Hell's Music

by Therese von Willegen

  “I honestly wish I hadn’t. Things between me and Sarah started improving when she finished that big programming job. She got a bonus and we were planning to spend some time at that big safari lodge up in the Cederberg when...she discovered some text messages on my phone.”

  “What was she doing reading your text messages in the first place?”

  “I think she started to suspect something.”

  “That’s really stupid, shitting in your own house by shagging her sister.”

  “You don’t have to repeat what I heard a dozen times from her.”

  “So she kicked you out on your arse?”

  “Something like that. Sad thing was I’d already broken it off with Siobhan a month or two beforehand. I mean I was going to really try to fix things with Sarah. She wouldn’t give me a second chance. I was really pathetic. Pity...”

  “Don’t blame her, not when the trust is gone.” Unbidden, her thoughts flew to Simon. What was he doing today? He wouldn’t be able to speak to her until after Boxing Day and, although she longed to hear his voice, she wasn’t about to sit and wait for his call at the shop, as much as she wanted to speak to him.

  “The new guy? You giving him a chance when he’s fucked up with so many women?”

  “I really don’t want to have this conversation, Eric. Things are still new. And yes, I have enough reason to believe his feelings are genuine, so let’s drop it, okay?”

  “Woo, someone’s in denial.”

  “Cut it out, Eric.” Emily lifted a glass salt shaker and made as if to throw it at him.

  Her cousin grinned back at her. “Oh-kay. Touchy subject.”

  They caught up on other family gossip while Eric made a sauce, but none of what they spoke about sank in. She kept thinking about Simon, imagining what he was doing. He was in Oslo, or so he said, and would be enjoying a white Christmas with some friends of the band’s, eating pinnekjøtt and mashed turnips while downing copious pints of beer. At least he’d joked about the food. She had no way of really knowing what he got up to–his life when she was not around a great gaping hole.

  At any rate, shooting the breeze and listening to her cousin bemoan his fate was still preferable to sitting outside and enduring her elder relatives bitching about her latest developments.

  When he was done with the sauce, Eric motioned for Emily to follow him outdoors. “Make yourself useful and bring the dishing spoons. Mother never has enough of those.” He sounded so resigned Emily shuddered, not wanting to imagine what it must be like to be stuck out here with only computer games for any break from the routine.

  She still had an excuse to leave and move out on her own. The way her cousin was going, he’d not be leaving the house any time soon unless he made drastic changes to his life.

  As Emily stepped outside, she immediately wished she hadn’t left the kitchen. The rest of the family sat in a rough circle, plates already perched on laps as they picked at their meal with forks. Eyes barely flicked up as Emily and Eric exited the house to place their burdens on the table.

  Her mother flashed her a brief glance before she stabbed at an errant baby potato that rolled about on her plate. Rae crouched over her food in much the same way a cat would guard its kill, not making eye contact with anyone, and her bangs pulled over her face in a manner that suggested she’d rather be anywhere but here.

  “Hey,” Emily mumbled, feeling like a bit of a tart, because she had no real desire to find a place among her family.

  Rae glanced up from what she ate to offer Emily the briefest of nods. “Hey, sis.”

  A quick glance around the table and Emily’s heart sank. She might as well be seating herself at the gathering of the next Cold War for the stony silence dispersing its cloud of doom over her family. Her mother had seated herself as far away as possible from Rae, and the only available chairs were between Reinhardt and her grand uncle Geoff, whom she had nothing in common with save their shared genes. With Reinhardt on the one side, talking about the latest shifts in real estate and Geoff on the other who would, no doubt, remind her how good it had been under the previous apartheid-era regime, Christmas lunch would hardly be a cheery affair.

  Eric, the little shit, had already taken the only other available seat next to Rae where she should be sitting and, by the looks of it, flirted with her to boot. Fuming silently, Emily settled and focused on dishing her Christmas lunch which, because she didn’t eat meat, consisted mostly of a scoop of potato salad, some coleslaw and wilted lettuce. The rest of the family had already helped themselves to the feta, tomatoes and cucumber in the supposedly “Greek” salad.

