Fractured Fairy Tales (20 page)

The Singing Bones

*This story is written in UK English*

Sinead MacDughlas

I’ve never been one to believe in magic, not the wizards and dragons type anyway. For me, enchantment is found in the small miracles of life; in the blooming of flowers and the appearance of a rainbow; in the laughter of a child, or the flight of a hummingbird. Most of all, for me, music is magic.

Have you ever done something impulsive, something seemingly innocuous, which changed everything you thought you knew? I bought something at a flea market. That’s it.

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I didn’t even want to go, but one of my colleagues dragged me out, insisting that I must do more than work and sleep. That was easy enough for Petra to say. She was born with a bow in her hand and a Stradivarius tucked under her chin. Literally. Her parents fell in love in the pit of a Broadway musical for cripe’s sake! That was before they gained tenure with the orchestra, and her father became a first chair violinist. Her mother had been second chair until she retired.

Petra didn’t
need
to practice her instrument every waking moment. She’d glided into third chair as easily as a swan glides through water, while I was more like a dog, paddling for all I was worth just to keep my head up. There was never any doubt that Petra would get tenure. I just prayed that I could cling to fourth chair flutist.

It was hard to be jealous of Petra, though. She was so full of joy for the music, as well as life. When she burst in, flashing that brilliant smile of hers and fluttering her lashes, insisting that I join her on a field trip, I conceded with only a little grumbling.

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“Isn’t this
adorable
?” Her voice cut through the crowd at a pitch that could likely summon every dog within earshot. It was impossible to pretend I didn’t know her while her dainty arm was hooked through mine in visible sisterhood.

She released my arm to pluck her find out of a box of clothing. “This” was a T-shirt bearing the slogan
Mozart Lives
and a tragic drawing of the great composer in a white, spangled jumpsuit.

“
Please
tell me you’re not buying that.” I rolled my eyes at her.

“Why not? It’s so fun!”

“It’s appalling.”

I almost laughed as she pouted and tossed her red curls.

“Well,
I
think it’s fabulous, and I’m buying it.” She handed the man tending the stall five dollars for the T-shirt, and guided me to the next stall. This one was crowded with old furniture.

“I need a coffee,” she announced, suddenly. “Keep looking, Cynical Cindy. Maybe you’ll find something old and creepy that will capture your twisted heart.”

I laughed at her back as she glided off toward the snack stand. It was a standing joke between us. To Petra, I was Cynical Cindy, and when I teased her, I called her Perky Petra. It should have been impossible for us to share a living space, but being polar opposites actually made us the best of friends, as well as compatible roommates.

She wasn’t wrong, either. I’d always had a predilection for the macabre. When I’d become enamoured, some years ago, of the lyre possessed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Petra had been just as disgusted as I was with her choice of T-shirt. It was constructed of antelope horns with a human skull base, skin, gut and hair. It looked like something out of a horror movie. Despite her teasing, she’d proudly presented me with a beautiful flute of carved hawk bone for my twenty-fifth birthday.

In the decade since, my collection of morbid musical instruments had grown substantially. I now had several bone, antler and ivory flutes, all antiques I’d found in various auctions. One of the percussionists had helped me obtain a Tibetan skull drum, made of authentic human skulls. There were horns and trumpets, a deer hoof rattle, and an authentic set of bones, the precursor of the American spoons. I also had a small fiddle with human bone pegs, scroll, and tailpiece, which Petra refused to touch, even to dust.

It seemed serendipitous, therefore, that moments after Petra teased me, I opened the drawer of a pitifully abused side-table, to discover a yellowed, obviously hand-made, pan-flute.

“How much for this?” I tried to feign weary indifference, as I held up the flute to the bottle-blonde woman hovering nearby.

“Where did
that
come from?” she muttered, half to herself.

Her attention was on a young couple gushing over a ratty old armoire, and she didn’t look pleased about the distraction. Without taking her eyes off the couple, she grabbed the offending item, put it to her lipstick crimsoned mouth, and blew. No sound emerged, other than the whistle from her pursed lips.

“Hmph! It’s busted,” she grumbled, and turned toward a trash can behind her, holding the flute in the tips of her manicured fingers.

“I might be able to fix it. I’ll give you ten dollars for it.”

“Sure.” She turned back and dropped the flute into my hands. “It’s your money, lady.”

She snatched the ten dollars from my hand, eager to get to the more lucrative furniture sale, just as Petra sailed back over with two cups of coffee in hand. I hid the flute behind my back.

“You
bought
something?” Petra looked around at the furniture, visibly restraining her pert upper lip from curling. “What is it, and where will we put it?”

“Don’t worry. It fits in my purse. Can I borrow your new T-shirt to wrap it in, though?”

Her chin tilted down and she peered at me sideways, the way one looks at a potential mugger.

I laughed and produced the flute for her inspection.

“Is that bone?” she asked cautiously.

“I’m pretty sure.”

“Animal bone?”

“I don’t know. Probably.”

“Fine.” She handed me the shirt. “But if that thing is human bone, I may never forgive you.”

“I’m sure it’s bird, deer or some other animal, Petra. It’s as old as the hills. Don’t be such a wuss.”

I wrapped the flute in the shirt, put the package in my purse, and took the coffee she’d bought for me.

“I have to admit. This was fun.”

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A quick rinse with some soapy water removed all the dust the flute had accumulated. After the cleaning, it was ghostly white, with a slight sheen like it had been waxed or varnished. Even though my knowledge of how to play pan flute was sketchy at best, it produced music that was hauntingly beautiful. One of the other flutists claimed significant training, but none of them could get it to produce a note. It was a curious and slightly creepy anomaly.

