Fractured Fairy Tales

by Catherine Stovall

  She wasn’t wrong, either. I’d always had a predilection for the macabre. When I’d become enamoured, some years ago, of the lyre possessed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Petra had been just as disgusted as I was with her choice of T-shirt. It was constructed of antelope horns with a human skull base, skin, gut and hair. It looked like something out of a horror movie. Despite her teasing, she’d proudly presented me with a beautiful flute of carved hawk bone for my twenty-fifth birthday.

  In the decade since, my collection of morbid musical instruments had grown substantially. I now had several bone, antler and ivory flutes, all antiques I’d found in various auctions. One of the percussionists had helped me obtain a Tibetan skull drum, made of authentic human skulls. There were horns and trumpets, a deer hoof rattle, and an authentic set of bones, the precursor of the American spoons. I also had a small fiddle with human bone pegs, scroll, and tailpiece, which Petra refused to touch, even to dust.

  It seemed serendipitous, therefore, that moments after Petra teased me, I opened the drawer of a pitifully abused side-table, to discover a yellowed, obviously hand-made, pan-flute.

  “How much for this?” I tried to feign weary indifference, as I held up the flute to the bottle-blonde woman hovering nearby.

  “Where did that come from?” she muttered, half to herself.

  Her attention was on a young couple gushing over a ratty old armoire, and she didn’t look pleased about the distraction. Without taking her eyes off the couple, she grabbed the offending item, put it to her lipstick crimsoned mouth, and blew. No sound emerged, other than the whistle from her pursed lips.

  “Hmph! It’s busted,” she grumbled, and turned toward a trash can behind her, holding the flute in the tips of her manicured fingers.

  “I might be able to fix it. I’ll give you ten dollars for it.”

  “Sure.” She turned back and dropped the flute into my hands. “It’s your money, lady.”

  She snatched the ten dollars from my hand, eager to get to the more lucrative furniture sale, just as Petra sailed back over with two cups of coffee in hand. I hid the flute behind my back.

  “You bought something?” Petra looked around at the furniture, visibly restraining her pert upper lip from curling. “What is it, and where will we put it?”

  “Don’t worry. It fits in my purse. Can I borrow your new T-shirt to wrap it in, though?”

  Her chin tilted down and she peered at me sideways, the way one looks at a potential mugger.

  I laughed and produced the flute for her inspection.

  “Is that bone?” she asked cautiously.

  “I’m pretty sure.”

  “Animal bone?”

  “I don’t know. Probably.”

  “Fine.” She handed me the shirt. “But if that thing is human bone, I may never forgive you.”

  “I’m sure it’s bird, deer or some other animal, Petra. It’s as old as the hills. Don’t be such a wuss.”

  I wrapped the flute in the shirt, put the package in my purse, and took the coffee she’d bought for me.

  “I have to admit. This was fun.”

    

  A quick rinse with some soapy water removed all the dust the flute had accumulated. After the cleaning, it was ghostly white, with a slight sheen like it had been waxed or varnished. Even though my knowledge of how to play pan flute was sketchy at best, it produced music that was hauntingly beautiful. One of the other flutists claimed significant training, but none of them could get it to produce a note. It was a curious and slightly creepy anomaly.

  “It’s like it was meant just for you, Cindy,” Stephen proclaimed. “You should play it for Anthony.”

    

  Anthony Greco was our Composer Laureate, and a connoisseur of instruments. A small man, with a huge presence, I’d found him rather intimidating at first. He was incredibly friendly, though. Even in his tuxedo, with his salt and pepper hair in a tidy ponytail, he exuded welcome. He’d shown great interest, and perhaps a little envy, for my skeletal collection. The pan flute was an intriguing delight to him. My claim that no one else could play it captivated him even more than the instrument itself. He tried, and failed, to prove me wrong, and then applauded my own performance with tears in his bright blue eyes.

  “It is a mournful little flute, and quite fascinating. Where did you find it?”

