The Box: Uncanny Stories (16 page)

What happened after the movement was contained within the boundaries of the United States (a name soon discarded) is data for another paper. A brief mention, however, may be made of the immense social endeavor which became known as the “Bacon
and Waffles” movement, which sought to guarantee $750 per month for every person in Los Angeles over forty years of age.

With this incentive before the people, state legislatures were helpless before an avalanche of public demand and, within three years, the entire nation was a part of Los Angeles. The government seat was in Beverly Hills and ambassadors had been hastened to all foreign countries within a short period of time.

Ten years later the North American continent fell and Los Angeles was creeping rapidly down the Isthmus of Panama.

Then came that ill-fated day in 1994.

O
n the island of Pingo Pongo, Maona, daughter of Chief Luana, approached her father
.

“
Omu la golu si mongo,” she said.

(Anyone for tennis?)

Whereupon her father, having read the papers, speared her on the spot and ran screaming from the hut
.

1
John Gunther,
Inside U.S.A
., p. 44.

2
Henry G. Alsberg (ed.),
The American Guide
, p. 1200.

3
Symmes Chadwick, “Will We Drown the World?”
Southwestern Review IV
(Summer 1982), p. 1 ff.

4
Guillaume Gaulte, “Les Théories de l’Eau de Ciel Sont Cuckoo,”
Jaune Journale
(August 1982).

5
Harry L. Schuler, “Not Long for This World,”
South Orange Literary Review
, XL (Sept. 1982), p. 214.

6
H. Braham, “Is Los Angeles Alive?”
Los Angeles Sunday Examiner
, 29 Oct. 1982.

7
“Ellieitis: Its Symptoms,” AMA pamphlet (fall 1982).

8
Fritz Felix DerKatt, “Das Beachen Seeken,”
Einzweidrei
(Nov. 1982).

9
The Los Angeles Manifesto
, L.A. Firster Press (Winter 1982).

10
L. Savage, “A Report on the Grand Teton Drive-In,”
Fortune
(Jan. 1983).

11
“Gulls Creek Gets Its Forty-Eighth Theater.”
The Arkansas Post-Journal
, 1 March 1983.

12
Maxwell Brande, “Altercation at Deadwood Spa,” Epigram Studios (April 1983).

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.

T
he clock-like 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 spiraled 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 glass-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 amusement 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.

A
s 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 gray-wreathed pate, the sunlight came filtering through the stained-glass window. It passed 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 cocked his head.

“Can’t hear anything but the organ and the motor,” he said.

“That’s
it
,” the old man whispered. “
You’re not supposed 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 re-murmured 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 bass 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.

“Well . . .” 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.

“
I hope so
,” Mr. Moffat answered. He felt his hands begin to shake.

T
he 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 morning . . .

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 willful 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 clamp. His pale hands jerked from the keys and, for a second, there was only the muffled 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.”

“Listen,” Wendall said, “you said you were bothered because they’re getting rid of her.”

The old man grunted.

“So,” said Wendall, “I think you’re doing these things yourself, unconscious-like.”

The old man thought about it. Certainly, she was an instrument; he knew that. Her soundings were governed by his feet and fingers, weren’t they? Without them, she was, as Wendall had said, a contraption. Pipes and levers and static rows of keys; knobs without function, arm-long pedals and pressuring air.

“Well, what do you think?” asked Wendall.

Mr. Moffat looked down at the nave.

“Time for the Benediction,” he said.

In the middle of the Benediction postlude, the
swell to great stop
pushed out and, before Mr. Moffat’s jabbing hand had shoved it in again, the air resounded with a thundering of horns, the church air was gorged with swollen, trembling sound.

“
It wasn’t me
,” he whispered when the postlude was over, “
I saw it move by itself
.”

“Didn’t see it,” Wendall said.

Mr. Moffat looked below where the Reverend had begun to read the words of the next hymn.

“
We’ve got to stop the service
,” he whispered in a shaking voice.

“We can’t do that,” said Wendall.

“But something’s going to happen, I know it,” the old man said.

“What can happen?” Wendall scoffed. “A few bad notes is all.”