Shadow Music

by Elisabeth Rose

  “The Golden Dawn was around at the turn of the twentieth century. There was a lot of interest in that sort of thing then apparently. What we call New Age stuff now. Piers must have been one of them.” Nina stared at the computer screen trying to make sense of this new information.

  Martin said, “You know what, Nina? Piers was seriously trying to raise Mira from the dead.”

  Nina looked around at the other people in the library. Everyone appeared normal as far as she could tell. No members of weird cults wearing peculiar robes, no satanic priests or priestesses. Perhaps that elderly grey-haired lady was a witch borrowing fiction from the large print section, or those teenage girls reading magazines were vampires? That man at the next computer looked decidedly odd—definitely a being from another planet checking out the local culture.

  She returned her attention to Martin. He appeared quite normal as well—a neatly attired, thirty-something, good-looking Englishman, slightly pink-skinned from the sun, sitting next to her in a public library looking at a computer screen.

  “You’ve got to be kidding.” Loudly, earning a frown from the alien.

  “Well, it explains what we’re hearing, doesn’t it?” Martin whispered.

  “Does it? It doesn’t explain why we’re hearing them. Not to me anyway.” She shoved back her chair and stood up. “I’ve got to get back to work.”

  “I’ll stay here,” said Martin. “It’s obvious. Piers and Jasper and Michael were involved with the Golden Dawn group and tried to resurrect Mira after she died. Don’t you see? We’re getting some kind of psychic fallout from their experiment.”

  “But it’s impossible! Once you’re dead you’re dead.” That got the alien’s attention. He frowned and shook his head.

  Martin shifted to her chair and scrolled down to read further, intently absorbing the words on the screen.

  She lowered her voice. “How could they think they could do that?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll read up on them and report to you later.” Martin glanced at her and grinned. “Meet you same time, same place this evening?”

  He suddenly looked boyish and vulnerable in his enthusiasm, like Julian or Dick from the Famous Five off another quest. Nina managed a feeble smile.

  “All right. See you later.” She turned and left the library, stepping from the refrigerator straight into the oven. Large billowy clouds crowded the sky to the west and a hot wind had picked up. Perfect bushfire weather. Nina put her sunglasses on and strode toward the shop.

  Piers trying to raise Mira from the dead? Totally mad. Piers must have been a lunatic. But he wasn’t a lunatic, he was strong and passionate and sensitive and a wonderful violinist. The melody swirled in her head. Piers’ version not hers. The more she thought about what Martin had said the more furious she became. No wonder Jasper was reluctant—he must have known Piers was obsessed with the woman. Perhaps he didn’t want to have anything to do with resurrecting her because she was a bitch, a slut. Mira must have been some female to have enthralled Piers that way. A real femme fatale. He wasn’t the sort of man to fall for a weak, spineless girl. She probably seduced him. Either that or kept him panting. Men were incredibly weak where sex was concerned.

  Nina stopped abruptly, aghast at the vicious line her thoughts had taken. Why was she so angry? What on earth was going on? The hot sun beat down on her head relentlessly. Was it frying her brain? She was consumed with jealousy of a dead woman she knew nothing about and a spirit who had loved her. A spirit she was in love with? A flash from the dreams appeared before her eyes. His face, so handsome and intense, his eyes looking deeply into hers, his voice saying, “Do this for me. Only you. You are mine.” His hand reaching out to her.

  “Piers,” she murmured.

  Someone touched her arm.

  “Are you all right? You look a bit pale and wobbly. I shouldn’t stand in this sun if I were you.”

  Nina blinked. She’d stopped in the middle of the footpath. Frozen in place. A woman was peering at her through dark glasses.

  “Oh. Thanks. I’m fine.”

  But the melody remained in her head with Piers smiling at her as she walked on. He’d never been with her like this before, away from the music, away from home. He’d invaded her mind, overrun her thoughts—like a new lover.

  She worked through the afternoon on automatic pilot, Piers with her constantly while she served customers, checked stock, answered the phone. When Martin appeared ten minutes before closing and began browsing in the classical section, his appearance jolted her. She’d forgotten he was coming. He would interfere with Piers. He would come between them.

