The Haunts & Horrors Megapack: 31 Modern & Classic Stories

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  “No problem. You’ve had a hard day. You’re allowed to blow off a little steam.” He watched her while she got down the cannister of tea. “Do you think you could use a day off?”

  “No,” she said. “Why?”

  Faster shrugged. “I just thought it might be easier to let Warren do whatever it is he intends to do while you’re out, is all.”

  “You might be right about that,” she said after a moment. “But I think I should stay around. I’m responsible for the instrument, and who knows what Doctor Warren might do if he’s left to his own devices.”

  “Okay. I’ll let Shotwell know and we’ll set the tests up,” said Faster. “How soon would you like it?”

  “I don’t like it at all,” said Vanessa. “But do as you think best.” She went to empty the water from her teapot, then set the kettle boiling again as she loaded in two measures of Dragonwell leaves. “Just give me a couple days’ warning.”

  “Will do,” Faster promised, pledging with his glass to make his point as emphatically as he could.

  * * * *

  Cummings Hall was small enough to be called “intimate” by critics, seating five hundred twenty-four, all with clear sight of the stage. The Dziwny forte-piano had been put on the broad apron, and the tuner was finishing up his work as Vanessa arrived to practice.

  “Looks good,” said the tuner, removing his damping felts and giving the keys a cursory run. “Sounds good, too.”

  “You’ll be staying here, to retune?” Vanessa asked.

  “That’s the deal,” said the tuner. “I’ll be in the house-manager’s office, if you need me. I want to catch the game, if I can, while I have my lunch.” He strolled away, his attention no longer on the instrument.

  Vanessa went over to the forte-piano and sat down, remaining still for a short while, letting the place and its ambience sink into her. She frowned as she thought about Professor Warren, who would arrive in an hour. The last thing she wanted was a publicity-seeking loony poking around the forte-piano, but Shotwell had agreed, so she had to make the best of it. Flexing her hands, she began a few Czerny exercises, her fingers moving automatically with the familiar cadences. Satisfied, she took a little time to collect her thoughts, and then began to play. The Six Fugues on Themes of Handel came more easily than she would have supposed. Fugues One and Two came and went, and Three began with a simple theme in G-minor, and Vanessa let the music carry her. The hall whispered, and the forte-piano rang, a thrilling sound that seemed to fill the space.

  By the Fourth fugue, she was wonderfully lost in the music, caught up in Dwizny’s vision so completely that she was no longer aware of Cummings Hall, but felt as if she were at Lowenhoff, all those decades ago, caught up in a passion that had no place to go but into the notes being played. The fugue unwound elegantly, the melody moving from bass to treble, then flitted through the mid-range only to emerge in the treble again in a dazzling display of talent and training. Starting the Fifth fugue, Vanessa was unaware that she was being watched. Her hands played as if the movements were a martial art and she its greatest exponent. The sound came out flawlessly, the repeated musical images piled one atop another into an astonishing edifice of patterned tones. Without pause, she launched into the Sixth fugue, playing brilliantly until she suddenly stopped in the middle of a thematic statement, as if she had lost track of the music.

  Trembling, she moved back on the bench and sat there, dazed and breathing hard. Her face was pale. She began to rub her palms on her skirt, nervously blinking as if she had finally become aware of her surroundings. Abruptly, she stood up and walked a half-dozen steps away from the instrument.

  “Why did you stop?” asked an unknown voice from the middle of the empty hall.

  Surprised, Vanessa looked up. “Who’s there?” she demanded sharply.

  “Christopher Warren. I was told you’d be expecting me,” came the answer.

  “Professor Warren,” she said with a hint of distaste. “I didn’t expect you so early.”

  “It’s after twelve,” he said, leaving his seat and coming forward.

  “I must have lost track of the time,” said Vanessa, only glancing in his direction.

  “The way you were playing, I’m not astounded to hear you say so.” He came up to the apron and held up his hand to her. “It’s very impressive.”

