Shattered Silence

by Ron C. Nieto

  “Isn't it time for you to be home?” he said, keeping his voice calm.

  It was. Alice said good-bye with another small kiss on the cheek since her father was looking—not that he hadn't gotten an eyeful earlier—and bounded up the stairs. I waited until the door was closed and the light came up in her room, and then I began the trek back home.

  Chapter 24

  It had been a while since I hauled my guitar to school. I didn't notice that this was important until someone I didn't even know by name stopped me in the corridor.

  “What's it gonna be?”

  People really need to stop blurting questions out of the blue at me.

  “What are you talking about?”

  The guy blinked, taken aback both by my words and by my tone—but I couldn't be bothered to care. Being nice should start with people who are nice to you in the first place.

  “I meant the play, dude. What'd the director pic this time?”

  “No idea, dude,” I said.

  “Oh. So, you aren't preparing another mad, shredding song for this one?”

  I had already taken a couple of steps away and stopped to reply. “I don't shred. And I can't play anything for this one because Mr. Hedford hasn't decided yet what he's going to do.”

  “Cool! That means you will when he makes up his mind, right?”

  Not really. The way the guy had linked “Mr. Hedford doesn't know yet which play will close the year” with “I've become the new theater group's one-man orchestra” didn't add up in my head, but hey, he was happy and already walking away, talking about it with his friends, so I didn't correct him.

  I'd have passed it all as a weird incident if it hadn't happened several more times along the day.

  “Welcome to being a school celebrity!” Alice told me when I commented on it much later while we rode a bus out toward the studio.

  “I'm a school celebrity? I missed that memo.”

  “Yeah, you became a de-facto one when you began dating me, and you definitely earned the title with your work in the play before Christmas.”

  “I thought that'd wear off sooner rather than later.”

  “Think again. People are bored, nothing happens, and suddenly they learn the extraordinarily weird kid they've been shunning has uber talent and is actually cool. They already know your name, so it's not like insta-fame, but they'll obviously talk about it.”

  “Obviously.”

  Alice pouted at my smirk. “You're making fun of the school's social scene and hive mentality. Again.”

  “Because then I get you to pout,” I said, laughing.

  She swatted my upper arm but didn't complain further.

  “So, what are you going to play today?” she asked, changing topics.

  “No idea. I've got this feeling that Stuart is going to ask for something specific because he said ‘test recording,' and usually, you do those with stuff you think you can sell, but he didn't tell me anything over the phone.”

  “Whatever it is, I'm sure you'll do fine,” she said, shifting to curl up against my side, using my shoulder as a bony pillow. “You know, Mom's really excited about this.”

  That took me by surprise, though it probably shouldn't have.

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah! She's super proud that you changed that guy's opinion with just one song, and she can't wait to see where you go from here on out. I overheard her bragging about it on the phone the other day, too.”

  “That's... odd. Not even my father's making that much of a fuss about it.”

  “I think that's partly it,” she said, softly. “She thinks you really need to be encouraged and supported in your dreams. You've already achieved so much, and you act as if it was nothing when you should be swelled up with pride and all geared up to take it the next step, not worrying about making sensible decisions and making sure you can make ends meet every month. So, she's become sort of your personal cheerleader.”

  “And what do you think?”

  She took a long moment to answer that one. “I think it's important to be responsible. You'd not be yourself if you just grabbed a guitar and decided to wing it.”

  “A couple of weeks ago you were surprised to learn I wasn't doing just that,” I interrupted.

  “Yeah, well…” She huffed. “I've learned better.” Her hand came up to rest on my chest, against my heart. “You're always so... so… secretive and difficult to read. When you're playing, it's like I can see exactly who you are and feel the same things you do. I can understand you. But then you stop, and you kind of... close up. No, that's not the right expression. It's more like you take second row, like you believe you're an unimportant part of the background or something.”

  “You know I've always been honest with you, don't you? I haven't tried to hide anything. I'm just not that good with words, I guess.” Which was an understatement.

