The Best of Richard Matheson

by Richard Matheson

  “What do you think?” he asked inside the brick room.

  Wendall shrugged.

  “Can’t tell,” he said. He looked at the turning of the motor. “Single-phase induction,” he said. “Runs by magnetism.”

  He listened. “Sounds all right to me,” he said.

  He walked across the small room.

  “What’s this?” he asked, pointing.

  “Relay machines,” said Mr. Moffat. “Keep the channels filled with wind.”

  “And this is the fan?” asked Wendall.

  The old man nodded.

  “Mmm-hmm.” Wendall turned. “Looks all right to me,” he said.

  They stood outside looking up at the pipes. Above the glossy wood of the enclosure box, they stood like giant pencils painted gold.

  “Big,” said Wendall.

  “She’s beautiful,” said Mr. Moffat.

  “Let’s hear her,” Wendall said.

  They walked back to the keyboards and Mr. Moffat sat before them. He pulled out a stop and pressed a key into its bed.

  A single tone poured out into the shadowed air. The old man pressed a volume pedal and the note grew louder. It pierced the air, tone and overtones bouncing off the church dome like diamonds hurled from a sling.

  Suddenly, the old man raised his hand.

  “Did you hear?” he asked.

  “Hear what?”

  “It trembled,” Mr. Moffat said.

  —

  As people entered the church, Mr. Moffat was playing Bach’s chorale-prelude Aus der Tiefe rufe ich (From the Depths, I cry). His fingers moved certainly on the manual keys, his sprinkling shoes walked a dance across the pedals; and the air was rich with moving sound.

  Wendall leaned over to whisper, “There’s the sun.”

  Above the old man’s gray-wreathed pate, the sunlight came filtering through the stained-glass window. It passed across the rack of pipes with a mistlike radiance.

  Wendall leaned over again.

  “Sounds all right to me,” he said.

  “Wait,” said Mr. Moffat.

  Wendall grunted. Stepping to the loft edge, he looked down at the nave. The three-aisled flow of people was branching off into rows. The echoing of their movements scaled up like insect scratchings. Wendall watched them as they settled in the brown-wood pews. Above and all about them moved the organ’s music.

  “Sssst.”

  Wendall turned and moved back to his cousin.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Listen.” Wendall cocked his head.

  “Can’t hear anything but the organ and the motor,” he said.

  “That’s it,” the old man whispered. “You’re not supposed to hear the motor.”

  Wendall shrugged. “So?” he said.

  The old man wet his lips. “I think it’s starting,” he murmured.

  Below, the lobby doors were being shut. Mr. Moffat’s gaze fluttered to his watch propped against the music rack, thence to the pulpit where the Reverend had appeared. He made of the chorale-prelude’s final chord a shimmering pyramid of sound, paused, then modulated, mezzo forte, to the key of G. He played the opening phrase of the Doxology.

  Below, the Reverend stretched out his hands, palms up, and the congregation took its feet with a rustling and crackling. An instant of silence filled the church. Then the singing began.

  Mr. Moffat led them through the hymn, his right hand pacing off the simple route. In the third phrase an adjoining key moved down with the one he pressed and an alien dissonance blurred the chord. The old man’s fingers twitched; the dissonance faded.

  “Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.”

  The people capped their singing with a lingering Amen. Mr. Moffat’s fingers lifted from the manuals, he switched the motor off, the nave remurmured with the crackling rustle and the dark-robed Reverend raised his hands to grip the pulpit railing.

  “Dear Heavenly Father,” he said, “we, Thy children, meet with Thee today in reverent communion.”

  Up in the loft, a bass note shuddered faintly.

  Mr. Moffat hitched up, gasping. His gaze jumped to the switch (off), to the air-gauge needle (motionless), toward the motor room (still).

  “You heard that?” he whispered.

  “Seems like I did,” said Wendall.

  “Seems?” said Mr. Moffat tensely.

