Part 15 (2/2)

The learning of those sorcerers is a lost art. They made hold out of lead, and the one necessary essence of their mixture was the soul of a young maiden.

”It is obvious no cold mechanical thing could create music. No, it must be an object of warmth; must have a woman's soul. And more than that, the soul of one who has lived a life of music. Are you following me, Bancroft?

Martha Fleming is such a woman.”

He removed his coat and began to roll back his sleeves.

”When I lured her here by telling her you were taken suddenly ill in my apartment, I did not expect the Negro maid to come along. But Kari was a most interesting person. I found to my surprise that she was an obea woman from the West Indies. Obia”an admirable system of sorcery, Bancroft. The civilized world would do well to study it. I thus had two totally different yet ideal subjects for my experiment. I tried the native girl first.”

”You meana””

”I mean that while Kari was not musically trained, her occult background made her worthy of the experiment. You perhaps noticed last night her heart pulsing in the gla.s.s tube in the piano. Shea””

”You murdered her!”

”In the interests of science,” he said. ”The piano still would not compose, but it was no longer a cold, inani mate thing. The powers of obi had been woven into it. It was that that rose up and colored your sonata last night.”

He stepped across to the operating table and adjusted carefully the powerful light suspended over it.

A sense of utter helplessness swept over me. Motion less, she lay there on the operating table, face white under the glaring light.

Farber left the operating table now and moved toward the farther wall. My eyes never left him. Directly under the shelf that held the midget piano was a built-in wall cabinet, and opening the door, the bearded man drew forth a white enameled tray.

As if measured into focus, a single object took form in my visiona”the midget piano up on the shelf.

There was that d.a.m.nable creation that had thrown me into this well of terror. There it stood, tuned to my thought wave as on the night before.

All my loathing and hatred for it rose up within me.

Then suddenly it happened! As I gazed with utter abhorrence upon it, as my concentration increased a thou sandfold, the little bulb within the gla.s.s panel flared into orange brilliancy. The ivory keys trembled, and an electric shock swept through me from head to foot. An invisible bond seemed to connect my brain with that piano.

And somehow I understood. It was not music that was sweeping from my mind to the inner vitals of that instrument. It was hate! Hatea”and the piano was reacting to it in a manner which Farber had never dared dream was within its scope. Hatea”a thought wave a thousand times more potent than any musical fancy.

Up there on the shelf the keys were trembling violently.

Abruptly they came to a standstill. Then, with a soul rending thunder of discord, those keys surged downward in unison. The piano shook and swayed, and the strings under the open sound-top screeched forth a chord.

Farber, at the wall cabinet directly beneath, stared with astonishment.

The tray of knives slipped from his hand and clattered to the floor.

The chord pa.s.sed on, and there came now from somewhere within the piano's sides a low, humming sound, as of a distant electric motor.

Louder and louder, growing into a subdued roar, it filled the room. The ivory keys began again, quivered in rotation down the octaves. Back and forth in trembling vibration the instrument swayed, rocked on its hard-rubber base.

And thena”a single repercussion burst forth from the bowels of that piano. To the edge of the shelf the piano topped, hung there, the strings screeching that symphony of horror.

Farber came to life too late. With one mad lunge he sought to throw himself out of the instrument's reach.

The piano fell. Straight toward that upturned bearded face it hurtleda”struck with a sickening thud.

There was a single shriek of agony, a rending of wood and broken bone, and I turned my eyes away.

It is Martha, not I, who remembers the happenings of the next few moments. The death of Farber released her from her hypnotic trance. She came to her senses slowly, looked about her as if awakening from some wild dream, and then stumbled from the operating table. It was she who released me from my bonds. Then we pa.s.sed out the door and through the black corridor to the street. I looked back when I reached the walk.

There was that huge, disproportionate building with the three bulging colonnades rising to form a claw of granite before the black facade. There were the dark, eyelike windows staring sullenly.

I pa.s.sed my arm around Martha, and led her gently toward the Strand.

SLIPPAGE.

by Michael P. Kube-McDowell.

It did not begin as a time of madness.

Richard Hall tossed his rain-dampened ski cap into the nearest chair and ran his fingers back through his thinning hair. ”Elaine?” he called.

She appeared at the bedroom door and moved to hug him.

”You look frazzled.”

”Am,” he said, face buried in her hair. ”Fought half the morning with a dimwit from Human Resources who tried to tell me I don't know my Social Security number. Took the IRS's word over mine. Ha!”

”Take a short loving recharge,” she invited.

”Glad to,” he said, tightening his embrace.

”That's enough,” she said, and pushed him back. ”Choose: Start dinner or get the mail in. My hands were full.”

”Mail, thank you.” He took the key from her hand and the stairs to the lobby, returning with six pieces of junk mail- one promising ”s.e.xually Oriented Advertis.e.m.e.nts,” one bill, a letter from Elaine's mom, and a tattered copy of the Cross Creek Weekly Chronicle. Cross Creek, which was every bit as small as its name implied, had been Hall's birthplace and home for seventeen years. His mother still lived there, and the subscription was an annual gift from her, about which he had never had the courage to say, ”Please don't bother.” The paper came average of three weeks late, by the cheapest cla.s.s of mail, and the high point of it was frequently a list of where townspeople had gone on vacation or the weights of the 4-H sheep.

Settling back on the sofa and kicking off his shoes, Hall ripped out the staples and turned to the front page. He immediately frowned, and read quickly.

”Elaine?” he called. ”Listen to this.”

”If it's the balance on the Total Charge bill, I'd rather not hear it,” she called back.

”Noa”something in the Chronicle. They're closing my old high school.”

”Why?” Elaine appeared, bringing him a cold soft drink.

”According to this, the school board decided that they could get better value sending the students over to the new consolidated high school in Atlasburg. Cross Creek High School was too run-down and had too few students. So the last day of cla.s.ses will be”a”Hall looked at his watcha””tomorrow.

Oha”and they're going to hold an all-cla.s.s reunion as a kind of going away party.”

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