  “It's not just the words. You're climbing out of your shell, but at first, it was as if you were always sad, always expecting something bad to happen, and always alone.”

  I went to reply, but her fingers against my lips stopped my words and she pulled back to look at me. Her eyes, usually so confident and full of energy, were too dark and full of emotion.

  “And I know. You don't have to tell me. I know you were alone and lonely, but even so...”

  “Hey,” I said, taking her hand in mine and wrapping my fingers around her delicate ones. “It's okay. It's no one's fault, just the way things worked out. And I'm not sorry about that.”

  “I kind of am. I should've been there sooner.”

  “You're here now.” I kissed her knuckles and held her gaze. I just gave her a nod, and she took a deep breath and shook herself out of the moment.

  “Okay. So are we almost there?”

  We actually were.

  We dragged our feet off the bus, reluctant to give up more alone time, and walked the distance to the studio in silence. When we arrived, Stuart was waiting so we were ushered into a studio room almost as soon as our feet crossed the threshold.

  “Couldn't keep your hands off your lady friend?” he asked when we entered the room.

  I chose to ignore the comment and looked around instead. This time, the room was larger with better light. The equipment looked newer too, but that was difficult to tell with the wear and tear this kind of place took every day. Sitting behind the console there was another guy. He looked Hispanic and offered an open smile and friendly wave when we came in.

  I instantly liked him, if only because of the way Stuart ignored his presence.

  “We're going to record your first demo, kid,” he said when it was clear I wasn't going to explain myself or Alice's presence to him.

  “A demo?” Alice asked, her voice pitched a tone or five above her normal level. “Shouldn't he have prepared for that?”

  “Most people do. But I want to see if you can work your magic twice, kiddo.”

  “Aren't demos used for securing a label?” I asked instead of replying. I was learning that dealing with my would-be manager would take a lot of ignoring. “And don't we have one already?”

  “Yeah,” he said, cherishing the chance to sound condescending. “But you see, a new guitarist with your unique style's going to need help securing instrumental support, marketing campaigns, and video shooting. That's what we'll use the demo for. So, get in there and start playing.”

  “Just like that?” Alice asked. “You're not going to tell him what you need or anything?”

  “Pretty girls can stay around as long as they let us boys work,” he said, pointing to a chair in a corner. “So sit, watch, and try not to interrupt again.”

  Alice must've caught something in my eye because she shook her head, telling me to back off with an amused smile, and sat on the chair he had pointed out. I walked to the fishbowl and set up the guitar.

  The amp was different. Not necessarily better because it takes a lot to get better than one of the mo
st epic pieces of equipment ever, but different, and I wondered if it was a sort of test. Luckily, I was family with it too—a teenaged guy without a social life needs a hobby, and mine had involved reading up about guitars, peripherals and complements whenever I hadn't been playing.

  The Mesa Boogie was an all-around harder amp and as soon as I saw that, I knew what I would play. I wouldn't need much reverb, not with the overdrive this thing could deliver, but I made some adjustments to my own guitar, preparing it to lean more heavily on the tail pickup to get longer sounds, brighter bass notes and, most importantly, killer harmonics.

  “Ready,” I said, even though I knew the fishbowl was soundproof. The Hispanic guy read my lips and gave me another encouraging smile and a thumbs-up. The recording light came up, and suddenly, I was alone with my guitar and nothing mattered but the music.

  This time, I didn't try to tell my story. I didn't want a tale of sadness and love, even though I knew how easy it would be to weave it with Alice listening just beyond the glass. What I wanted, what I began to pull out of an old memory, was a struggle.

  On the bus, Alice had said that I was sad and silent most of the time. That I was too responsible for my age. Her mother thought I shouldn't give up on chasing my dreams yet no matter how wild they might seem. She believed I should fight and not just settle for that was “right,”, and while she was less vocal about it, I understood that Alice shared that idea.

