The Musician

by Douglas Gardham

  What the hell am I thinking?

  Ethan saw the green carpet again. The fibers pressed into his left cheek. Like his right eye before, his left eye was all but closed. When he opened it, his eyeball nearly touched the carpet.

  “She wanted you, Ethan!” the voice said, yelling his name again, the black boot unmoving. “She chose you. But she was mine.”

  The voice paused long enough for Ethan to again question his present. Whom was the voice talking about? Mila? Christa? Syd? He couldn’t ask. Robbie had known Mila, but he’d killed Christa. No, that wasn’t right. It wasn’t, right?

  How long had it been since he’d taken his Orap—the morning of Bogart’s? Did it matter? Was he already—

  No, Ethan, you can’t go there.

  “I speak like it’s the past, but true love is eternal. She was mine. Still is. You cannot take her away, but you misled her.”

  The black boot moved. Ethan’s eye didn’t twitch. The boot disappeared from sight. If he concentrated, he could see the white piss pot in his lower peripheral vision without moving his eye.

  “You’ve wrecked it for all of us, Ethan,” the voice said.

  Ethan was trying to trace the voice’s footfalls but couldn’t over the sound of Robert Plant singing, “Going down, going down now, going down.”

  “Neither of us can have her now.”

  The voice had moved farther away, down to his feet.

  Ethan was having a hard time figuring out who the her was. He hadn’t been with Christa long enough to know about her previous romantic interests or others vying for her affection; Mila was a closed case. That left Syd. But Syd seemed as much a victim as he was. But remembering again what he’d heard her say confused him: “I’m not part of this.” For her to say that was an admission of involvement. But part of what? He couldn’t figure it out. How could she be part of it but taken with him?

  His fading pain kept him thinking. Why would Syd have anything to do with this thing? She’d never mentioned anyone. She didn’t talk about her relationships.

  And the voice?

  All along, he’d assumed the voice was male. The electronics could easily fool him with that too.

  As thoughts of Syd festered in his head, it was unbelievable to think that any part of this nightmare could be real—but his pain was.

  Pain accompanied everything here. He attempted to breathe through his nose again. The tiniest bit of pressure sent tendrils of pain past the backs of his eyeballs, as if to warn him. His right calf felt tight and swollen. His right hand hurt the most. His broken finger throbbed in numbness. He hoped the voice would leave it alone. He knew his fingers were vulnerable and an obvious target to further break him—but break him from what? The polished boots loomed largest in his mind. A kick to his head could bring him to an end.

  You can’t think that way.

  A silent prayer fell on his lips: “The lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.”

  He recited the prayer in its entirety in his head. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d said it, yet he knew it.

  Still, the voice didn’t speak.

  He couldn’t believe he was asking it again. Please say something.

  But the voice’s silence continued as Simon and Garfunkel sang about the sound of silence, replacing Led Zeppelin: “Hear my words that I might teach you.” That was all he heard.

  He was heading back inside his head. His inability to move, with constant scrutiny bearing down on him, was becoming unbearable.

  CHAPTER 72

  Eyes Still Open

  He heard the suck of an airtight door open. A similar sound, followed by a clunk, closed it.

  “She’s why you’re here.”

  Ethan had no idea of the time or how long the silent wait had lasted. The melodic sounds of Sweet filled the room with their hit “Fox on the Run.” If the voice was in the room, the shiny black boots were too, somewhere behind him. It made sense now. Every other time, the voice had knocked him out on departure.

  “Drink, Ethan!” the voice yelled above the song.

  The shock of the loudness caused him to blink. He knew it. He waited for the blow to come. What would the black boot target next?

  But nothing happened—at least nothing he expected.

  It started behind his right ear and crossed to his cheek, crawling like a centipede.

  Air passed over the hairs on the back of his neck. He felt, rather than heard, the breathing—inhaling and then exhaling—across his face, unseen, again and again.

  The breath was harmless enough, but after the third pass, Ethan couldn’t stand it. The voice didn’t stop. It seemed to get closer with each breath, moving around his earlobe to the top of his ear and back again. The voice breathed down the nape of his neck, below his ear, and under his jaw. Ethan stared at the carpet. He wanted to shrivel up and disappear as the voice’s breath passed over his skin.

  “Drink, Ethan,” whispered the electronic voice as a hand came out in front of him, reinserting the straw that extended into a new bowl of liquid now in front of him. It was the hand of a person whose fingernails and cuticles were chewed to the quick. Ethan tried to suck on the straw but only managed a trickle of water. It was all he could manage with the air blowing on his neck. He wanted to melt into the green carpet. The hand moved away. Then the breathing stopped.

  Something wet and alive moved across the soft skin behind his ear. If he’d been on a cliff, he would have jumped off. The heavy door was there again. His balance was precarious. He wanted to reach out and open it; there seemed no other escape.

  “Drink some more, Ethan,” the whispering electronics repeated beside his right ear.

  Whatever had been behind his ear stopped. The heavy door wasn’t pressing him. Ethan sucked on the straw, bringing cool water into his mouth. Maybe he would see another hour yet.

  “Do you love her, Ethan?” asked the voice, the tone changed.

