The Organ Builder

I am not usually the sort of person to judge others harshly, or put forth my opinion as fact, but I must admit that after certain recent events I cannot help but regard some things as wrong – in the sense that they should not exist – or ever have done. I do not say this lightly. I have pondered many mysteries of the world, not least apparitions, ghouls and other things that dwell in darkness. I have let myself consume and be consumed by many astonishing works of art, letting - one hopes - perhaps a little of their wisdom sink into my soul. I do not consider myself a person who is easily duped or swayed, nor one who ignores the mystical & spiritual aspects of existence. I would say I am open-minded, curious, yet cautious and not without common sense. My studies have led me towards science, though I must admit a certain artistic longing coloured my youth, with music and painting causing a few haphazard moments in an otherwise rather uneventful career.
It was in my sophomore year at Baryonic University that a young music student first came to my attention. He was an eidolonic presence, pale and silent, with a blood freezing stare, swept back black hair and a long scruffy raincoat that ran the six feet from his shoulders to his ankles. At the time I had some artistic acquaintances who liked to give the same impression, perversely as an attempt to attract the same intensely creative sort, I think, but they did not achieve the genuinely gloomy aura that surrounded Ahren Calder. He appeared to exude a psychic warning not to approach him, which, of course, engaged my curiosity and made me all the more certain that I would pass through those barriers and engage the human being behind them.
In those days I rather fancied myself as a poetic soul who had made the fateful decision to study the sciences, physics in particular, all the while harbouring a secret longing to write and paint. Sometimes I had would even start work on a novella or poem only to lose inspiration and slink away deflated. Once I purchased some oil paints and brushes, but never surmounted the problem of stretching a canvas let alone passing the first test of painterly rectitude: setting a single drop of paint upon it. So I held court with students of the arts to whose coven I wished to belong, and tried desperately to be seen as a great undiscovered talent.
Circumstance had set my path through education as my fathers subjects became my own. He had made it clear that he wanted me to follow in his footsteps and some day take over his position at the University. Head of Physics would not be my first choice of titles, but perhaps it is better than anonymity – or infamy. My fate was finally swayed by his sponsorship, enforced by that of some of his colleagues, who obviously appreciated a “network” within the department and therefore had taken an interest in my educational welfare. Perhaps he was just trying to clear a path for me. Or perhaps he had known he would not see me graduate . Either way, I must admit that I was obliged to take the position I hold today by those old boys meddlings, and although I am content and have forged a career successfully, I cannot help but wonder what would have happened if I had been left to decide for myself what path my existence could have taken. Certainly it would have been less comfortable, and discomfort is a strong incentive to achievement.
But all that is unimportant now. A record must be made of what I have seen, and although I hesitate to burden another soul with the terror I have experienced, I cannot help but conclude that if any such event threatens to occur again then my knowledge could help to prevent it, however incredible and unearthly it may seem to present readers. These events did happen, and they occurred, to the best of my knowledge, as I have recorded them here.

Composers, so I gather, are a rather narcissistic bunch. I had noticed in the music department at Baryonic that the composers were often painfully shy, exquisitely awkward in conversation and solitary, at least outside of their natural environment – the study! But I realised quite soon that these traits usually – and deeply too – are a lid, often covering a bubbling ego of quite extravagant vastness. Hence the spats with their peers, the histrionics in rehearsal and the distress at being so pitifully misunderstood by the listening public. After a bad experience with a Mahler symphony I had decided I could not trust anyone who required countless hundreds of strangers to express their emotions. Music is a simple art – which like language has been passed down to us by our uncomplicated and unknown predecessors from the deepest possible past. To expand it to the degree poor Gustav did seemed to me simply distracting. I must admit that my thoughts on this matter were partly shaped by attending the concert after having been stricken by an intestinal malady, deriving from a salmon supper that in retrospect appears to have been of ancient and mysterious origin itself.
For a few short weeks, I thought I had found the heir to Gustav's throne; the composer and profoundly disquieting man, Ahren Calder. I had been aware of him for some time, and had wanted to engage him in conversation mainly because, as I said above, he seemed to go to great lengths to avoid unnecessary human contact. So I decided that there was only one way that I could get to know him: I would have to commission a work from him. As I was being supported financially at the time, and my expenses were relatively few, I could afford to offer him a modest inducement, as well as fund the performance. This would demand that was work for small forces. Out of tradition, I opted for a string quartet – that battleground which has vanquished even the most mighty of composers!
I decided on a cover story. Something that would intrigue him but draw him out too. I decided on “Lament for a Love Lost” as a title. Not ground-breaking I'm sure you'll agree, but designed to evoke a response. Surely a man as cold and as isolated as Calder must have lost a love...or silently borne some great heartbreak from afar. No artist could refuse a work with that title! It would be, I assumed, fertile ground for his hidden but fevered imagination
I sent a letter to his room, having got his address from reception. He lived in the Lewis Conservatory, separated from the rest of campus by a lonely knot of shadowy lanes flanked by vengeful trees. I had never visited a room there, or tramped the lanes, but I had met other students, mainly music scholars who had resided there. Apparently, the rooms were rather spacious - “ luxurious” was the word one friend of mine used. Maybe some of the rooms were kept aside for the more delicate artistic minds among us. There was also an empty wooden warehouse that was now used as a rehearsal space by some of the residents. I'd heard there was a beautiful piano installed there which was, I think, received from an anonymous benefactor. .
After one week I got a reply:

