Jake didn't tell Allison about the gunshot incident. He almost wrote about it in the journal that night while she slept, but he could hear her telling him to quit the job, that this was no way to live, that the long hours were bad enough, but at least she hadn't thought she was living with someone who was likely to get killed when he went to work, like an inner city cop. Not until now, anyway. He closed the book without writing anything and went to bed beside her, feeling that to write anything about the night and omit the gunshot would be an outright lie.
He woke up early and went straight to Eddie’s office. Gribbens wasn’t there. Eddie was on the phone. Jake hung back by the door and listened. Eddie was saying, “I don’t know what to tell you, Bob, there’s no standard anymore. I should replace at least one of the old analog Studers with a new one, but I don’t even know if they’ll still be making them in a couple of years. Analog is on the way out.
“The pity of it is that the musicians who are coming up now don’t even know that it really does sound better…. I know. You know what I tell them? I say it has an infinite sampling rate. Yeah, I do. Digital can suck my dick; analog tape is the only format with infinite resolution. But who cares, right? At the end of the day, it’s coming out of some guy’s car speakers over the engine noise with the radio station compressing the shit out of it…. Uh-huh. I don’t know what to tell you. None of it’s a good investment. Here today, gone tomorrow. Yup. Alright. Best to Laura. What’s up, Jake?”
“Hey, Eddie.” Jake walked in but didn’t sit down. He said, “Have you seen Gribbens today?”
“No. Why, is he late for the session? If he’s sleeping through, I will wring his neck,” he said, picking up the phone again.
Jake raised his hand and said, “No, he’s not late. We don’t even start until eleven.”
Eddie put the phone back in the cradle. He sat back, studying Jake. “How’s the project going? Are you getting anything you can use?”
“Yeah, we have basics for about nine songs done. Some are really good. Yesterday we started lead guitar overdubs. Everybody seems happy with the sounds.”
“Good. So you’re confident about driving the desk? I mean, I haven’t heard any complaints.”
“Yeah, I think I’m doing alright.”
“Well, I’m waiting to hear back from Danielle Del Vecchio. I told her the studio only includes an assistant with the day rate. Told her they need to find some real money for you, now that you’re engineering.”
“Thanks.”
“You have to make sure Rail gives you the proper credit, too. An engineer credit on a Billy Moon CD could kick-start your career. Of course, then I’d be stuck having to replace you already, so don’t let it go to your head before you have good reason to make the leap. Maybe your phone will start ringing in five months. You never know.”
“Yeah. Uh, listen, Eddie, last night Trevor Rail fired a gun in the studio.”
“In the studio.”
“Yeah, the control room.”
“No shit. He didn’t hit anybody, right? If he did, I would have been woken up, right, Jake?”
“No, no, he didn’t hit anybody. I think he was aiming for the ceiling.”
“Why?”
“You mean there could be a rational reason? I don’t know why. To make a point, I guess. He’s pretty dramatic to say the least.”
“So I’m told.”
“Well, what do we do about it?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know, are people allowed to fire guns in the studio? I didn’t see anything about firearms in the facilities handbook. Are you going to call the police or talk to him about it?”
Eddie sighed through puffed cheeks and fat lips. He looked at the paper-strewn blotter on his desk and said, “Jake, I know you’re new at this, but don’t talk about calling the cops again or I’m going to start worrying about you. If I called the cops every time I heard about one of our clients using illicit drugs, or having an orgy with a bunch of prostitutes, or, hell I don’t know, practicing animal sacrifice to invoke their muse for a vocal track, I would have put us out of business in the seventies.
“The biz is full of people who are highly unstable, theatrical, and emotional. Our job is to stay sober, levelheaded, and non-judgmental about their lifestyle choices. It’s really none of our business, if no one gets hurt.”
“Somebody could get hurt. Eddie, I don’t know about this guy. He’s kind of a loose cannon. Definitely, somebody could get hurt.”
“Rail is an intense character, but he’s not going to kill anybody. It’s like how some film directors establish a tense atmosphere on the set to motivate the crew or to provoke inspired performances. People hate those guys, but they make some of the best movies. Are you sure he wasn’t firing blanks?”
“There’s a hole in the ceiling.”
“Hmm. I’ll have Buff spackle it when the project’s over.”
“I’m not getting paid enough to take a bullet.”
“Are you saying you want off the project? Do you want me to tell Danielle they need to find another engineer?”
Jake considered. Then he said, “No. I just thought you should know what’s going on down there. We’ve already had one fatality.”
