Tenebrae Manor Read Free Page A

redundant to all but one apparition.
    As Bordeaux passed row upon row of empty seats, he found a soothing relief in the soft echoes of his footfalls accompanied by the muffled sound of gentle piano keys nearby.
    “Such a capacity, this cave could certainly house my woes.”
    His whispers surprised him; though low, they were still carried far in the ever-hearing eardrum of a hall. On the stage, a spotlight shone down onto nothing save for flakes of dust that captured its rays along a cyclical journey through the air. A loft in the high corner of stage left, hidden amongst rafters so that only a dull candlelight betrayed its existence, concealed the perpetrator of the aforementioned piano sounds.
    Bordeaux stopped at the foot of the ladder up to the loft and cringed at observation of its rungs. He was not a man of physical exertion; even more so, he was not one for sullying his prim appearance. Nonetheless, he rose to the task and made his way to the loft as the sounds of music grew ever louder.
    The simple and dusty loft greeted him, in such untidy state as to leave him hesitant to handle any objects with his bare hands. Across the floorboards, sheets of musical score lay everywhere as if thrown in a fit of rage. The piano, or rather, the immense pipe organ that stood with all its girth along an entire wall of the loft, had seated before it a passionate mantis-like man hurling his fingers along the keys with apt precision and speed. The tails of the man’s green cardigan shifted and swayed over the bench where he perched; waves of sickly brown hair sprouted and spread horizontally from a part where the roots of said hair bore deep into the magnificent mind of its owner, the composer.
    Bordeaux stood silently for a moment, admiring the elegant tones floating forth from the instrument, before clearing his throat loudly.
    The composer started. “Who is it? Who, I ask disturbs the melodic thought train of the irrepressible Arpage Espirando Notturno?”
    He rose with emaciated hands aloft, convulsing, yearning for some lost and impossible dream. Green lights flew from betwixt the keys of the pipe organ, wisps of curled haze spewed from the pipes and a new sound, a ghastly wail exhumed from the composer’s cadaverous mouth. His mouth appeared to contort itself to inhumane dimensions, perhaps by a trick of the lights.
    He now turned to face his intruder and, as if his jaw were merely elastic, the shriek increased in volume as his mouth stretched wider.
    Unperturbed to this monstrous behaviour, Bordeaux clicked the thumb and forefinger upon his crimson hued hand and the lights, the flames, the wails from the composer and his instrument ceased.
    “I…”
    “Sit down, Arpage.”
    “Sir.”
    Arpage slouched back upon his stool and swung lazily around to face the keys.
    “I am honoured by your visit, sir. Indeed, honoured! My apologies, Master B,” he mused, poking apathetically at a key on his piano, where a B note sounded over and over again. Bernt, bernt, bernt …
    “It is just this blasted humidity,” he continued. “It places both my mind and instrument positively out of tune.”
    “Arpage.”
    “How can one think in this stifling heat?” Arpage interrupted, hissing through his teeth at the abhorred adjective. The B note rang again and again. Bernt, bernt, bernt …
    “Arpage,” drawled Bordeaux.
    “… When this dank auditorium alters the very sounds of my vision! Sounds of my vision? How perfectly ridiculous!”
    “Arpage!”
    The composer leapt from his reverie with a start, the monotonous B note breaking into a disconcerted squeal. “Oh, sir! Sir! A thousand pardons!”
    Bordeaux grinned. “How is the composition coming along?”
    Arpage was nonplussed by the question, “T-t-the composition?”
    “You are a composer, are you not?” Bordeaux mocked. “The irrepressible Arpage Espirando Notturno?”
    Abashed, Arpage was struck with realisation. “Oh, the composition! Of course, of course!”
    Here, Arpage