“It’s like it was meant just for you, Cindy,” Stephen proclaimed. “You should play it for Anthony.”

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Anthony Greco was our Composer Laureate, and a connoisseur of instruments. A small man, with a huge presence, I’d found him rather intimidating at first. He was incredibly friendly, though. Even in his tuxedo, with his salt and pepper hair in a tidy ponytail, he exuded welcome. He’d shown great interest, and perhaps a little envy, for my skeletal collection. The pan flute was an intriguing delight to him. My claim that no one else could play it captivated him even more than the instrument itself. He tried, and failed, to prove me wrong, and then applauded my own performance with tears in his bright blue eyes.

“It is a mournful little flute, and quite fascinating. Where did you find it?”

“At a flea market, of all places.”

“So you know nothing of its origin or construction?”

“Only that it appears to be hand-made of bone.”

“We must find out more!” I had never seen Anthony so animated, but his excitement was contagious.

“Perhaps I
could
look for a specialist in these things.”

“I know just the person!” he declared, excitedly. “An anthropologist friend of mine could help us. His name is Graf Thomas von der Meier. Please, let me call him for—”

A scream tore the air asunder. Anthony dropped the flute on the floor. We rushed to his open window to look for the source. It was a male voice, and it sounded like someone being murdered, but we couldn’t see anything. After a minute or two, I called 911 while Anthony continued to scan the street.

The police arrived a lot faster than I’d anticipated. Two SUVs pulled up, blocking the street on both sides of the Brownstone. When they pounded on the door, I opened it immediately. The first officer I saw had his hand on his gun. There were seven more behind him, all in tactical gear.

“Is everything alright here, ma’am?” The young officer eyed Anthony suspiciously.

“We’re fine, thank you, officer. We called because—”

“
You
called?” he glanced at the officer behind him. “We’re here to investigate the scream one of your neighbours heard coming from this address.”

“But we’re the only people here. We called because we heard the scream too, and thought it must be coming from outside.”

Even as I said the words, I began to doubt. The sound was so loud, maybe it
did
come from inside the house.

“We’d like to take a look around, if you don’t mind.” The second officer didn’t look convinced.

“You’re most welcome to do so,” Anthony answered, “but is anyone checking out there?” He waved at the window.

The two officers entered swiftly, with two more following, before the senior officer responded. Even then, he didn’t really answer.

“Baker, take your unit and check the street,” he shouted over his shoulder.

The remaining four officers trotted back down the steps and fanned out in front of the house. After much opening and closing of doors, and several shouts of “Clear”, the officers gathered in the foyer again.

“Thank you for your cooperation, sir.” The older officer was less taciturn now. “The other unit hasn’t found anything in the street, and all of your neighbours seem to be fine. If you hear or see anything else, don’t hesitate to call again.”

Anthony insisted on hailing a cab to take me home.

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Perhaps the scream had unsettled my subconscious, or maybe it was the hoagie Petra and I had shared while we watched Paranormal Activity for the five hundredth time, but sleep was not my friend that evening. I woke several times, shaking and sweating, gasping for air, and every time I closed my eyes again, the nightmare came back. It continued in my sleep, like a serial short film I was forced to not just watch, but live.

The smells were real; earth, water, sweat…and blood.

First he punched me, the huge shadowy man who laughed and cursed me in his deep, rough voice. The words were foreign to me, but the lunatic rage was plain. Then the three, vicious stabs to the guts. The flow of the blood down my sides as I lay on the ground, the sense of weakness and desperation to escape, the screams I could not force from my throat as his hands crushed my larynx.

Then came the water, cold, so icy cold, I could hold my breath no longer, filling my mouth as he turned my face into the current, slicing down into my lungs as I screamed my silent screams. I thought it was over then. When I woke, shaking and sweating, grateful to realize that the myth about dying for real when you perish in a dream, was just that—a myth.

It wasn’t over, though. Not by far. When I finally succumbed to the exhaustion again, I had to lay immobile while he mutilated my body—my strangely male body— with a wicked-looking hunting knife. He grunted and cursed while he broke bones and severed joints, first the extremities, and then my head.

I saw his face, then, as he propped my head up to witness the final atrocities. He removed my heart, squeezing it in his hand like a sponge until the blood barely trickled between his fingers. He grinned as he worked, a malicious, gratified leer worthy of the coldest serial murderer. Each rib was removed, scraped clean, rinsed in the river and then stacked neatly on the bank. The flesh he dumped into the river, the stripped bones, he carried under a nearby bridge where the ground was soft, and dug a hole with his hands. All of the bones went into the hole, one by one, as he muttered to himself.

At last, he turned his attention back to my head. He picked it up and looked deeply into my eyes, the madness fading now, but not the anger. He spoke some more words I didn’t understand, and yet I knew that he was berating me for something. It didn’t matter what, because a moment later, he set my head on a large stone, picked up another and swung.

I woke again, screaming this time, and Petra rushed into my room. I tried to tell her all of the nightmares, in order, but they were already beginning to slip away. All that remained were the terror, the pain, the fear; the sense of helpless paralysis and impending doom.

They came back every night after, always exactly the same. I began fighting sleep. Soon, I simply
couldn’t
sleep. After the first week, I had to request a leave of absence. The exhaustion was consuming, the sleep medication from the doctor, debilitating. I had no energy or focus to play. Depression settled like a heavy, black cloak on my shoulders, and the helplessness stretched into the infinite. It seemed inevitable that I had ruined my probationary term, and any chance at tenure. I swore off horror movies and hoagies forever.