The Bellwether Revivals

by Benjamin Wood

  At quarter to five, Jean came to the nurses’ station and told Oscar he could leave early, so he walked straight back to his flat to shower and change out of his uniform. He ate dinner, left the dishes soaking in the sink, then sat under the pale kitchen light and tried again with Descartes. The prose was no easier to consume. It was just the kind of book that somebody like Eden would admire, he thought: leaden with concepts, light on entertainment. Still, he liked the way Descartes treated the soul and the body as separate things. It read to him like an owner’s manual—a step-by-step guide to the mechanics of emotions.

  By the time Oscar got to Harvey Road, it was very dark, and the flickering security light on the house across from Eden’s gave the whole street a haunting neon shine. Marcus answered the door and showed him inside. ‘What’s it like out there?’ he asked. ‘The radio said it might hail tonight. Any sign of it?’

  ‘Not that I could tell.’

  ‘Hard to know when hail is coming, I suppose. I wonder how they predict these things, these weathermen. No more reliable than palm readers, if you ask me.’

  The others were waiting for him in the living room. All the furniture had been rearranged: Eden’s antique harpsichord was set up, dead centre, and a leather wingback was positioned in the shallow curve of its body. The fireplace was glowing. Both of the chesterfields had been pushed back along the far wall, and Iris, Yin, and Jane were sitting there in an oddly straight alignment, like passengers expecting a train. A soft, auburn light bathed the room—twenty or so candles were wavering in jam jars beside the golden casters of the harpsichord. Iris waved at Oscar sedately, a simple lifting of her fingertips. He smiled back at her.

  ‘Glad you could make it,’ Eden said. He was perched on the window ledge with the curtains drawn behind him, sipping from a china teacup. A stack of papers rested at his feet, bound in a manila file and tied with red ribbon. The room seemed bigger, barer, with the rugs scrolled and propped up in the corner, reminding Oscar of church halls and children’s parties and pass-the-parcel.

  The rest of them said hello. They all looked slightly fretful, reluctant to move. Oscar sat down next to Iris, on the arm of the couch. ‘I’m not sure I like the look of this.’

  ‘Me neither,’ Iris said. ‘Did you bring your Ouija board? I think we’re having a séance.’

  ‘Very funny,’ Eden said. ‘Nothing wrong with a little atmosphere. It all adds to the effect.’

  Yin leaned forwards. ‘This is gonna be something to write home about, I can tell.’

  ‘Well it better not take long,’ Iris said. ‘I’ve got a supervision paper due tomorrow and I could do with making a start sometime this decade.’

  ‘Alright, alright. Thank you, my dear sister, for your cynicism. It’s been duly noted,’ Eden said. ‘Now the guest of honour is here, we can get things started.’ He looked at Oscar, then gestured towards the wingback with his eyes. ‘Would you mind taking a seat?’

  ‘Me? Why me?’

  ‘Because you’re the one I said I’d convince.’

  Oscar didn’t move. ‘You don’t need to prove anything to me. I told you before, I don’t really care one way or the other.’

  Eden rucked up his face. ‘Oh, come on. If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t be here. You’d still be lazing on the couch watching Taggart.’

  ‘He’s got you there,’ Jane said.

  ‘I didn’t know Taggart was on,’ said Yin. ‘I should’ve stayed home too.’

  ‘Come on now.’ Eden pointed to the wingback again, palm upturned, willing Oscar to sit.

  ‘Go on,’ Iris said. ‘I really need to finish that paper.’

  Feeling the weight of expectation upon him, Oscar walked over to the wingback and sat down in its worn, supple leather. ‘Just promise me this isn’t going to hurt.’

  ‘I guarantee it,’ Eden replied. At once, he clicked his fingers, pointing to the far corner of the room. ‘Yin, Iris, Jane, take one of these and go and stand by the clavichord, please.’ He untied the ribbon on his file and doled out a booklet of sheet music to each of them. They didn’t get up from the chesterfield, just sat there, amused, peering at their booklets. ‘Come on, humour me, will you?’ Eden said, and they got up. ‘Marcus, you know what to do.’