  To add to the misery, Reinhardt had selected Boney M’s Christmas album, one he insisted on playing every year and no one else seemed to mind, except her and Rae. Emily no longer bothered complaining, since it had been pointed out to her that she didn’t possess enough festive spirit. As if watching her family gorge themselves into morbid obesity with each holiday was all that joyful.

  Those thoughts only served to draw her back to Simon. She would have been expected to bring him along to the family get-together and it made her smile, imagining how he would have charmed her family, despite their initial horror at his presence. And charm them he would have, no doubt, with the flash of white teeth and a wicked smile, his eyes dancing in merriment at her family’s consternation.

  Or perhaps he would have whisked her away, giving Emily a legitimate excuse to avoid this annual day of torture.

  A woman speaking dragged her from her grim reverie and she looked up, at first not sure who had said her name. “Eh?”

  “Have you come to your senses now that he’s gone away?” Her mother glared at her from beneath her bifocal prescription sunglasses, her white hair gleaming like the halo of an avenging angel.

  “What do you mean, come to my senses?” Damn dried-up woman had barely greeted her and now sought to make a spectacle in front of the family. Emily clenched her teeth and took a deep breath.

  “That creature.” Her mother’s smug expression dared her to enter the fray.

  This couldn’t be happening, not here, not in front of everyone. Another slow inhalation did nothing to steady Emily’s frantic beating heart. With every scrap of intelligence she knew she mustn’t rise to the bait, but it was so damned difficult. Emily forced a bright smile. “You mean Simon?” She made sure to maintain steady eye contact with her mother, who had the good grace to look away, a deep frown furrowing her brow.

  A snicker from Rae made Emily flinch, especially when the attention around the table shifted to the young woman who hunched over her meal, her expression guilty.

  A hiss from her mother drew Emily’s gaze back to the older woman. “Yes, that evil creature. I honestly don’t know what you’re thinking, bringing disgrace to the family name like that.”

  Her mother really knew when to pick her moment. All eyes rested heavily on Emily and her blood ran cold. She wanted nothing more than to push away her plate, stand and storm out, but knew this wouldn’t benefit the present situation. “You’d rather pick on both your daughters when we should be celebrating the season?” She took a gamble that her mother had sniped at Rae, but it was worth a shot trying to deflect from the current direction her parent aimed at.

  Reinhardt cleared his throat. “They’re showing Dinner for One on the thirty-first. It will be good to see it again.”

  Ten out of ten for trying, but Reinhardt did not succeed in breaking the tension.

  Emily’s mother dabbed her lips with her napkin then rose. “I’m not feeling well. Reinhardt, will you take me home, please?” She did not look at anyone but swept past, the damask rose of her perfume nauseating to Emily of a sudden. Just bloody great. She could give herself a pat on the back for not acting like a kid. Then her mother went and took the cake on the whole deal.

  Emily rested her hands on the wrought-iron table with a sigh and blinked back the tears that threatened to blind her. Ever the dutiful brother-in-law, Reinhardt obeyed, pushed back his
chair and left the table to follow Emily’s mother. Conversation resumed after the broken pause, as if neither offending sisters were seated among those innocent.

  Emily waited until her eyes stopped burning and lost herself in the conversation before she rose as well. She had to go talk to her mother before she left. It would be wrong to allow her to part on such bad terms, even if Emily felt next to no joy at celebrating holidays she cared nothing for, with family.

  Rae caught her eye as she walked away from the gathering and offered an almost unnoticeable shake of her head that Emily decided to ignore. Inside she could hear the rumble of Reinhardt’s voice as he argued with her mother before the front door opened.

  “…should just have left it for today,” he said, but Emily was too far down the passage to catch her mother’s reply save for picking up on her tone of voice that was anything but friendly.

