Billy Moon was singing with a gun to his head. The song was “Black Curtain,” and the gun was held by Rachel, who was pressing the muzzle of it against the back of Billy's head while he knelt in front of her like a condemned man in a Chinese prison, a microphone on a low stand before him. Jake was watching the meters, thinking that the reels were turning too slowly because the end of this take could not come soon enough. Jake was thinking that this had all gone too far, had crossed a line, was utterly fucked up. Jake was also thinking that the vocal sounded awesome.
Are you sick with fear? Then you are not alone
The end is near, I can feel it in my bones
Whispering in my ear 'til the big black curtain falls
The end is near, I can feel it in my balls
Billy repeated the lines over and over through what would be the fade-out. Jake only had to keep an eye on the needle and a finger on a fader, but he felt like he was driving an eighteen-wheeler through an icy mountain pass. When the beat finally broke down at the end, his palms were slick with sweat.
Rail said, “That's the one. Put a star on it.” Then, into the intercom, “Bravo, Billy. Another inspired performance. Isn't it amazing the difference it makes, just knowing it's there? Knowing it's loaded?”
“Yeah. So you got what you need? I can go now?”
“You may go.”
Through the glass, Rachel looked sweaty and horny and on the verge of tears, running her hands over Billy's chest, the Ruger now lying atop a wooden stool like just another instrument: a harmonica or a microphone. Billy kissed her, but then gently removed her hands. Jake knew Billy was going to pick up his acoustic guitar like he did every afternoon now and take off for a walk in the woods. Alone. She didn't look too happy about it.
They were in the final days of the project, and it was all about the vocals now, but there were only so many consecutive hours they could expect Billy to perform without diminishing returns, so they had established a routine: mornings were spent tracking, followed by a break for Billy in the afternoon when Jake and Rail would sift through the day’s catch, making charts on the dry erase board and marking up lyric sheets with three colors of highlighter. Once the best takes were identified, they would cut and paste a seamless, stellar performance. After dinner, they would play the edits for Billy and then move on to gathering raw material for the next song.
Keeping meticulous notes was crucial now, so Jake didn’t know if it was a blessing or a curse that Gribbens had simply stopped showing up for work. He couldn’t really blame the guy; after all, he had been shot at in the studio, and witnessing Kevin Brickhouse's death was bound to catch up with him sooner or later. Considering the pressures, Jake wasn’t even sure if Eddie would fire Ron for going AWOL. An assistant wasn’t strictly necessary at this stage, although there were times when Jake wished he could just ask Gribbens what some bit of notation on a track sheet actually meant.
Rail was pushing hard for the deadline, and tension was reduced on only one front during those long days: Billy seemed to have surrendered fully to the producer. He showed up and sang each morning, then vanished into the winter woods. Jake couldn’t help wondering if he was out there jamming to the impossible sounds of the pan flute every afternoon as the light waned. Rail showed no interest in what Billy might be writing out there, because whatever it was, it wasn’t going on this album. Anything new was too late, and anything acoustic didn’t fit Rail’s vision. Sometimes Jake would stare at the row of blue knobs labeled L PAN R, and wonder what Billy's vision was.
Over lunch, while Billy was on his walk, Jake summoned the nerve to ask Rail a loaded question. In the breezy tone of trivia, Jake said, “You ever hear about the ghost who supposedly lives here?”
Rail glanced up at the loft where Rachel was watching TV. “Of course,” he said, “that’s why I chose this studio.”
“How do you mean?”
“To inspire Billy's dark muse.”
“So you believe in it? The ghost?”
Rail said, “Let me tell you something about producing. All that matters is what the artist believes. I believe Billy Moon does his best work when he’s fucked in the head. Some people come to a remote studio like this for a safety zone, but we’re here for quite the opposite.” Rail bit a cherry tomato in half in a way that somehow conveyed that the conversation was over.
As Christmas week dawned, Jake found himself avoiding the apartment. He kept a few things in the church refrigerator and went to work earlier in the morning, the housekeeping staff still cleaning around him as he made his breakfast. At night he would linger after Rail had retired to the house on the hill, obsessing over edits and telling himself it was natural to want his first project as principal engineer to be blemish-free.
God only knew what star mixer Rail would call on to finish the record, and whoever it was would be scrutinizing his work. He should take the time now to make sure he was delivering the best tracks possible, to double-check that the documentation was in order. After all, he didn’t have anything to go home to. Not even a dog to feed.
Two days before Christmas, Eddie popped in to check on the clients and to apologize for the absence of the cleaning staff. “December is a pretty dead month for us. Here’s my home number. I’m right across town if you need anything.”
Rail asked if J.T. would still be available to cook for them.
Eddie scratched his ear and said, “Well, gee, not on Christmas, I’m sure. He has a family. But I’ll call him and see if he could do Christmas Eve for you. Bring you some trays you can heat up when the restaurants are closed.”
“That would be grand,” Rail said.
Turning to Jake, Eddie asked, “Still no sign of Gribbens?”
“No. He hasn’t called you?”
“Nope. His brother has an apartment in the city. He’s probably down there drowning his sorrows or something. Christ. Call Brian if you really need help, okay?”
“Sure thing.”
* * *
At four o’clock on December twenty-fourth, J.T. arrived in a Santa hat. Jake helped him carry the trays and Sterno burners into the kitchen. It was a perfect spread: carved turkey with gravy and garlic mashed potatoes, coleslaw, cranberry sauce, stuffing, steamed veggies, and the best biscuits Jake could ever recall eating.