  Ethan didn’t move.

  “She loves you,” the voice said. “She was given to me, but you took her. What one is given, another taketh away; it’s in the Bible and how people behave.”

  There was a brief pause.

  “What you must understand,” the electronic voice added, steady and serious, “as part of lesson two, is why you’re here. You are responsible. You’re here because of what you did. If you had just left well enough alone, I wouldn’t have to do this. I wouldn’t have had to do it to her.”

  To her? Syd?

  The more the voice spoke, the more Ethan figured out what he must have missed; for Syd, the band was not only music but also a way out. It made sense. That was why she’d come to Toronto so quickly—packed her bags and left after only a phone call from a note stuck in a magazine. Music and Ethan were a way to get away from this madman.

  The night in the car after Benny’s show, she’d wanted to say more. Things had happened between them and effected what they loved. He’d known it would destroy what they were creating, yet he’d still let it happen.

  “She wanted you from the first time she met you,” the voice said. Ethan was sure he heard something different when the voice shouted the last word. “Crazy how that happens and then turns into such terrible things.”

  The voice murmured something Ethan couldn’t quite make out. It coughed.

  “But you can’t just take what isn’t given to you,” the voice said, sounding weak at first but stronger with the last word. “But you did, and you will get what you deserve!”

  The yelling caused the speaker to crackle again. There was an unsettling madness in the words.

  Ethan had a sense that the voice had moved closer. He couldn’t hear any movement, only the gangling voice of Bob Dylan singing “Times They Are A-Changin’.”

  “And thus concludes lesson
two, Ethan,” the voice said quietly, speaking just above a whisper. Ethan could again feel the breath of air on his neck. “You’re here because of her. Her. Her!”

  The voice screamed, hammering Ethan’s head yet again with another sonic blow.

  “I can’t. I can’t!” the voice screamed, but the percussive impact wasn’t the same, leaving Ethan with the impression that the voice had moved away.

  “I won’t!” it hollered, stretching the words like the howl of a wolf. “I won’t say her name. I can’t say her name. She is inert.”

  For a moment, Ethan didn’t know what hit him. It wasn’t a physical blow but something he felt inside as soon as he heard it.

  It was in the last word the voice said. Inert. He knew it—not in the sense of having heard it before or knowing what it meant but in knowing it connected with something in his head that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. The heavy door was close again, with its repeating sense of déjà vu blocking him from seeing more.

  “She was mine!” the voice screamed. It had now moved a distance behind him. “She was given to me. She was my gift, and you—you, Ethan Jones—took her away!”

  The voice was screaming, loud beyond measure, but to Ethan, it didn’t seem to be screaming at him. Like someone lost in hysteria, a dog lost in its own barking, the voice seemed to be speaking to something or someone outside the physical dimensions of the room. Ethan could all but see the voice’s arms outstretched, as if it were addressing a large audience from a platform instead of the incarcerated captive before it.

  Ethan saw Robbie. It couldn’t be.

  Then, in what seemed but an instant, the voice was close behind him again, breathing in and out across the tiny hairs on the back of his neck, disrupting any possibility of thoughts forming in his head—except for Robbie’s image.

  “You took her away,” the voice hissed, close to Ethan’s ear. “She didn’t even love you.”

  The next few seconds were stolen from Ethan, confused by the image of Robbie and thoughts of Syd. How could this voice possibly think he’d stolen Syd away? They were part of a band, not a couple. How could Syd possibly have had anything to do with this thing? Worse, the voice spoke of Syd in the past tense.

  He couldn’t let himself think about that.

  The breathing was close to his ear again, and then the slithery wetness was licking behind his ear. It was unbearable.

  Had he been knifed in the back, his reaction would not have been different. With what little movement he was allowed by whatever held him to the floor and his limited ability to make any sound, he screamed, jerking his head and body with everything he had. He moved fractionally, hardly enough to matter and not enough to move the voice’s tongue from his ear.

  “Oh, Ethan,” the macabre voice said in a whisper distorted by the electronics, “these are tough lessons for you, aren’t they?”

  The voice stopped. The tongue returned, tracing the edge of his ear with impossible slowness. The light breath turned him inside out. His right arm pulled on his numb left, the movement causing his broken finger to throb. Something inside said, Don’t, but it was no use. He either found a way to break loose or opened the heavy door to somewhere else. He could already feel something peeking out from behind it.

  Then, as if he were being jerked backward by a force much more powerful than he, it happened.

  The pain was excruciating. It was so extreme he forgot where he was. His right arm pulled hard, restricted by his left. He could do nothing but take it. His right ear, only moments before the target of the voice’s licking and breathing, was on fire.

  The pain began to subside, but his ear was numb. Like a teardrop, warm fluid ran down the back of his neck. The voice was silent until Ethan heard a gurgle and a sputtering spit. Something splashed into the bowl of water in front of him.

  Ethan stared straight ahead. His right eye could see the blood dripping from the edge of the bowl onto the carpet. It was only then he connected the terrific pain with what the voice had spit into the water.