  “At a flea market, of all places.”

  “So you know nothing of its origin or construction?”

  “Only that it appears to be hand-made of bone.”

  “We must find out more!” I had never seen Anthony so animated, but his excitement was contagious.

  “Perhaps I could look for a specialist in these things.”

  “I know just the person!” he declared, excitedly. “An anthropologist friend of mine could help us. His name is Graf Thomas von der Meier. Please, let me call him for—”

  A scream tore the air asunder. Anthony dropped the flute on the floor. We rushed to his open window to look for the source. It was a male voice, and it sounded like someone being murdered, but we couldn’t see anything. After a minute or two, I called 911 while Anthony continued to scan the street.

  The police arrived a lot faster than I’d anticipated. Two SUVs pulled up, blocking the street on both sides of the Brownstone. When they pounded on the door, I opened it immediately. The first officer I saw had his hand on his gun. There were seven more behind him, all in tactical gear.

  “Is everything alright here, ma’am?” The young officer eyed Anthony suspiciously.

  “We’re fine, thank you, officer. We called because—”

  “You called?” he glanced at the officer behind him. “We’re here to investigate the scream one of your neighbours heard coming from this address.”

  “But we’re the only people here. We called because we heard the scream too, and thought it must be coming from outside.”

  Even as I said the words, I began to doubt. The sound was so loud, maybe it did come from inside the house.

  “We’d like to take a look around, if you don’t mind.” The second officer didn’t look convinced.

  “You’re most welcome to do so,” Anthony answered, “but is anyone checking out there?” He waved at the window.

  The two officers entered swiftly, with two more following, before the senior officer responded. Even then, he didn’t really answer.

  “Baker, take your unit and check the street,” he shouted over his shoulder.

  The remaining four officers trotted back down the steps and fanned out in front of the house. After much opening and closing of doors, and several shouts of “Clear”, the officers gathered in the foyer again.

  “Thank you for your cooperation, sir.” The older officer was less taciturn now. “The other unit hasn’t found anything in the street, and all of your neighbours seem to be fine. If you hear or see anything else, don’t hesitate to call again.”

  Anthony insisted on hailing a cab to take me home.

    

  Perhaps the scream had unsettled my subconscious, or maybe it was the hoagie Petra and I had shared while we watched Paranormal Activity for the five hundredth time, but sleep was not my friend that evening. I woke several times, shaking and sweating, gasping for air, and every time I closed my eyes again, the nightmare came back. It continued in my sleep, like a serial short film I was forced to not just watch, but live.

  The smells were real; earth, water, sweat…and blood.

  First he punched me, the huge shadowy man who laughed and cursed me in his deep, rough voice. The words were foreign to me, but the lunatic rage was plain. Then the three, vicious stabs to the guts. The flow of the blood down my sides as I lay on the ground, the sense of weakness and desperation to escape, the screams I could not force from my throat as his hands crushed my larynx.

  Then came the water, cold, so icy cold, I could hold my breath no longer, filling my mouth as he turned my face into the current, slicing down into my lungs as I sc
reamed my silent screams. I thought it was over then. When I woke, shaking and sweating, grateful to realize that the myth about dying for real when you perish in a dream, was just that—a myth.

  It wasn’t over, though. Not by far. When I finally succumbed to the exhaustion again, I had to lay immobile while he mutilated my body—my strangely male body— with a wicked-looking hunting knife. He grunted and cursed while he broke bones and severed joints, first the extremities, and then my head.

  I saw his face, then, as he propped my head up to witness the final atrocities. He removed my heart, squeezing it in his hand like a sponge until the blood barely trickled between his fingers. He grinned as he worked, a malicious, gratified leer worthy of the coldest serial murderer. Each rib was removed, scraped clean, rinsed in the river and then stacked neatly on the bank. The flesh he dumped into the river, the stripped bones, he carried under a nearby bridge where the ground was soft, and dug a hole with his hands. All of the bones went into the hole, one by one, as he muttered to himself.

