The Mussorgsky Riddle

by Darin Kennedy

  “I’ve been inside your son’s mind. His family means everything to him.” I pull her chin up so her gaze meets mine. “And no one more than you.”

  Caroline returns the picture to its shelf and wipes the tears from her face. “God, I miss Bill as much today as the day he died.”

  “Unless I miss my guess, Anthony has a lot of his father in him.” I pull Caroline into a hug. “And his mother as well.”

  “If there’s ever anything we can do for you, Mira, just call.”

  I look across Caroline’s shoulder. Rachel shoots me a smile and a wave while Anthony continues to run his collection of toy trucks into each other. After being so intimately connected with the boy for so many days, his indifference hits me hard. But I didn’t come here to become the kid’s new best friend.

  I came here to free him.

  I pull away from Caroline. “I hate to say it, but we’ll stand here saying goodbye for three hours if we’re not careful.”

  “God, I hate goodbyes.” She stifles a sad laugh. “Safe travels, Mira.”

  I rest a hand on the doorknob, the metal orb cool on my fingertips. That’s when I hear it.

  Quiet, but there.

  One last time.

  Scheherazade’s theme.

  Caroline and I turn as one. Seemingly oblivious to the both of us, Anthony continues playing with his sister, the ominous melody the only sound other than the crashing of toy trucks. Perhaps he doesn’t want me to leave, or maybe it’s just his way of saying goodbye. In any case, it’s more than clear he knows I’m walking out the door for good this time.

  “Subtle, isn’t he?” Caroline laughs. “That’s my Anthony. He may not communicate like the rest of the world, but when he wants something, he always finds a way.”

  “I get that impression.”

  Wait.

  He always finds a way.

  “Hold on a second.” I bring my hand to my mouth and call down the hall. “Jason?”

  A door opens down the hall and a moment later, Jason rejoins us in the foyer.

  “Yeah?”

  “Something just occurred to me. The day you found Anthony and me with Veronica. You’d been gone for over twenty-four hours. Why did you choose that particular moment to come home? I mean, the rain was coming down so hard I thought we were going to have to build an ark.”

  Jason rubs at his chin. “I don’t know. I was over at my buddy’s house and I… just felt like I needed to come home.”

  I meet Caroline’s gaze. “Trilby falls in the Exhibition sending you and Rachel to the hospital, and an hour later Jason drives home through a monsoon just in time to keep Veronica from killing Anthony and me?”

  Caroline’s eyes grow wide. “From what you’ve told me, that’s the exact moment Anthony chose to speak for the first time in weeks.”

  As one, we turn and study Anthony. Seemingly oblivious to all of us, the boy plays with his trucks and continues to hum a melody that will likely haunt me till my dying day.

  “Is it possible?” Caroline’s incredulous gaze passes from Anthony to me. “Could he have orchestrated the whole thing?”

  “How could he even do something like that?” Jason kneels next to his brother and rests a hand on his shoulder. “He’s just a kid.”

  “I’m not sure we’ll ever know.” I shake my head and can’t help but laugh. “There’s a lot more to your brother than meets the eye, Jason.” I turn to Caroline. “And if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past two weeks, it’s that anything is possible.”

  I cast one last glance at Rachel and her enigmatic brother before stepping onto the front porch and pulling the door closed behind me. Though I can no longer hear Anthony’s low hum, Scheherazade’s theme echoes across my thoughts as if I stand amid a full orchestra. At one level this terrifies me, but I’d be lying if I denied part of me is going to miss this.

  “Goodbye, Anthony.”

  As I head for my car, Sarah Goode’s face flashes across my thoughts for what must be the thousandth time since I hit Charlotte, but this time it’s juxtaposed with Julianna Wagner’s features. As horrible as the thing with Sarah was, at least she survived. All I could offer the Wagners was some measure of justice and closure. I pray they find some way to heal. Without warning, a third face that I struggle to keep from such trains of thought invades the mental picture. As if in answer, the phone in my pocket rings.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Mami.”

  Girl must be psychic. Just like her mother. “Hi, sweetheart.”

  “Have you left yet?”

  I check the time. Fifteen seconds past the hour. Right on schedule.

  “I’m heading to the car now. I should be home for dinner.” I steel myself before asking the next question. “Did you have fun with your dad and Autumn yesterday?”

  “It was awesome. We went to the Smithsonian and looked at all the dinosaur bones and then Autumn bought us all sundaes.”

  The joy in her voice is palpable and in that moment I swear to myself I won’t ever be the one to take that from her. Not after everything I’ve been forced to witness children endure. Sarah Goode. Anthony. Rachel. Hell, even Jason.

  My toes curl inside my shoes as I force a pleasant lilt into my voice. “That sounds great, sweetie.” I open the car door and toss my bag into the passenger seat. “I’m getting in the car now. Let me get off the phone so I can hit the road.”