“Come on, that was an accident. Look, Jake, it's not the first time a producer or artist ever put his gun fetish on parade. Phil Specter was legendary for waving a gun around on those Wall of Sound sessions. Fuckin’ David Crosby, the gentle hippie? He’s a gun nut. Just chill. If you let this kind of thing get to you, you won’t last long.”
“Forget I said anything, then.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear you’re getting decent tracks. Let me know if you need anything.”
Jake turned to leave. Eddie called after him, “Hey, Jake! You let me know if he puts a slug in any of our equipment. The ceiling’s one thing, but if he shoots up any vintage gear, Gravitas is gonna have to pay for it.”
* * *
Billy woke to the sound of a fist banging on the front door downstairs. He crawled out of bed and pulled his black kimono over his pale, naked body on his way across the catwalk. When he opened the heavy double doors, he found Flint, fist cocked for the next round of pounding. Billy said, “You should be careful with that hand. We still have to get another day or two of tracks out of it.”
Flint looked like he had forgotten to take his sense of humor with him when he left the rectory across the road. He appraised his red knuckles and said, “Motherfucker must be solid oak. I thought you’d never hear me.”
Billy looked beyond him at the fog-bound woods, pulling the thin silk kimono close around his chest. “What time is it?” he asked.
“I dunno,” Flint answered. “Early. Get dressed. Let’s go into town and get some breakfast.”
“You crazy? It isn’t even light out. I’m not hungry. Just come in before I freeze.”
Flint stepped into the church and Billy closed the doors, pressing his weight against them to make sure they sealed. He scratched his head and said, “You want some coffee? I’ll make some.”
“Yeah, good.”
Billy pointed at an antique couch where his acoustic guitar lay, the neck jutting over one arm. “Have a seat,” he said and set about opening and closing cabinets. Usually when he woke, the housekeeping staff had already been in and brewed the first pot of the day, so it took him a while to find the filters and get it started. His first domestic chore in recent memory accomplished, he returned to the couch where Flint was finger-picking a variation on McCartney’s “Blackbird” riff over the gurgling sounds of the coffee maker.
Billy sat down beside him and said, “Be ready in a minute. So… what’s up?”
“I wanted to talk to you before everyone else shows up. I couldn’t last night with Rail kicking us out all of a sudden.”
Billy said, “That was a gunshot, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, man. Dude’s a first-class nut job.”
“What happened?”
“That kid Gribbens said something that pissed him off, so he fired a… a warning shot. Fucking gun came out of nowhere. Kid must have pissed his pants.”
Billy set his elbows on his knees, his temples in his hands, and stared at the floor.
“I didn’t like it one bit,” Flint said. “It’s not that he carries a gun that gets me. If he liked to shoot it off in the woods, whatever. But not in the studio. Nuh-uh. Not at some guy who’s running his ass off for crumbs. I don’t trust him with it. If I were you, I’d fire him.”
Billy nodded. “It’s not that simple,” he said. “Lemme get that coffee.”
He returned with two mugs and handed one to Flint. He put his own down on top of an amp, lit a cigarette, and began pacing the rug, talking between drags. “I have a three-record deal with Gravitas, but it doesn’t allow for much creative control at this point. The last record, well, they let me do it my way because Eclipse was a hit. This one, I have to do what they say. If this one bombs, I’ll get dropped from the label.”
“Billy, I’ve heard stories about ol’ Third Rail. Stop thinking about your contract for a minute. What’s your feeling? Is he dangerous?”
“He’s probably more dangerous than you'd think in your wildest dreams, but I don’t really see a way out for me. He’s the captain of this ship, and I’ve been press-ganged.”
“Well, I’m sorry, Billy. I guess you have an obligation, but I’ll work today and then I’m out of here. I’m not gonna end my career in a backwoods ditch because some psycho producer had a breakdown, you know? Use me the best you can today, okay?”
“Yeah. Alright, man. Can't say I blame you.”
“You shouldn’t have to deal with this shit while you’re trying to write. Talk to Danielle. She’s a ballsy lady. If you’re unhappy, she should be talking to the label.”
Billy took a long drag.
“Dude, are you alright? Hey, man, look at me. Am I way off base here? The fucking guy fired a shot at an assistant. Why do I get the feeling you don’t want to tattle on him?”
Billy stamped the butt out in the crowded ashtray. He said, “I hear your concerns, I do. But I have a strange relationship with him.”
Flint set the guitar down, turned his palms up in a prompting gesture.
“He showed up in my life at a time when I really needed help. He… intervened when I was at rock bottom. I was gonna kill myself. “
“Wow. So you feel like you owe him your life?”
“I don’t know. In a way, maybe.”
