The shadows come alive. I thought at first I was hallucinating, or it was a trick of the light. I work with little sleep, and the reek of the ovens and ash on the air keeps me awake. Last night I discovered a shadow feeding off my body like a leech, perhaps to build its own. My bone becomes its bone. My blood spills into its veins. I feel my soul disintegrating, chewed and swallowed, giving form to the beast being born from my beautiful music and mutilations.
I am sorry, my beloved Anna. I must finish. I am not coming home when the war ends.
* * *
Philadelphia
October 30th 1995
Stephen played the piano in vain, holding hands with the instrument, making love to the keys and playing his divine gift, yet his son didn’t stir from his coma. Stephen had reached the world with his music but had failed to heal his own child.
“I wrote this for you, Martin,” he said, studying the boy’s serene face for any response—a smile, a tear, the flex of a cheek. As a baby, Stephen would play Martin to sleep. He had teethed with Chopin, and Beethoven saw him through scarlet fever. But no composer could excise the lymphatic tumors now devouring his body.
Doctors offered no remedy. His priest failed at comfort. So Stephen beat the ivories until his fingers ached and joints swelled.
The nurses moved to and fro, checking Martin’s vitals, turning him, hanging bags on his pump. The ventilator forced air into his lungs, wheezing to the beat of his father’s music. At first, the administration at Saint Mary’s Hospital had dithered over installing a piano in the Intensive Care Unit. The staff preferred the reverence of a funeral home for the ward, so Stephen made a sizable donation to the hospital as motivation to adjust their policy.
Stephen’s leg now ached, the pain surging into his groin. The injury from the accident always flared up after sitting for a few hours at the piano. He resisted the opiate urge, safely stowed in his satchel. The voice of the divine.
“That’s beautiful,” Stephen’s cousin and confessor, Father Barlow said, piloting his electric wheelchair through the door. “Don’t stop. Keep on tickling those ivories.”
“I’m trying to reach him,” Stephen said, merging his song into Bach.
“Perhaps you should look at the reverse? Is God trying to reach you through your son? Still don’t pray, do you?”
“Music has power. Music is divine.”
“It is God’s gift to you,” Barlow said. “You were born at the piano. We could never get you off of it.” Stephen choked on the reek of whiskey raking from the priest. He knew Father Barlow had gone back to drinking. He’d had a real problem after the accident, before joining the clergy, and Stephen had hoped that his faith would have been enough to keep him from straying, but faith only possessed short-term power.
“And He’s exacted a cost,” Stephen said. He pulled his fingers from the keys, breaking the connection, a sensation like pulling out of a woman before finishing.
The vent continued to inflate Martin’s lungs, pushing oxygen into his body, compelling him to life. Pumps clicked, pouring chemicals into his bloodstream, maintaining his life but exacting a cost, destroying his vitality and draining his youth. Stephen knew if Martin survived, he’d never be the same.
Father Barlow rolled forward and grabbed Stephen’s shoulder. “Maybe he’s had enough.” Stephen pulled free, shaking off the priest. “I’m so sorry, cousin. Why not release him?”
“I owe it to the memory of Elizabeth,” Stephen said, playing as they spoke. “Martin will have a life.”
“Life and death are just two sides of the coin. The coin is the soul.”
“This coin is spent. I have a debt to pay.”
“The soul is a debt from God,” Barlow said as something from the corner of the bay distracted him. He flinched and grabbed his white collar for comfort. “That shadow just moved.”
“You’re drunk.”
“I have good reason to imbibe.”
“Because your faith isn’t strong enough,” Stephen said, regretting the cruelty in his statement. “I’m sorry, cousin, but I’ll pray in my own way. Not that I’m sure He’s listening.”
The priest twitched again, his eye drawn back to the shadows. The priest shook it off. “I’m not so sure, either,” Barlow said. “I’ll stop back before I head home. I will pray for you, just in case.”