  “It’s a fine instrument,” said Vanessa, bending down briefly to take his hand. “I should probably get the tuner back here. The pitch is beginning to slip.” She started away from him toward the prompt-side wing.

  “Would you rather I go? I have some equipment to bring in, and I don’t want to disturb you.” Warren watched her pause. “It’s no trouble.”

  “All right. I’ll just sit down for a bit, get some water.” She resumed walking.

  “Why did you stop where you did?” Warren called after her.

  Vanessa halted. “Did I stop?” She seemed confused. “I guess it was the pitch going. It felt like I was finished.” Her frown became a glower. “I don’t leave music unfinished.”

  “Well, if the pitch wasn’t right,” said Warren as he cut through a row of seats toward the side door that led to the offices of the hall, “I can see how you’d stop.”

  Vanessa nodded, but went back to the forte-piano, and, after a long moment, sat down and began the Sixth fugue again, concentrating on the music, doing her best to ignore the slight shift in pitch in the strings. “That’s the trouble,” she said. “It needs tuning.” She continued on through the fugue, paying close attention to its tone and the pacing of the work. As she reached the extended passage for the left hand, she faltered. “Damn,” she said aloud, and began the left-hand passage again, a bit more slowly and deliberately. This time it worked, and she thundered on into the end, careening through the dizzying pyrotechnics with the verve of a race-car driver. “There,” she said as if to confirm her final repeated chords. When she was finished, she was a bit shaky; the beginnings of a headache buzzed behind her eyes and she pinched the bridge of her nose to stop it.

  “Brava!” called Warren from the side-door. “That was spectacular.”

  “Yeah. But the pitch is off,” said the tuner, who stood beside him, “still, the playing’s first rate.”

  “Thanks,” said Vanessa, moving away from the forte-piano. “The low E is really off.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” said the tuner, and brought his small case of tuning forks onto the stage. “Have to do this the old-fashioned way,” he said.

  “Good,” said Vanessa, and sought out the soothing darkness of the backstage area. She leaned against the wall and willed herself to relax, which left her jittery. What on earth had happened to her? she asked herself.

  “Ms Hylas, are you okay?” Warren asked her as he rolled a strange-looking, metal box on wheels, ornamented with dials and gauges up next to the stage-manager’s podium.

  She made herself straighten up. “Just a bit tired.”

  “There’s coffee in the house-manager’s office.” He studied her for a moment, then began setting up his equipment.

  “And it’s terrible,” she said, attempting levity. “But it’s hot.” She started toward the door that would lead to the hall to the offices.

  “You sure you’re all right?” Warren called after her, his question underscored by the tuner as he started his work.

  “Yes, thanks,” she said automatically, and wondered if she dared to eat anything. It might help her feel better, but it could make her feel worse. She was still debating this as she reached the house-manager’s office, where the odor of scorched coffee told her not to have any of it. She went to the drinking fountain and gulped down several mouthfuls, then wandered back toward the stage where the tuner was making progress on the forte-piano and Christopher Warren was busily setting up his display of machines.

  “Feeling better?” Warren called out cheerfully. “You look a bit less pasty.”

  “Thanks,” she said drily. “Rehearsing can take a lot out of me.
”

  “If it was just the rehearsing,” he said almost jauntily.

  “How do you mean?” Vanessa asked.

  “I’ll tell you after I’ve finished monitoring the rest of your rehearsal,” he said, merrily adjusting what appeared to be an oscilloscope.

  “All right,” she said, trying not to be too curt with him even though she resented his intrusion on her rehearsal time.

  “Just carry on as if I weren’t here,” he encouraged her. “You know how to do it.”

  “What makes you think so?” she could not stop herself from challenging.

  “Well, you certainly weren’t aware of me when I arrived,” he said blandly, his pleasant face showing no signs of sarcastic intent.

  “No, I wasn’t,” she allowed, and listened while the tuner finished his work.

  The Nursery Songs went well enough, their fancy ornaments and flourishes sounding impressive, as they were intended to be. When she was finished, she had the tuner come back again, before she started the Grand Toccata and Fugue on a Polish Folk Song. “If it isn’t slipping now, it will be before the piece is done,” she said with a wry smile. She turned to Warren. “Anything so far?”

