The Devil's Beat (The Devil's Mark) (3 page)

With his undamaged hand, Max pulled out a large flashlight which doubled as a handy steel club. Its circle of bright blue light pushed back the dark while its heft made him feel armed and less vulnerable. He walked further into the stale darkness, silence, and heat. At random, he headed into the first room on his left.

At first flash, it appeared to be an old-fashioned and ornate sitting room. He stopped a few steps in. A strange sight near the top of the ten-foot ceiling snagged his eyeballs. The walls sported faux columns at regular intervals, capped with ornate capitals and carved plaster or stone statues.

The statues, gargoyles or some other sort of grotesque creatures, looked balefully down into the room. All had raised arms that appeared to hold up the ceiling. Max took a couple more steps into the room, then shuddered.

Who would voluntarily design a room like this? He could practically feel the malevolence in the gaze of the statues.

A quick sweep of the edges of the room with the light revealed dark shadows of moldering chairs and sofas. The once-rich red fabric was torn, rotted, and stained by the flood waters.

His beam flashed across the floor and momentarily illuminated two bodies, both fish-belly white and dead, lying intertwined bonelessly on the floor.

The sight speared through his brain, causing shock waves that smacked into his adrenals and squeezed them dry. He squeaked, jumped, and swept the beam back to horrible sight.

The light revealed that the bodies were actually just cushions, draperies, and sheets piled up in a heap.

Max's heart thudded in his chest. “Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck!” He tried to catch his breath, momentarily closed his eyes to give his over stimulated brain a break, and stepped back.

A terrible crash shattered the silence.

He screamed, jumped about two feet, twisted around desperately, and tried to take out his unseen foe with the flashlight. His makeshift club swept unimpeded through the air. Only with a heroic effort did he stay on his feet. In a panic, he brought the light to bear on the floor, where it illuminated the former pile of old beer cans scattered by his backward step. He put his hand to his heart to help his ribcage hold it in place and quickly checked to make sure none of the gargoyles had jumped off their pedestals while his back was turned. With every thrumping beat, a red tinge speared in from the edges of his vision, then subsided. He tried to hold the flashlight steady against the shaking of his muscles and tried to calm his breathing. Between breaths, he told himself, “Hold it together, Faust. Stop freaking out. Just a house. Just beer cans.”

When he felt less likely to keel over dead, he flashed the light around the floor surrounding him. It was darkly stained and littered with beer cans, fast food bags, and cups. There were dozens of partially burned candles and something that looked suspiciously like a bong. Random wax-covered dishware spread around the central pile.

He muttered in disgust, “Just a teenage party hangout...” With irritation, he also realized that if a bunch of teens were getting in, there must be an open window or door, probably around back. He had never even considered going around to check. That would have saved him several cuts, a new window, and probably a tetanus shot.

Sensing movement from the upper corner of his eye, he pinned down the closest statue with the light. Its short, squat body, mismatched bulbous eyes, and long dangling tongue evoked thoughts of a drugged-out, saw-toothed frog. He unsuccessfully tried to hold his flashlight steady with shaking muscles. He held it there long enough to convince himself that the statue truly wasn't moving, that the jiggling of its belly was just the result of his jittery light and its shadows.

When it seemed the statue was not going to drop on him and eat his face, he forced himself to sweep the rest of the room with the light. His beam illuminated two dark shapes at the back of the room. One, he recognized quickly as the silhouette of a grand piano. The other looked like some sort of golden column with odd bits poking out.

The thought of an antique piano perked him up. He deliberately sucked back his residual fear, ignored his shaking muscles, and walked toward the back. He made an effort to avoid the cans and puddly candles while focusing his attention on the odd golden column, trying to make out what it was. It looked like some sort of medieval torture device.

From a few feet away, the golden column resolved itself into the ragged front piece of a full-sized harp. From this distance, he could see that its golden color came from peeling gold paint. Once, the harp had been an ornate, elegant, visual, and aural sculpture, but now most of its strings were missing, and the peeling paint revealed a rust brown undercoat. Max’s interest in an old, ragged harp couldn’t compare to his love of the piano, so he went there.

