The Night Marchers and Other Strange Tales Read Free Page B

my thumbs grabbing the black keys, augmenting the seconds, filled out the tones with a slight dissonance that rang over the drums. The band had cut to just the percussion, the bass, and me. Then Roger and Jack came back in, trading a soft, fast trill that reminded me of Sacred Spiral. It was powerful. Thrilling. It felt right. It felt like home. Jack smiled. Not at me. To himself, but I knew what he was feeling. I felt the same way. 
    My hands moved up and down the keyboard; in my head I was still watching Noah Sol, his hands moving with mine until I was unsure if he were following me or I following him. They were right about the song. There was power here, something real, something alive, and they were very, very close. 
    To what, I didn’t know. But I knew in my bones that there was still something missing. Noah Sol knew it too. My playing had brought them closer—I could feel it. I knew it as sure as I knew that rain would fall from the sky, as sure as the cicadas’ summer symphonies would cease come fall. I was far too familiar with the maddening feeling of being so close. Was that why he brought me here? To search with them? Was that what I brought to the equation? 
    They were ready for the next movement. I didn’t know where it would lead us. But I wanted to know, so I played on. 
    The band came back in hard. Roger and the other sax players stood in their seats, swaying and bopping like in the video. The construction workers had come in from the kitchen. They were pounding on their guitars like drums. The girls from the hallways danced with the conga players. The old woman had some weird three-stringed instrument in her grasp.  
    After a few more measures half of the band was on its feet, marching around the room in interweaving orbits. I stayed at the piano. I couldn’t see Jack anymore. I craned my neck and saw a trail of musicians marching up the stairs. The dead guy was on the floor in front of his chair. 
    We flung the song outward with all of our intent, and in that instant, I knew what the crying girl had meant. The universe was either going to infinitely expand into the blackness of the void, in an eternal wave of creation, or when we stopped it would finally collapse back onto itself. Which one it would be, I didn’t know. No one knew, but the song, the song was hot on the trail.  
    I kept playing. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, the last of the musicians were disappearing up the stairs. My cadences slowed. I rang out fat chords, and with each of them I thought of something true. My first love. My parents. My brother. My newborn niece. Jack. The girl from the music store I wanted to make it with so badly. These things were true. These things were expanding, racing into the future. I kept playing, letting each chord ring out until it was no more, then replaced it with another. Noah Sol watched, then too he was gone and I was left with the fading sustain of my last chord and the settling dust in the last of the sunlight. 
    When I stopped I was alone with a dead guy in an abandoned building. I felt I had done something, but wasn’t sure what. Some decision had been made but I wasn’t sure what, or even what all the choices had been. 
    **** 
    The next night I received a call from Jack. 
    “I’m going to Jupiter,” he said. “I want you to come.” 
    I just listened, didn’t say a thing. He knew my answer was no.  
    “I’m going to be okay,” he said. “Maybe after Jupiter it will be a new galaxy.” 
    “Why don’t you stop by before you go?” I asked. 
    “I can’t, dude. That’s why I’m calling. Got to go.” 
    And that was the last I ever heard from him. The world didn’t end. Obviously. I wouldn’t be writing this. Part of me hoped Jack would turn up a few months later, living with his sister in North Carolina, or with some fling of the month in Jersey City or Amsterdam, all of which had happened before. 
    But it’s been six years. I don’t think I’ll ever