  The taste of the food Emily had eaten went sour at the back of her throat, her pulse hammering wildly as she reached the front entrance just as car doors slammed shut. She should have risen sooner to talk to her mother, despite the tears.

  “Wait!” Emily shouted as she struggled with the lock.

  A car engine revved, and judging by the amount of fuel Reinhardt fed the car, he was pretty pissed off himself, though he’d never stand up to his wife’s sister. Nausea made Emily’s knees weak as she staggered out into the driveway in time to see her uncle drive off with her mother sitting ramrod straight in the passenger seat. Just like the bloody queen of England.

  Emily sank to her butt on the bottom step, rested her forehead on her knees and breathed deeply. What on earth was going on with her, and what was with her family? “All bloody drama queens,” she whispered, her lips gone dry.

  “You’re right.” She hadn’t heard Eric approach behind her, but was glad he had showed up and settled on the steps next to her.

  “What can I do? I can’t get anything right. I can’t make anyone happy, least of all myself.”

  Her cousin propped his chin on his elbow and gazed into the middle distance. “You’re only figuring that out now? I often wonder how things would have turned out if I hadn’t been such a jerk-off, but chances are the relationship would have fucked out, anyway. The way I figure, you’ve got to grab what happiness you can while you have it in reach.”

  Emily managed a dry laugh. “And look where that got you. Living at home with your mother again.”

  He shrugged. “I learned my lesson. It was just sheer unforeseen bad luck that I happened to get retrenched not long after. We wouldn’t have been able to afford the rent had I still been married. There would have been some changes. Who knows, it could have gone pear-shaped in any case.”

  “Now what about this?” Emily gestured in the direction Reinhardt had gone.

  “You know what they are like, the older women in our family. Prickly as all hell. Give the old bat some time. Worked with my mom. I had to endure the silent treatment for three months before she started talking to me. That’s the problem with the Keating clan. Too proud by half.”

  “You’re not a Keating. Your dad is a Viljoen,”

  “And Mother never fails to remind me I’m like the Viljoen men.” He sighed. “Want a lift back to your place? I don’t see your trusty steed outside, and I figure you could do with a ride home after this last bit of drama.”

  “Thanks… I guess you’re right. The others will probably just get drunker and bitchier as they go along, and I’ve pretty much had my fill of the nastiness.”

  “Just trust your heart, cuz.” Eric gave her a quick hug. “And don’t let the Keating side crawl out. They’re all bloody miserable and you’re too young to become a spinster aunt.”

  Emily allowed herself a wan smile. Eric may be a stuff-up, just like her and her sister, but at least they had each other in their dysfunctional familial bliss.

  * * * *

  Rae waited until they were home before they spoke about the abortive Christmas lunch. It bothered her immensely that Emily made straight for the wine rack as they arrived.

  “I’ll have some of that if you’re offering,” she said.

  Emily turned and regarded her silently for a number of heartbeats and, for a moment, Rae was tempted to believe her sister would ignore the request.

  “God! I need a drink just to get the bad taste out of my mouth, sis.”

  “It is Christmas Day, after all,” Emily conceded. “Remember how Dad used to allow us a glass at the dinner table and top us up when Ma wasn’t looking?”

  Both sisters laughed at the memory.

  “It’s not so bad,” said Rae. “We’re just too different from them.”

  “But what went wrong with us? Why are we so...otherwise?” Emily pulled the cork out with a pop and filled two crystal glasses with the dark-red liquid.

  Rae accepted her glass and grimaced at the wine’s bitterness. “Could have probably stayed in the bottle for another year or two.”

  Emily laughed. “Us?”

  “The wine, silly. But it’s a pity Dad’s not here this year. We could have had a jol with him.”

  “Even with the blond thing you said was there? God, he’s dating little twits who’re not even ten years older than us. Who was the last one? Natasha? She was apparently an attorney. Oh, woo-hoo.”

  “Face it, everyone’s dysfunctional. It’s just that some of us are more apt to see it.”