“And I will play for you.”
The priest paused at the threshold of the ICU bay. “Stephen, I’ve been holding something back, but I don’t think it’s my right to keep it from you. I have prayed for guidance, but the Father of all Things is silent on the matter.”
“I won’t have my son baptized.”
Father Barlow sighed. “Forget it,” he said. “It will cast a shadow on your life.”
“Shadow, or light?”
“Have a good performance tomorrow. Some good can come out of this. The money will help save the lives of many kids stricken with this terrible disease. You should take comfort in—”
“Spare me,” Stephen said.
Barlow rolled out of the room and shut the door behind him, giving father and son some privacy.
Stephen ceased playing, got up and steadied his leg with his black, aluminum cane. Pain shot through his thigh, he resisted it, fighting the need for the syringe in his satchel. Wetting a washcloth, he wiped down his son’s nearly bald head. Martin’s red hair, inherited from his mother, had grown out since the oncologists had stopped giving him chemo treatments. Stephen had never noticed the fuzz growing on Martin’s chin, usually only seeing how the lymphoma gouged the boy. Now he saw the growth, the maturing, and realized that Martin was becoming a man, even while dying.
The pain in his leg was becoming overwhelming, giving him an excuse to break his fast. Just enough to take the edge off. He grabbed his satchel and dug through the music sheets—his variations on Chopin for the Halloween benefit at the Mann Music Center tomorrow. Needing to get through the day sitting here with Martin, he plucked the morphine vial and syringe from a hidden pocket, then tied off his arm with a rubber tourniquet. He sucked up a fraction of his usual dosage of the opiate. But the first threads of a man’s beard on Martin’s face haunted him, so he took more. Finding a good vein, he depressed the plunger. Bats flapped in his head, dark shapes that tickled and stirred. The burden lessened. His body lightened. Gravity released its hold, and he once again sat down to play the piano, now freed of his terrible reality.
After an hour, the euphoria thinned. Enough morphine still flooded his system to dull his common sense—his self-preservation instinct. The drug removed his inhibition. He fetched the needle, filled it with what remained and injected it again. The drugs numbed him, and he struggled to breathe but didn’t care. Nothing mattered. He sat at the piano—not bothering to remove the syringe from his arm—and composed at the keys. He sensed a new concerto: close, fleeting, something evolving in his mind. It played just at the edges, his lost wife dancing at the envelope of the dark.
Stephen’s lungs seized under the opiate strain, and his heartbeat pounded in his neck. His head was a carousel, spinning faster than the Earth. Father Barlow’s shadow leaked back into the room, spilled up his leg and Stephen fell into black.
* * *
“You’re lucky I came back to apologize,” Father Barlow said through the darkness.
Light shredded Stephen’s eyes and his head throbbed. “I’m going to throw up,” he said. The priest handed him a pink basin, and he filled it, pushing up the coffee from earlier this afternoon.
“Doctor McKenna thinks it was an accident, a little too much morphine. Happens all the time. They knocked it out with Narcan. You’re fine now and should be ready to go home soon.”
“My leg hurt,” Stephen said, feeling shame for losing control when his son needed him.
Barlow sighed. “It’s killing you. Your son is dying. Jesus, forgive me. I really have no choice but to tell you. This is outside of His work. ”
“Hell used to scare me. But now it feels like
a comfort. A way to give me peace.”
“You deserve no peace and should be punished,” Father Barlow said, shedding his compassionate and forgiving vocation.
“I can endure any punishment that’s inflicted on me. But your God is a truly sadistic God. He tortures my son to punish me.”
Father Barlow hesitated. His eyes seeming to contemplate some terrible matter. “There might be a way to save Martin. Come to my trailer tomorrow, before the benefit. God save my soul.”
“What way?” Stephen asked, ready to try anything.
“Can you give yourself to darkness?”
* * *
“I know what it’s like to live with a burden,” Barlow said as he poured whiskey into a tumbler, finishing off the bottle. “Temptation has weighed down on me.”
