The Symbiot
by Michel Weatherall
The Symbiot© Michel Weatherall 2015
All rights reserved
Cover Designed by Michel Weatherall
Published by Broken Keys Publishing
[email protected]
No part of this book may be used or reproduced, scanned, distributed in any printed or electronic form in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
Copies can be obtained by sending an email to [email protected]
Published March 2015
Third Printing
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the writer's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-0-9948189-0-4 (print)
ISBN: 978-0-9948189-1-1 (digital)
Printed and bound in Canada
Dedicated to influential women in my life:
Isabelle Weatherall,
Jackie Weatherall,
Jenny Hodgson,
and Francine Hodgson.
See the world through new eyes.
Everything is within reach.
Also by Michel Weatherall
A Dark Corner of My Soul
Necropolis
Necropolis: Book 3: Pharaoh
Necropolis Book 4: Hybrids
Necropolis Book 5: R'lyeh
Coming Soon:
The Refuse Chronicles
Chapter I: The Horror of Mackenzie Street: The Testimony of Lorne S. Gibbons
Sept. 29, 1987
I just finished smashing my grand piano to pieces.
As I sit here and write this narrative, I watch all of a lifetime of musical study and remnants of my piano burn in the fireplace.
You should note that parts of this narrative have been deliberately left out or obscured. Facts regarding certain places, names, and locations I simply refuse to release. It's terrible enough that I sought out and stumbled across this horror, let alone give directions to those foolish enough to attempt my act of arrogant stupidity.
But before I continue, allow me tell you about myself: I live in Montreal, I am a pressman by trade, and my name is Lorne S. Gibbons. My wife's name is Marie and we've been married for a little over five years now.
Music is, or was my passion. I am a very accomplished pianist. My knowledge and theory is contendable with some of the best professional musicians. It was always the fear of ridicule and failure that dissuaded me from entering that line of work. Thus I became a musician by hobby.
I could read any musical score at a glance. I learned to play virtually any piece on piano by ear or score. The mechanics of the instrument became second nature, it became inbred. I began to study more complex and ingenious composers' work: Haydn, Wagner, Schonberg, Palestrina, Stravinsky, Monteverdi, Brahms, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart… I learned and mastered their styles and techniques. I broke down their patterns, rhythms, and scales. Do not be mislead however. I could never create nor compose any semblance of even their simplest pieces. But I could understand them and play them forwards and back!
As horrible as it is to say, I became bored with the Masters. Their compositions are pure genius in their own rights but they all shared one simple, frustratingly common kinship: The eight-note octave. The three clefs. The rhythmic subdivisions of equal halves and halves of halves and quarters of halves and so forth. Tones and semi-tones, whole and half steps, black and white keys. The system was always the same.
I did experiment with the "Great Stave" of eleven, not five, lines. However, this is still not foreign to contemporary musical theory. It is alien and bizarre in appearance due to its redundancy. In short, the "Great Stave" is all three clefs - treble, alto, and bass - combined to display pitch zones and clef integration diagrammatically. It is not used due to the confusion it creates in combining all three clefs (Seven clefs if you count soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, and baritone.)
I transcribed certain pieces onto the "Great Stave" for its visual appearance but this could only impress my most musically ignorant associates. Eventually I studied certain Arabic musics. Generally it was the same with the exception of a further division of tones and semi-tones. While our system holds two semi-tones to a whole tone - black and white keys - certain Arabic theory hold four 'quad-tones' to one whole tone. These 'quad-tones' do not appear on pianos. If they did they'd be a key between the black and white keys.
Search and research as I might, I could find nothing new. I spent years frustrated and bitter that I could not learn more. I could find no one that could show me knowledge beyond our current spectrum of musical theory. I refused to believe that out of all the millennia of our race's existence that not one single individual hadn't explored and discovered a revolutionary theory beyond contemporary understanding! It was simply impossible! I refused to believe it.
Why are the 'visual sciences' preferable over the 'audio sciences'? When man first shone light through a prism he discovered the visual spectrum. But he didn't stop there did he? No. He looked further, beyond the seven colours and their infinite shades in between. He searched and discovered gamma rays, X-rays, ultraviolet rays, infrared rays, and even radio waves. What if man was simply content with the visual spectrum? Where would we be now? Imagine a world without radio waves. Man would have been an idiot to have called it quits at the visual light spectrum.
But enough said about the 'visual sciences'. What about the 'audio sciences'? Mankind discovers rhythm and pitch and calls it music. He analyzes it. Do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do; He calls this an octave and says it repeats itself attaining one octave higher that the last. He learns to write sounds and music and rhythm on paper and… what? Calls it quits! He says that's it. That's all there is! Although I freely admit that I cannot imagine exactly what could be beyond our current knowledge in music, nor where or how it could fit within our structure, I do however believe it exists. Someone must look further and discover it. It was this that I was longing for. It was someone with a truly incomprehensible genius that I sought after.