  Emily sank into the leather sofa and Rae took that as her cue to follow, happy to be with the one relative who didn’t treat her as if she were some sort of freak.

  “Not totally dysfunctional. Davy and me are an item now,” she told her sister. She may as well drop the bomb now that she’d figured things out for herself.

  “What on earth possessed you to go and do a thing like that?” Emily shook her head. “Suppose I can’t judge. I know I’ve been a bit nasty about him, but it’s because he reminds me of so many of the guys who used to hang out at The Event Horizon. Nice guys, no motivation.”

  “He is a bit lost,” Rae agreed. “But I figured he’s a better bet than some of the others.”

  “But do you really like him, have feelings for him, y’know?”

  “I’m comfortable around him,” Rae said. “I can be myself. And, yes, I do like him. I just never really thought about him in that way until I took a good look at him. He’s always been around, so I’ve never considered him as anything other than just a friend.”

  “Kinda crept up on you, did it? Well, I’m glad something’s working out for one of us.”

  Rae had to laugh at that.

  * * * *

  Although Simon called almost every day, and Emily tried to follow Hellbound Heart’s progress on some of the blogs she could hunt down, it still didn’t help with her growing sense that Simon was somehow not real. Sure, she got a definite rush when he sent her gifts by courier: wooden reindeer, chocolates, black silk roses, perfume that stank to high heaven…mainly odd little items only a guy could select out of some vague, misinformed sort of notion as to what would appeal to his lady love.

  What she had not been prepared for was the legions of Simon’s fans who regularly frequented her shop, some of them younger than her sister. She tolerated their dour countenances and pale faces and stocked up on her urban fantasy selection, which they bought. Always their attention was focused on her as she sat at her desk and tried hard not to notice them observing her. What must some of them think? Most likely something along the lines of “What does she have that we don’t, that our Simon, our paramour, will find her attractive and not us? Why, she doesn’t even wear a labret piercing, or wear the right clothes.”

  But the fans she could get used to. They were always unfailingly polite, and some of them were even friends with Rae. She supposed her sister must be basking in the afterglow among her peers that Emily was involved with someone like Simon van Helsdingen.

  “Just don’t ask me to get his autograph,” Emily warned Rae often.

  It was not Simon’s fan
s that caused her a point of concern. It was the pamphlets and tracts that mysteriously appeared beneath her door that worried her. Hastily scrawled Bible verses, preaching death and condemnation for those who would consort with devils, or offering some lurid afterlife reminiscent of the material the Jehovah’s Witnesses were apt to hand out were slipped under her door. These Emily crumpled and threw away as soon as she found them.

  Once or twice her work phone rang, but all she heard on the other end of the line was someone breathing and, always faintly, Amazing Grace playing off some terrible midi-sounding recording. Although she shrugged off these random intrusions, probably from the same people who burned Hellbound Heart merchandise with all the Harry Potters and Twilights of the world, Emily nonetheless found the calls unsettling. She chose rather not to discuss it with Rae, certain that if she ignored the crazy person enough, he or she would eventually grow bored and leave her alone.

  Religion was not something she cared to think of often. It made her feel vaguely embarrassed whenever people in her immediate circle spouted these ideas, and she definitely did not have time to worry about it now, not when Simon’s absence left a gaping angry hole in her chest.

  Emily became a regular fixture of the small internet café where she’d initially conducted her research, watching video clips and interviews, which somehow failed to reconcile the man she saw on screen with the man whose bed she’d landed in. Simon van Helsdingen on screen or on stage remained some aloof, sneering creature who stalked about putting the fear of hell in those who weren’t part of the scene. To put it mildly, he even scared her when he donned his leathers and corpse paint, as if he became possessed by an infernal dark half. Banter on stage and interviews revealed a bitter, scarred man so unlike the lover in her bed. Did she really know him?

  While she struggled with the leering specter who performed his particular brand of heavy music, she nonetheless drew comfort from the sounds, as if she were closer to him, as if the gentler songs were somehow meant for her.