  Storm clouds had built up into a threatening purple black mass covering the sky like a shroud. Thunder, growling and rumbling, rolled around the heavens in the intense, oven-like stillness. The little ferry bounced toward the jetty on the choppy swell. The gangplank heaved up and down alarmingly as the passengers boarded and sought seats inside under cover. Half way across the harbour the rain came bucketing down, obliterating any view of the bridge and the approaching shoreline. The ferry eventually bumped its way into the Balmain East wharf. Martin slipped his arm around Nina and together under her red umbrella, they struggled up the hill and along the rain-washed streets for home.

  For the moment Piers was silent. Martin waited impatiently while Nina poked in her bag for the key.

  “Come on. We’ll drown at this rate.” Laughing, as he tried to shelter them from the slanting rain which lashed in under the overhang of the porch. Thunder roared all around now as the storm hit full force. Jagged bursts of lightning etched bright against the inky clouds. The door opened and they tumbled inside. Nina slammed it behind them with a whoosh of relief.

  ****

  She emerged from her bedroom in dry clothes and joined a similarly reclad Martin on the couch where he was sipping a cold beer. He’d poured her a glass of wine rather than offering her a stubbie the way Gordon would have. He handed it to her.

  “Tell me what you found.” She drew her feet up under her and faced him. Piers had gone. Somewhere as they ran in the rain he’d slipped away like the water sliding down the gutters.

  “There was a lot of stuff about the Golden Dawn. It started in the eighteen eighties in London and fizzled out in 1903 due to all sorts of things, not least of which was bickering amongst the members, or initiates they’re called. It seems there were quite a few breakaway groups. Some dabbled in spiritualism, which the original founders frowned upon. Yeats, the poet, was a member.” Martin paused. “There were quite a few artistic people drawn to their ideas. Well known, some of them. One of the things that one particular breakaway group was into was astral travelling and astral projection.”

  “But not bringing people back to life,” interjected Nina.

  “Not that I read but who knows? There were so many influences from so many different sources—Rosicrucians, ancient Egyptian, witchcraft, spiritualism, the occult, ancient Celtic beliefs, Christianity, druids, eastern mysticism, you name it…”

  “Piers didn’t manage to do it, did he? Or he wouldn’t still be trying.” Nina took a sip of wine and gave Martin a triumphant look as if to say, “answer that”.

  “I don’t think he is still trying. I think we’re getting a sort of late signal, like radio waves that are still going on endlessly into outer space. You know? They say if you go far enough and fast enough into deep space you could pick up the first TV broadcast as it happened the first time. Maybe they were into astral projection and he got stuck or something.”

  “So? Where does that leave us? Why the compulsion to keep playing?” How could Martin disregard the last eight insane months of his life? “You came half way round the world because of this, this…cosmic fallout, Martin. Remember? Have you forgotten what you told me just two nights ago?”

  Martin sighed and stared at his beer bottle. He bit his lip. “Maybe I just want to believe that’s what it is. Now that I’ve met you…you said yourself the compulsion isn’t as strong…maybe
it’s fading…I don’t know. It just seemed to make such perfect logical sense when I read that today, it all seemed to fit.”

  “But it doesn’t!” The anger shocked her, coming so abruptly and fiercely rising up like milk on the boil. “It doesn’t make any kind of sense. Don’t you want to play the three parts together? Don’t you want to finish this? You can’t just read that stuff and then say, ‘Oh, well that explains thatʼ. ˮ

  Martin stood up, face blank. “I don’t want to argue with you, Nina.” He walked across the room toward the hallway. “I’m going to do some yoga. I haven’t done anything since I arrived.”

  Nina’s anger faded as abruptly as it had risen. “I’m sorry. I’ll get dinner ready. It won’t take long.”

  “Give me forty minutes?” Distant and polite.

  “Of course.”