  “Well . . .” Wendall reached over to flick a nail against the air dial. Nothing happened. Grunting, he turned and started toward the motor room. Mr. Moffat rose and tiptoed after him.

  “Looks dead to me,” said Wendall.

  “I hope so,” Mr. Moffat answered. He felt his hands begin to shake.

  —

  The offertory should not be obtrusive but form a staidly moving background for the clink of coins and whispering of bills. Mr. Moffat knew this well. No man put holy tribute to music more properly than he.

  Yet, that morning . . .

  The discords surely were not his. Mistakes were rare for Mr. Moffat. The keys resisting, throbbing beneath his touch like things alive; was that imagined? Cords thinned to fleshless octaves, then, moments later, thick with sound; was it he? The old man sat, rigid, hearing the music stir unevenly in the air. Ever since the Responsive Reading had ended and he’d turned the organ on again, it seemed to possess almost a willful action.

  Mr. Moffat turned to whisper to his cousin.

  Suddenly, the needle of the other gauge jumped from mezzo to forte and the volume flared. The old man felt his stomach muscles clamped. His pale hands jerked from the keys and, for a second, there was only the muffled sound of usher’s feet and money falling into baskets.

  Then Mr. Moffat’s hands returned and the offertory murmured once again, refined and inconspicuous. The old man noticed, below, faces turning, tilting upward curiously and a jaded pressing rolled in his lips.

  “Listen,” Wendall said when the collection was over, “how do you know it isn’t you?”

  “Because it isn’t,” the old man whispered back. “It’s her.”

  “That’s crazy,” Wendall answered. “Without you playing, she’s just a contraption.”

  “No,” said Mr. Moffat, shaking his head. “No. She’s more.”

  “Listen,” Wendall said, “you said you were bothered because they’re getting rid of her.”

  The old man grunted.

  “So,” said Wendall, “I think you’re doing these things yourself, unconscious-like.”

  The old man thought about it. Certainly, she was an instrument; he knew that. Her soundings were governed by his feet and fingers, weren’t they? Without them, she was, as Wendall had said, a contraption. Pipes and levers and static rows of keys; knobs without function, arm-long pedals and pressuring air.

  “Well, what do you think?” asked Wendall.

  Mr. Moffat looked down at the nave.

  “Time for the Benediction,” he said.

  In the middle of the Benediction postlude, the swell to great stop pushed out and, before Mr. Moffat’s jabbing hand had shoved it in again, the air resounded with a thundering of horns, the church air was gorged with swollen, trembling sound.

  “It wasn’t me,” he whispered when the postlude was over, “I saw it move by itself.”

  “Didn’t see it,” Wendall said.

  Mr. Moffat looked below where the Reverend had begun to read the words of the next hymn.

  “We’ve got to stop the service,” he whispered in a shaking voice.

  “We can’t do that,” said Wendall.

  “But something’s going to happen, I know it,” the old man said.

  “What can happen?” Wendall scoffed. “A few bad notes is all.”

  The old man sat tensely, staring at the keys. In his lap his hands wrung silently together. Then, as the Reveren
d finished reading, Mr. Moffat played the opening phrase of the hymn. The congregation rose and, following that instant’s silence, began to sing.

  This time no one noticed but Mr. Moffat.

  Organ tone possesses what is called “inertia,” an impersonal character. The organist cannot change this tonal quality; it is inviolate.

  Yet, Mr. Moffat clearly heard, reflected in the music, his own disquiet. Hearing it sent chills of prescience down his spine. For thirty years he had been organist here. He knew the workings of the organ better than any man. Its pressures and reactions were in the memory of his touch.

  That morning, it was a strange machine he played on.

  A machine whose motor, when the hymn was ended, would not stop.

  “Switch it off again,” Wendall told him.

  “I did,” the old man whispered frightenedly.

  “Try it again.”

  Mr. Moffat pushed the switch. The motor kept running. He pushed the switch again. The motor kept running. He clenched his teeth and pushed the switch a seventh time.

  The motor stopped.

  “I don’t like it,” said Mr. Moffat faintly.