  “You can only get so far,” said the voice, spewing its words, “before things catch up with you. We learn from our mistakes. It just takes some of us longer. Doesn’t it, Ethan?”

  It asked another question, knowing there would be no response. Ethan’s stomach erupted upon his seeing the chunk of ear lying in the bowl of water. He knew now it was blood that ran down his neck.

  “The next time you fail to listen, obey, learn, and remember,” the voice said without emotion, “it will be more than just a piece of you.”

  The right polished boot appeared.

  “I’m not playing games here, my friend,” the voice said, sounding intent on inflicting some other punishment. “Sorry. I misspoke. The expression ‘my friend’ can be a nice familial expression of endearment, but don’t misunderstand it. I am no friend, Ethan. There’s no endearment here. This is full-on hate that will not end until you’re dead.”

  The shiny black boot didn’t move.

  “You must remember. I am your hope, your fear, and your truth. There is nothing else in this room.”

  The voice went silent above him, replaced by Tom Petty singing the chorus to one of his songs: “Even the losers keep a little bit of pride.”

  “Things will be different for you the next time. That I can assure you.”

  A cackle followed the voice’s last sentence.

  “I want you to remember, Ethan,” the voice added, “that you brought all of this upon yourself. There are consequences for our misdeeds. You need to think about this if you want to live past the next lesson.”

  The voice paused, but the black boot didn’t leave its position in front of his face, beside the bowl of bloodied water.

  “What was given and taken away is done. There’s no taking it back. But you can still listen and obey and remember.”

  Ethan knew he had paid with his ear for his indiscretion of trying to move; he had stepped way over the line. His loss of control had been a waste of what little energy he had and only amounted to more pain. No one could hear him except the one he didn’t want to; his only sounds amounted to little more than muffled grunts.

  “I think we’re going to get along real fine now, Ethan,” the voice said, as if Ethan could have become anything close to a friend in this nightmare of horror. “I know you understand. It’s not me but control you’re fighting—your self-control. Like I said before, you’re responsible for what I do to you. You’re the one who makes me do it.”

  There was another pause. The right boot was joined by the polished left one. The two boots moved back and forth in front of him as if the voice were pacing, thinking of what to do next.

  The burn in his ear was fading.

  “You know the rules. Now it’s a matter of practice and your willingness to follow them. I think you’re a good student, Ethan. But thinking and being are not the same. We will discover them together.”

  The black boots disappeared below what Ethan could see.

  “I like that,” the voice said, as if responding to something Ethan had said. “Self-inflicted. It describes what’s happening to you. You are getting beaten, but it’s all self-inflicted. You break the rules; you suffer the consequences.”

  The right boot came back into Ethan’s view as the voice spoke, and before the voice finished saying the word consequences, the boot swung into him.

  His control was gone. Pain shot through him as if his skin would burst. His body seemed like a mass of exposed nerve endings hit by a dentist’s drill. He couldn’t see whatever was in front of his eyes, as he was blinded to the edge of consciousness. The agony wouldn’t relent and seemed compounded by each beat of his pounding heart. Short of going through him like a cannonball, maiming him for life, the toe of the boot embedded itself in his groin like a stuck piece of pipe.

  Unknowingly, he struggled in the restraints; he was
nothing.

  He gasped for air through the hole in the tape covering his mouth, the straw now gone. Something unstuck in his nasal passage, as if he’d imbibed a stone, but air came into his lungs. As if on cue once his nasal passage had cleared, the pungent smell of sweet rot covered his face again.

  Everything went away.

  CHAPTER 73

  Eyes Open—Fifth Time

  “Good morning, Ethan,” the now familiar voice said.

  He listened, now awake. His back was stiff, his leg was sore, and his ear hurt. He wasn’t on his side anymore but sitting in a chair. His head hung down, his chin on his chest. The muscles in the back of his neck stretched. His eyes were closed. He didn’t want to open them. It was a conscious thought. It seemed the electronic voice was listening too.

  His arms were pulled back behind him. Thick cuffs were fastened to his wrists and cut into his skin. He knew they were steel. They were not comfortable. The cuffs hung from chains attached to something behind him—maybe the beige cinder-block wall he remembered from before. His arms were raised high enough to be even with his shoulders. He couldn’t feel his arms.

  With his eyes closed, he knew none of this for sure, but it was easier to accept in his mind than to see it for real. He didn’t know why he knew all this, only that he did.

  His memory then began to serve him quickly. The music came first. Again, he recognized the song. It was fairly new, David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance.” The music never stopped; it wouldn’t. He didn’t know why he knew it wouldn’t. It was part of some plan—a plan that felt increasingly familiar.

  The chair he was sitting in was fastened to the cement floor with four-inch lag bolts. He hadn’t seen them, but he knew they were there. Carriage bolts and steel brackets finished the job. When he’d first seen the wood legs, they hadn’t been bolted to the floor. His ankles were encased in cuffs like those around his wrists but bigger. They were steel too. Each was bolted to the chair leg opposite the bracket. A thick belt of some sort was wrapped around his stomach and fastened to the back of the chair with four more carriage bolts—carriage bolts with round heads, like the ones he’d used on the pool fences while working for Al.