The ancient, badly beaten piano stood at a tilt on warped and water damaged legs and it sported intricate relief carvings along the side. The finish on the piano had cracked and pealed over the years, but it couldn’t hide the beauty of its lines or the quality of the craftsmanship. The trespassers had used the piano as a base for their candles and large puddles of candle wax spread across the top and dribbled down the side to make a small wax stalagmite on the floor.

Max’s earlier anger came back with a vengeance. The treatment of this beautiful instrument was practically sacrilegious. He grit his teeth and moved around to the front of the piano.

There, right above the keys was a faded and barely legible manufacturers name, but Max recognized it. It was a Playel. This was the same piano Chopin had played and composed on, and it looked to be from that same era. It had been treated like a piece of trash.   

Max’s hands clenched and unclenched at his side. He wanted to hit something, but there was no one there to take his anger out on. He took a couple of shuddering breaths, got his temper under control, and examined its condition.

It was missing several keys, with four or five cracked or broken. Inside, many missing or snapped strings and a cracked soundboard rounded out the damage. He prayed he might be able to salvage it. In its prime, this piano had been a work of art, but now he feared it was just junk. Unable to stop himself, he tapped middle ‘C’. He winced when sound it made was more of a thonk than a note.

He'd always promised himself, he would buy a piano someday. They were less practical and versatile than a keyboard, but they were beautiful and elegant. His first musical love was the piano, and that had set the course for the rest of his life.

He ran his fingers lightly over the battered keys and said, “Beautiful lady, I will do everything in my power to bring you back to life. You deserve far better than you have received.”

Unable to look at it any more, he turned his back on the piano, and the harp caught his attention again. He wondered if it was as old as the piano. Max gave the harp a closer look. The gold paint made it look shoddier than it actually was. The ornately decorated column and frame looked solid, and when Max rocked it a bit, it proved so. His hand came away covered with flakes of gold paint. He thoughtlessly tried to brush the glitter off with his bandaged hand and winced at the pain. It transferred the flakes instead of knocking them off. A quick wipe on his already stained pants didn't help, either.

He sighed and just decided to ignore it. He'd had enough of the harp anyway. Absentmindedly, he plucked one of the remaining strings. It sang a deep, pure tone.

“A,” muttered Max to himself. He turned back toward the front of the room, but stopped when he realized that the note wasn't decaying.

Curious, he turned to look at the instrument again. The note was actually increasing in volume. Max had never seen anything like it. He focused the light on the vibrating string.

The note got louder.

He put his finger on the string to silence it.

It had no effect. The note continued to gain in strength. He grabbed the string with his hand.

It continued to vibrate. In fact, it got louder. The vibration started to sting his hand so he pulled it away.

“What the hell?” Max put his foot on the sound board to see if that would slow it down.

It didn't. It just got louder. Now the tone was loud enough to hurt Max's ears. The “A” note visibly shook the instrument.

If Max hadn't still been angry about the piano, he might just have left, but as it was, the misbehavior of the harp just pissed him off. He grabbed the harp and shook it. The vibrations traveled down his arms and started rattling his teeth. He released it with another curse.

The “A” note blasted through the small space and the gold flakes covering the frame of the harp now formed a cloud of sparkly gold dust around the harp.

Max snapped. He'd been cut, bruised, and covered in dirt. Now his ears were being assaulted. He screamed and smashed the harp with his light. The flashlight truly was a decent club and left a sizable dent in the neck of the harp. Thus encouraged, he hit it again... and again... and again and, ignoring the pain in his hand, he added the strength of his second arm to the light, bringing it down on the defenseless, shrieking harp. The neck cracked. This encouraged him to redouble his efforts while he continuously screamed in rage. Suddenly, he wasn't just beating at the harp, he was beating on Lucian, he was beating on the press, he was beating on the lawyers, he was beating on himself.

