Shock III Part 12

And I never came back. Because there was nothing to ever come back for.

This is the end of the ma.n.u.script. There seems no adequate evidence to ascribe the events recounted as true. But the following facts, taken from the city's police files, might prove of interest.

In 1901, the city was severely shocked by the most wholesale murder ever perpetrated in its history.

At the height of a party being held at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Marlin Slaughter and their daughter Clarissa, an unknown person poisoned the punch by placing a very large amount of a.r.s.enic in it. Everyone died. The case was never solved although various theories were put forth as to its solution. One thesis had it that the murderer was one of those who died.

As to the ident.i.ty of this murderer, supposition had it that it was not a murderer but a murderess. Although nothing definite exists to go by, there are several testimonies which refer to that poor child Clarissa" and indicate that the young woman had been suffering for some years from a severe mental aberration which her parents had tried to keep a secret from the neighbours and the authorities. The party in mention was supposed to have been planned to celebrate what her parents took for the recovery of her faculties.

As to the body of the young man later supposed to be in the wreckage, a thorough search has revealed nothing. It may be that the entire story is imagination, fabricated by the one brother in order to conceal the death of the other, said death probably being unnatural. Thus, the older brother knowing the story of the house tragedy may have used it for a fantastic evidence in his favour.

Whatever the truth, the older brother has never been heard of again either in this city or in any of the adjacent localities.

And that's the story S.D.M.

VII a" SHOCK WAVE.

'I tell you there's something wrong with her,' said Mr. Moffat.

Cousin Wendall reached for the sugar bowl.

Then they're right,' he said. He spooned the sugar into his coffee.

They are not,' said Mr. Moffat, sharply. They most certainly are not.'

'If she isn't working,' Wendall said.

'She was working until just a month or so ago,' said Mr. Moffat. 'She was working fine when they decided to replace her the first of the year.'

His fingers, pale and yellowed, lay tensely on the table. His eggs and coffee were untouched and cold before him.

'Why are you so upset?' asked Wendall. 'She's just an organ.'

'She is more,' Mr. Moffat said. 'She was in before the church was even finished. Eighty years she's been there. Eighty.'

That's pretty long,' said Wendall, crunching jelly smeared toast. 'Maybe too long.'

There's nothing wrong with her,' defended Mr. Moffat. 'Leastwise, there never was before. That's why I want you to sit in the loft with me this morning.'

'How come you haven't had an organ man look at her?' Wendall asked.

'He'd just agree with the rest of them,' said Mr. Moffat, sourly. 'He'd just say she's too old, too worn.'

'Maybe she is,' said Wendall.

'She is not: Mr. Moffat trembled fitfully.

'Well, I don't know,' said Wendall. 'She's pretty old, though.'

'She worked fine before,' said Mr. Moffat. He stared into the blackness of his coffee. The gall of them,' he muttered, 'Planning to get rid of her. The gall.'

He closed his eyes. 'Maybe she knows,' he said.

The clocklike tapping of their heels perforated the stillness in the lobby.

This way,' Mr. Moffat said.

Wendall pushed open the arm-thick door and the two men spiralled up the marble staircase. On the second floor, Mr. Moffat shifted the briefcase to his other hand and searched his keyring. He unlocked the door and they entered the musty darkness of the loft. They moved through the silence, two faint, echoing sounds.

'Over here,' said Mr. Moffat.

'Yes, I see,' said Wendall.

The old man sank down on the gla.s.s-smooth bench and turned the small lamp on. A wedge of bulb light forced aside the shadows.

'Think the sun'll show?' asked Wendall.

'Don't know,' said Mr. Moffat.

He unlocked and rattled up the organ's rib-skinned top, then raised the music rack. He pushed the finger-worn switch across its slot.

In the brick room to their right there was a sudden hum, a mounting rush of energy. The air-gauge needle quivered across its dial.

'She's alive now,' Mr. Moffat said.

Wendall grunted in amus.e.m.e.nt and walked across the loft. The old man followed.

'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 spindling 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 grey-wreathed pate, the sunlight came filtering through the stained-gla.s.s window. It pa.s.sed 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 c.o.c.ked his head.

'Can't hear anything but the organ and the motor,' he said.

'That's it,' the old man whispered. 'You're not sup-posed 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 ba.s.s 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.

'Wella' 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.

'/ 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 morninga 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? Chords 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 wilful 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 m.u.f.fled sound of ushers' 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.'