The Musician

by Douglas Gardham

  “You, Ethan,” the voice said sternly and slowly, “have to stop moving. You’re not going to live long enough to learn anything else if you don’t.”

  Ethan heard the voice, but that was all. He was focused on breathing. He could take air in through the hole in the tape if he breathed slowly; otherwise, his breath seemed to suck in the tape and close the hole. Slower breathing lessened the pain and seemed to calm him, opening a passage for air to pass. He had to be mindful of his breathing. It seemed to help balance the fine line his pain was on.

  He struggled with what caused the pain and blood in his nose, but that discomfort masked the pain in his abdomen. But as his breathing became more controlled, his stomach started to hurt.

  “If you haven’t figured it out,” the voice said. He couldn’t see the boots but was sure he could hear them moving on the carpet behind his head. “I was trying to give you some relief so you didn’t mess your pants. Too bad.”

  With the mention of messing his pants, his need to pee grew worse. The pressure hurt. He could remember the cramps he’d experienced as a kid when holding it in class, an unfortunate result of being too shy to ask to be excused. There was no raising his hand here.

  His thought ended abruptly as a cloth with the smell of rotting garbage was stuffed in his face. The green carpet with his dried puke of Greenland and blood darkened. The wood legs and the beige cinder-block wall became one.

  CHAPTER 69

  Eyes Open—Third Time

  Ethan awoke with something stuck in his mouth again. In an instant, he knew what it was. Without trying, he felt cool water trickle into his mouth. Water! His eye flashed open to find the white bowl in front of him, filled with clear liquid. Not again. He stopped.

  Journey was singing “Don’t Stop Believing” from somewhere behind him. He tuned in and out of the background music, which wasn’t loud but was always present.

  “It’s okay, Ethan,” the electronic voice said, thrusting him back into his nightmare with nauseating speed. The voice came from somewhere behind him. It sounded kind with its duping tone of empathy, as if the person behind the voice had the ability to care. “You need to drink. You’ve been too long without water.”

  Ethan, still reluctant to draw from the straw, sucked carefully, uncertain what he would taste and consume. It hurt to even think of the bitter burn of alcohol down his throat and the witch-cackle shriek that was sure to follow. The thought struck him that he might have a way out. Could he not drink and wage a hunger strike? Surely the voice wouldn’t expect it. It wanted control. His refusing to drink would turn that around. Was the voice already concerned inside its feigned empathy? For Ethan, the idea brought hope, as if a ray of sunshine had found its way into the room.

  The pain that followed, like an explosion inside his body, eliminated all thought.

  “Drink the water!” the voice yelled, as loud and chilling as anything Ethan had heard.

  He couldn’t breathe, never mind drink. He did his best to calm down. Slowing his breathing was a monumental task, but it lessened the pain. Water came into his mouth, luscious and as sweet as anything he had ever tasted. It didn’t remedy his agony but touched it enough for him to recognize that the pain came from the right side of his lower back, one of his kidneys being the likely target. He sucked on the straw. Without his really knowing it, his mouth filled. He swallowed. He relished the replenishment, his idea to save himself forgotten. It was like discovering a spring of fresh water at the end of a lengthy hike on a hot summer’s day. The ache from the kick would not pass soon, but the water at least helped ease it.

  “Okay, okay,” the voice said as Ethan continued to suck down more water, “take it easy. The water’s not going anywhere, but you will be if you don’t slow down.”

  The voice paused. The black boots returned to his field of vision. They stopped again in front of his face, inches behind the bowl. Ethan kept drinking, unable to stop or obey the instructions he’d been given. Like magic, the bowl disappeared, kicked away by one of the black boots. Water splashed onto his face.

  “In spite of what we’ve been through,” the voice said, calm and direct, “you’re still not learning. Either that, or you’re simply as dumb as a stump.”

  Ethan continued to suck from the straw, unaware that only air was coming into his mouth. His tiny pleasure was over.