  “Listen, I’ve seen this before,” said Wendall. “When you push the switch across the slot, it pushes a copper contact across some porcelain. That’s what joins the wires so the current can flow.

  “Well, you push that switch enough times, it’ll leave a copper residue on the porcelain so’s the current can move across it. Even when the switch is off. I’ve seen it before.”

  The old man shook his head.

  “She knows,” he said.

  —

  “That’s crazy,” Wendall said.

  “Is it?”

  They were in the motor room. Below, the Reverend was delivering his sermon.

  “Sure it is,” said Wendall. “She’s an organ, not a person.”

  “I don’t know any more,” said Mr. Moffat hollowly.

  “Listen,” Wendall said, “you want to know what it probably is?”

  “She knows they want her out of here,” the old man said. “That’s what it is.”

  “Oh, come on,” said Wendall, twisting impatiently, “I’ll tell you what it is. This is an old church—and this old organ’s been shaking the walls for eighty years. Eighty years of that and walls are going to start warping, floors are going to start settling. And when the floor settles, this motor here starts tilting and wires go and there’s arcing.”

  “Arcing?”

  “Yes,” said Wendall. “Electricity jumping across gaps.”

  “I don’t see,” said Mr. Moffat.

  “All this here extra electricity gets into the motor,” Wendall said. “There’s electromagnets in these relay machines. Put more electricity into them, there’ll be more force. Enough to cause those things to happen maybe.”

  “Even if it’s so,” said Mr. Moffat, “Why is she fighting me?”

  “Oh, stop talking like that,” said Wendall.

  “But I know,” the old man said, “I feel.”

  “It needs repairing is all,” said Wendall. “Come on, let’s go outside. It’s hot in here.”

  Back on his bench, Mr. Moffat sat motionless, staring at the keyboard steps.

  Was it true, he wondered, that everything was as Wendall had said—partly due to faulty mechanics, partly due to him? He mustn’t jump to rash conclusions if this were so. Certainly, Wendall’s explanations made sense.

  Mr. Moffat felt a tingling in his head. He twisted slightly, grimacing.

  Yet, there were these things which happened: the keys going down by themselves, the stop pushing out, the volume flaring, the sound of emotion in what should be emotionless. Was this mechanical defect; or was this defect on his part? It seemed impossible.

  The prickling stir did not abate. It mounted like a flame. A restless murmur fluttered in the old man’s throat. Beside him, on the bench, his fingers twitched.

  Still, things might not be so simple, he thought. Who could say conclusively that the organ was nothing but inanimate machinery? Even if what Wendall had said were true, wasn’t it feasible that these very factors might have given strange comprehension to the organ? Tilting floors and ruptured wires and arcing and overcharged electromagnets—mightn’t these have bestowed cognizance?

  Mr. Moffat sighed and straightened up. Instantly, his breath was stopped.

  The nave was blurred before his eyes. It quivered like a gelatinous haze. The congregation had been melted, run together. They were welded substance in his sight. A cough he heard was hollow detonation miles away. He tried to move but couldn’t. Paralyzed, he sat there.

  And it came.

  It was not thought in words so much as raw sensation. It pulsed and tremored in his mind electrically. Fear—Dread—Hatred—all cruelly unmistakable.

  Mr. Moffat shuddered on the bench. Of himself, there remained only enough to think, in horror—She does know! The rest was lost beneath overcoming power. It rose up higher, filling him with black contemplations. The church was gone, the congregation gone, the Reverend and Wendall gone. The old man pendulumed above a bottomless pit while fear and hatred, like dark winds, tore at him possessively.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?”

  Wendall’s urgent whisper jarred him back. Mr. Moffat blinked.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “You were turning on the organ.”

  “Turning on—?”

  “And smiling,” Wendall said.

  There was a trembling sound in Mr. Moffat’s throat. Suddenly, he was aware of the Reverend’s voice reading the words of the final hymn.

  “No,” he murmured.

  “What is it?” Wendall asked.

