New Zealand Ghosts & Other Haunts

Stauf Stevens

"A chord cannot be malevolent or sweet, it merely is; just as a chord does not follow another chord in a natural order - it is a composer's own dreaming that gives it force or caress, wailing or soothing. "

So Peter Van Diepen remembered he had been taught. His instructor had passed on no greater knowledge than that a composer was the one who held the sway and rise of music in his fist .He would be the one to bend it and stretch it in creschendos and chords, plummets of note and song, all by his doing, and that he was never, ever under the grip of the muse itself.

Easy words to remember when you were so well remembered yourself. No one questioned the greater master's teachings where music was concerned. And now, as Peter sat still in his study at his piano, where he and his teacher had sat many hours before, Peter found his mind unwilling to work, unwilling to compose the notes that would make up his late teacher's final song; the music for his funeral.

No one believed that the old teacher would live forever. But it had been a shock to see him cut down in the prime of his life, barely fifty, and with so many students and so much respect. It was as if a man had spent his whole life in the persuit of beauty, only to find respect in its petals, and then to have the world close grimly about and snatch that life away.

Peter could not compose anything. No music, no inspiration came to mind. He took a moment, breathed heavily, and prayed that his beloved teacher was able to compose better music in the clouds of heaven than he was on earth. Peter looked up to the lily that bloomed from a pale ceramic vase on his piano. To his eyes, a single petal withered before him, then fell slowly down to the surface of the piano, laying white against the finished black of the massive instrument. At that, Peter recieved inspiration. He began to write chords and melodies, falling and wavering tunes; flutes gasping for air, violins pained and withering, the perfect lament for a dead master of music.

Peter retired late that evening. The piece was not nearly complete, but he had written scores that day. With his nightly prayers he thanked his professor and his God for the wonderful music that had been gifted to him.

With that, a cold blew through the room. The feeling of peace Peter had had at acomplishing so much was turned to dust. He felt the scrying of eyes in intense displeasure at what he had done, a feeling of consciousnesses aghast at him for something. And all night long he slept fitfully.

He awoke to the pounding of his own heart. He did not know what woke him - it was still early in the morning, and the sun had not yet risen. He sat up in his bed, shocked but not scared. He felt no discomfort, no ill at ease, no harsh sensations, yet his heart beat loudly in his ears and beads of sweat dripped from his brow. He looked about his spansive bedroom. All about him, the flowers that he kept in vases at his bedside and on the windowsill - a gift from his fiance - were wilted. One was almost black with age. It was as if the flowers had been dead for months. In the perfect silence of the night, Peter began to hear tones - not a true melody, but a series of notes that pieced together in his mind. He knew that he was not hearing these outside his head, and wondered that he was not going mad with stress and mourning. Yet the notes were insistant and constant. Finally, determining that something in the air was amiss, he rose from his bed. In a dream he walked to his study and sat at his piano. And began to play.

In the hideous night, the music that came from the piano was nothing Peter had ever heard - or played. It was fresh and new to his memory, yet he played it as if he'd known it for years. All the while he marvelled at it. It was not his inspiration, but inspiration thrust into him. The music flowed perfectly, with total ease, from his fingers.

Soon, the melody began to change. The dark night, illuminated only by the moon outside and the starlight glinting off of polished wood and silver, pressed on Peter. He felt like the darkness itself was
closing in on him. And as it closed, the music he played seemed trapped inside of it. He felt like a man trapped in an ever-shrinking bubble that prevented his music from escaping into the free air
beyond.

Filled with fear, Peter played on. He forced himself into a familiar Cantata; gradually, with the greatest mental effort, he pushed the strange music from his mind. The music that, so beautiful, so
charming, so free and easy to play that he need not even think, that yet seemed to welcome darkness. He forced himself to play his own music, the music of his professor, the music he'd written himself. The darkness encroached. He swore he could feel nightling things pressing in the darkness. He felt the will upon him, the urge on his soul to give in to the music that Darkness fed to his fingers.

Peter was in revolt. He played with greater gusto, his Cantata
becoming an Overture. He played with all his soul, beating out music from his piano with all the fear and hate and love that man builds his greatest arts with, desperately pounding down against his instrument, brutalizing it, demanding that it play only for him. And with every note that he willed through force and passion out of his instrument, every chiming melody and powerful close, those notes beat against the darkness, pushing it back.

Back went the darkness, and Peter commanded the muse. At last his hands grew weary; his frame rocked and white, and he at last collapsed, stricken and unconscious, across the keys.

He awoke to the sweet song on a bird at dawn. He had survived the night. He still lay across the piano, his fingers clenched into the final crashing finale of a powerful song. In that bright morning, Peter realized that he had survived worse than death - he had survived losing his soul. For the soul of a musician is his music, and he knew that his sage professor had indeed taught him a lesson that night, and showed him the truth about music, that it is indeed the man that commands music, or else he loses himself to the illusion and fancy of the popular culture, the muse that demands satisfaction. Only in his own will did Peter realize he had found power over that muse, and the beauty to create that he sought..
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Shanachie