“That’s bullsh—”
“No. Let me finish. In a way, I owe him the life I’ve been living. The life. Being a rock star, what I dreamed of as a kid. It’s the only thing I know how to do, the only thing I’m qualified for. Nobody wanted to give me a chance until he showed up. And then doors opened where I didn’t know there were doors.”
“But you don’t owe him anything. Do you know how much money he’s made off you? You’re the one who wrote the songs. You’re the one who sang ‘em. Hell, it’s you living on the road, working your ass off. The only reason he’s an in-demand producer is because you were a success. You’re the goose that laid the golden egg. But your self-worth is all fucked up because he’s messing with your head.”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s subtle. He’s got you here in the middle of the woods, isolated. He’s the one with the power, and he’s intimidating the engineers, playing with your ego. There’s no one else around to give you any perspective. If you ask me, you should be in the city with a band.”
“It means a lot to me that you’re worried. Seriously, I don’t think I have too many real friends these days who would talk to me like this. Truth is—yes, he scares me, but I believe in what he can do for me. He’s done it before.”
“That’s the label talking. You did it before.”
Billy looked at the floor and said, “People are starting to forget about me. What am I gonna do, go back to working in retail? You’ll think I’m crazy, but I think he can make me a legend. He’s done it before. For other people.”
“What the hell are you talking about? You’re his only platinum record.”
Billy shook his head, “I’m pretty sure he’s been involved with other records behind the scenes, or under pseudonyms. Really big records. He’s a lot older than he looks.”
“Dude, you do sound crazy. That makes no sense. You think he wouldn’t want credit? You really believe that?”
“I do. And it doesn’t matter anyway because my contract pretty much says I have to stay on this train until the end. They won’t let me off.”
Flint stood up and nodded at Billy, “Alright, man. I tried. I’m gonna go have some breakfast.”
“Hey, Flint,” Billy said when the guitarist had his hand on the iron door handle. “Do they have a piano over there in the old rectory?”
Flint's face turned a whiter shade of pale. He stared at Billy, opened his mouth, and closed it.
“I just wondered what could have woken you up at six.”
“It's a piano, Billy, not an alarm clock.”
“You sure the gun's the only thing you're afraid of?”
“Sorry I woke you,” Flint said, and closed the doors behind him.
Billy showered, dressed, and started work on a new beat in the computer. With the headphones on, he immersed himself in the project for a few hours, only looking up each time a wedge of subdued sunlight fanned across the floor to herald the morning arrivals—first Jake, then Flint again, then Gribbens.
Billy took off the headphones and nodded at the assistant. “Hey, Ron.”
Gribbens flashed Billy his usual enthusiastic smile and said, “Billy, my man. Wassup? Flint, baby. Hey, is that ‘Blackbird’ I hear you pickin’?”
“Indeed,” Flint replied. “Well, my variation on it, anyway.”
“Nice. I fucking love the Beatles. Wanna hear my variation on a timeless classic?”
Flint looked at Billy and said, “Sure.”
Gribbens slid the piano bench out with a grinding of wood on wood and straddled it. He stepped on the sustain pedal, flipped up the lid, and with a dramatic tilt of the head, struck a chord, singing:
There’s nothing you can shoot that can’t be shot…
He hit another chord and let it ring out.
There’s nothing you can snort that can’t be snot.
Billy and Flint started laughing. Jake looked up from his notes in the control room. Gribbens picked up a bouncy, slightly stilted descending bass line with his barely adept left hand, which he more than made up for with his voice as he sang out full and loud:
There’s nothing you can’t smoke, but you can learn how to take a joke
It’s easy…
All you need is drugs!
All you need is drugs! Dot dah diddle dah,
All you need is drugs, drugs
Drugs are all you need
Flint clapped and whistled as the door swung open and Trevor Rail strode in, black overcoat whirling around him. Gribbens cut it short and scurried away like a field mouse in the shadow of a hawk. He was in the control room gathering papers before the sound of the piano lid slamming down finished reverberating in the rafters. Flint slid off the couch and intercepted Rail with a lazy, tilting gait that seemed slower than it was. He said, “Hey, Trevor, I’ve been thinking about that bit I did in ‘Language of Love.’ I might have an idea for how to make it support the vocal more.”
Rail said, “Okay, we’ll try it. But the vocal itself isn’t etched in stone. I may have Billy try something different as well.”
Billy followed Rail into the control room and heard him telling Jake and Gribbens to build a makeshift vocal booth out of gobos and packing blankets in the big room.
“I thought it was a guitar day,” Billy said.
Rail turned to him. “There’s little point in having Flint play around your vocal if I'm not sold on your performance. I’m hearing ‘Language’ as the single at this point, and I’m not going to waste time having him poke around in the dark until I know we have a vocal that’s a keeper.”