  “I can’t turn her on.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I just—”

  The old man felt his breath thinned as, below, the Reverend ceased to speak and looked up, waiting. No, thought Mr. Moffat. No, I mustn’t. Premonition clamped a frozen hand on him. He felt a scream rising in his throat as he watched his hand reach forward and push the switch.

  The motor started.

  Mr. Moffat began to play. Rather, the organ seemed to play, pushing up or drawing down his fingers at its will. Amorphous panic churned the old man’s insides. He felt an overpowering urge to switch the organ off and flee.

  He played on.

  He started as the singing began. Below, armied in their pews, the people sang, elbow to elbow, the wine-red hymnals in their hands.

  “No,” gasped Mr. Moffat.

  Wendall didn’t hear him. The old man sat staring as the pressure rose. He watched the needle of the volume gauge move past mezzo toward forte. A dry whimper filled his throat. No, please, he thought, please.

  Abruptly, the swell to great stop slid out like the head of some emerging serpent. Mr. Moffat thumbed it in desperately. The swell unison button stirred. The old man held it in; he felt it throbbing at his finger pad. A dew of sweat broke out across his brow. He glanced below and saw the people squinting up at him. His eyes fled to the volume needle as it shook toward grand crescendo.

  “Wendall, try to—!”

  There was no time to finish. The swell to great stop slithered out again, the air ballooned with sound. Mr. Moffat jabbed it back. He felt keys and pedals dropping in their beds. Suddenly, the swell unison button was out. A peal of unchecked clamor filled the church. No time to speak.

  The organ was alive.

  He gasped as Wendall reached over to jab a hand across the switch. Nothing happened. Wendall cursed and worked the switch back and forth. The motor kept on running.

  Now pressure found its peak, each pipe shuddering with storm winds. Tones and overtones flooded out in a paroxysm of sound. The
hymn fell mangled underneath the weight of hostile chords.

  “Hurry!” Mr. Moffat cried.

  “It won’t go off!” Wendall shouted back.

  Once more, the swell to great stop jumped forward. Coupled with the volume pedal, it clubbed the walls with dissonance. Mr. Moffat lunged for it. Freed, the swell unison button jerked out again. The raging sound grew thicker yet. It was a howling giant shouldering the church.

  Grand crescendo. Slow vibrations filled the floors and walls.

  Suddenly, Wendall was leaping to the rail and shouting, “Out! Get Out!”

  Bound in panic, Mr. Moffat pressed at the switch again and again; but the loft still shook beneath him. The organ still galed out music that was no longer music but attacking sound.

  “Get out!” Wendall shouted at the congregation. “Hurry!”

  The windows went first.

  They exploded from their frames as though cannon shells had pierced them. A hail of shattered rainbow showered on the congregation. Women shrieked, their voices pricking at the music’s vast ascension. People lurched from their pews. Sound flooded at the walls in tidelike waves, breaking and receding.

  The chandeliers went off like crystal bombs.

  “Hurry!” Wendall yelled.

  Mr. Moffat couldn’t move. He sat staring blankly at the manual keys as they fell like toppling dominoes. He listened to the screaming of the organ.

  Wendall grabbed his arm and pulled him off the bench. Above them, two last windows were disintegrated into clouds of glass. Beneath their feet, they felt the massive shudder of the church.

  “No!” The old man’s voice was inaudible; but his intent was clear as he pulled his hand from Wendall’s and stumbled backward toward the railing.

  “Are you crazy?” Wendall leaped forward and grabbed the old man brutally. They spun around in battle. Below, the aisles were swollen. The congregation was a fear-mad boil of exodus.

  “Let me go!” screamed Mr. Moffat, his face a bloodless mask. “I have to stay!”

  “No, you don’t!” Wendall shouted. He grabbed the old man bodily and dragged him from the loft. The storming dissonance rushed after them on the staircase, drowning out the old man’s voice.

  “You don’t understand!” screamed Mr. Moffat. “I have to stay!”