  Nina pottered about in the kitchen putting together spaghetti with meatballs and making Greek salad. The storm still raged but with no windows on either of the side walls, the occupants of the terraces were shut off from the full effects of the elements. She usually found the evidence of storms in her front and back gardens in the form of leaves and small branches and flattened flower beds. Sometimes if the wind blew the wrong way, water would come in under her back door onto the laundry floor.

  When the tomato sauce was bubbling, the meatballs were cooked and waiting, and the spaghetti had just entered the boiling water, Nina went to have a quick look out the backdoor. A small puddle had formed where she expected to find it but there didn’t seem to be more water coming in. The worst of the cloudburst was over and rain fell in a steady curtain. She took the mop from its place by the washing machine and began cleaning up, widening her sweeps, backing toward the kitchen as she went.

  “Nina. Nina…something just happened.” Hoarse and unnatural.

  “My God, Martin, you scared the hell out of me!” She dropped the mop and whipped around at the sound of his voice. But his face stunned her, drained the anger away in an instant, so pale and shocked. “What’s wrong?” An icy cold tremor ran down her spine.

  “Tell me.” She led him to the living room and sat him down while she ran to get a glass of water. Her hand trembled as she handed him the glass. He drank deeply and carefully placed the tumbler on the coffee table. His hand shook and that sent a frisson of fear through her.

  “Piers spoke to me.”

  Nina blinked. Was that all? “He speaks to me all the time.”

  “He told me I have to get the other parts,” went on Martin as if she hadn’t spoken. “Nina, I was meditating and he appeared quite clearly and spoke to me. He’s never done that before. He’s…extraordinary. So powerful…” His voice trailed off.

  And sexy and handsome and passionate. “I know.”

  Martin suddenly grasped her hands so tightly her fingers were crushed. “But Nina. When I opened my eyes he was still there…standing in the room.”

  “What?!”

  “He was standing there as clearly as you are sitting here with me.”

  Freefalling in the deep space of lunacy, Nina clutched at reality as it receded into the distance. “That’s impossible. He’s dead. We don’t even know if he ever even existed. It’s impossible.”

  “He was there. Only for a few seconds but he was there.” Adamant. Certain.

  Chapter Seven

  Nina stared at him as her world disintegrated. In all of this, Martin was her rock. She relied on his rational mind and his ability to guide her through this craziness without losing his way.

  “But you were saying you thought it was getting weaker, the radio signal thing.” Desperate for reassurance.

  “I haven’t done any meditation since I’ve been here.” That sounded more like the man she knew, already at work trying to figure out what had happened and why. “And I hadn’t ever heard the violin part before. That was in my head quite strongly when he appeared. Do you meditate?” he asked her suddenly.

  He relaxed his grip on her hands but didn’t let them go, just held her fingers, lightly now, comforting. Her heart rate slowed, mind began functioning.

  “I used to when I started Tai Chi but I got too scared to do it because Piers spoke to me…” She broke off and met Martin’s gaze. “What if we both did at the same time?”

  “I don’t know whether I’m up for that again tonight,” he said with a cautious smile. “Or any time soon.”

  “What was it, do you think? Did he look…I don’t know…real?”

  “He was real.”

  “No. Solid. Substantial or was he like an image, you know, in a movie?”

  “He looked…” Martin frowned. “Filmy, I suppose. Not completely solid but it wasn’t an after image, if that’s what you’re thinking. He was definitely there in the room.”

  “I believe you.” Nina squeezed his fingers. “It’s just so…” She cast about wildly for a big enough word to encompass the whole experience. There wasn’t one. “You conjured him up.”

  “He’s a very handsome man. Great charisma. Even in that brief flash, I could see that.”

  A little worm of jealousy squirmed in her belly that Piers had appeared to Martin instead of her. “I’d really like to see him,” she murmured. Not just in my dreams.

  “What I would really like is dinner. I’m starving and it smells really good.” He gave her a disarmingly boyish grin. The worm stopped squirming. Nina leant forward and gave him a light kiss on the newly shaved cheek.

  “Coming right up.” She jumped to her feet.