Billy blinked. “I wasn’t expecting to start the day with lead vocals, Trevor. I didn’t get much sleep and my voice is shit this early in the morning.”
“Don’t fret. It’ll warm up.”
“But Flint is only sticking around for today. We should use him while we can.”
“I was told we had him for three days.”
“He changed his mind.”
“Changed his mind?”
“Talk to him.”
Rail turned to Gribbens who was hovering nearby, listening to the exchange. “What are you waiting for? Didn’t I just tell you to build a booth?”
“Right. I’m on it,” he said and wobbled around, trying to choose which side to pass Rail on.
Rail leafed through the lyric sheets.
Through the glass Billy could see Jake and Ron rolling sections of modular padded walls with plexi-glass windows into position in a corner of the kitchenette. Flint was sitting on a stool near a stained-glass window that depicted one of the Stations of the Cross, tuning his guitar. Billy said, “Well, are you going to talk to Flint about how long he’s staying? ‘Cause if he’s leaving today, we should focus on him.”
“I don’t have a single yet,” Rail said, “and this studio is booked to someone else in just a few weeks. If Gravitas is going to pay for additional sessions at another studio, I need to have a single in my hands when we leave here. ‘Language of Love’ could be it, but I won’t know that until I hear you sing it like you mean it. I’m not going to piss away the day dressing up a song with guitar parts if the song might not even make the cut. Do you think I’m making a guitar record? I’m making a Billy Moon record. So get out there and sell me the song.”
Billy went to the kitchenette, lit a cigarette, and made himself a cup of Throat Coat tea. Jake was telling Ron which vocal mics to set up in the booth for Billy to try out.
“Billy, is there a favorite mic you’ve used in the past?” Jake asked.
“Not really. It always sounds like me no matter which mic. What’s the big black one that’s shaped like a gun?”
“An SM-7?”
“Yeah, I like that one.”
Jake called into the booth, “Put up an SM-7 too.”
A little while later Gribbens poked his head out of the control room and told Billy, “Ready when you are.”
Billy pulled a blue horse-blanket aside and stepped into the dead air of the booth, where he found his worn headphones hanging from a hook beside an assortment of expensive mics on stands. He put the cans on and looked through the window to the control room. Jake’s voice in his ears told him to sing through the song once, starting with the mic on the left and moving over to the next one for each new verse or chorus until he had tried them all.
Even in the headphones he could hear a sweet spot in the spectrum of his voice when he tried the third mic, singing:
Do you write a check?
Do you write a song?
Do you risk your neck?
To right a wrong?
Do you toss your change in a beggar’s cup?
Run into the flames, does it raise you up?
When you’re tied to the chair,
Will you lie, do you swear?
How do you speak the language of love?
They settled on the third mic. Gribbens took the others away and placed a windscreen in front of the keeper. Billy asked for a touch of reverb in the cans and Jake dialed it in. Time to sing it for real.
Billy closed his eyes and went inward, letting the dark details of the music carry him to that place where the studio disappeared and the part of him that was half poet, half character actor stepped up and laid it down. But in the middle of the take, he was jolted out of the flow when the backing track abruptly fell out from under him. Rail’s voice clicked into his ears, thin and distant, but as saturated with willful command as ever. “Pick a fucking beat to end each note on, Billy. They shouldn’t be that long. You’re running out of air and getting pitchy at the end of every line. Try ending it on three.”
And so it went for the next few hours. Billy sang until his voice was warmed up, rich and fluid. Then Rail had him sing the same chorus over and over in falsetto, full voice, and a raspy scream until his tone passed into a zone that was ragged and weak. The shadows of mic stands on the wood floor shortened as the sun climbed to its zenith. Purple and gold puddles moved across the room from the stained-glass panes. Rail’s criticism chattered, metallic and tireless in the headphones.
In the afternoon, the room darkened with storm clouds and snow flurries dusted the ground around the little church. The song played on and Billy sang:
Do you raise your voice?
Drop your pants?
Do you even have a choice?
Did you ever have a chance?
In a dirty phone booth,
Do you swear to tell the truth?
How do you speak the language of love?
Dark gray shapes trotted out of the woods in the falling snow. Dogs? Surely not a whole pack. Billy glimpsed motion much closer through the vocal booth’s distorted Plexiglas window and the kitchen window beyond. Something lunging past, too quick to focus on.