  “I’m not certain,” he said from his place in the first row of the audience where he was staring at the screen of his laptop.

  Vanessa paced the apron, reviewing the piece she was about to rehearse in her mind. She paid little attention to her slight light-headedness, attributing it to her skipped lunch. As soon as the tuner relinquished the forte-piano to her, she sat down, ready to begin.

  “This is the piece he played when he—?” Warren asked, breaking her concentration.

  “Yes. He shot himself three-quarters of the way through the piece,” she said testily. “Anything else, or can I…” She gestured to the keyboard.

  “Go on,” he told her, his whole attention on the screen.

  The opening bars of the toccata went well, the pace a confident andante con moto. Vanessa let the steady four/four beat carry her along through the modulation from E-flat to G-flat, and back to E-flat again. She was part of the music now, like a raft on a river, riding the current. Gradually all sense of the hall and the strange monitors around her faded away and she seemed to be in the eerie splendor of Lowenhoff, lit by candles in chandeliers and sconces, with a select group gathered to listen to him play this newest piece he had composed, the piece that was dedicated to Maria-Antonia, Graffin von Firstengipfel, the woman to whom he was utterly devoted, and who could not express her love to him. The stage lights vanished, and the darkened concert hall was gone, and in its place was the ballroom of Lowenhoff, golden and glistening.

  The Graf sat bolt upright, listening in growing fury at the scandal this man had brought upon him and his family; Dziwny could see his disapproval in every line of his body. He knew this was the last concert he would ever give under von Firstengipfel’s patronage, but he would not accept the callous dismissal he had been given—that way lay ruin for him and a tarnished reputation for the Graffin. No, he would show the Graf what he thought of his arrogant termination with one far more damaging than anything the Graf had promised. The fugue began simply enough, and he played the octaves with deceptive ease, thinking of the song he had heard so many times in his childhood: Endless Love. The melody, plaintive and sweet, echoed from hand to hand, growing and enlarging in long cantabile passages that led to the astonishing fermata. He laid his left hand on the keys and began to play the long restatement of the fugue’s theme, while he reached for the pocket in his swallow-tail coat.

  Fumbling with her skirt on the piano bench, Vanessa was transfixed by Dziwny’s composition. Her face was without expression, and everything but her hands moved like a doll, stiffly and automatically. With a sudden cry of frustration, she rose from the bench, slapped the side of her head and collapsed, falling between the bench and the forte-piano as Warren sat all but mesmerized by what he saw on his screen.

  * * * *

  Faster was on one side of her and Warren on the other when Vanessa finally walked out of Cummings Hall some three hours later. “I still want you to see the doctor tomorrow,” Faster was scolding her. “I can’t have you fainting during a performance.”

  “Not to worry,” said Vanessa. She was feeling a bit embarrassed for putting these two men—and the tuner—through an hour of anxiety. “I’ll be fine.”

  “I want to be sure of that,” Faster said, then rounded on Warren as they reached the edge of the street. “What were you thinking, putting all that equipment around her? Didn’t it occur to you it might hurt her?”

  “How could it?” Warren asked as calmly as he was able.

  “I don’t know. It’s your equipment. You should know better than anyone what it’s apt to do.” Faster signaled for his town-car, and kept his hand protectively on Vanessa’s arm.

  “I don’t think it was his equipment,” said Vanessa, startling both men. “I think it was the forte-piano.”

  The two men stared at her with varying expressions of disbelief. Finally Faster spoke. “You sure you’re okay? That sounds a bit…nuts.”

  “To me, too,” she said, watching as his Lincoln pulled up to the curb. “But it happened before Professor Warren set up his monitors, only not so intensely.”

  “What happened?” Faster demanded, his patience finally failing him. “What are you talking about?”

  “About the fugues,” she said, and laughed sadly. “It set…I don’t know…something off. Something that the forte-piano is part of.” Although Faster opened the door for her, she didn’t get in immediately. “It’s still there, you know. It’s still at Lowenhoff, and it always will be.”