Stephen leaned on his cane, enduring the fire burning up his leg into his thigh, and sat down on the only piece of furniture in the cramped trailer. Bottles lined the windowsills and clattered along the floor. Broken glass crunched under his feet.
“I don’t have a lot of time before the benefit, cousin. You offered me a way to save my son, and I’m desperate enough to believe anything. Why am I here?” Stephen asked.
“To give you a little family history.” A shadow melted along the walls, cast at odd angles from the sparse light that filtered in through the blinds. It reached, manifested and melded into a single figure that danced along the wall like a shadow puppet. Barlow gulped from his tumbler. “What did your father tell you about our grandfather?”
“Same story you were told. He grew up in Berlin. Served in the Wehrmacht in France. A file clerk. His two sons, my father and yours, came to America and got married.”
Barlow shook his head. “It’s a practiced lie,” he said, sipping from the tumbler. “Our family hoped the truth would be forgotten. You know, repeat the same story and eventually it becomes true.” He opened the freezer and pulled out a manila folder wrapped in a plastic bag. He tore the plastic and handed the contents to Stephen. “My father told me the truth about Otto Kerner a year ago, before he died.”
“Is this Hebrew?” Stephen asked, trying to decipher labels on the front of the folder.
“Our family saved most of the material and kept it secret. I don’t know why they saved it. The rest was compiled by Simon Wiesenthal himself, the famous Nazi hunter.”
The term Nazi shook Stephen. The subject had always been avoided when they’d spoken of their family history.
“He was a file clerk. He served his country as any son would. Did his duty.”
“You’ll find a journal in the packet,” Barlow said. “I’ve read some of it but couldn’t continue. You took German at college?”
“All the great composers were German,” Stephen replied, hesitated, then opened the folder. He studied the youthful face beaming from the monochromatic photo and recognized the same features in his own son. Proud Officer Kerner wore his cap and uniform. Double lightning bolts on his lapel marked him as a member of the SS—the Nazi private army loyal to Hitler and not the state.
“Our grandfather was in the SS,” Barlow said. “They ran the camps—the real monsters. He served as a doctor in the medical core at Auschwitz.”
“Oh god. My fans can ever know.” The journal slipped out of the file and into Stephen’s hands. He ran his fingers along the smooth, brown leather. A red ribbon marked a middle page, and he opened the journal. The entry was dated 1945.
“Ja. Doctor Kerner was quite the pioneer in medical research. And he had a gift for music. I wonder what else you inherited.”
“Why have I never heard about this?” Stephen asked. “Was he ever caught and brought to trial?”
“Otto Kerner disappeared. It was assumed he died in the Allied bombing or made it to South America.”
“I don’t understand how you think this could help.”
“Read the journal. Kerner discovered an ancient song of power. It might heal your son.”
At first, Stephen scoffed, but Barlow was right. He was desperate for any miracle cure or magical measure. Even though the thought of having such a vile relative repulsed him, it also intrigued the composer in him.
“Why did you put this burden on me?” Stephen asked.
“For love of my nephew, and my hatred of you for what you did to me,” the priest said.
Stephen left his cousin to a fresh bottle and got into his car. He opened the diary at the marker and read the music notes, converting them to sound in his mind. His head ached from the melody inside his skull. He flipped through the pages, seeing mostly notations and formulas, both chemical and electrical, though Stephen didn’t understand science. Then, he began again from the first page.
* * *
From the journal of SS-Hauptsturmführer Doktor Otto Kerner
25th December 1944
I have sacrificed in the name of the state, but that does not make me an evil man. There are times when a soldier must give up his morality for his duty. I understand that my actions are monstrous. However, I find solace in the thought that my subjects are serving their glorious humanity, helping us to build something pure and lasting. Wouldn’t all of us gladly give of ourselves for a better world? This is war, and we are fighting for our survival against Bolshevism and the lesser races. I lay down my soul in the service of the fatherland.