  At last, he turned his attention back to my head. He picked it up and looked deeply into my eyes, the madness fading now, but not the anger. He spoke some more words I didn’t understand, and yet I knew that he was berating me for something. It didn’t matter what, because a moment later, he set my head on a large stone, picked up another and swung.

  I woke again, screaming this time, and Petra rushed into my room. I tried to tell her all of the nightmares, in order, but they were already beginning to slip away. All that remained were the terror, the pain, the fear; the sense of helpless paralysis and impending doom.

  They came back every night after, always exactly the same. I began fighting sleep. Soon, I simply couldn’t sleep. After the first week, I had to request a leave of absence. The exhaustion was consuming, the sleep medication from the doctor, debilitating. I had no energy or focus to play. Depression settled like a heavy, black cloak on my shoulders, and the helplessness stretched into the infinite. It seemed inevitable that I had ruined my probationary term, and any chance at tenure. I swore off horror movies and hoagies forever.

  At the very depths of my pit of despair, the jangling of the phone was a physical blow. It turned out to be more of a mental blow, as it propelled me to action.

    

  “So you’re just going to fly off to Germany, to visit some scientist you’ve never met before?” Petra was staring at me with a combination of worry and exasperation.

  “Yep.”

  “Wow.” Her shoulders drooped as she slouched back into the corner of the sofa. “And you call me impulsive.”

  “I can’t explain it. I just have to go.”

  “Fine, but don’t expect me to dust all your other creepery. I’ll do the animal stuff, but if I’m not sure, I’m not touching it.”

  I laughed. “You won’t have to touch any of it. I’m taking my entire collection with me. Mister von der Meier is eager to see every piece I own.”

  Her sigh was mostly relief.

    

  Graf Tomas von der Meier was every inch the average looking, blue-eyed, dark-haired, middle-aged guy, who could hail from nearly anywhere on the planet, though the Graf in his name declared him a member of the nobility. It was only when he set to work on my collection that he became animated, like someone had suddenly found his electrical switch, and flipped it on.

  With my permission, he separated my instruments into classifications according to their constructed materials. I was disappointed to learn that I’d been misled about some of the more expensive pieces. It wouldn’t be easy to inform Petra that we had far more human bones in the house than we’d suspected.

  When he had all but the pan-flute in their groupings, he held it up to the sunlight pouring in the windows. He’d been fascinated by the flute alone, but the fact that it would play for no one else whipped him into an eagerness akin to a child set loose in a toy store.

  “Now where do you belong, mein freund? Tell me all of your secrets,” he demanded as if it could simply answer all of our questions, right then.

  Tomas and his wife, Jan, hosted me in their home, while he ran his various tests. By some miracle, I’d left the nightmares behind in America. Within a few days, I was feeling much more like myself, enough to begin to worry about the expense of this whole venture.

  “Ach!” Tomas dismissed my concern with a flick of a hand. “I cannot charge you for this honour. Besides, we are cousins, of a sort, and I cannot charge family for satisfying my curiosity.”

  It turned out that Jan was an avid amateur genealogist, and she had traced my ancestry to a common root, many generations back. The von der Meiers took such things very seriously. It didn’t mean so much to me—until the results of the tests revealed another, more disturbing link.

    

  “You must play it for me!” Tomas demanded, a bit of lunatic light flashing in his eyes.

  I thought to play Scarborough Fair. From the first exhale, I realized I was playing Bridge Over Troubled Water, instead. I closed my eyes as I played, and Tomas sang some words in German that I assumed were the translated lyrics—until I opened my eyes.

  Tomas was sitting on the floor, his eyes larger than a frightened doe, and his hands over his mouth as tears streamed down his face. He lowered his hands and his mouth opened and closed several times without forming any words or sound.

  “Tomas?” I asked, frightened by the balance of horror and joy in his expression.