Wolves. He stopped singing and took the headphones off. The music marched on without him, now reduced to a trebly clattering from the headphones hanging in his hand. They were wolves—bony, motley gray wolves running in the field around the church. The playback in his headphones stopped. He dropped them absentmindedly and stepped out of the booth. Slowly, like a man in a trance, he walked across the room to where Flint was standing on a stool, peering out through a clear segment in one of the Stations of the Cross. Flint looked down at Billy, his face blanched, and said simply, “Wolves.”
“Over there too,” Billy said, nodding in the direction of the kitchenette. “They’re circling the church.”
Flint laughed. A dry, humorless chuckle that reminded Billy of the sound of a motorcycle engine sputtering out on an empty tank. “Told you, you should have booked a room in the city.”
The control room doors swung open. Rail leaned out between them and snapped his fingers like a hypnotist. The sound echoed in the space above them.
“I brought you here so you could work without distraction,” Rail said. “Back in the booth.” He pulled the doors shut without waiting for a response and took his seat beside Jake with an imperious stare that never left Billy. Behind him, the reels of the tape machine whirred, rolling back to the top of the song.
Flint said, “Do you think they’re hunting deer?”
“Deer would be in the forest where they came from,” Billy said, walking back to the booth. He slipped the headphones on, pulling his long black hair out of his eyes with them.
He tried to focus on the song, but then, halfway through the next take, he heard something in the mix that hadn’t been there before: a voice whispering in some strange clipped dialect. Billy stopped singing. The song cut off, followed by a short reverb trail.
The air inside the booth suddenly felt at least five degrees colder.
“What now?” Rail said.
“Did you just say something to me, while I was singing?”
“No.”
“I thought I heard you saying something. But it sounded like it was in Russian. Never mind, just roll it back to the top of the chorus and punch me in.”
This time he sang all the way through, but there it was again—a whispering voice at the fifth bar of the second chorus. It had to be on the recording, but he had heard this mix at least twenty times today. If the voice was on the tape, he should have noticed it before now. When he finished the take, he asked to hear it back. As the song played, he dialed down the knob labeled VOX in red sharpie on his personal headphone mixer so that his own voice vanished from the mix. No one in the control room would know he wasn’t listening to his own last performance for flaws. He turned the master volume up, holding his breath as the second chorus came around. There. It sounded like a woman’s voice saying, scar hath woluf.
What the hell did that mean and who said it? He was certain the whispered fragment hadn’t been there until two takes ago. Billy's mouth went dry, as if all of the moisture in it had drained down to his palms, which were now slick with sweat. He wanted very badly to get out of the booth, to get out of town.
Rail’s voice blasted in his ears, loud and metallic. He jumped and swatted at the little mixer, cranking the volume down again as Rail said, “I want you to put the emphasis on the second syllable. On the beat. Got it?”
“Yeah, okay.” Billy wiped his hands on his jeans, sipped his tea, and set the mug down with a tremor in his hand.
Two takes later, Rail was satisfied, and he called for Flint’s overdubs. Billy stepped outside for a moment to take in the air while the engineers were setting up for guitar. The snow flurry had ceased and the wolves were gone. Scanning the gray sky and the silent tree line, the only sound Billy heard was in his memory where an old song, a song that never really stopped playing, marched on—the dull jangle, twang and thump of Robert Johnson’s battered steel string guitar, and that reedy African voice that sounded so old Billy could imagine it issuing from the dusty throat of a Canopic jar: Got to keep on movin’, blues fallin’ down like hail. Got to keeeep on movin’, hellhounds on my trail.
Rail declared the session over just after midnight. The producer offered his hand to Flint as they walked down the church steps together. Flint switched the handle of his guitar case over to his left hand to receive the gesture. Billy thought his friend looked a little weaker after that handshake.
Rail continued on alone across the gravel lot, lighting up the BMW with the key fob. When the taillights disappeared, vanishing over the crest of the hill beyond a mist of glowing red exhaust, Flint looked up at Billy standing in the open door.
“I’m glad he didn’t press me to stay on another day,” Flint said.
“I think he knows you won’t take any shit from him.”
Flint smiled thinly at the overestimation. “You could give him the same idea, Billy.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re not under contract.”
Flint wanted to say more and they both knew it, but all he said was, “I’ll be taking a car back to the city in the morning, probably before you get up. Take care of yourself, eh?”
“Thanks, man. You were brilliant.”
“Any time.”
Billy watched Flint walk across the field to the rectory. Gribbens jogged down the steps, slapped Billy on the shoulder as he passed and said, “Later, Billy.”
Billy started back up the steps, the sound of Gribbens handling his mother’s car like a stunt driver receding into the night behind him. Jake appeared in the doorway, shaking his head, and said, “You’d think the accident would have made him just a little more careful.”
