“You are only to watch,” the old woman had told him, “and to listen.”
Fuming, Lee would sit out in the audience with Madame Magnus, thinking of all the things he could do with the music that was being played.
I could bring forth flames or frost,he mused. I could fill the room with steam or snow. Perhaps I could even drain the very air from the room.
Could he do that? Lee would never really know as long as Madame Magnus refused to let him play.
During these weekly concerts he would watch the strange old woman. There was something unsettling about the way she listened—the way her ears perked up at every note she heard. It was as though she absorbed the sounds, as though they flowed into her ears like water rushing into a whirlpool. Week after week he observed his teacher practically sucking in the music. It reminded Lee of something, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.
“Have you noticed that when you stand behind Madame Magnus at a concert, the music suddenly doesn’t sound right?” Lee asked Wilhelm one day. “It’s as though somehow all the best notes have been sucked right out of it.”
“Everyone’s noticed it,” Wilhelm answered in his heavy accent. “The woman, she gives me the shivers. Still, she is the best teacher there is. She has told me that my playing will make me famous someday, and I believe her.”
Lee frowned. She had never said anything like that to him. That night, just as Lee fell asleep, it occurred to him just what Madame Magnus reminded him of. She was like a vampire . . . but one that lived on something other than blood. Is that possible?Lee wondered. Can someone actually live on music?But the thought was lost in a swift current of nightmarish dreams.
“Somebody lives there, you know,” whispered Wilhelm the next day during breakfast. “No one ever sees him come out, but he’s there. Everyone knows it.”
Wilhelm was talking about the guesthouse, of course. Through the window of their room, the two boys could see its blackened windows.
“The lights never go on,” said Wilhelm, “but one of Madame Magnus’s servants brings a large platter of food out there three times a day.” The thin, pale cellist leaned closer to Lee. “I think there’s a monster in there.”
Lee wondered about what Wilhelm had said, and that night he snuck out of the institute and crossed the distance through the woods to the mysterious little building. He just had to know if anyone or anything lived there.
The guesthouse loomed in the woods, unpainted and covered with ivy. As Lee approached, its black windows seemed like dead eyes to him, and he began to wonder what nature of beast was kept there.
Making his way around the back of the sad-looking building, Lee pushed away the thorny bushes that surrounded it, bushes that seemed to be protecting the little house from trespassers. When he came across a broken window, his suspicions were confirmed—the windows weren’t just dark, they were painted over so that no light could get in . . . or get out.
Lee took a step closer, and just as he put his face near the broken glass to peer inside, a hand reached out and grabbed him by the shirt! It was an ancient, pasty hand, and it held him in a desperate grip.
“Leave this place,”rattled a raspy voice attached to a body Lee could not see. “Leave and don’t come back. Don’t you know what she is?”
Lee would have screamed if he hadn’t lost his voice in fear. Standing frozen in the grip of the bony hand, he now could see the eye of an old man through the hole in the window.
“Nero played his violin,”the wrinkled figure said in a voice that seemed to come from the grave. “He played his violin, and Rome burst into flames. From Nero’s flames she was born.”The voice grew in intensity. “And all the masters who died before their time—they did not die!”Then, as quickly as it had shot out at Lee, the hand pulled back into the jagged hole and disappeared into the darkness.
His heart pounding, Lee ran back to the conservatory, raced to his room, and hid beneath his covers, as if mere sheets and blankets could possibly shut out what he had seen. “Nero was an emperor of Rome,” Wilhelm explained the next day in the library. He showed Lee a drawing in a history book. “He was powerful, arrogant, and legend has it that he played his violin while the entire city burned to the ground.”
Lee looked at the article Wilhelm referred to in the encyclopedia. “But it doesn’t say that Nero’s playing actually startedthe fire.”
Wilhelm shrugged. “Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. No one knows for sure.”
Lee wondered how great a musician would have to be to be able to set an entire city on fire with his music. How evil such a person would have to be. And then he remembered what the old man behind the broken window had said: From Nero’s flames she was born. Could he have meant Madame Magnus? Was shea creature born from those evil flames?
