Category: Story

“You broke something in me. Like a gear in a music box. Now I’m all sour notes and noise. That’s a metaphor, yes. But it has also manifested itself in my professional life.”

He had asked her to meet him here: the place where they had first met. It had been almost three years to the day since they had cut ties. Almost three years since that last argument.

“You see, when you abandoned me, people said that my motivation to create beauty did the same.”

Here, at the Claymore Inn, was where she had first seen him play. His fingers moving as if they had no physical limits; as if they traveled inter-dimensionally across the planes of the keys.

He had played many pianos in his time, but the grand piano at the Claymore had always held a strange place in his heart, and in their past discussions. And a strange artifact, it was. She recalled that he had given her an expose on its history one evening, and that it had been a dark one; though, those details were lost to her now.

“I still perform here on Wednesday nights. I’m sure you recall my fondness for the particular instrument that resides in this institution? I have practiced many nights on it, with the permission of the owner. In fact, you’ll be fortunate enough to see and hear me play it once more if you stick around a while after we are done here. You see, they have low expectations here. I can meet those. What I can no longer do is play to the fancies of the parties I was gathering attention from before your departure from my life.”

He had always spoken like this. It was one of the qualities he possessed that had piqued her interest in him. He was sophisticated in dress, profession, and speech. And, at the time, he had backed that up with his more than sufficient income. She had never been with him for the money, but it had definitely never hurt the situation.

“The Benjamin Brothers dropped me from their lineup. They no longer felt I was contributing to their ventures, and that my creativity had waned since our ‘break up’ (if that’s what one can even call it).”

She was beginning to wonder why she was here. Had he invited her here to break her down? To finally capture some stray feeling of revenge against her that had eluded him thus far? She, of course, felt justified in her reasons for having ended their relationship. His addiction to practicing almost ceaselessly on his grand piano late into every night. His ravings about believing that music held some unnatural power – some ancient mystery that would be unveiled to the musicians that truly mastered their art. That he was increasingly nearing that mastery himself, and that very soon he would have within his grasp a power unimaginable. The list went on. Despite her urgings for him to seek something as basic as weekly visits with a counselor, he had continued descending into what she had seen as nothing shy of madness. He had offered her no reason to stay. He no longer made her life better, but instead more difficult – something her own personal history had accomplished enough already.

“John, I –”

“Jenny, I am speaking. Does one shout over a symphony? Does one scribble over a painting?”

And that, right there, was another entry on the list of reasons she had left him.

“The Benjamin Brothers were, of course, as wrong as they were cruel. Rather than being the death of my genius – that period of time embodied the pangs that led to the birth of my true calling. While you were ‘moving on’ from me, I continued learning, improving my technique, and edging ever closer to the secrets that you were so convinced were a figment of my imagination. I found those secrets to lie outside the tonality and pitch that the human ear commonly finds pleasing. Only through intense concentration can one find the beauty and power in the atonal. So, in a way, you were correct. In the opinion of the common man, I have ‘gone crazy’. My art is now dissonant and strange. However, I believe that this sacrifice was worth it. Losing you was truly an unforeseen blessing. My fingers now hum with an electric energy upon the keys!”

He really was delusional. She felt somewhat empathetic, wanting to believe that her leaving hadn’t played a role in his continued downward spiral, but not quite being able to convince herself that was true.

“And so, here we are. I wanted to invite you here to thank you. To let you know that I am grateful for your invaluable contribution to my success. Without your having been the catalyst of my plunge into despair, I would have never discovered these secrets. I would have continued to be distracted by the bands and clubs that sought my skills, wasting the time I could have been spending on what should always have been my sole focus.”

What was he going on about? Did he actually believe he had done it? That he had discovered some arcane, mystical art through his music?

He glanced at the black watch on his wrist, and began to remove it.

“Well, would you look at the time? I’m glad that I was able to fully thank you before I go on tonight. I thought it might be my last opportunity to do so. I apologize if I seemed inconsiderate by interrupting you earlier. I simply knew there was so much I had to tell you before 7:15 came around, and you arrived late to our meeting as per usual. Now, I must beg your pardon. The music awaits!”

With that, he rose from his chair, dropped the watch into his pocket, and walked towards the small platform in the middle of the dining area. On it, sat the grand piano that he had always loved. It was painted the darkest, purest black. There was no reflection off the paint; no glare from the bright lights that illuminated its off-white keys from above. She tried once more to remember the details that he had shared with her concerning its history that night, long ago; but all she could summon was the vague, uneasy feeling that he had told her more than she cared to recall.

As he sat on the bench, she grew increasingly uneasy. She couldn’t explain it. She had no reason to feel this anxiety, having had seen him play his music on this instrument dozens of times before. Yet, somehow, she felt in her gut that tonight was different. The squeezing fist in her stomach told her that he hadn’t simply invited her here to “thank” her this evening. He had wanted her to observe something more; something he was proud of.

Then, he began. His fingers danced across the keys effortlessly, just like she remembered. But there was much that was not as she remembered. The dissonant chords and atonal melodies that erupted from the internal strings of the piano. The feelings of uneasiness as each measure arrived and departed, offbeat yet entrancing. The increasing tension she felt in her body.

He glanced over at her, no pause or note missed in doing so. The look in his eyes was terrifying. She didn’t know this man. His face was John’s, but the demeanor was not. The smile that skewed his face grotesquely nearly convinced her that none of this was real.

As the music swelled, the room began to spin. Every chord that entered her ears was more dissonant than the last. His eyes, baring into her, stayed at the center of her vision while the rest of the world turned tumultuously around her. Soon, there was only a constant blur of twisting lights, with John and his piano balanced delicately in the center.

Amidst the chaos, she saw his lips part. Then she heard his voice, thundering at a volume that defied reality.

“I wrote this for you.”

She knew at that moment that he had done it. His ravings had been no delusion. His claims of being close to discovering the secret – that power he had spoken of – had been not only accurate, but horrifyingly precise. This was no work of musical art – it was a summoning. A melody – if one could even call it that – that reached and groaned into past eons that she dared not contemplate.

She knew that she was his first target, and she wasn’t sure if that knowledge or some unseen, pressing evil was what glued her to the seat. She was paralyzed as the room continued to churn in a maelstrom of light and its absence. Her head began pounding, a pressure building deep within her skull. It grew more severe with every activation of the white and black keys under his fingers, pulsing incessantly as the tempo rose.

Without a sound, she fell over the cliff of sanity into a free fall of terror. She soon heard her own laughter cackling over the cacophonous storm. Was she the crazy one now? Was this all her delusion?

Those alien eyes.
Those bony fingers shifting.
The pitch black anti-matter of the grand piano multiplying in size.
His laughter joining hers in a dance not unlike the ones they had physically shared years before.

She at last remembered one aspect of the black piano’s history. John had told her that samples of its wood had been tested by multiple independent laboratories. That none of them could identify the origin of the wood, its ebony sheen wholly unknown to science. That is why he had insisted she meet him here. Those yellowed ivory keys were the ritual knife in this unholy event. She now realized, with sudden horror clamping iron-like around her mind and body, that she would never leave the Claymore Inn.

The last sound to fall upon her throbbing ears was that of her own voice, cutting through the tumultuous din.

“You’re welcome, Johnny.”