Billy shrugged, then jutted his chin out and said, “Hey, Jake, can you hang just a little bit longer and play something back for me?”
Was that a sigh Billy heard? He couldn’t read Jake’s face, backlit in the doorway, but if the young engineer begrudged him for extending the day’s work, his voice kept the sentiment in check when he said, “Sure thing.”
Jake flicked on the lights in the control room and asked, “What song?”
“‘Language of Love.’”
“Of course. The song of many vocals,” Jake said, pulling the box from among its fellows, all lined up on the windowsill next to the multi-track, their spines labeled in Gribbens’s neat hand. He threaded the tape onto the machine, typed a number into the transport, and set the reels spinning, the pitch of the motor rising as it picked up speed and lost the resistance of a full spool, then falling again as it slowed to a stop at the head of the song.
Billy said, “Take me to the top of the second chorus.”
Jake checked Ron’s notes and shuttled to the proper cue. The room was filled with the thick rhythms of bass, drums and keyboards, as well as the newly minted cacophony of layered guitars and a choir of Billy’s vocals. They listened to the chorus until about the halfway point, when Billy reached past Jake and hit the STOP key, rewound a few beats and hit PLAY.
“What are we listening for?” Jake asked.
Billy shushed him and leaned into the speakers. “There, you hear that?”
“Sounds like talking in the background,” Jake said, sitting up.
“Doesn’t it? You didn’t hear that when I asked Rail if he was talking to me during a take?”
Jake looked embarrassed. “If we didn’t have some of the tracks muted right now, I think it would be harder to pick that out. You probably only noticed it because you had headphones on.”
“Yeah, but what is it?”
“Dunno. I mean it’s obviously someone talking. Could be on one of the drum tracks. Steve might have said something while he was playing. Or even Jeff. One of them cued the other and it got picked up by a drum mic. Don’t worry about it. I’ll sift through the tracks and find out where it is when we have some down time. If I can’t spot erase it, I’m sure whoever mixes the song can hide it. It’s only there for a second or two.”
Billy furrowed his brow, then said, “Find it now.”
“That could take a while. Why’s it so urgent?”
“I want to know what it’s saying. And it sounds like a woman’s voice. I don’t think it’s Jeff or Steve.”
Jake ran his hand through his hair and sighed. “Alright.” He hit the rewind key and said, “If you want to watch TV upstairs or something, I’ll give a shout when I have it isolated.”
“Nah, I’m good,” Billy said, planting himself on the couch and flipping open a copy of Rolling Stone.
Jake started muting entire groups of tracks, running his finger across a row of buttons, leaving a trail of red lights and snuffing out entire swathes of the mix. First all the drums. The voice was still there, clearer now with less to obscure it. And it was a woman. He wondered if a radio station had been briefly picked up by a poorly shielded cable. Next, all the guitars. Still there.
Billy listened as Jake carried out the tedious process of looping the three bars in question to repeat over and over again, isolating the vocal tracks in solo mode and marking the strip of masking tape that identified each track with a penciled X to rule out one after another. Billy had never liked hearing his own voice naked, without musical accompaniment or reverb—especially early takes of a new song with all the rough edges still showing, but he endured it, forcing himself to listen carefully. Jake had been right about how time-consuming it was. He almost drifted off but startled back to a state of alertness when his chin touched his chest. He tuned in again. The rollers engaged. The spools revolved.
Scar hath woluf
“Got it,” Jake said.
Billy leaned over the console. Now he was fully awake, adrenaline saturating his sinews.
Jake pushed a fader up and played it again. The whispered phrase sounded distant compared to Billy’s sung lines before and after it.
“So it’s on one of my vocal tracks.”
Jake nodded and made a note on the track sheet. “Track seventeen. A harmony part. And it doesn’t overlap with your singing, so I can erase it no problem.”
“Don’t erase it!” Billy yelled, his hand out, fingers splayed. He rubbed his eyes and pondered. “I think that might be the take I was doing when I first heard it. If it’s on my track, that means my mic picked it up while I was singing.”
Jake bit the inside of his cheek, eying Billy sidelong.
“It’s like someone was in the booth with me, whispering over my shoulder. Whispering into my ear.”
Jake raised an eyebrow and opened his mouth but nothing came out.
“What?” Billy asked.
“Nothing, I just… I just think it’s late and you’re tired and maybe more than a little stressed out.”
“You hear it too, Jake. It’s on the fucking tape. The needle moves when it goes by. Shit, you found it yourself. Don’t tell me I’m hearing things.”
“I didn’t say that.”
They stared at each other until Jake looked away.