Lee closed the book and told Wilhelm what the old man had said about all the masters who had died before their time. “What do you think he meant by saying they didn’t die?” he asked.
Wilhelm took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Well, I’m going to find out,” said Lee. “If Madame Magnus wants me in this school, then she can’t keep secrets from me.”
Wilhelm shook his head. “I wish I could be like you.”
Lee looked at his friend. But you can’t be,he thought. Because you can never be the musician that I am.
When Lee stormed up the stairs into Madame Magnus’s private residence, she didn’t seem shocked to see him, or even surprised. She only smiled that sly yellow-toothed smile of hers, then said, “To what do I owe this unexpected visit, young Master Tran?”
Lee got right to the point. “I want to know about the man in the guesthouse. Who is he, and why doesn’t he ever come out?”
Madame Magnus looked at Lee from her high-backed velvet chair. “You’ve only been here two months,” she said.
“What has that got to do with anything?” Lee demanded.
“Two months is a short time, but you are a fast learner. Perhaps you are ready.”
“Ready for what?” Lee demanded.
But Madame Magnus only smiled. “Would you like to meet him? The man in the guesthouse?”
Lee wasn’t expecting that. “Uh, sure,” he said hesitantly. “Yeah, sure, I’d like to meet him.”
And with that, Madame Magnus and Lee Tran walked into the chill of the night and far into the woods, until they reached the old guesthouse. The old woman unlocked the many locks on the door, and soon it creaked open into a musty world of old furniture that was kept in perfect condition. A grandfather clock ticked away, ominously marking the time.
“Did you think it would be a dungeon?” asked Madame Magnus, laughing when she saw the surprise on Lee’s face.
And yet, in its own way, the place did have the feel of a dungeon about it.
There was music coming from a back room, and Lee wondered why he hadn’t heard the music outside as they approached. Slowly he looked around, and then he understood the reason—the windows weren’t just painted black, they were padded thickly, so that no sounds could escape.
Now listening to the music carefully, Lee noticed that it sounded familiar, and yet it also sounded totally new.
With Madame Magnus on his heels, he followed the sound into a back parlor, done in red velvet—the same red velvet, Lee noticed, that lined his violin case. There, hunched over a grand piano, sat the old man who had grabbed Lee through the broken window. He was pouring his heart into the music. Yet, as beautiful as the music was, it somehow seemed old and tired to Lee, not unlike the man himself.
As Lee listened to him play, once again the familiarity of the music tickled the corner of his brain. The music was romantic and sentimental, perfectly composed. It sounded like Gershwin, Lee finally decided. But this was nothing Gershwin had written in the short thirty-nine years of his life.
Lee studied the ancient figure still playing away at the piano. The old man could have been a hundred by the looks of him. He glanced up fro
m the keys, and upon catching a glimpse of Lee, he sighed, then returned to his playing.
“I’ve brought you a young friend,” said Madame Magnus to the old man.
“Is he the one?” the old man replied.
“The finest violinist alive, and the finest young composer in the world,” answered Madame Magnus. And as his teacher said this, Lee held himself up proudly.
The old man just looked away, then returned to his music.
“You’ll have to excuse George,” said Madame Magnus. “He’s not used to visitors.”
And then Madame Magnus did something strange. She went to the piano and closed the lid over the keys so the old man could no longer play. “Time to rest, George,” she said. “Time to rest.”
The old man threw a sad look over at Lee and stood, his bones creaking. Then he went to lie down on the velvet sofa in the corner. He folded his hands over his chest, closed his eyes, and let out a singular long raspy breath. It didn’t take long for Lee to realize that the old man had died.
Feeling panic beginning to set in, Lee turned in terrified awe to Madame Magnus. But she said nothing. She simply walked over to the fireplace and took down a dusty violin case from the mantel.