  “Es singt! It sings!” he finally managed to shout.

  He leapt to his feet, and snatched the flute from my hands. Rushing over to his desk, he grabbed a handful of papers and waves them at me like a victory flag.

  “Der Singende Knochen! You have found The Singing Bones! Do you know what this means?” He was practically screaming.

  Jan appeared in the doorway, one hand over her mouth and the other over her heart.

  “No. I don’t know what any of it means!”

  Jan came over to sit in the chair Tomas had vacated. She smiled at me shyly, took both of my hands in hers and began to speak in careful English.

  “You have found something magical and tragic, Cynthia. If you will listen with an open heart, I will tell you the story of it.”

  I could only nod my consent, and she began.

    

  “Many hundreds of years ago, when Germany was a feudal society, there was a King, Konig Berahthram, whose lands were ravaged by a wild boar. The boar had killed many men, and nearly killed the king himself. Believing that he would die from his wounds, and only having a daughter to succeed him, he promised her hand to any lord who could bring him the corpse of the boar.

  “There was a…” she struggled for the English word, “a Duke, Herzon von Fulda, with two sons. The eldest, Emelrich, wanted the crown for himself, even knowing that the younger brother, Ortwin, truly loved the girl. They set off together to find the boar, but fell to arguing about who would get the girl. Ortwin wanted to take the corpse together and allow the princess to choose, but Emelrich would not agree. Finally, they chose to hunt separately and let destiny decide for them. Ortwin went straight into the forest, determined to win, but Emelrich stopped at a drinking house, to find his courage at the bottom of a mug.

  “Just before he entered the forest, Ortwin saw a tiny man sitting on a rock, weeping. He asked the little man what his trouble was, and the man said he wept for the fate of the kingdom.

  “When the little man learned that Ortwin sought to win the boar, the princess, and the kingdom, he danced for joy. Then he gave Ortwin a spear, long and strong.

  “”Keep the spear in your hands before you,” the dwarf said, “and let no one see your back until you’ve claimed your prize.’

  “Ortwin tried to thank the man, but he vanished the moment the young noble touched the spear. It wasn’t long until he found the boar. The beast charged the man, but Ortwin remembered the words of his benefactor and kept the spear in front of him. The boar impa
led itself on the spear.

  “With the boar bled and hung around his neck, Ortwin trudged back toward the castle. He met his brother along the way, and remembering the little man’s warning, he decided that having Emerlich at his side would be prudent.

  “As they walked, the elder brother became more and more jealous. When they came to a narrow bridge, Emerlich insisted that Ortwin go first, so he could watch his younger brother’s back.”

  “But the warning was to let no one see his back!” I interrupted.

  As Jan nodded, my heart began to pound and my stomach to fold in upon itself. My chest constricted, making it hard to draw a breath.

  “Emerlich attacked his brother!” I hissed. “He hit him, and then stabbed him with the spear.”

  Jan and Tomas stared at me in growing horror as I detailed the rest of my nightmares, but I could sense no disbelief.

  When I had finished, Tomas pressed one hand to his chest, as if to keep his heart in place. Jan shuddered, one great physical motion that ran like a wave from her head to her feet.

  “Emerlich took the boar to the konig and wed his daughter, becoming next in line for the throne. He told everyone that the boar must have killed Ortwin, as he had found it covered in blood already. For many years, the people believed him.

  “To Emerlich’s dismay, Konig Berahthram recovered from his wounds. Emerlich chafed at having to wait for his kingdom, but he played the dutiful son-in-law. His own sons grew. One would be Konig after Emerlich, the second would be his…” she groped for the right word, “his chamberlain. The youngest boy, being a simpler man, became a musicker…a minstrel, and traveled the world.

  “One day, when the youngest boy, Chlodovech, was returning home for a visit, he was crossing a bridge, and saw something gleaming white in the water below. He climbed down the bank to the stream, where he found seven bones.