  “Congratulations,” the voice said. “You’ve now completed your first twenty-four hours in captivity.”

  The boots shifted. The toes pointed at Ethan’s face in front of the wood legs. Beads of water spotted the polished black leather. He watched as the boots rose slightly on the carpet. The voice sat down. The boots were a foot from his face, within easy striking range. In staring at the boots, he noticed something was different below his waist. Without moving his head, not that he would have or even could have, he caught the edge of something round and white midway down his body. It was difficult to tell what it was—maybe he’d been given a pot to piss in and had. It didn’t feel as if he’d peed his pants, but the urgency to go was gone. It felt as if his pants were too.

  “We have a couple of things to go over,” the voice said, “before we begin our lesson today. You will need to listen closely. Learning, if you haven’t figured out already, will be key to your longevity here.”

  The voice paused, as if it were reflecting on what it had just said.

  “Come to think of it, that’s not much different from life. As I’ve said, you won’t be leaving this room alive. You will come to learn why—ah, that word again—in time, and how well you learn will dictate how long you stay alive.”

  Unnerved, Ethan had heard what the freakish voice was saying, or some semblance of it, before. He couldn’t remember where and wondered if his mind was messing with him. He felt a creepy sense of déjà vu and a distraction from the surreal horror that surrounded him, but it was a distraction he didn’t need. He had to pay attention and not move, but the feeling of having been there didn’t go away. He kept trying to figure it out, as terrified as he was of missing something that would keep him alive.

  “You’ll come to know who I am,” the synthetic voice said. Ethan was no closer to putting a face to the electric voice than he had been upon first hearing it. “The better you learn, the sooner that will be. I have no intention of keeping my identity secret. You will never leave here, so no one else will ever find out.”

  The voice stopped. The black boots remained still. Ethan could feel its eyes scrutinizing him. He didn’t dare move, but something was different. He heard the music again. It sounded like some Frank Sinatra song his father might have listened to. But it wasn’t Frank. As the song played on, he was reminded of summer nights driving back from his nanna’s place in the back seat of his father’s blue ’68 Chevy Impala. They listened to his father’s music, and only his music, when traveling in the car. That was just how it was. Most of the time, his father had the dashboard radio tuned in to a crooners’ station.

  As if in sync with Ethan’s thoughts, the voice spoke.

  “You probably have no idea why you’re here,” it said, “but you will. What one is given that another takes away has its consequences.” The voice placed emphasis on the last syllables of the word. “We will go through those con-sequences over time. You, Ethan, will determine how long those sequences last through your learning and obedience.”

  There was another pause. Ethan didn’t move. His left eye was open, fixed on the bottom of a chair leg. His dried blood and vomit were still on the green carpet in front of him. Due to the position of his head, his right eye was all but in it.

  “And so lesson one begins, Ethan,” the voice said, “entitled ‘The First Hint.’ I was given, and you—yes, you—took her away!”

  CHAPTER 70

  Eyes Stay Open

  The suddenness of the voice yelling again caught Ethan off guard. He didn’t move but was certain he blinked. T
he sound carried the surprise of a balloon bursting beside his head. To flinch at such a sound would have been normal, but there was nothing normal about his situation. Although he hadn’t noticed the voice moving, he was certain it had leaned closer to emphasize its words. The sound was so loud that he struggled to understand what was even said.

  “I’m going to start with a hypothesis today,” the voice said, returning to a calm, academic tone. “Everything we do is based, at some level, on the value we give it.” The voice paused—the habit of a person who liked to hear himself talk. “And that value is uniquely determined and decided on by the individual.”

  There was another pause.

  “A simple example would be what you’ve experienced in the last day.”

  Ethan’s heart sped up as the right black boot moved off the carpet. He tried to prepare for another kick. His eye stayed on the wood chair leg. The boot rose out of sight and then came to hang in front of the voice’s left boot. The voice had crossed its legs.