  Marcus nodded and left the room. He came back in carrying Iris’s cello case and proceeded to set it on the floor and open it, slowly unlatching the clasps. ‘Hey, be careful with that,’ Iris said. ‘The bridge is a tiny bit loose.’ Marcus removed the cello and the bow, dragged one of the dining chairs close to Oscar in the wingback and sat down. In a deliberate, focused motion, he began rosining the bow.

  ‘Okay then. Good.’ Eden exhaled a long breath. He walked over to the keyboard end of the clavichord and stood there momentarily, drumming his fingers on the teak. Then he took a bundle of keys from his trouser pocket, searched for the right one—a delicate, tarnished little iron thing—and unlocked the lid. With a flurry of his fingers, he played a brisk run of notes. Marcus droned a deep, scratchy burr of a chord on the cello. Eden hit the corresponding chord on the clavichord, until he was satisfied they were both perfectly in tune. ‘Alright, let’s get started, shall we?’

  ‘What are we supposed to do?’ Iris said.

  ‘You’re my choristers.’

  ‘Oh God, I was afraid you’d say that.’

  Eden ignored her. ‘Yin, you can be the beater. The rest of you just read along with the notation.’

  ‘You might’ve given us some warning,’ Jane said. ‘I haven’t warmed up.’

  ‘You’ll do fine. You’ve done this a hundred times before.’

  ‘Not this we haven’t,’ Yin said.

  ‘You all were in choir at school, weren’t you? Have a quick read through and note my alterations in red. It’s just a madrigal—Baroque—a three-part harmony. It’ll barely challenge you.’ Eden lifted his eyebrows at Oscar. ‘Just sit back, okay. Close your eyes, and try to empty your mind of thoughts. Can you do that?’

  Oscar wasn’t completely sure he could, but he nodded.

  ‘Take your time. Just let yourself relax.’

  There was a long silence. Oscar fidgeted in the chair, hearing people moving around him.

  ‘Okay, I’m going to ask you a few questions,’ Eden said. ‘And I want you to respond with the first thing that comes into your head. The very first thing. There are no right or wrong answers, only honest ones.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just run with it.’

  ‘This is mad,’ Oscar said. ‘I’m opening my eyes.’

  Eden’s voice came back at him sharply: ‘Stop being such a bloody girl and answer my questions.’

  Oscar went quiet.

  ‘What is your full name?’

  He let a few seconds go by, then relented. ‘Oscar James Lowe.’

  ‘And how old are you?’

  ‘Twenty.’

  Eden struck a high note on the clavichord. ‘What are you most afraid of?’

  Oscar thought about it. He was afraid of a lot of things, but there was one fear that stood out above the rest. ‘Old buildings,’ he said. The high note continued to sound.

  ‘Next question. Which bones have you broken in your body?’

  He remembered the only serious injury he’d ever had, playing cricket for the school team, and the uncomfortable Fiat Panda ride to the hospital with Mr Hamilton, his old PE teacher—he could almost feel the agony of it again. ‘The middle finger on my left hand,’ he answered.

  ‘Okay.’

  Eden waited. ‘If a house were on fire, and you were stuck inside, would you want someone to risk his own life to save you?’

  He responded quickly: ‘No.’

  The high note stopped.

  He opened his eyes. ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Keep them shut,’ Eden said. ‘Empty your head again.’

  Oscar seemed to be sitting there for a long time, eyes closed tight. Nothing appeared to be happening. He could hear nothing, sense nothing around him, and he beg
an to feel embarrassed; he was sure they were all playing a trick on him, that they would all erupt with laughter at any moment. Just as he was about to open his eyes again, the melody of the clavichord bit through the silence. It was an arresting kind of sound—brittle but sweet, light but pure—and the music seemed to cascade around him like falling snow.

  The tune was slow and mournful to begin with, and it relaxed him. With each note, he felt his body loosening. The air flowed smoothly through his lungs and his heartbeat seemed to regulate itself. Dah-dah-dah-dah-dah. His arms tingled, and the tension in his shoulders eased away, like creases smoothed out with an iron. He was getting so comfortable, so calm, that he found himself smiling. But suddenly the tempo shifted, and the music became frenzied, discordant. Jarring notes speared the air, sharp and strange to his ears. At once, the cello joined in. The instrument was right up close to him, and its deep, languorous music seemed to shake the slackened muscles of his arms and legs.