“Dear Mr ---------,
thank you for your interest in my work but as yet I have no published compositions and am still studying music and will maybe not accept commissions until i have grduated and can properly call myself a composer i would like to right a work for you but need to change one instrument the second violin is not needed and performer of my choice must be exchanged and and don't need to pay me i have a work ready for you soon give me 2 weeks & i will deliver it to you'll
also need to tel me when performance is got to prepare thank you
ac”

As you can imagine, I was overjoyed that my commission was in some sense accepted, but also disturbed by his letter (which was hand posted, apparently very early in the morning).The friendly/non-English speaking tone of his letter confused me. I'd assumed he was English – although his name was hard to attach a place to...German? Austrian? It was impossible to be sure – and his accent was, from the little I had heard, broadly and anonymously European.
So, two weeks – and an extra performer of his choice. It would be a long wait. He did not appear to be on campus for those fourteen days, and I felt as if I had held my breath for every single one of them. On the morning of the fifteenth day, I awoke anxious, excited and impatient. How would I receive the work? Would I get to speak to this strange man about the composition process? I sat up, folded back the thick blue blanket, swung my legs to the floor and....
My heart hammered in my chest as I saw a slip of paper protruding from under my door. I reached down and unfolded it, blinking my eyes clear of sleep. It took a moment to focus.

“Dear Mr -------,
the work is ready to be performed. Certain conditions are necessary for a correct performance. Notice is required. Please advise. Leave your reply under your door at midnight tonight – and do not open the door for thirty minutes either side of this time or the deal will be forfeited, and my work destroyed.
Sincerely,
Ahren Calder”

I must admit some surprise at the radically different tone of this note – and the apparent leap forward in his written English. But preserving his privacy was evidently paramount to him, and I felt it unwise to question him about it. Also, I had a concert to organise. Irritatingly, my contact for the string quartet was the second violinist was Guido De Vort, a gentle and talented young man, who I must now ask a favour from - one that would require him to organise his quartet and then step aside to let a stranger in, whom I could not vouch for.
Mulling over how to approach De Vort, I scribbled a reply to Calder, expressing gladness that he had completed the work, and amazement he could have done so so quickly. Then I wrote something about the concert being in a month. This was a bluff, but I felt it a reasonable time to organise such an event. At the conclusion I appended a short sentence asking if I could meet him, peruse the score and talk about the music, adding that I was an enthusiast and very interested in conversing with someone so much more talented than myself on all matters musical.
I left the note on my desk, washed, dressed and got on with my day. Lectures took up my morning from nine till noon, then I had to visit the lab in the Gentry Building for an hour or two, drop in to my fathers office near the Main Hall, then head back to the lab around four to check on my results. The meeting with my father was the usual mixture of duty, catharsis and frustration. He sat in his long hazy office, piled high with new works and tomes and works in progress, poring scorn on practically everything I had done since I had walked through the same door one week before. A watery sun dribbled over the bars in the window, silhouetting the older man, his white hair catching the light, burning magnesium white. I listened to him speaking, gesturing, losing and regaining my focus, and letting Calder and De Vort spiral in my mind, cascading into images of staves and notes and rests which suddenly and disturbingly twisted and into strange shadows, shades and nightmares.
When I left, having excused myself not knowing entirely what I or my father had said, I was exhausted and felt moved to take some rest. I dropped back in on the lab, checked my work, which I found would be fine left for a night, and hurried back, feverish and upset.
The journey from the Gentry Building to my tiny room in the East Wing of the University was only a few minutes walk, ten at the most, but my head was full of the most awful apprehensions, my feet felt heavy and numb, and I stumbled and staggered back, sweat stinging my eyes. I caught my reflection in the glass outside the Main Hall, and I looked hunched, evil and swathed in black. This hallucination disturbed me even more and I rushed to get back to my room. Up the stairs unsteadily, and into the corrider I limped along, rattled the bulky key in the lock and fell through the door, suspecting a faint would seize me.
When I awoke, my cheek against the wooden floor, the first thing I noticed was the note I had left for Calder. I grasped it, meaning to rewrite it to say that I was ill, and could not indulge his games for the near future. Opening it, I found that it was not my note – but his reply to it.