  “Okay.” She takes a breath. “I love you, Mami.”

  “I love you too, Isabella.” I suck in one last lungful of Charlotte air and climb into the car. “Tell Nana I’m on my way.”

  As I pull out of the suburbs and onto the main drag, the sun comes out from behind a cloud and kisses my arm. After two weeks of gray skies and rain, this different side of autumn in North Carolina is a more than welcome change.

  Autumn.

  The thought of another woman taking my daughter out for sundaes sends my stomach into knots. I’m contemplating how I’ll keep myself from encircling my fingers around her slender neck when a certain baritone voice echoes through my subconscious.

  “You’re a good person, Mira,” the voice reminds me.

  The smell of fresh-baked apple pie floats across my senses and the tension in my shoulders eases a bit as the memory of Thomas’ steely blue gaze fills my mind’s eye. I take one of the deep, cleansing breaths I learned in yoga and perfected under the tutelage of the good Dr. Archer and pick up my phone. I dial his number twice, and both times put the phone down before hitting the send button. Before I can make a third attempt, the phone rings. I glance down, fully expecting to see my mother’s name across the screen, another call from my intrepid daughter.

  I’m wrong.

  I scramble to answer the phone before it stops ringing while doing my level best to keep the car on the right side of the road.

  “Hello?” Fantastic. I sound like I just ran a lap at the track.

  “Good morning, Mira.” If the memory of Thomas’ voice helped calm me before, the real thing achieves the polar opposite. “Was hoping I might catch you before you headed out of town. There’s something I wanted to ask you.”

  “Okay.” I pull into the nearest parking lot, my heart already racing. “And what might that be, Dr. Archer?”

  He pauses for a moment. “I was curious about something.”

  “Curious? About what?”

  “If I might talk you into visiting Charlotte again sometime.” A slight tremor invades his voice. Good. I’d hate to be the only one hanging off the edge of a cliff here. “I’m… sure the Faircloths would be glad to see you again.”

  “The Faircloths?” I ask.

  “Of course. Anthony’s just out of the woods and might need help beyond what I can offer. Caroline could certainly use a friend who understands what went down these past few weeks. Rachel adores you and from what I hear, even Jason’s become a pretty big fan.”

  “Of course. I can probably get back down here in a couple weeks and check in on them.”<
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  Thomas clears his throat. “If you have time while you’re in town, do you think we could grab dinner? Things have been a little nuts since everything… went down. There’s an Asian place just south of Uptown. Maybe we can catch up over some pad Thai?”

  I pull the phone away from my face so he doesn’t hear my breath catch.

  “I’d like that, Thomas.”

  The conversation goes on for a few more minutes, each of us avoiding what’s clearly on both of our minds. As the top of the hour approaches, Thomas tells me he needs to get off the phone and see his next client. Though I have no desire to end the call, I let him go and pull back onto the road. The last few miles as I leave Charlotte in my rearview mirror are bittersweet though I take comfort in Thomas’ last words that echo again and again in my mind.

  “Safe travels, Mira. Talk to you soon.”

  Soon.

  Come to think of it, Isabella’s school has a workday next Friday, I don’t have anything resembling a job prospect at the moment, and next weekend is wide open.

  A dreamy half-grin breaks across my face.

  Wouldn’t it be interesting if Dominic wasn’t the only one introducing our daughter to someone new this week?

  With a quiet laugh, I crank the radio up to eleven on some decidedly non-classical music, punch the accelerator, and head for home.

  An old adage states it takes a village to raise a child. Though writing at its base remains a solitary affair, the creation of a book is anything but. The number of people who have in some way helped get Mira and Anthony’s tale out of my head and into your hands is staggering. I fully recognize that in my endeavor to remember everyone, I will inevitably leave someone out. The failed neurons responsible for this oversight would like to go ahead and offer their sincerest apologies.

  And so, without further ado…

  First, to my critique group of J. Matthew Saunders, Jay Requard, Traci Loudin, Rochelle Bryce, and John Hartness. Thank you for your time, advice, insights, and encouragement. Your contributions have proven invaluable in bringing The Mussorgsky Riddle to life. Simply put, this book would not exist without you.

  To everyone from Charlotte Writers who have walked through our doors at Morrison Library or sat with me at the big black table at Amelie’s French Bakery, and especially those at the Caribou Coffee table discussion of the earliest incarnation of this story’s embryonal first chapter, know that you have taught me most of what I know about writing. Thanks for being part of such a great thing. Keep it going.

  To Mom, Dad, and Jilly… What can I say? For decades you’ve shown me nothing but unwavering love, support, and respect, even when I haven’t always deserved it. I love you all. Enjoy the book and know that you are on every page.

  To Katie and Olivia, I look forward very much to you two being able to read this someday.

  To my agent and captain, Stacey Donaghy, thank you for being such a fantastic advocate for me and my writing, and more importantly, for being such a great friend.

