and there was a ringing in her ears. She flounced down on the couch, dropping her bag heavily on the end table.
“Dark Chasm of Eternal Sorrow sucks—urp!—ass.”
The band hadn’t actually been that bad, but they hadn’t been that good, either. They were just unoriginal. The same old frenetic, retching-vocal, math rock, death metal shit. It all sounded alike to her, and worse, there was no groove with the constantly changing meters. You couldn’t bang your head to it, unless you were epileptic. Worse than that, they had looked wasted and performed sloppily. You can’t play that fast through different time signatures while falling-down drunk, Jessica thought. The first prerequisite for a hit band was being tight. That was more important than having a hook in a song. Which the songs didn’t have. Hooks, that was. They did have choruses. As best she could recall.
Jessica shuddered, remembering her run-in with their singer…Jervis? Jarvis. Jarvis Bentley. Major asshole. He’d hugged her and tried to cop a feel. Off a record label rep who could make his career. What irked her even more was that his band was still her best option for a new act.
“Fuck.”
Worse, that damn Penumbra song just wouldn’t die away. It kept playing in her head, mocking her with actual, if nascent, talent she couldn’t have. She had to get rid of it.
With a huff, she snatched up the universal remote and started the CD player, filling the room with Fiona Apple’s ethereal voice, although it seemed to be coming from behind a thick curtain. The dark intro to “Pale September” sounded both sinister and forlorn. After a jazzy verse, the intro returned like a funeral wagon drawn by heavy horses. Jessica turned the stereo back off. The silence felt loaded, heavy-laden, pregnant. For a moment she thought she’d throw up right there on the sofa, then the feeling passed. In its wake, the pounding in her head developed into a full-blown headache. At least the damn Penumbra song was gone.
She leaned over to get her bag, felt an alarming wave of nausea, then righted herself, bringing the bag with her. After fumbling around inside, she upended it, spilling the contents on the couch beside her. She rummaged through her junk, then spotted and snagged a bottle of ibuprofen. In the kitchen, she got filtered water from the fridge door, downed four tablets, then drained a second glass. That ought to do it. After going to the bathroom and peeing like a horse for what felt like five minutes, Jessica struggled out of her clothes and crawled into bed.
* * * *
Two hours later she started awake. Rolling over, Jessica saw a figure silhouetted in the door to her bedroom, backlit by the glow from the nightlight in the hallway beyond.
She screamed and scrambled away, tangling herself in the covers and falling heavily to the floor on the other side of the bed. For a moment she considered crawling underneath, but knew that would be foolish. Fueled by adrenaline, she jumped to her feet, arms out and hands fisted to protect herself.
The doorway was empty. Her heart beat so hard and fast she feared she’d have a coronary event. She ran to the door, screaming again, lunging out on the attack. There was no one in the hall. No one in the bathroom, the living room, the kitchen. No one else anywhere in the apartment.
Panting, and still very drunk, she returned to the bedroom and leaned against the doorjamb, wondering if someone had slipped a roofie into her drink or something. No, she was just sloshed, and she’d awakened from a nightmare, bringing the figure into reality from her dreams. Still shaken, she checked the apartment again, then made it into the bathroom just in time to throw up so hard she was afraid she’d injure herself.
By the time she fell back into bed, the damn Penumbra song was looping in her head again.
Chapter Ten
Saturday early morning
Gauzy light from the full moon sifted into the toolshed, glinting off the blade of the axe.
David stood in the doorway, staring at it intently. He did not recall returning the axe to its home on the pegboard. In fact, he’d had to search for the key to the shed for a full fifteen minutes, and had almost given up when he thought to look in the garbage can and found it there. He wasn’t sure what made him look in the trash, or how it had gotten there, he’d just done it.
His mind still foggy from the moderate beer and pot buzz—but mostly from the trance the music put him and the others in—he’d suddenly found himself feverishly searching for the axe, without memory of a conscious decision to do so. He last recalled sitting in the studio in a daze, fretting over the spell the music had cast on him. Vince’s “Second Coming” was David’s second chance to fulfill his potential as an artist, yet a sense that there was something very wrong with the music had at some point planted itself in David’s unconscious, taken root, and now pushed toward the surface.