  “It’s very relevant when we look at how we learn. You know, that word just won’t go away, will it?”

  Ethan relaxed a little, realizing the relaxed position the voice had taken; a kick seemed a little less inevitable.

  “Look at you,” said the voice, the empathetic tone returning. “You’re evaluating pain and its value much differently than you did even, say, a day ago. No?”

  Ethan didn’t so much as shift his pupil.

  “And,” the voice added, “I think you learned that moving equals pain. No moving means no hurt. Seems simple enough, but it’s taken hours for you to learn. I’ll extend moving to a single rule—or governing law, if you prefer. Simply put, do as I say. Remember, I am your hope, your fear, and your truth!” the voice shouted. Then, without pausing, it returned to its normal tone. “That will be more than sufficient for you to live longer.”

  Ethan doubted he’d ever get used to the suddenness of the voice’s loudness. He had no idea whether he’d blinked or not, but the black boots didn’t move.

  “But don’t get your hopes up, Ethan,” the voice said. “Your life will come to an end in this room. Your obedience will allow you to live longer, but it won’t change the inevitability of your demise. We will find out how much you value a longer life by how well you listen, how well you obey, and how well you learn!”

  Ethan wasn’t prepared this time for the last word to be shouted. The edge of his eyelid trembled. He didn’t know how close the voice would have to be to detect the movement, but the black boots remained in place one above the other.

  “There is a bed and a commode. Oh, I like that word. It sounds so—oh, I don’t know—much more flowing than toilet. The very word constipates me. I do digress, don’t I? Behind you, Ethan, are a commode and a bed that you cannot see. Not seeing them won’t make them as valuable to you as seeing them—seeing is believing, right? I could be lying. I assure you they will be valuable to you.”

  The voice stopped. Ethan pictured it holding its chin in one hand between the L formed by its thumb and forefinger while cupping its elbow in its other hand, pensive about what it had said and still needed to say.

  “And me—yes, me,” the voice said, as if suddenly aware of what it wanted to say. “You will come to value me above all else as you truly begin to understand that I am your hope, your fear, and”—Ethan was ready for the voice to scream this time, but it never came—“your truth.”

  Ethan continued to stare forward. The voice went silent.

  He tried to stay focused on being still, despite his thoughts wanting to take him elsewhere. Shifting his stare fractionally, he looked beyond his dried blood and vomit, the boots, and the wood legs. The room looked to be in the basement of a house. He would have been at the band’s house now after the drive back from Bogart’s if twenty-four hours had indeed passed, as the voice had said. He pushed the thought away. Good thoughts about being there and being free weren’t useful and would only make him feel worse. An image of Greg’s Slingerland drum kit replaced the voice’s black boots and the wood legs in front of him. He could remember lying on the floor in Greg’s parents’ basement. Greg had pinched the dime-bag stash of weed hidden between his older brother’s box spring and mattress. It had been Ethan’s first drug experience, and one of his last, as he preferred the taste and high of alcohol to the vague feelings and musty smell of smoking pot. He had stared at the unfinished ceiling and watched the visible crossbeams change shape to the sounds of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer’s Brain Salad Surgery. He’d watched as the cross members shifted between grins and frowns as the wood joists stretched and shrank in harmony with Keith Emerson’s fingers on the Hammond organ. The grains of wood had seemed to flow like water into the top of the cinder-block wall. He remembered being amazed that he’d never noticed how much wood looked like water. It was odd that he’d never noticed it again or listened to Brain Salad Surgery either.

  Movement of the right black boot back to the green carpet returned him to the room and his predicament. He watched the boot, fearing the worst.

  Had he moved? Was that why the boot had moved? His drifting thoughts had let him down again. Why couldn’t he concentrate?

  The toe of the boot moved up and down. The Cars’ “Let’s Go” was playing; the boot moved to the beat.

  When the music ended, the boot stopped.