  To Lisa Gus, thank you for taking a chance on this project and for loving it almost as much as I do.

  To Eugene Teplitsky, big thanks for taking my words and making them look so wonderful on the page.

  To Sharon Pickrel, many thanks for all your hard work on editing this beast and whipping it into shape. I learned many things from you and will carry the lessons forward on future projects.

  To Erika Galpin, many thanks for your diligence in finding the last few weeds (I hope) in my little word garden.

  To Polina Sapershteyn, thank you for such beautiful artwork to represent my story. If anyone chooses to judge this book by its cover, I am in good shape.

  To the entire team at Curiosity Quills, my deepest gratitude for all the things I know that you did for me, and even more for the things I don’t.

  To my various teachers and professors over the years, thank you for helping develop me as a writer and a person. And a few special educator shout outs:

  To Sue Burgess, for making learning English fun. Glad we’ve reconnected.

  To Carla Robbins, for the A for effort on my travesty of a fantasy short story in ninth grade English.

  To John Everhart, for making two consecutive years of science class fun and fresh on a daily basis and for taking us outside on that day in 1987 when the earth was supposed to end so we could experience it first hand. Strangely, we’re all still here.

  Lastly, to Alan Brumfield, for making sure I didn’t leave tenth grade without knowing how to touch type. I don’t think any of us knew at the time what an asset that would be in every facet of 21st century life.

  And now, if I may be a bit more esoteric…

  Clearly, I owe an incredible debt to Modest Mussorgsky, the composer of Pictures at an Exhibition. The various melodies, harmonies, and rhythms he combined to create his masterpiece have captured the imagination of millions for over a century and very clearly created the perfect storm of inspiration in this writer’s mind.

  Why did I write this book? Why did I feel such a compulsion to bring Pictures at an Exhibition to life? It’s very simple.

  I love the music.

  Every stanza. Every bar. Every note. I could listen to it all day, and have on multiple occasions, often as I wrote many of the words you now hold in your hands.

  Where did I get the idea for such a weird story in the first place? Even simpler.

  This little experiment of mine all started with a happy accident, as many great things seem to do. Sort of a “You got your chocolate in my peanut butter” phenomenon. It went like this: I flipped over the CD case for Pictures at an Exhibition one fateful evening and after reading the titles of the various movements, all lined up and numbered, one simple thought sprang into my mind.

  “These are chapter titles.”

  The rest is history.

  Viktor Hartmann, whose paintings started this avalanche of creation, cannot be overlooked. As Mussorgsky inspired me, so did Hartmann inspire Mussorgsky. Many of his original paintings and other pieces of art have been lost to antiquity, but a few remain that you can find with a simple search of the Internet. Check them out. They’re beautiful.

  Special thanks to Maurice Ravel, whose masterful orchestration of Mussorgsky’s original piano piece is likely the main reason the music is still so well known today. Sorry, Maurice, but Boléro doesn’t hold a candle.

  Keith Emerson, Greg Lake, and Carl Palmer of Emerson, Lake and Palmer were similarly inspired by Mussorgsky’s work and without their various renditions of Pictures at an Exhibition, I might never have been led to the original nor met the symphonic love of my life. The frescoed ceiling of Anthony’s Exhibition in one scene is dedicated to those three fine musicians, not to mention the Sage/Janitor may or may not bear a striking resemblance to the lead singer, minus of course the wall-eyed stare. Greg Lake’s eyes work just fine, that Lucky, Lucky Man…

  Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, another outstanding Russian composer, is nearly as integral to this work as Mussorgsky himself. If Pictures is my Mary Jane Watson, then Scheherazade is my Gwen Stacy. I can only hope the words in these pages paint half as vivid a mental picture.

  One final thought: A posthumous collection of paintings from the middle of the nineteenth century inspired a piano masterwork which was then arranged to a full orchestral piece that is played worldwide even today. This was in turn transformed into a progressive rock masterwork and now all of the above debut at the beginning of the 21st century, all fused into a novel lying at the intersection of urban fantasy and contemporary mystery.

  As Trilby asked Scheherazade along the Exhibition a few pages back, “Where do we go from here?”

  Darin Kennedy, born and raised in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is a graduate of Wake Forest University and Bowman Gray School of Medicine. After completing family medicine residency in the mountains of Virginia, he served eight years as a United States Army physician and wrote his first novel in 2003 in the sands of northern Iraq.

  His debut novel,
The Mussorgsky Riddle, was born from a fusion of two of his lifelong loves: classical music and world mythology. His short stories can be found in various publications and he is currently hard at work on his next novel.

  Doctor by day and novelist by night, he writes and practices medicine in Charlotte, North Carolina. When not engaged in either of the above activities, he has been known strum the guitar, enjoy a bite of sushi, and rumor has it he even sleeps on occasion.

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