“Dear Sir,
as much as I wood like to grant yor request I am afrayed I must decline. I am not permittid to talk about this material, but can only work through another to perform it. I do not wont to appere rude but I cannot risk exposure at this timedoor. Performance details are now required time will soon pass and then performance will not bepossible.
Ideal time is 21st November this yeer. Please advise.
Your frend,
Ahren Calder”

At the bottom of the page was a small, stylised sketch of a bird and a series of small circles. I crawled onto my bed and passed out, fear and confusion fading to muted, darkening dreams of side-glimpsed terror.
My dreams ceased - I surfaced, feeling shocked and still. No more evil crept upon my mind, and the dark phantasms were silent.
I looked around for some indication of the time. My alarm clocks radium-tipped hands glowed a ghostly green in the stillness. Quarter past eleven. Or five to three, but it felt earlier than that. The bare window was dark, a slight shimmer of darkest possible blue glancing off of the silver-specked night. Nearly midnight.
In a browse I wondered if I had time to pen another note to Calder. Just something short, and slide it under the door before the hour chimed. From what I was gathering of the man I had no doubt my letter would be collected. This reminded me of what he had said about opening the door. If I saw the paper slip out from under upon the stroke of midnight, how could I resist that temptation to see what form he had come in? Perhaps a rook or a bat would do his bidding! Eleven twenty now – ten minutes before I could no longer open my own door for fear of losing the work of this maddening composer.
After a moments thought, I left the room, walked along that bright creamy ceramic-tiled corridor passed my three neighbours silent abodes, switched off the main light, then carefully crept back in and closed the door softly behind me.
Realising that the university bar would have just closed, and that my neighbours – who were avid socialisers – would shortly be returning, probably in high spirits, I surmised that this light would surely be turned back on shortly. I reflected that I was just being childish, and pulling a prank to make the mans life more difficult, and resolved to write him a letter instead of mock him. Unfortunately, it was just as I watched the second hand move onto the six that I realised I could have left the note for him and hidden in the small storeroom on the opposite side of the corridor. I was certain it had an unused lock - and therefore a keyhole through which I could spy on my mysterious colleague. The moment was past, though, and I would be forced to wait inside for him to collect his response. So I sat a my desk and wrote, for what seemed only a few minutes
My eyes were prickling for sleep, but my heart's clamoring betrayed the fear in my soul as I
finished my letter and turned to check the time. I shook as I saw I had two minutes until Calder would collect his reply and speculated on whether he would be here in person or whether he would send some fearful agent to do his bidding. Clutching the letter I crouched by the door and, at the stroke of midnight, pushed it into the dark line under the door. As I let it go, the letter did not stop moving for a moment but simply slipped away, whisked into the silent dark. No footsteps had I heard, or movement sensed. It was an utterly eerie, quiescent horror, and I felt my skin tighten around the back of my head and along my still outstretched arms. I paused for a moment, then rose and started to unlock the door, but was halted by a quiet but unmistakable hiss from directly outside my door. I recoiled, and succumbed to a freezing terror. Some strange and ancient part of my soul guided me to my bed, where I rested uncomfortably, unconcerned by time, and only felt able to rise again when sunlight peered through my window and struck my tightly closed eyes, bringing brilliance to the darkness inside where I had feared all things of light had been vanquished.
Awaking again, I felt the whole incident must have been some dream or mental absence, but upon sitting up and folding back the blanket, then swinging my legs over to get up once again I noticed a small slip protruding from under my door. Blinking and breathing hard, I felt as though my lungs had not held fresh air for an eternity.
Slowly kneeling I reached down, pulling the note out from under the heavy oak door. It felt that for a second someone was holding it on the other side of the door, letting go as I tugged, but I resisted my urge to pull open the door and face them. The overwhelming exhaustion was too great and my body urged me to rest through terrible cramps and twitches. Even my eyes hurt from the long and heavy torpor.
I unfolded the note and read through the blur.