  The last time I had struggled to do something I adored and not something I should do, I'd been eight. My mother was still alive. We hadn't moved from our old house in the nice part of the neighborhood, and it was big and pretty, like a doll's. It had been the last year I'd taken formal lessons. Afterward, those who could teach me were too expensive for my father after dealing with my mother's treatment, and by the time we pulled out of the dark hole, they just couldn't teach me anymore, not like professors anyway—they never wanted to treat a strange Goth-emo kid as their equal.

  But that one time, before it all went downhill, when music had been my only worry and not my single pleasure and escape, I had struggled to win a competition. I had worked hard, very hard, not only with hours upon hours of practice, but also with composition. Instead of playing the big ones, I had painstakingly written every line, every riff of the piece I presented.

  Looking back on it, it had been ridiculous, child's play. The Keith that was recording now wouldn't have lost a minute of sleep, wouldn't have sweated it. What good would the recognition be for me? What important, truly important thing would change if I won or lost? But for eight-year-old Keith, the line between success and failure had become the defining factor stringing whole months along. He'd practiced until his fingers bled, missed hours of sleep staring at the dark ceiling of his bedroom at night, tapping a rhythm with his finger against the bed covers. He had hit walls, perhaps made of sand, but no less insurmountable for their frailty, and had thought he knew despair.

  I latched onto those old feelings, recalling them as I'd lived them when I had cared and not as I would have faced them as an older, more jaded person... and played.

  The song was canned on the first try. The tech guy, Hector, did some kind of magic that made the sound come alive in ways I hadn't realized before, then burned it and passed it over to Stuart, who said he'd be moving it up the decision-making chain to secure a decent marketing budget and good launching venues. With luck, he said, we'd just recorded the first version of my future first single.

  It was called “Shattered Silence” because it was time to dare to dream again, to scream out and fight for what I wanted. There'd be plenty of time to sit silently in a corner later on.

  When Alice and I jumped on the bus back home, the sky was already dark but we were wide awake.

  “That was amazing!” she said in hushed tones when we settled for the trip. “That guy's face was priceless, the way his jaw hung open. You'd have thought he expected you to fail!”

  “He probably did.”

  “Yeah, well, he doesn't know you. And by the way, I'm glad you made that choice.”

  I didn't ask what choice she was talking about. She understood my language just fine, and I knew the notes had reached her as if they were words. I had picked the piece on the spot, and it had been my answer to her. It had been me telling her that she was right, that life deserved to be fully lived, that settling down without even trying wasn't necessarily wisdom but also a little bit of fear. That I might have been broken, but I was mending.

  It had been a conscious choice, but it had also been the natural reaction to her fire. I just couldn't stay away, and her belief in me was so strong that I couldn't help but dare to share it.

  We settled in comfortable companionship and nearly fell asleep on the way. A message to her cell awoke us with a start when we were entering town.

  “Your mom?” I asked.

  “No,” she said with a frown. “Lena. She says there's trouble.”

  That sobered me up. “What kind?”

  “Doesn't explain. Wants to meet at school.”

  “School's closed. I'm not sneaking in.”

  “I'm already typing that,” she said. The answer came back in a blink.

  “Parking lot.”

  “I hope she has some answers.” I groaned, not relishing a nightly adventure in the bitter cold carrying the guitar along for who knows what purposes.

  We got off the bus at the right stop and walked all the way to the school. In the dark, the streets became inhospitable and dead, hard to recognize and reconcile with the lively crowd of students swarming them in daylight hours.

  It was worrisome, but Alice and I were getting used to wandering at night and we didn't really mind the creepy surroundings. We were more angry than scared, truth be told.

  Lena's Cabrio was the only vehicle on the lot and she stood outside, bundled up in a winter jacket and shivering anyway, either because of the cold or with fear.

  “What's up?” Alice asked when we got close enough.

  Lena winced and gestured for us to lower our voices, even though we were completely alone.