Eventually I heard of Erich Zann. I had hoped to research his work but found very little trace of him. I began a painstakingly long (indeed, years!) search and study into what little information there was available on Erich Zann. For all my troubles I was not well rewarded. I found out this of the man:
He was German, played the viol and was mute. 'Great!' I thought 'Not only does he speak a language that I don't but he doesn't speak at all!' I decided that during my further studies in hopes of finding Mr. Zann's current residence that I would learn to speak the German language. I purchased a cheap and cheesy copy of "You Too Can Speak German" handbook. I got as far as Ich heisse…, and ja, nein, wo ist, wo sind, and my crowning achievement Warten sie auf mich bei der shranke. ("Wait for me at the gate"). Like I'd ever use it.
It was at that time that I received my first correspondence from the German Embassy… much to my disappointment. Not only did Erich Zann speak a foreign language and was mute but he was also quite dead. Although his body was never found and he was listed as missing, I believe him to be dead. He would be past his one-hundred-and-twenties if he were still alive. But, however to my good fortune (so I thought) he had a son, Otto, who was a violinist and a granddaughter, Nadia. Otto Zann, his son, was now an old man of ninety-one years living in an old age home ('asylum' was what the letter said but I attributed it to a mistaken translation) in Heidelberg, Germany. His daughter, Erich Zann's granddaughter, Nadia de LaFountaine (apparently she adopted her mother's maiden name for unknown reasons) was alive and residing in Oxford, England. Her addr
ess was 301 Apt. N, Mackenzie Street. The fifty-six year old was still an active member of the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra.
I wrote letters to her explaining my love of music and of my disenchantment and lack of inspiration in the Western World. I eventually asked for her tutelage.
When I received her letters she was enthusiastic and more than happy to share her knowledge and experience and not at all suspicious. She never asked "why me?" But then again, all musicians have their egos.
When I asked her what instrument she played, wouldn't you know it, she played the viola. But music is music, or so I thought. This was when my plans suffered august termination. With bills to be paid and a mortgage to boot, I could not raise enough money for an extended trip to England, let alone getting any reasonable length of time off from work.
Time went by and I gave up on going to visit Nadia de LaFountaine in England until the advent of Marie and my fifth wedding anniversary. Apparently, Marie had mentioned to her parents of my desire to go to England (bless her loving little soul - where ever it may now be). Her parents had offered, for our anniversary present, for the four of us, Marie, myself, Henri, and Veronica, to go to England for a full month. Arrangements had already been made for a temporary replacement for me at work as well. (Her parents are quite well off.)
Well, you can imagine my surprise and joy. My wife and I accepted and I immediately wrote to Nadia of our arrival. My goals and ambitions were finally within arms reach. Now hopefully Nadia had some knowledge of her grandfather's theories and could teach me in the style and technique of what I've grown to call Zannianism. Now I call it madness.
I had asked her about Erich Zann's music and my desire to learn it. Between receiving my final letter and my actual arrival she had found some old weathered moth-eaten notebooks of Erich Zann's in the German language and did a good deal of reading. When I arrived in Oxford she was more than ready to explore this new and undiscovered universe of musical theory with me.
* * *
When we arrived, Nadia met us at the airport. For a woman of fifty-six she appeared quite younger. Her eyes were green and sharp and crisp as a winter breeze. They reflected great intelligence and enormous understanding. The wrinkles at their corners and the slightly drooping bags under them told of endless nights of study and of a patience of an artist. Her expression was that of passion incarnate. Her mouth, once full lipped in youth, was now pursed and dignified. Her lips had a gentle and sensuous curve to them, yet with the distinct solidity of a disciplinarian when needed. There was a slight twist on the ends of her mouth that, if one looked hard enough, gave her the look of a wanton.
She was old, it was obvious, but her youth, her love of life, her passion if you wish, shone through and made her radiantly beautiful. Her hair was auburn streaked through with gray. She wore it in a long French braid down her back. It had the appearance of silk and shimmered with red hi-lights in the sun. When she turned her head her hair would be tossed playfully to and fro across her back. I could imagine the braid falling loose and cascading over her face and shoulders.
But most of all I remember her scent. Haunting it was, especially for a woman her age. She smelled of rose-petals, which isn't particularly odd, but there was an omnipresent scent of something else. It was never overpowering and barely perceptible. It was the faint scent of warm moist sexuality. It was inviting, yet darkly sensual - seductive. It gave Nadia an air of duality. Outwardly she appeared prim and proper yet beneath this phantasm lurked an exotic and sultry woman.