  That’s when he felt it: an urgent warmth at the base of his neck.

  The voices came next. Yin’s deep baritone drawing outwards, then Jane and Iris in unison, their sweet, songbird tones off-setting it, forming a volley of words that Oscar couldn’t quite understand. The singing and the fluid cello countered the spikes of the clavichord, anchoring the music, giving it gravity. He wasn’t sure if it was just his mind playing games with him, but he swore he was falling out of consciousness. The music pushed and retreated in his head, steady as the tide. He was falling away. He could still hear the voices of the others, but they were muted now, just words passing through a long, dark tunnel. His eyelids felt heavy. There was a metallic taste in his mouth. A dry ache on his tongue. A sedating heat against his neck. And the next thing he knew, he was wide awake and blinking.

  Iris was on her haunches, looking up at him, one hand on his thigh, the other touching his face. ‘Oscar, can you hear me? Oscar?’ She seemed slightly panicked.

  ‘Woah,’ he replied, adjusting to the light. ‘I think I fell asleep.’

  Everyone laughed, and the sound seemed to pull him further into consciousness.

  ‘Can you feel anything?’ Iris asked. ‘Are you alright?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m okay, I’m just a bit groggy. What happened?’

  She replied in a wary kind of way: ‘Look down.’

  He peered at his feet. Nothing. He checked his right side. Nothing. Then, as he looked towards his left, he saw it—a thick roof-nail, about four inches long, skewering the loose skin on the back of his left hand, just below the knuckle of his middle finger. He flinched, feeling like he might throw up, and tore his eyes away. ‘Jesus! What the hell have you done? You said it wasn’t going to hurt.’

  ‘I think if it hurt you’d be screaming by now,’ Eden said.

  Oscar waited a few seconds for the pain to register, but it didn’t. He gave it another moment, allowing his brain the chance to catch up. But he felt nothing. ‘You hypnotised me?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking,’ Eden said.

  There was still no pain in his hand at all. Everything else felt fine—he could wiggle his fingers and feel the leather against his skin.

  ‘I told you I could prove it,’ Eden said.

  ‘By sticking a nail through my hand? Thanks a lot. If I get some kind of infection, I swear, I’ll—’

  ‘Oh, relax,’ Marcus said. ‘It’s been sterilised. Perfectly clean.’

  ‘You might be a little sore in the morning, though,’ Iris said.

  ‘Take it out. Take this thing out of me right now.’

  Eden shook his head, folded his arms. ‘If I take it out, it’ll hurt. Trust me, you’ll want me to put you under again. It’d be like a dentist pushing a rotten tooth back into your jaw. Not very nice.’

  ‘Just get this thing out of my hand, okay? Or I’m going to—’

  ‘Going to what?’ Marcus laughed. ‘Calm down.’

  Yin spoke up then. ‘Okay, come on, guys, fun’s over. Take it out, Edie. Give the guy a break.’

  ‘Fine, not a problem. It’ll just take a sec.’ Eden looked at Oscar. ‘Lean back. Close your eyes.’

  Again, the silence. Again, the brooding melody of the clavichord, followed by the cello, followed by the heat and the voices, followed by drifting, drifting, drifting. Something like an ether consumed him, gradually. When he woke up, the furniture was back in its right place. A dressing was taped to his hand. And the five of them—Eden, Iris, Marcus, Yin, and Jane—were all sitting around him, in an arc of chairs, leaning on their elbows, talking.

  ‘I didn’t understand the questions at the start,’ Jane was saying.

  ‘Oh, I was just having some fun with him,’ Eden said. He was not paying attention to Oscar as he woke. ‘Smoke and mirrors, that’s all. I could’ve kept him under a lot longer if I’d wanted to.’

  Oscar felt a pain in his left hand, like a searing burn, and he grabbed for it with his right, as if holding it might lessen the agony. He didn’t understand why he was hurting. The last thing he remembered was sitting down in the chair and Eden telling him to empty his mind.

