EIGHT

 

“I’m no expert, but that’s what it sounds like,” Ben said. “Let me see it.”

Jenny passed him the piece of paper, already pondering the words and their strange hiding place inside the music box.

Ben held the paper close to his face, lowering his hand a second later as he considered the words.

“Maybe it’s some kind of game,” Jenny suggested. “It’s a music box, so it might have been owned by a child.”

Ben shook his head. “I doubt it. The handwriting sucks, but it doesn’t look like a kid’s writing to me.”

He reached for the box. Jenny could see the look of concentration on his face. Closing the bottom of it, the piece of paper still on the floor next to him, he turned the box right side up. It glimmered a little, and Jenny saw that it was encrusted with jewels. No doubt they were fake, but it was still a strange find in an attic that, until now, had produced only junk and some cool clothes.

Ben put the key in the hole and turned it. Then he opened the lid. A few creaky, tinkling notes stumbled from the box.

“It works!” Jenny laughed.

It was obvious Ben was as surprised as she was. “Wait a minute … ” He stopped, a look of total concentration falling over his eyes. “Do you hear that?”

“What?”

He looked at the box with wonder and something else she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

“It’s playing Moonlight Sonata,” he said softly.

Jenny listened more closely, finally catching the tune in the slightly off-key notes. “You’re right,” she said. “You were playing it yesterday when I came into your room.”

She was suddenly awash in a wave of nostalgia. She didn’t know what it was, but it wasn’t from hearing Ben play Moonlight Sonata in his room. It went deeper, a sense of instinctual recognition like running into someone you knew but hadn’t seen for a long time. Even if the person looked a little different, you were almost positive that you knew them.

Ben turned his head toward her, his eyes meeting hers. He looked like he wanted to say something. Like he was trying to find the words.

“What?” she asked.

He was quiet for so long she wondered if he’d even heard her question. Then, he sighed, shaking his head. “Nothing.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Nothing, huh?”

“Yeah.” He nodded slowly. “Nothing. That’s what I said.”

The bite had crept back into his voice. She stared at him as he wrapped the music box back in the cloth, setting it on top of the I Have No Idea pile.

The sight of it there, hidden by fabric and sitting on top of a bunch of junk, gave her an irrational stab of panic.

“Wait a minute.” She reached for it, pulling it off the pile.

“What are you doing?” he asked her.

“I … I don’t know. I just don’t think we should put it with all this other stuff, that’s all.”

“What else would we do with it?”

She hesitated, wondering if she was really going to suggest what she wanted to suggest. “I think we should try it out,” she finally said.

“What are you talking about?” Ben asked. “We already got it working. Moonlight Sonata, remember?”

“Not the music box,” she said. “The instructions on the piece of paper.”

“The instructions … ” Understanding dawned on Ben’s face. “You want to try the mesmerization thing? The hypnosis?”

She shrugged, trying to be nonchalant when her heart was beating so fast she thought it might jump out of her chest. “Why not?”

Actually, there was probably more than one reason why not, starting with the fact that it wasn’t smart to play around with things you didn’t understand. Things that couldn’t be explained. She knew that better than anybody.

But she couldn’t help thinking of the Ouija board. Of the presence that had reached to her from the darkness of her half unconsciousness and of the man named Nikolai who had been in her dream later that night. The man in her paintings. She felt like a door had been opened, just for a second, and then shut again. It seemed impossible to live her life without knowing what was on the other side.

Ben’s nod was slow. “Okay. But you go first.”

“Deal,” she said.

He picked up the piece of paper, bowing his head to the words. He started reading.

“Instructions for Mesmerization must be followed exactly.” His voice sounded strange in the room. Formal and older than his age. “The subject will maintain a reclining position throughout the session. This will guard against possible vapors induced by the Sight.”

“But what are vapors?” Jenny asked. “And what does it mean by the sight?”

Ben sighed. “I don’t know any more than you do, remember? Do you want to do this or not?”

“I do.” Jenny answered quickly before Ben could change his mind. “Let me just find something to lay my head on.” She leaned forward, digging through all the stuff they’d uncovered until she came to an old wool coat. “Keep going.”

She balled the coat up and set it on the floor. She tried not to think about all the dirt and dust and who-knew-what-else on the attic floor as she stretched out and rested her head on the coat.

“You okay?” Ben asked.

“Yep, I’m good.”

He continued reading. “Upon proper positioning of the subject, the Mesmerist must open the box. The box will remain open for the duration of the session.”

“The box?” Jenny lifted her head from the musty coat. “The music box?”

“I guess so,” Ben said. “The two must go together.”

Jenny laid her head back down. “That’s weird. But okay.”

Ben opened the music box. He waited for the strains of Moonlight Sonata to begin before he started reading again. “The mesmerist will read … ” He stopped, considering the word. “So I’m a mesmerist now?”

“Just keep going,” Jenny urged.

He continued where he left off. “The mesmerist will read the following to the subject, taking care to keep one’s voice even and calm at all times.”

Jenny closed her eyes. She didn’t know what she expected to happen, what she wanted to happen. But her chest was heavy with expectation, and she tried to calm her mind, concentrating on her breathing and on Ben’s voice, deep and even.

“Close your eyes as gently as a bird fluttering to rest on a spring branch. Let go of this world and its cares as you drift amidst the blackness of the great beyond, that place of both mystery and understanding.”

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Jenny knew it was cheesy, but the knowledge was distant and didn’t stop her from being entranced by the words. They washed over her like waves until she felt herself slipping into a state of comfort bordering on lethargy. Her body felt heavy, even lying on the floor, the eerie rendition of Moonlight Sonata only adding to the allure of sleep.

“You are now in the place where all queries may be answered,” Ben intoned. “Where all questions will find resolution. In this place, you hold the keys to even those things you have not yet wondered, but somehow know. There are no barriers here. No separation of time and space. Now, all knowledge meant to be yours is yours, all things meant to be joined are one.”

In the blackness behind her closed eyelids, there was a rush of sound. At first, she thought it was a gust of wind, but that wasn’t it. Instead, everything seemed to be sucked from the room, leaving her in a vacuum of stillness. There was no scratching from the birds in the eaves, none of the mundane sounds that filled the air every day. She couldn’t have even have named them all, but she knew somehow that they were missing.

There was only one thing she could still hear. One thing that rose above the muffled quiet imposed on the rest of the room.

Moonlight Sonata was still playing, the notes drifting through the air as blackness approached from every side of her vision.

And then there was nothing at all.