“You think it’s me,” Billy said at last.
Jake looked down at the field of knobs before him.
“That’s not my voice.”
For a moment neither of them said anything. Then Billy asked Jake to play it again.
Scar hath woluf.
“It sounds like the last word might be ‘wolf,’” Billy said, “and those wolves were outside when I heard it.”
“Billy… have you ever heard of an artist going into a kind of… creative trance?”
“It’s not my voice.”
Jake pulled his chair closer to the console, rested his elbows on the leather pad, and rubbed his eyes with his fingertips.
Billy said, “I’m sorry, but if I said it, why don’t I know what it means?”
“My girlfriend majored in psychology. She talks about this kind of thing all the time, and according to her, trance states work like that. Maybe it means something to you subconsciously. It slipped out while you were getting into the song.”
“I don’t buy it.”
“What do you think it is?”
“A ghost. There, I said it.”
“If you don’t mind my saying so, the possibility that you went into a trance for a few seconds and whispered some gibberish you don’t remember saying requires a much smaller leap than the idea that a ghost was in the booth with you and we caught it on tape.”
Billy made a sour face and said, “Play it backwards.”
“Huh?”
“Can you play it backwards?”
Jake glanced at his watch, but nodded. “I can do it, yeah. Let's see… uh, flipping the tape over and finding it again could take some time. I’ll boot up the computer and fly it into Pro Tools. Take a couple of minutes.”
Billy paced the big room, smoking a cigarette, and eyeing the vocal booth with suspicion while Jake worked. When Jake waved him back in, there was a small blue waveform on the screen.
Jake tapped the spacebar. The sample played in reverse.
Billy clutched Jake’s shoulder. “Did you hear that? It says, follow the tracks.” He looked excitedly at Jake for confirmation, but Jake kept his eyes on the screen and clicked the mouse to cue it up again.
Jake played it again.
Billy said, “Well? Right?”
“It could sound like ‘follow the tracks.’ Especially now that I’m listening to it with that in mind.”
“What the fuck, Agent Scully? It’s as clear as day.”
“It’s clear to you. But we’re both really tired.”
Billy sat down hard and sunk into the couch. Jake was right, he was tired, but why couldn’t the kid admit that he heard the message? What was he so afraid of? He said, “You know, if you want to talk psychobabble about subconscious states and such, I could point out that the reason you’re in denial about what you heard is because it scares you.”
“I’m not scared.”
“Listen, Jake, this is not the first strange thing I’ve experienced in this church. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”
Jake’s gaze drifted through the glass doors toward the loft where the grand piano slept under its black canvas cover.
Billy leaned forward, hands clasped, stubbled chin perched atop steepled fingers. He said, “You told me to transpose that melody to D. It spells ‘dead.’ Why did you tell me to do that?”
Jake kept looking through the glass, but he said, “I’ve heard it too. When I was alone in here.”
“The piano playing itself?”
“Yeah.”
“So then why are you busting my balls about this voice? It’s another manifestation of the same thing.”
“It could be. I’ll admit that, because I don’t even have a theory about what that piano did. But there could be other ways to explain the voice. It doesn’t have to be connected.”
Billy sighed. “Give me a theory that doesn’t involve me speaking in tongues.”
“A burst of radio interference.”
Billy folded his arms and gave Jake a stare that said, That all you got?
Jake turned his chair to face Billy. “Have you ever seen a UFO?”
“No.” Billy could feel anger welling up now. “I’m not some fucking psychedelic casualty who believes every weird story he’s ever heard like it’s his civic duty as an artist. Believe me, I know guys like that, who won’t even do a guitar track until someone balances their chakras with crystals and does a banishing ritual.”
Jake held his palm up to ward off the tirade. “I’m not suggesting you’re like that. Just hear me out. I have seen a UFO, technically. Many times. I’ve seen something fly by that I couldn’t identify for certain. Could be a plane, could be a helicopter. Maybe a satellite at night. Maybe even a bona-fide alien spacecraft. The point is, sometimes you have to file things under ‘unknown.’”
“Yeah, but there isn’t any normal explanation for a piano playing itself. Or a voice besides mine getting into that mic. It doesn’t sound like radio. I’ve used cheap pedals and cables that pick up all kinds of crap. I know what that sounds like.”
“And I know that damned piano makes no sense. I admit it—it’s fucking scary. Maybe that is a real poltergeist. But if we have to get on the crazy train about one thing, that doesn’t mean every other weird thing has to be connected to it, or we’re just running full tilt off the tracks. There may be different explanations for these two things. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Let me get this straight, because now you sound crazy to me. You think it could be a ghost playing the piano, but it could still be me leaving myself backward messages in a hypnotic trance in the vocal booth.”