  ‘Hello. We’ve got movement,’ Eden said. He tilted his head and waved. ‘Morning, sunbeam.’

  Oscar looked at them with wet eyes. ‘Fuck. Did I pass out or something?’

  ‘Yep,’ Eden said. ‘You were out for the count.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I think it might have been Yin’s aftershave.’

  Everyone laughed, and Yin gave a sarcastic titter.

  ‘Don’t you remember anything?’ Iris asked. There was a softness to her voice that felt to him like genuine concern.

  ‘I remember sitting in the chair and you all starting to play, and then—’ He broke off. ‘My hand is killing me.’ Oscar stood, flexing the fingers of his sore hand. A sort of panic came over him. It was not the pain itself that made him fearful, but the strangeness of it, the fact that he didn’t know where it had come from. ‘What the hell happened to me?’

  Iris was about to speak, but Eden placed his fingers upon her shoulder. ‘You had an accident,’ he said. ‘We were halfway through the demonstration and you fainted. You fell onto one of the candle jars and cut your hand. Are you alright?’

  ‘I did?’ Oscar looked at the others. Their faces were blank, static, and he didn’t know how to read them. Another surge of pain gripped his hand. ‘It hurts like mad.’

  ‘I dressed the wound. It’ll heal up fine,’ Iris said.

  Eden held out his palm. ‘Let me see.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Let me take a look at your hand.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I say so.’ Eden’s voice was dry and hollow.

  ‘You better let him look,’ Iris said. She smiled at Oscar in that way that he couldn’t resist. Her pupils were steady, reassuringly set. Reluctantly, he put his hand into her brother’s palm.

  Eden removed the dressing. Two small lesions were seeping, an inch apart. The wound looked like a snake bite. A yellowy bruise was starting to spread across the swollen skin. The sight of it made Oscar light-headed. He turned away.

  ‘Oh, it’s not that bad,’ Eden said. ‘I’ve seen worse. On horses.’

  ‘Are you sure I don’t still have some glass in there?’

  ‘You’ll be fine.’

  He winced as Eden placed his other hand over the wound. ‘Hey! What are you doing? That kills. Stop it!’ But Eden only gripped harder. His fingers viced. There was an urgent heat in his hands. ‘For fuck’s sake, stop it!’ Oscar shouted. But Eden wouldn’t release his grip. He only extended it over Oscar’s wrist and stared into his face. His eyes had that weird sheen about them, that purity of focus. The pain was still there in Oscar’s hand, but more overwhelming was that deep, distracting heat coming from Eden’s fingers.

  ‘Let go of me!’

  Eden squeezed harder and harder. His face was concentrated, sneering.

  ‘I said, let go!’

  Iris took a timid step
backwards.

  ‘Edie, can’t you just leave him alone now?’ Jane said.

  ‘Yeah, man, don’t hurt the guy,’ said Yin.

  But Eden’s skinny thumbs kept pressing and twisting, pressing and twisting. Then he quickly released his grip, and Oscar reeled backwards. ‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’ he shouted. ‘Are you trying to torture me or something? Jesus!’ He was shaking with anger and could feel the blood rising through his body. A queasiness came over him. He wanted to get away from this dark room, these people. He was too frantic to speak. Hauling on his coat, he ran out into the hallway. The leather caught underneath his heels as he stepped hurriedly into his shoes, but he didn’t stop to adjust them.

  He was still struggling with the latch on the front door when Iris rushed out to the hall. ‘Hey, come on, don’t go,’ she said. ‘It’s Eden being Eden, that’s all. Will you let me explain?’ She stared at him with a look of regret—not as if she were sorry, but as if she were somehow disappointed in him. ‘He went too far, I know. We all got a bit carried away in there. But please. Please don’t leave. He was just trying to—oh, I don’t know what he’s trying to do.’

  Oscar said nothing. He couldn’t find the words to express how angry he was, how much he objected to being made a fool of, experimented on, used. He stood there in the dim hallway, breathless, shaking his head. Iris turned her eyes to the floor. It was as if she had seen something in his face—a sight that could explain his feelings much better than words. ‘Look, perhaps it’s better for everyone if you go home and cool off,’ she said. ‘I’ll call you, okay?’