“Dear Sir,
my frend it is imperative that the performance takes place on the 21st november here at the University. It is arranged, the perfomance?. Please infrom me of the exact location. Thank you for you understanding and coperation. You will be delited by the result. Bear with me.
Your servent,
AC”
Once again, at the bottom of the page was a little sketch of a bird and a few small circles. The bird had a fierce, curved beak.
I felt a frightful sense of being caught up in a game I did not understand, mixed with curiosity at being so close to a mystery. My constitution had been disturbed greatly, and I regarded myself in no fit state to attend lectures or pace the lab. A concert was to happen, it was certain, and the date in Calder's letter was no more than twenty days away.
The next day, after a hearty breakfast of kippers and boiled eggs with toast, penny buns and English Breakfast tea (which revived my spirits no end), I caught up with Guido and relayed my dilemma. He truly is a kind and gentle man, and I despised myself for asking him such a favour – but, I was honest and told him the truth. I needed his group of musicians, but must ask him to step aside to be replaced by an unknown performer. He agreed to organise it, and only asked that he could be present at the reheasals to ensure all was to his satisfaction. This seemed a perfectly reasonable deal to me, so I agreed.
It was starting to dawn on me at this point that there was going to be a piece of music performed. I had really not thought about who it would be performed for. So I immediately started to think about who I could invite, and slowly I came to the conclusion that it would be an old-fashioned evening – enthusiatic amateurs giving a concert to a small invited audience. My heart lept at the prospect, and images of Schubert and Schumann swam in my mind. Yes! This would be a wonderful evening, a salon-style performance, and then perhaps the inscrutable Calder would open up to me a little over a glass of wine and I would catch a glimpse of his dark and cobwebbed but possibly brilliant mind.
Although fortified by my marvellous breakfast, the stress of the previous night had taken its toll on me and by the early afternoon I was feeling trembly and weak. I did not want to tempt any kind of illness so I returned to my room intent on getting as many hours of sleep as my body would allow. I entered, scanning the floor for a new note – with relief tinged with disappointment I saw there was nothing waiting for me there. I passed my desk and reached to draw the curtains, it was not a bright day, but I have never been able to sleep comfortably in daylight, and noticed a broad-winged bird circling above the trees near to the old clock tower. I immediately thought it must be a sparrowhawk – rare to see one in these parts. Uncommon to see any bird that size. I watched as it soared with incredible grace and lethal calm until swooping down suddenly, it snatched a smaller bird out of the air. A burst of adrenaline surged like a spike of ice into my heart, but my inclination to absorb the beauty of nature does not extend to the violent and bloody side, and I could not help but draw the curtains, turn away, and try not to dwell on the fate of that fearless warriors prey.
A terrible banging at my door awakened me from termagant-haunted dreams, a series of ferocious cries between them. I shuddered awake and knew that something was wrong.
My name was being called, in a strange accent, and by a young voice. Pulled on my clothes hurriedly I shouted that I would be one minute. I dressed and opened the door to a young man dressed in a suit who told me that he had been sent to tell me that my father had been taken seriously ill, and was being treated at St Trintignants Hospital. I knew of the place vaguely and as I stumbled to get the words out, the strange boy offered to drive me there. He said it was a long way on foot, but that his own father – a tutor of mine - he said , had asked him to drive me.
I nodded and put my hand on his shoulder as I walked past him, leading him down the corridor. His suit felt like cobwebs. Like any moment of high emotion, everything seemed clear and calm and pre-determined. I led the lad to the main gate where he pointed out his old-fashioned automobile. He gestured for me to get in, and then jumped in himself. He reversed the antique auto onto the driveway, and pulled out onto the bridge. In noticed, strangely,dreamily, that the river was dry, just a bed of stones, like it would be in summer. I interrogated the boy on what he knew of my fathers condition until we arrived after ten minutes at the emergency ward of St Trintignants, and walked into a ballet of sounds and smells and emotions that only hospitals ever choreograph.
I found an orderly and explaned who I was and who I was looking for. He was a short dark-haired man with an understanding smile, rolled up sleeves and a calm manner of someone who seen the worst that life can meter out. He told me to sit down and he would found out if there was any news for me. Wondering what I should say to the lad who drove me here, I turned but found him gone. I never saw him again. I wish I had asked him his name.
I must have memorised every inch of that whole miserable room before any news arrived. From the cracked cream ceiling with its one unsteady beam, to the painted bricks and tiles, the hint of hidden odour and the sickly light through the uncheerful uneven white-edged windows. The other hunched patrons, my brothers and sisters in dread, sat motionless apart from the occasional sigh or shift to avoid numbness. No eye contact. No sound. A terrible place it was.
The news I received imprinted that room on my memory, and I felt a thousand echoes from all the other souls who had heard the same words in the same place after the same wait. I evaluated how I felt.
There was nothing there.
I saw him, signed two forms, and walked home. Only later did the tears come, and even now I'm not sure that they ever stopped entirely.