“For you,” she said, opening the case to reveal a Stradivarius violin that must have been hundreds of years old. “It belonged to Mozart himself,” Madame Magnus announced. “Take it.”
She held the violin out to Lee, and although he felt afraid to even touch it, he could not refuse the magnificent instrument. To play a Stradivarius violin was the dream of a lifetime. Could this truly have been Mozart’s?he wondered as he took the beautiful wooden instrument into his hands.
Madame Magnus produced a handwritten manuscript of music, aged and as yellow as her skin. “Play for me, Lee,” she said. “Play like you’ve never played before.”
And Lee did.
For the first time in months he launched himself into a real piece of music. The Stradivarius was magnificent, and the piece of music glorious. It sounded like Mozart, but like no Mozart Lee had ever heard before. It was a rich musical tapestry full of life and youth and joy. Lee lost himself in it. He felt his soul plunging into the music. And as he played something happened—not to the room, not to the air, but to Madame Magnus herself. With every note it seemed the life of the music poured into her; the youthful, joyous tones seemed to drain into her flesh as if she were some musical black hole.
Lee couldn’t keep his eyes off the woman, and although terror began to fill him, he couldn’t stop playing. No longer looking at the sheet of music, he played, his fingers flying over the strings, creating music fast and fiery—music that exploded out of the violin.
But nothing caught fire.
Now all the power of the music funneled right into Madame Magnus. Her eyes burned with its intensity. And to his horror, Lee saw that with each note, Madame Magnus grew younger—younger and more powerful.
Finally the piece ended, and Lee was drenched in sweat. Gasping for breath, he let the bow and violin fall to the floor, for they were burning his fingers.
Before him stood Madame Magnus, a young woman, now no older than twenty-five, and she threw back her head and laughed a hearty, horrible laugh.
Lee willed himself to run, but he just stood there, unable to move. Then, looking down at his legs, he saw that heavy metal shackles now fastened him in place.
“How marvelous!” Madame Magnus cried with delight. “How perfectly marvelous!”
“What’s going on?” Lee demanded. “I don’t understand!”
The young Madame Magnus smiled her sly smile, only now, on a much younger face, it seemed more than just sly—it seemed evil.
“Come, now,” she said. “Don’t play dumb with me, young Master Tran. You know precisely what’s going on.”
And Lee did, but he couldn’t admit it to himself. He didn’t dare.
“The other young musicians in this conservatory—none of them are good enough to feed me the truly powerful music I thrive on. I needed a great master—a youngmaster, someone whose genius would fill my ears with the fresh fire of youth and make me young again. You are the one, Master Tran. You are the one I need.”
Lee could only stand there, shaking his head. Not a single word rose to his lips.
“Oh, there have been others—many others,” said Madame Magnus. “Mozart did not die young. He lived to be an old man . . . in my care, of course. And there was Schubert—he, too, grew old . . . with me. And of course you met dear Mr. Gershwin. As you saw, he didn’t die young as the rest of the world thought . . . and neither will you.”
“No!” screamed Lee. “I won’t stay here!”
Then Madame Magnus stepped forward and looked deep into the boy’s terror-stricken eyes. “You’ll do exactlyas I say for the rest of your life, young Master Tran. You’ll play and you’ll write music for no one but me. You’ll feed me with your music as the masters before you did. And your music will keep me young and strong . . . until it is used up.”
Madame Magnus picked up the violin and bow, then put them back into Lee’s hands. “Now play for me,” she said, any kindness that had once been there now gone from her voice. “Play me something youwrote. Something with power.”
With no other choice, Lee tucked the Stradivarius beneath his chin and began to play, and instantly he felt his music swallowed whole by Madame Magnus’s hungry, hungry ears.
I am the greatest, Lee told himself, fighting back tears of terror. I am the greatest in the world!
But that didn’t matter anymore, since no one else would ever hear him play. Now his music would have to be enough, because now music was all there truly was for Lee Tran . . . and all there would ever be.