  “I went to a jeweler today to get the ring melted because there's no way I'm holding onto that thing any longer, and since I was in the business district, I took the opportunity to talk to the trust manager,” she said. “I think he's clean.”

  “Meaning?” Alice asked.

  “Couldn't we discuss this somewhere else? Less foreboding?” I said. I was ignored.

  “I asked him about the house, last year. He said that he'd approached the professor and then sent the furniture like I told him, but he didn't know anything about any other family member, living or dead, being involved.”

  “And we believe him because...”

  “Because,” Lena said haughtily, “he was really surprised and tried to help.”

  “Is that so?” I might have gone a bit overboard with the sarcasm, because Alice discreetly drove her elbow into my side. I sighed and tried to amend it. “What did he do?” I asked, overlooking why she thought the man had been truly surprised. She knew both lying and acting, after all. She'd catch on like a hound.

  “He gave me the old records of the late Mr. Nightray,” she said, getting something from her car. It was a manila folder. “This is the way everything was disposed after his passing.”

  “Okay, that's interesting,” I was forced to admit.

  “Anything jump out at you?” Alice asked, gesturing for her to hand over the folder.

  She did, and while Alice perused a lot of papers with ridiculously small print in an impossible light, she explained her findings.

  “There was a list on the will with all the items that had to be kept. Most of them were used in the play. I think all that stuff is safe.”

  “Why?” Alice asked, half paying attention and half trying to read.

  “Because some other things came with very specific instructions about being sold. And if we're right about this whole anchor theory a
nd Hubert Nightray knew about it, he'd have spread the items around, right? It'd make it harder to destroy them, since we've seen they can be destroyed by normal means.”

  “Makes sense. A lot of it. There was the portrait in the trust's custody, the snow globe with Alice's family, the ring with yours. There has to be more items, and they have to be somewhere else.” I didn't like to admit it, but Lena's reasoning was solid, and she had been quick connecting the dots.

  “So what are we looking for?” Alice asked, giving up on trying deciphering the official papers for the time being.

  “A chandelier was donated to the local concert hall.”

  Alice gasped. “There was a chandelier when I visited the ghostly version of the house. I remember remarking on it because we couldn't fit in in the school.”

  “That only strengthens the theory that it is somehow important, or it'd not have appeared for you,” I said. “Go on.”

  “And, get ready for this. A grand piano was set up for auction.”

  “The piano?” I croaked.

  “It doesn't say, but which else could it be?”

  “The piano should go last,” I said immediately. “If it's the original one, the one Andrew Stafford used for composing the song, then it might be the strongest anchor and it could really set her off if we mess with it before we're ready.”

  “Since you brought it up, how close are we to be ready?” Lena asked, still not convinced about my musical destruction theory.

  “Forget that,” Alice cut in. “How are we going to destroy a chandelier in the local concert hall?”

  “We can break in and break it,” Lena said.

  “Is that sarcasm I hear?”

  “Nooo, why? Because it's highly illegal to destroy public property and nearly impossible to get to it in the first place?”

  “Not impossible,” I said, grinning when the idea hit me. “It's very easy, as a matter of fact. That fancy lamp's going to go out with a very public bang.”

  The plan was risky because getting rid of her second-to-last anchor in front of a lot of people could cause an accident, but I was confident nothing would go wrong. From what we had seen at Lena's, Beatrice needed time to build her influence, to haunt someone. Once she had sunk her hooks in her prey, she could sap their souls and turn them into her instruments. That's what we'd figured happened to Wyatt—he got too close to Lena, drew the ghost's attention, and allowed Beatrice to get a grip on him. He might have survived the confrontation, but Alice and I nearly hadn't… and in truth, there's no telling the lasting mental damage suffered by him and the other kids who'd been haunted at school. However, the public wouldn't be exposed to her anchors or to Lena herself, not for long enough for any of that to happen, and once the night was over, the concert hall would be safe from her.