  As they ate, Nina said, “Did Piers tell you where to get the other parts?”

  Martin shook his head, mouth full of salad. He swallowed and began twirling the last of his spaghetti onto his fork.

  “George sent the other parts to New Orleans, remember?”

  “You’re not going there, are you?”

  “Why not? It’s no crazier than coming to Sydney. I’ve got an around the world ticket valid for a year. New Orleans rather appeals to me. The music will be great if nothing else.”

  She stared at him, appetite gone.

  “When would you go?”

  Martin eyed her speculatively before he answered. “Not until we’ve played with the cello part. I’m on a tourist visa so I’ll have to leave Australia in a few months anyway.”

  “Oh, of course.” She toyed with the food on her plate then got up to clear the table.

  “We don’t know what’s going to happen on Sunday.” Martin stood as well, picking up the empty salad bowl and taking it to the kitchen. He turned on the taps and began to fill the sink.

  “I thought you said you thought it was losing its power, whatever ‘it’ is.”

  He scrubbed their plates and stacked them on the draining rack. “And I thought you got mad at me because I said I knew what was happening. I was wrong. Whatever is happening isn’t getting weaker, it’s waiting for us to get stronger. Piers is trying to get us ready for something. Here, dry these dishes.”

  “Us?” Nina picked up the tea towel and stood twisting it between her fingers.

  “We seem to have been selected.”

  “But what for?” Her voice rose. It was all so damned frustrating.

  “I don’t know but I think we have to keep on until we find out. We can’t walk away from it, can we?” He placed the last saucepan on the rack.

  “Even if we want to.” Softly, voice barely working. “I’m scared, Martin.”

  “So am I after tonight. I’d got used to the other things but…seeing him. Wow. I don’t want to try that again. He gazed into the sink full of dirty water. “There’s one good thing, though.”

  “Is there?” She couldn’t see it.

  “We’re in this together, aren’t we?” He let the water out of the sink and dried his hands, turned to her.

  “But what happens to me when you leave?” Tears trembled on her eyelashes. She wiped them away quickly with the tea towel.

  “When we leave. When we leave. I’m not going anywhere without you.” Mart
in put his hand on her cheek, eyes locked on hers for a long moment. Then he bent his head and kissed her. He tasted of spaghetti sauce and salad dressing. Nina closed her eyes and let him deepen the kiss. His hand slid around the back of her neck and she wrapped her arms around his narrow body as he held her and part of her enjoyed the sensation while another part suddenly and powerfully wished she were being kissed by Piers.

  Martin disengaged himself gently and sighed. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “You have a boyfriend. You still…I shouldn’t kiss you.” His arms slid from her body.

  Her eyes opened slowly. Had he sensed what she was thinking? Impossible. Piers hadn’t intervened either which meant—what? He approved? He must because the last time she’d been kissed…Hazel eyes regarded her, waiting for a response. She didn’t want to hurt him, the last thing she wanted was some sort of barrier between them.

  “I don’t have a boyfriend and I didn’t mind.”

  “No, but it’s not quite the same thing as…well…you don’t…” He trailed off in confusion.

  “I hadn’t thought of you in that way before, Martin, that’s all.” The wrong thing to say. As soon as she said it she knew, but she couldn’t mention Piers, even to Martin, especially to Martin. Not now if that’s how he felt.

  He turned away into the living room and flopped onto the couch. “Exactly! That’s why, Nina. Just leave it. I’m sorry. I won’t kiss you again.”

  “What, never?” She strode across and sat next to him. “Isn’t that a bit extreme?”

  He glanced at her and she tried to hide the grin but couldn’t. He smiled and then his expression changed as he reached for her hand and played with her fingers as he spoke.

  “I always rush into relationships and then end up stuffing them up somehow. I don’t want that to happen with you.” His tone changed, more businesslike. “Anyway, forget it, we’ve other things to sort out.”

  “New Orleans?” Nina sat up straighter. “Are you seriously going to go?”

  He nodded. “Why not? But you’d have to come too. I don’t think I could handle it on my own any more. Could you?”