I had hoped that I would fight my war using my acumen as a physician to mend our wounded, but we cannot choose our roles. Reichsführer Himmler assigned me directly to this project, giving me autonomy, funds and equipment. He understands the importance of my brilliant discovery. Our soldiers give their lives to hold back the Red Army, which stands ready to overrun the Reich. I will gladly give my soul. I have only weeks to finish my work before they take the camp.
I began my experiments today. I think back to my adventures over the last five years, pursuing my research for the Ahnenerbe in the ancient parts of the world, across Asia and Europe, seeking pieces of the song painted on cave walls or etched into old pottery in museums. I’ve researched old tomes and books of the SS. Reichsführer Himmler has created an archive of power and history, most of it forbidden, thought to be lost or destroyed by the Vatican. This is the work of centuries, and it fascinates me. I play with the source of all life and creation. I have studied with gurus and mystics, shamans in Siberia and America, to develop the vision to compose the missing composition. Now I will refine the concerto into a fine tool.
My first subject was a homosexual woman from Krakow. Age twenty. I asked her to strip and lie down on the table designed for vivisections. I reassured her and hooked her body to the galvanometer to measure her natural electrical current during the process. I set myself at the piano and told her I was going to play some music to relax her. I smiled to calm her, but she struggled against the bonds, perhaps sensing her end.
I began the first part, playing through the discovered music and my own composition. As I played, my fingers and toes tingled. I observed the subject and witnessed the vitality escaping her system. Her skin darkened, turning ashen. Her eyes became glossy and the color drained. Clumps of hair fell out and she vomited. It surprised me how fast the music affected the subject. I felt invigorated, surging with new strength. I continued to play, feeling euphoria, and she screamed at an inhuman tone. The current registering on the meter changed, and her natural energy levels were in flux. I finished playing the concerto, and after a minute her body went still. The flow of energy stopped, and I collapsed onto the keys. It took time for me to recover from the failed transference.
I tried it on seven more subjects, varying my attempts until my body could no longer withstand it. The work did produce data. I discovered that the concerto’s effects are proportional when used on groups, but the energy still did not remain in my body.
I must refine the music, the mathematical formula, the harmonic equation, and through my experiments, I will apply a scientific basis to sorcery. I believe my work has the power to grant immortality. Old Norse runes I disc
overed in Norway called it the devil’s music. I don’t believe in a devil. I believe in Adolf Hitler and a triumphant German people.
* * *
Waning sunlight set the orange and crimson crowns of the maples that lined Main Street afire, creating the perfect atmosphere for Halloween. Costumed kids stalked the streets in search of treats—witches, clowns, zombies, animals. For a moment, seeing them diverted Stephen’s thoughts from the possessive images of Otto Kerner’s journal. He remembered Martin’s first Halloween—dressed as a scarecrow, oblivious as a baby to the holiday. It had been more for Stephen and Elizabeth really, but Martin came to enjoy several future Halloweens. Stephen was still shaking and turned on the radio to calm himself while he drove home to his apartment to change for the benefit.
Once home, he opened a bottle of wine and studied the music inscribed in the journal—the only copy of the dark concerto, the devil’s music. The notes appeared simple at first, basic chords, and they played a saturnine melody. He touched the keys on the grand piano, finding the dark spirit of the song. His heart sped. The song played like church bells ringing a funeral dirge, the loss of some beloved soul, buried and wasted.
Could this work?
He believed in the spirit of music, the divine spark, a current that powered or drained.
What could be lost if it was only the fantasy of a madman?
The concerto was simple enough, easily played by a student, and Stephen could experiment at tonight’s benefit.
He got up from the piano and dressed in his best cravat and coattails. Elizabeth would always straighten his lapel and collar, calling him a mess. What would you do without me? she would have said.
Savage Beasts Page 18
