Finding Abbey Road (19 page)

Val shrugs. “What other reason could there be?”

I slip a thumb drive from my sweatshirt pocket and place it on the table. “This is ‘Finding Abbey Road.' The only version that exists in this universe.”

Kellen eyes the drive. His hand moves up to the table but he's not taking it yet. “And where exactly did you find this?”

“Same as with the others. We followed clues. It doesn't actually matter where we found it. But there it is. Eli White, live from beyond the grave.”

Kellen nods and slides the drive over. “I suppose you think that this will actually satisfy me, that I'd really be so gullible as to believe
this
was the point of your trip, the end of the mystery.”

“I don't know what to tell you,” I say. “That's all there is.”

“And that should square things nicely,” says Susan.

“As if,” says Kellen.

“Actually, think about it,” says Susan. “The delivery of this tape, along with the two that they already gave to your associate, signifies that Eli has fulfilled his contract to Candy Shell. He's delivered the rest of the album. Technically, that's all that was ever really required of him.”

“I'm not sure I agree with you.”

“Of course you could still pursue him,” says Susan, “but I don't think it would be in your best interest.”

Kellen leans back. “This is weird, because what you're saying sounds like a threat, and I'm pretty sure you're in no
position to be threatening me.”

“It's not a threat,” I say. “It's just what your boss told us.”

“My boss.”

“Jerrod Fletcher,” I say. “You should talk to him. Tell him about the recording you just received. You might find that now that Candy Shell has what they always wanted from Eli, they are most interested in moving on. Not living in the past.”

“Also,” says Susan, “we've already messaged an identical copy of that song to Mr. Fletcher, so there'd be no point in accidentally losing that drive, or any such thing.”

Kellen taps the drive on the linoleum. “I don't know what you guys are up to. . . .”

“We're making things right,” says Caleb. “Just like we've done all along. We gave Jason the other two tapes. Then we came here to find the last one. We wanted to hear it first, since it's our dad. You've got everything that belongs to Candy Shell. And you never would have found them without us.”

“I think you're forgetting that
you
belong to Candy Shell,” says Kellen.

I manage a smile. “We do. Sounds like a win-win for you guys.”

Kellen eyes us, glances at the drive. . . . His eyes widen. “My God, you really did see him. He's really alive. . . . How is he?”

I squeeze Caleb's hand, and he answers, “He sounds great on the song. That's all we know.”

Kellen keeps looking from the drive to us . . . and then he sighs. “Fine. Play it that way. But if this isn't the song . . .”

“It's the song,” says Val. “Go listen to it. We'll be right here. Now let us eat breakfast, already.”

Kellen stands. He looks around the diner, out the windows . . . like even now, he still hopes to spot Eli hiding in a corner. And I realize something:

He's haunted, too. He's been watching warily for the ghost of Eli White for so much longer than we have. . . . There's probably so much he's wanted to say to Eli, so many years of frustration. I feel bad for him. Sort of. He's never been sensitive enough to what Caleb and Val have been going through. But we've never really considered what this has been like for him.

Kellen leaves without a word. I'm sure he'll be listening to that file before we've finished our food.

And this is what he will hear: Eli White, singing his song, an electric guitar and a bass playing along. Distantly, there are echoes of background harmonies. It almost sounds like a girl and a boy . . . but it's probably just artifact, or tape distortion. It definitely sounds like it was recorded on analog gear, and sometimes that old tape has ghosts.

It won't be enough to be
sure
where that recording came from. A summer, sixteen years ago? Or about three hours ago?

Kellen will probably think the song is great. He'll probably also realize that recording it, along with the other two songs, is going to give him a moment he's wanted for a long time. A chance for Allegiance to get back in the spotlight, to finally benefit from how Eli derailed them. In a way, maybe Kellen and the rest of the band deserve it.

And yet I wonder, too, if a part of him will still miss Eli, miss that amazing band he once had, those times when they were onstage and the center of the universe and making music and feeling so alive and in it. No matter how many tapes Kellen finds, no matter how much money he ever wanted, I wonder if he can ever have that feeling back. He'll always wonder what could have been. And I wonder if that's the loneliest feeling.

6:15 a.m.

Outside the diner, we say good-bye to Susan, hugging as the world wakes around us.

“Be in touch,” she says to us.

“I will,” I say. “I have more questions for you.”

“Another late-night walk should be in order, even it's by phone across the pond.”

“Thank you,” I say.

She steps away, but pauses.

I feel it, too. The secret of what we just did. The weight of what we're about to try.

“I hope he's not mad,” I say to her.

Susan smiles. “I wouldn't mind if he is.”

Caleb and Val and I stumble back through the streets, arriving at the hostel as most of the tourists are getting up. The good news is that the dorm rooms are largely empty when we collapse onto our beds. And we sleep. Hard.

2:05 p.m., Friday

There was a day in there, somewhere. We slept, then shambled our way around London some more. We walked Kensington Gardens, saw the Peter Pan statue. In the evening, we took the train up to Oxford to see the Poor Skeletons' next show. They had us on the list. And they let Val and Caleb do a song for their soundcheck, a kind of unscheduled opener. They played a song that they didn't identify to the crowd, except when Val said, “This is for my dad.”

When you've never heard a song before, it's pretty hard to catch the exact lyrics. Nobody knew they were hearing the lost final song of Eli White.