  “Bye Bye Blackbird,” sung by a female singer Ethan couldn’t name, came next—Billie Holiday or Ella Fitzgerald maybe, performers his mother loved. The voice remained quiet. He hadn’t thought of his mother until now. He feared that news of these events could kill her. She struggled enough with the chance of him suffering a relapse, but kidnapping? She would go into shock or worse. He could see her collapsing and his father in shambles as to what to do. And Carlyn. Oh, Carlyn. It hurt to think of how much grief he’d already brought her. And Mila. Mila? Not Mila. Christa. His thoughts were confused. He needed his Orap medication. He was overdue. Robbie. Why, Robbie? His roommate had murdered Mila—and was later killed himself in a car accident. Christa would be worried. Those he loved would all be worried, their world turned upside down again. For his mother, losing him again would be unbearable.

  Focus, Ethan. He needed his pills.

  The voice continued its silence.

  The music. Focus on the music. Listen to the music, Ethan.

  But it wasn’t the music he thought about. It was Syd. What had happened to Syd? She’d been with him. They’d left Gus and Greg to get more beer. He’d heard her voice in the shaking vehicle on the way there, something about a plan. “I’m not part of this,” she’d said. What did that mean? Why could she talk? Was she involved? The voice made no effort to hide the fact that it knew him. Ethan didn’t know much about her past, as he’d been so enamored with her guitar playing. She didn’t talk much about her life in Ottawa.

  Ethan couldn’t come up with an explanation. If anyone was mixed up with the wrong folks, it was Greg. He was slipping, getting closer to the edge all the time. None of them knew what to do. Gus had come to Ethan. “We have to do something,” he’d said with sadness in his eyes. “The road he’s on doesn’t end with a stop sign. It ends over the side of a cliff.”

  Even so, Ethan had a hard time believing Greg could be involved. Messed-up people did messed-up things, but Greg couldn’t have been part of this hell.

  Johnny Paycheck’s “Take This Job and Shove It” played. The shiny boots came back into his sight. They’d never left.

  The voice still hadn’t spoken. The silence was horrifying. He prayed he hadn’t moved, certain the voice was watching and waiting like a hawk eying a field mouse. It was dreadful, being coerced to disobey, which would lead to his punishment. Ethan was shocked by his next thought.

  Speak, you bastard. Talk to me.

  As if cued, the boots sank deeper into the carpet as the voice rose to its feet. Without an electronic word, the wood legs came
off the carpet and disappeared with the black boots from Ethan’s view. He waited, doing his best to hold his fear in check while readying for the blow that was sure to come—a steel-toed kick to his ribcage, thigh, or worse.

  The background music made it difficult to hear any sound the boots made crossing the carpet. The cinder-block walls made him think of the cement underneath him and the basement—a basement suppressed suspicious sounds. Underground was the place to hide. Why did he think that?

  He looked at the green carpet and beige block wall. The bastard was going to sit and watch him fail from behind. He had to wait. God help him.

  The music played on. He didn’t recognize the song that followed Johnny Paycheck’s, but he was amazed at how many he did recognize and could name. He knew the music would play until the end, but he didn’t know how he knew.

  Still, the voice said nothing.

  He struggled with the nothingness. How long could he go bound in this position, being watched, hearing music, staring at blankness, and trying not to think about what pain would be inflicted on him next, all while holding his fear and himself in place? It was mind-numbingly exhausting. There was nothing to realize the passage of time, only what the voice told him. The room was lit by lights he couldn’t see but knew were above him like the ever-present threat of death that churned his stomach with all that his mind could not let go of. He imagined the horrors young American men must have suffered when dropped into the jungles of Vietnam—hell by a different name. They at least had been mobile.

  “So, Ethan!” the voice shouted as if the electronic sound had somehow slithered up beside his ear. Ethan was amazed how attuned his hearing was to the voice even with the music playing. The quieter “So” that preceded his name was loud enough to warn him. He remained still except for his left eyelid, which flicked like a tic.