Still, the lost tracks promised him another go at the exuberant dream, not of rock stardom and popularity, but of creating another universe from within, a new world for himself and others to explore and become lost in.
It wasn’t his soul unfolding like the Big Bang though, was it? It was Vince’s. David could be a part of it, like he always had, and make his meager contribution. But he feared losing himself in an alternate dimension of another’s creation and being absorbed, until he no longer existed. A shiver of loneliness swept over him.
The seductive Great Nothingness that had captured his mind last night led him to the axe, which presented an alternative to both his pointless life and this frightening potential world Vince’s music created. To sleep…but perchance, to dream: that was the rub. Wasn’t something better than nothingness? No, the contrarian voice in his head whispered. Not this something.
“Argh!” He clenched his fists, feeling as if two powers warred within him for command of his soul. He needed this shit to end. He crossed the plank floor and took the axe from where it hung on the wall. He studied it in fascination while turning it in his hands, again fighting the urge to run his thumb along the razor sharp cutting edge of the blade.
A picture of his ’59 Les Paul, an extension of himself, flashed in his mind, and he saw the axe coming down on it, severing the strings and sinking into the maple top and mahogany body in the guitar’s center of balance; driving deep and cleaving the instrument in two. It was like the timeline of his life, which had been divided neatly by the wreck.
His career had died with Vince. Afterward, he simply had not been able to get back on the horse. Nothing he did on his own could ever live up to the creative possibilities of Penumbra’s songwriting collaboration. He’d started drawing down on his savings, knowing they would not last him into retirement, and teaching. He had to face it, he’d already retired, to a worthless life of ennui and fatalism. Surely complete nothingness would be better than enduring as a hollow shell of a person.
A renewed desire to hack that goddamn guitar to pieces filled him; the fucking piece of shit mocked him, taunted him, dared him to try to compose again. The idea of taking the axe to the computer and the backup drives came to him and he found that he liked the prospect even more.
“Enough with the fucking axe,” Vince said from behind him.
Startled, David cried out and jumped away from the voice. He dropped the axe as he bumped into the shelves of garden tools and terra cotta pots and shouted again as the blunt end of the blade bounced off his left foot, screaming from both the pain of the heavy implement’s impact and the realization that he could’ve chopped off the end of his foot. Maimed, living in pain? Nothingness beckoned once more, smiling evilly.
He turned around to see Vince Buckley standing at the top of the plank ramp up to the toolshed. A palpable energy crackled from the man—man?—as if Vince was about to open a can of whupass on him.
David backed up, putting a hand out defensively.
“You can’t destroy a work
of art like that LP,” Vince said. “No more than you can turn your back on your Destiny. It's your duty to not bury your talent, not hide your light under a bushel, but to bring it forth, make it shine.”
David gazed into the unblinking eyes of the phantasm spouting Biblical admonitions, seriously considering whether he had in fact lost his mind. He might be merely actualizing a hidden aspect of his unconscious, manifesting a facet of his personality, playing out his existential dilemma in a false reality he’d created. Even if that were true, did it make the issues tearing him apart any less real?
“It’s your music,” David said. “I just add guitar parts. I’m only a technician. It’s your music, and it’s scary.”
“Bullshit,” Vince said, leaning against the doorjamb. “You wrote forty percent of the songs, at least.”
“I wrote sections in the context of your vision.”
Vince shrugged. “Maybe that’s what you do. Besides, you’re a virtuoso.”
“Big effing deal,” David said with a nervous laugh. “There are seventeen-year-old, hell, eight-year-old virtuosos all over YouTube.”
“Bro, it’s what you personally have to offer, the juxtapositions of patterns in original combinations only you could create. I need them. You need this album.”
“Doesn’t matter,” David said. “The band’s not with us. Mike was ambivalent, everyone else flat out refused. John threatened to get a lawyer.”