Under Max's onslaught, the neck cracked in two, and the note stopped. Max didn't. A glittering gold cloud surrounded him as he kept hitting the harp, screaming deprecations at it. After destroying the neck, he went to work on the column and then on the soundboard. He slowed down as exhaustion took him, but he didn't stop until the harp was just a pile of dried-blood-red kindling and wire on the floor. By this time, his voice was only a hoarse croak. When he realized there was nothing left to smash, Max finally stopped.

He stood breathing hard and then flopped down on the floor in exhaustion. He felt a little ashamed of his outburst, but he'd needed that. Because he was a self-absorbed idiot, he'd lost everything he'd worked for. He'd lost his right to make music. With a heaviness of body, but a strange lightness of spirit, he sat back against the base of one of the columns. The hollow wooden column shifted under his weight as he admired the results of his explosion with the play of his light. In the non-silence of his ringing ears (“E sharp”), he exhaled and didn't hear the accompanying sloshing of water above him. All his attention was on the ruins of the harp and its halo of shiny, golden paint chips. In the backwash of light, he could see the same gold specs covering his hands. In fact, when he played the light on himself, he found he glittered like the seventies.

Max muttered a half-hearted “crap,” slumped, and dripped his head back against the pillar with a thunk. Something tapped his head. He looked up as stream of noisome fluid poured down on his head from the top of the pillar.

He jumped up and spun around with another curse. At least that had been the plan. Instead, he unsteadily pushed himself off the floor with his still trembling arms and tried not to fall over as he backed away. The stream of liquid followed him a short way before he got himself out of range. Its rank smell made him gag as he weakly wiped it off with his sleeve and bandaged hand, coloring them both a nasty yellowish brown.

By the time he could see again, the stream had stopped. He pointed the light at the statue on top of the column. It was an ugly parody of the statue of the peeing boy that he'd always equated with English manor houses. This one was sporting a toothy smile, and its bulging, mismatched eyes focused on the enormous thrusting penis it held with both scaly hands. In front of it stood what looked like a bowl. The imp's evilly grinning mouth nearly bisected its misshapen face and two long fangs shoved out from his upper lip to dig into the stone flesh below.

That little mutant shit had peed on him! Max's anger re-flared, and he whipped his flashlight at the statue. The light twirled end over end till it hit the statue. With a solid thunk of metal on stone, the flashlight reversed course and came back at Max.

Max ducked and dove through another pile of cans, scattering them in a cacophony of sound punctuated by the heavy thunk of the light on the wooden floor. The light bounced and rolled in a couple of circles before it stopped.

Miraculously, it was still working. They sure didn't make flashlights like they used to.

When Max crawled over to pick up the light, the newly illuminated wall caught his eye. There was an odd vertical shadow traveling up the wall for about seven feet. It took a moment for Max to process it, but he was looking at a hidden door, which had been left ajar.

He should just leave. He knew it. Nothing good could come of exploring this place, this trap of Lucian's, but he couldn't leave until he had found his “present... before it rots.” He staggered to his feet and shone the light back on the peeing statue. It just leered at him with wicked humor. Max narrowed his eyes and growled at it. “I'll deal with you later.”

It seemed unimpressed. Max clutched his anger to him like a crutch and cautiously approached the door. As he approached, something seemed to be moving beyond it.

Max reached out and slapped the secret door open, revealing a short hallway. The movement had been the shadows from his light. The little corridor ended at a kitchen that might have fed an army. Max didn't pause to explore, but just went on, looking for his “present.” Expecting to be jumped at every turn, Max cautiously completed a loop through the dilapidated, dirty, and dusty main floor, past moldering and odoriferous furniture, odd carvings and disturbing Gothic bas-reliefs of angels, demons, dancing satyrs, and naked women augmented with faded paintings. He finally ended up back in the front hall. To his relief, he had found no bodies or any of the other horrible things he'd found himself contemplating as he stalked through the hot, dark building. The floor plan was immense and every room seemed to sport a different decorative style. Even to Max's untrained eye, the differences were obvious. Max genuinely wanted to meet the architect and find out what he'd been smoking.