And then we were out too late at the after party, and had to drag Val away from the Scottish boy, and we fell asleep on the train, and by that time we were so tired that we didn't even bother to go back to the hostel. At five a.m., we rented bikes from a rack near King's Cross, and rode up and down the Thames, laughing like idiots, like tourists,
like Americans, and loving it.

Then back into the Underground.

Then the airport.

Then a plane.

I find myself watching the door. Last stragglers are still boarding. I have watched all morning, on the train, at security, in the terminal. But Kellen McHugh has not shown up. There has been no dramatic moment with Scotland Yard or any such thing.

Which likely means that Jerrod Fletcher kept up his end of the deal.

It is a deal that goes like this: we hand over the final Eli White song. Then Jerrod makes it clear to Kellen that Candy Shell is no longer interested in talk of lawsuits and potential action of any kind in the future against Eli White or his descendants. Jerrod says that at this point, the three lost songs mean that Eli has finally fulfilled his contract. And Kellen and the band can pursue recording those songs, have their re-release, and get as much money out of the ghost of Eli White as they see fit.

Eli is free, at least from one of the shadows of his past.

And Jerrod says that if, sometime in the future, maybe later this year, maybe next, the world hears something that cannot be explained, that goes viral and blows up the internet . . . he won't interfere. It's generous of him.

I'll always wonder if Eli knew. Did he notice that light blinking on Susan's laptop, or did he sense in some way that
while we were listening back to the night's session in Abbey Road, she was secretly copying the tracks to her computer?

Maybe. Maybe not.

He would appreciate that before we went to that diner, Susan opened the tracks, and muted Val's and Caleb's vocal channels before she mixed down “Finding Abbey Road” to give to Kellen.

And how will he feel when we execute the next part of our plan? We won't do it until we've given him enough time to hide again. Given his habits, he may never even know it happened. Or maybe it will finally drag him back into the light. Maybe that, and the clearing of the legal air, will make him want to rejoin his family.

Caleb and Val and I don't know, and we don't particularly care. Sitting on the plane, all three seats together this time, we pass earbuds back and forth, listening to the Abbey Road session, letting it transport us back to that night in the dark, to the gothic holy ground of rock legends, where we lost ourselves in music and possibility. Where two generations of rock stars were together for a moment.

The flight attendant announces that the front doors are closed. Cell phones off.

I send a text:

Summer: Our flight is on time. I will come straight home. I know it will be hard. I love you.

After I switch off the phone, I tap my pockets. In one is a drive that holds the backups of the Dangerheart/Eli
Abbey Road sessions. In the other is Susan's card.

Caleb and I rest our heads against each other. We've been mostly silent today, but in constant contact.

And so we must go home. I think we will sleep for most of the flight.

And then this adventure will be done.

And yet still there is that big question:

So, now what, then?

A Voice from Beyond the Grave

—posted by ghostofEliWhite on March 25

This is the sound of your jaw dropping to the floor.

This is the sight of your face melting.

You get my point.

Now get ready.

You may remember last fall when I posted about the fifteen-year anniversary of Allegiance to North's unfinished last album,
Into the Ever & After
, released one year after Eli White's death. You may remember that then, not long after, we broke the bombshell news that Eli had a son, Caleb Daniels, living right under our noses in Mount Hope. You may even remember that Caleb had a band called Dangerheart and a song that referenced his dad called “On My Sleeve.”

Then, just last month, I reported the hot rumor that Dangerheart was about to sign with Candy Shell Records for the kind of son-of-a-rock-legend megadeal that would send us all scrambling to check our genealogy.

But you may also remember that, mysteriously, Candy Shell and Dangerheart parted ways just a few days later.

And then of course, later that very same week came the earth-shattering news, reported by the corporate mouthpieces over at
Slick
magazine: the lost songs of Eli White had been found. “Exile,” “Encore to an Empty Room,” and “Finding Abbey Road” . . . Eli's original demos, recorded mere weeks before his apparent suicide, had been discovered, and the remaining members of Allegiance to North would be reuniting to record the songs and release a fully finished version of
Into the Ever & After
, the masterpiece finally complete, all these years later.

So, all of that was just a little bit amazing. . . .

!!!!

When that news broke, many of you wondered if we would ever get to hear those original demos. Candy Shell recently said that they plan to include one or two as bonus tracks on the record.

But many of you also wondered: How could it be that these tapes remained hidden until now? The spokespeople at Candy Shell said they'd unearthed
some old possessions of Eli's and
kapow!
There were these tapes. Like, some ex-groupie discovered a lost trunk of smelly flannels, and suddenly one of modern rock's great mysteries was solved.

Just like that.

Easy.

Or maybe, as many of you have commented, too easy . . .

BECAUSE HOLY NOW THIS:

What you are about to hear cannot be fully explained, and according to the parties involved, won't be fully explained. In fact, it's almost more astonishing that way.

The links below connect to videos posted by Dangerheart just minutes ago. There's no actual footage, just a title that says “
Dangerheart: The Family Sessions.
” At first, the audio sounds like live acoustic renditions of songs from Dangerheart's first EP and live sets.

Until you listen closer.

Until you hear the harmonies, the vocal doubling, the personality of some of the guitar playing.

That reedy voice . . .

Friends.

I'm serious.

Just go and listen, and if you don't make the connection, throw on one of your old Allegiance records, and imagine that same iconic voice, sixteen years later.

And then sit back and enjoy the sound of your head exploding.

What is this? How is it possible?

Dangerheart isn't saying. Probably because they don't have to.

Once we all hear these, we'll do the commenting for them. . . .