“Maybe.”
“You’d rather believe in two weird things happening instead of just one cause for both effects.”
“Billy, I’m trying to help you keep one foot on the ground. I just think you should keep your options open for as long as possible when you’re tempted to start believing some really weird shit.”
“Okay, I get it. But I’m still more concerned with what it means. It says, follow the tracks. How can you not hear that? Do you think it means the railroad tracks?”
“What railroad tracks?”
“When I was walking in the woods the other day, after he pissed me off, I saw an old railroad track. Maybe I’m supposed to follow it.”
“I guess a walk in the woods just to see where it goes for a mile or so wouldn’t hurt. It’s not like the voice is telling you to jump off a cliff. Or kill someone. At least not yet,” Jake said with a strained grin.
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. Sorry. If it means something to you, you should follow your instincts and try to figure it out.” A few beats of silence passed. Jake said, “Do you think it might be a reference to Rail’s name?”
“Could be. But that still wouldn’t necessarily mean it’s my subconscious playing tricks on me. Not where he’s concerned. If it refers to him, it’s even more likely to have an otherworldly origin.” Billy looked out through the side door at the stepping-stones that led to the creek. The wood beyond was a tangle of black shadows, the sky above only a shade or two lighter than the tree shapes. When Jake spoke again, it snapped him out of a reverie in which his mind tumbled down a railroad track through the cold night. “Why would a message about Rail be more likely to come from the other side?”
Billy got to his feet slowly, arched his back and said, “You should go home, Jake. It’s late.”
“All of a sudden you’ve given up trying to convince me?”
“I appreciate you staying late to let me hear it, but I just don’t think you'd understand what I’m going through.”
“Did I say something?”
“No. Just, you’re skeptical about a spirit playing the piano and you’ve even heard that for yourself. You’re not ready to go where this conversation leads next.”
“Try me.”
“You’ll think I'm completely burnt out. And maybe I am.”
“Well now I’m awake and totally curious. Tell you what: if you tell me what you mean about Rail, I’ll tell you what I heard about the ghost and the piano.”
“I could probably get that story from Gribbens for a beer.”
“I won’t judge you.”
“People always say that. It’s impossible not to judge, even if you keep it to yourself.”
Jake waited.
Billy sighed and said, “I think he’s the Devil incarnate. Okay?”
Jake smiled and said, “I won’t argue with that wild theory.”
“I’m serious.”
“Okay… So you sold your soul?”
“I believe I did. It’s an idea that has kind of gathered around me lately when I look back at my experiences with him. I know it’s crazy, but once I thought of it, a lot of things just seemed to fit. For a while I couldn’t put my finger on how it happened exactly, but now I think I know.” Billy gave a rueful little laugh and tapped his right hand nervously on the corner of the console, the platinum ring on his finger rapping out a nervous rhythm. “There you have it. Devil. Now what about this ghost?”
“A deal’s a deal, but I'm afraid this is going to feed your fire. Her name is Olivia. What I heard is she was a witch back before the Civil War. They hanged her for consorting with you-know-who.”
“Go on,” Billy said, feeling his gooseflesh rising, having that sensation of wanting to look at what might be over his shoulder, and not wanting to.
“She played the organ back when this was a real church.”
“Before they hanged her as a witch, she was the church organist?”
“According to the legend. Everybody around here has a different version of the story. The studio grounds keeper told me they got the idea she was a witch because she played so well. Apparently, her interpretations of certain hymns were a little too hot to handle. They say she played them with rhythm and odd chord voicings, like in a black gospel service, sweating and writhing on the bench.”
“Really.”
“Yeah, but who would really know, after all this time, about the details. There’s probably a sparse record of what happened at the Town Library. Far less titillating, I would bet.”
“That might be worth looking into. Records of the trial.”
“I’m not so sure it would have been a real trial. Hanging witches went out of vogue after Salem in the late 1600’s. If there’s a grain of truth behind the story, it would've been the act of a small-town vigilante mob. But there might be a Historical Society of Echo Lake you could check with. I never leave the studio, so I couldn’t tell you what we have in this town.”
“Okay, go home already. Get out of here. Thanks again for the help.”
Jake stepped around the console and was almost through the glass doors to the big room when Billy said, “Hey, Jake?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I borrow your flashlight tonight? I’ll buy you new batteries.”
“Sure. Just don’t lose it. My mom gave it to me.”
Jake took the little red anodized Maglite from the nylon holster that hung from his belt beside a folding knife for stripping cables. He handed it to Billy. The barrel was etched with his initials, JC.