I couldn't help but notice the movements of her hips and legs beneath the ankle-length gown she wore. The smooth curves of her hips swaying sensually as she walked, but more noticeable was the way her inner thighs seemed to grind. All of these points coped with her age, and my age, made me feel decadent and shameful. I had envisioned her as a teacher, a Master, my tutor. We had nothing in common other than music and we weren't on any sort of equal levels. But there was always a silent unspoken understanding of a sexual desire between us, making us equal on one level only. This was greatly arousing and disturbing to me at the same time.
* * *
After the airport we took a taxi to our hotel, registered, and settled in. Nadia invited us to her flat for dinner.
Nadia's flat was on the fourth, and upper-most floor of the building. She had apartment N which was the corner unit, which provided windowed views down both intersecting streets. The flat was more of a small warehouse or studio apartment. It was one spacious, hi-ceiling room with wood-finished concrete support columns every ten feet or so. The flat had its own plumbing and its own crude electrical wiring. Her stove was gas-powered and of such an old model as to need matches to ignite the flame.
In the studio apartment's southwest corner, the corner facing the intersection and flanked by the two windowed walls, stood an antique upright piano. This area of the apartment had a small area rug, a pair of stools, shelves with various books and staved musical sheets, an old couch, a papasan, and a viola case on the piano's top.
The southeast end of the flat was rugged with a large redwood dining table, which could accommodate up to eight people with ease.
Just a little off centre of the eastern wall the floor became tiled and there her kitchen and pantry stood.
To the northwestern corner was Nadia's 'bedroom', if you could call it that. A large hinged multifaceted partition hid most of it from view. However the foot of her bed and an open-door shrank made of oak (teak, my father-in-law corrected) revealed a wardrobe of silks and satins; white lace lingerie with an assortment of silk stockings, and charmeuses.
In the centre of the flat was yet another area rug and what would have been the common, or living room if it were an actual room. It had a chesterfield, a loveseat, and a chair surrounding a coffee table of an oriental, glass-topped basso-rilievo design.
Nadia de LaFountaine was a philharmonic but obviously made good her passions. It showed in her furnishings.
My mother-in-law, Veronica, being some ten odd years Nadia's junior offered to help prepare the meal and was on one occasion scolded by Nadia with "Don't let the gas run dear, light it quickly!" when she started the stove-burners.
We ate, sat in the living 'room' and conversed over tea. Nadia told me she had translated her grandfather's German musical-theory notes and wanted to set a date for us to begin.
Tomorrow would do fine. I would be dropped off here while the rest of my family toured England's pubs, taverns and nightlife.
* * *
The sky was perfectly clear and every star conceivable shone! Nadia and I sat side by side at the piano in the dark watching the night sky. It was summer and particularly hot and humid. Although her apartment had air conditioning, it was off and the windows open for a better view of the constellations. She pointed out Aldebaran, Betegeuse, Gemini, Perseus, and many other names I cannot now recall. All the while I was constantly aware of her subtle, sultry scent beneath the perfumed mask of rose-petals. The hot, sweet and sticky humidity enhanced it and made it cogent. It was palatable. It made my bowels and loins crawl and my jaw muscle tingle and my mouth salivate. It was difficult to concentrate. I felt her hot voluptuous hip brush mine and thought of her groin-grinding strut. I broke the tortuous ecstasy by saying, "It's hot. Shall we tackle the music of Erich Zann?"
She gave me a long carnal look of acknowledgment and agreed with an ever so slight nod. I allowed Nadia to remain seated as I shut the windows and engaged the air conditioner. My legs felt feeble and my knees were wobbly. By the time I returned to the piano bench I had regained my composure and calmed my agitated nerves.
As I took my seat beside Nadia she lit one single candle and presented the translated notes of Erich Zann. On this first night of study we had accomplished one fact. Erich Zann's music was not intended for the piano. It required an instrument capable of sustaining a note nearly indefinitely. It was written in Arco, for the violin. Therefore I handed the honour of the performance to Nadia and her viola. I resigned to si
mply listening, helping when I could and learning Zann's theory.
The second night: We had accurately transcribed the music of Erich Zann but Nadia found great difficulty in properly performing it. The style and technique required extremely dexterous and articulate movements of precise and exacting rhythm. It was like nothing I've ever seen or heard before. There were alien scales undreamed of which demanded nearly all of Nadia's free fingers active. It was as if the music was not intended for the human-form to reproduce. But Nadia was extraordinary and relentless. She tore through strange scales and ranges always missing this or that nameless note or stumbling over some obscure bridge or missing a vital sforzando.
The Symbiot Page 1