RIDING THE RAPTOR
This story is the forerunner to my novel Full Tilt. I was at Six Flags Magic Mountain, one of my favorite amusement parks, on an incredibly crowded day. Every roller coaster had a two-hour wait, except for one. It was as if no one saw this roller coaster. As I wove through the empty line to get to the front, the sun went behind the clouds and a cold wind started to blow. That got my imagination going. What if there was one roller coaster at every amusement park that not everyone saw? What if it could only be seen by those who were no longer satisfied by other thrill rides, and were now ready for the ultimate coaster? What would the ultimate roller coaster be?
RIDING THE RAPTOR
“This is gonna be great, Brent!” says my older brother, Trevor.
“I can feel it.”
I smile. Trevor always says that.
The trip to the top of a roller coaster always seems endless, and from up here the amusement park seems much smaller than it does from the ground. As the small train clanks its way up the steel slope of a man-made mountain, I double-check the safety bar across my lap to make sure it’s tight. Then, with a mixture of terror and excitement, Trevor and I discuss how deadly that first drop is going to be. We’re roller coaster fanatics, my brother and I—and this brand-new sleek, silver beast of a ride promises to deliver ninety incredible seconds of unharnessed thrills. It’s called the Kamikaze, and it’s supposed to be the fastest, wildest roller coaster ever built. We’ll see . . .
We crest the top, and everyone screams as they peer down at the dizzying drop. Then we begin to hurl downward.
Trevor puts up his hands as we pick up speed, spreading his fingers and letting the rushing wind slap against his palms. But I can never do that. Instead I grip the lap bar with sweaty palms. And I scream.
You can’t help but scream at the top of your lungs on a roller coaster, and it’s easy to forget everything else in the world as your body flies through the air. That feeling is special for me, but I know it’s even more special for Trevor.
We reach the bottom of the first drop, and I feel myself pushed deep down into the seat as the track bottoms out and climbs once more for a loop. In an instant there is no up or down, no left or right. I feel my entire spirit become a ball of energy twisting through space at imposs
ible speeds.
I turn my head to see Trevor. The corners of his howling mouth are turned up in a grin, and it’s good to see him smile. All his bad grades, all his anger, all his fights with Mom and Dad—they’re all gone when he rides the coasters. I can see it in his face. All that matters is the feel of the wind against his hands as he thrusts his fingertips into the air.
We roll one way, then the other—a double forward loop and a triple reverse corkscrew. The veins in my eyes bulge, my joints grind against one another, my guts climb into my throat. It’s great!
One more sharp turn, and suddenly we explode back into the real world as the train returns to the station. Our car stops with a jolt, the safety bar pops up, and an anxious crowd pushes forward to take our seats.
“That was unreal!” I exclaim, my legs like rubber as we climb down the exit stairs.
But Trevor is unimpressed.
“Yeah, it was okay, I guess,” he says with a shrug. “But it wasn’t as great as they said it would be.”
I shake my head. After years of riding the rails, Trevor’s become a roller-coaster snob. It’s been years since any coaster has delivered the particular thrill that Trevor wants.
“Well, what did you expect?” I ask him, annoyed that his lousy attitude is ruining my good time. “It’s a roller coaster, not a rocket, you know?”
“Yeah, I guess,” says Trevor, his disappointment growing with each step we take away from the Kamikaze. I look up and see it towering above us—all that intimidating silver metal. Somehow, now that we’ve been on it, it doesn’t seem quite so intimidating.
Then I get to thinking how we waited six months for them to build it, and how we waited in line for two hours to ride it, and I get even madder at Trevor for not enjoying it more.
We stop at a game on the midway, and Trevor angrily hurls baseballs at milk bottles. He’s been known to throw rocks at windows with the same stone-faced anger. Sometimes I imagine my brother’s soul to be like a shoelace that’s all tied in an angry knot. It’s a knot that only gets loose when he’s riding rails at a hundred miles an hour. But as soon as the ride is over, that knot pulls itself tight again. Maybe even tighter than it was before.
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