  “You mean the instrument?” Warren asked.

  “If that’s what it is,” said Vanessa as she allowed Faster to assist her into the town car. She stared straight ahead as Faster got in and they sped away, leaving Warren alone on the sidewalk.

  DEAD BABIES, by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Allie’s baby was coming, wasn’t any doubt of it as her water had broke, so I put her in the truck and jumped in myself. My hands was trembling so hard I could hardly turn the key, but I got it started somehow and backed it out the driveway so as not to take the time to turn it around, and I clipped one of the posts at the end of the driveway but I didn’t stop. I got us out on the road and put ’er in first and tore across the ford so fast the water was spraying twenty feet on each side.

  “Bill, take it easy,” Allie said as I upshifted. “Won’t do us no good to hurry if you put us in a ditch somewheres.”

  I saw that she was right, so I tried to slow down and watch the road as we passed Miller’s Grocery and turned onto the pavement, but every so often she’d breathe funny, give a little gasp or something, and every time she did that I’d look over at her and my foot would just tromp down a bit more on the gas.

  About halfway to town I remembered that I should’ve called the doctor and told him to meet us at the hospital in Lexington, but I wan’t about to go back to do that, and there weren’t exactly a lot of pay phones on Becket’s Fork Road, so I figured I’d stop by Doc Everett’s house in Dawsonville and tell him in person, as it wasn’t more than a mile or two out of our way.

  But by the time we hit the blinker at the south end of Main Street in Dawsonville Allie was gasping and sort of heaving up from the seat every minute or so, and I wasn’t any too sure we were going to make it to the hospital anyways—that was a good twenty-five miles yet, and the interstate didn’t cover but half of it. So when we stopped in front of the Everetts’ house I went around to her side and got her down out of the truck and I walked her up to the door of the house and rung the bell.

  A woman answered, and I asked her where the doc was, and she said, “Why, he’s still in bed.”

  It was gone seven by then, but some folks do sleep in late, so I didn’t wonder too much, I just asked, polite as I could, “Could you wake him, please? I think it’s an emergency.”

  “Of course,” she sai
d. “Wait right here.”

  And she closed the door.

  Allie sat down right there on the porch, gasping.

  A moment later the door opened again, and the woman said, “You just come right on in.” She showed us in and turned us sharp right in the foyer there, into a smallish room like an old-fashioned parlor, and sat us down on a fancy couch, then went to fetch the doctor. We sat there, and I noticed this weird nasty smell, and I hoped it was from the house, all the medicines and stuff, and not from something wrong with the baby.

  A minute later Doc Everett came in in his bathrobe with his doctor’s bag. He took one look at Allie and shooed the woman and me out and closed the door behind us.

  So there we were in the foyer, and I looked around and saw a telephone on a little table and a big fancy mirror on the wall, but there wasn’t nowhere to sit except maybe the stairs. There was a big sliding door across from that little parlor, and I sort of looked at it hopefully, I guess, because the woman looked at it, too, and said, “We can’t go in there, I’m afraid; the baby’s asleep and I don’t want to wake him.”

  Well, right then I wouldn’t have minded playing with a baby, what with our own about to be born by the look of it, but I didn’t want to be rude, and besides, the woman seemed a little on edge, sorta, so I didn’t say that. I said, “How old is he, Mrs. Everett?”

  “Oh, it’s Miss Everett,” she said, all flustered. “Laura Everett. I’m Doctor Everett’s sister.”

  “Bill Sellers,” I said, holding out a hand. I figured it might not be a real good idea to inquire as to just whose baby it was that was sleeping, if Miss Everett weren’t married, and besides, there was something about her made me think I didn’t want to have too much to do with her, so after we shook I just leaned against the wall a little and waited.

  I waited for what seemed like hours. We didn’t talk; Miss Everett seemed sort of caught up in herself, the way some people get, and not much interested in me, and I didn’t see any call to bother her.