Rachel turned heads when she descended the stairs from the loft in a simple black dress, her hair newly cut and dyed black. Without the goth makeup and blood red mane, she almost looked like a girl you could bring home to your mother for Christmas Eve dinner.
After J.T. left, Rail went into the kitchenette and returned bearing a tray laden with four crystal goblets of dark-red wine. His resemblance to a waiter standing at attention was almost enough to make Jake laugh, but then the flawless beauty of the crystal caught his eye. He wondered if Trevor Rail traveled everywhere with them in a foam-lined metal case.
Rail set the tray down on the white linen tablecloth covering the farmhouse table. He handed out the goblets, then held his own aloft. Jake found it unsettling to watch Trevor Rail raise a sparkling chalice of red wine before a backdrop of stained glass. The moment must have felt pregnant with poetry for all in attendance because they laughed easily when he simply said, “To coming in under deadline.”
There was scant conversation during the meal, and somehow the silence made them feel like a real family for a little while. But Jake didn't trust any of it. To him, it felt too much like the calm before a storm.
Afterward, Rachel cleaned up. Jake offered to help, but she shooed him away, so he took the chance to make his exit while Billy was outside having a smoke under the stars. Jake stood beside him on the front steps for a moment before asking, “You’re not gonna offer me one?”
“I noticed you stopped smoking after your girl took off,” Billy said. “Most people, it’d be the other way around.”
“I didn’t tell you she left.”
“Man, it’s written all over you.”
“Well, she didn’t like me smoking.”
“Yeah, it didn’t suit you, anyway. I hope her leaving didn’t have anything to do with me showing up at your place.”
Jake considered telling him that hell yes, it had a little something to do with that, but refrained. After all, the guy was breaking out in a rare case of empathy. He just said, “It might have sped things up a little, but she would have gone anyway.”
Billy flinched slightly, or was that just smoke in his eyes? Then something new and sweet occurred to Jake, and he smiled. He asked, “That why you’re smoking outdoors now? Because you noticed I stopped?”
Billy shoveled some snow aside with the instep of his boot and said, “Nah, I just like a little fresh air with my cancer these days.”
They exchanged a smile.
Billy swayed slightly and said, “Actually, the air’s not helping like I thought it would. I’m feeling a little light on my feet. That wine must be good, ‘cause I can hold my liquor.”
Jake frowned and put a hand out to steady Billy’s shoulder as the singer sat down on the church steps. “You’ve been getting a lot of fresh air lately,” Jake said. “How’s that going?”
Billy fixed his eyes on the center of Jake’s chest and bobbed his head up and down. “Good,” he said, “It’s going good. Really fucking good. I sit there and listen, the flute gives me the melody and I find the chords. I’m getting a lot of songs.”
“No kidding.”
“Yeah. I’m never gonna let Rail touch them.”
“I guess that’s good… Billy?”
Billy’s faraway stare floated from Jakes chest to his eyes.
“If Rail’s the Devil,” Jake said, “who’s the piper at the pool?”
“I dunno. I think he might be my soul,” Billy said with a laugh.
“I don’t get it.”
“Me neither. But I thought I’d lost my soul, and now, out there in the woods, it’s like I’m finding it again. Like, check it out: I can’t find my pills, right? Don’t know where I put ‘em. And it doesn't even fuckin’ matter. That should be a crisis for me, but I’m doing alright. Because I found my soul.” Billy laughed again.
“I’m happy for you, Billy.”
“Thanks, Jake. I talked to the ghost, too. Olivia? She says the thing in the woods isn't the Devil. I think it’s Pan—you know the old Greek god?”
“Yeah, I know,” Jake said, thinking that Billy was wading farther into the deep end with each step, talking not only to the Devil now, but to a ghost and a god as well. If only his own experience hadn’t touched on these possibilities, it would have been a lot easier to dismiss the man as a burnout.
“Maybe Pan was her muse, and now he’s mine.”
“If it’s helping you to look at it that way, and not making you paranoid, then it’s probably an okay interpretation of what you’re going through.”
“Do you think?”
“I do.”
“That makes me feel better about it. You’re really the only person I can talk to about this. Rachel helped me get in contact with Olivia, but she doesn’t remember anything. She was in a trance at the time, and I don’t think I trust her enough to tell her what I’m doing out there in the forest.”
“Keeping your cards close. That might be wise. You’re in a vulnerable place.” He slapped his car keys against his thigh to indicate that he was going.
Billy looked up at him and said, “So, Jake. Do you think you could record my new songs?”
Jake laughed and looked at the pine boughs above.
“When Trevor’s not around. Just me and my guitar.”
“In the woods?”
“No, in the studio.”
“When?”
“How about you come back tonight after he leaves? It’s still early.”
“So much for a night off.”
Billy looked down.
“No, it’s cool. I don’t have anything else going on. I’ll come back in an hour or so.”
“Thanks.”
Jake thought Billy looked pretty stoned. Maybe he was. So what? As long as Billy didn’t expect him to go back into those woods in the dark….
At home Jake opened a beer and sat down on a couch that felt far less familiar than the one in the control room. He tried to watch TV. Most of an hour had passed when he looked down at the bottle in his hand. It was still full. He drank some. He remembered breaking up with Lori Vandercross in High School. Every song on the radio at the time had magnified and articulated his suffering.
Now, sitting in the dark apartment in the aftermath of losing the girl he had believed he would marry, letting the photons from their cheap TV wash over him for no other purpose than to keep the silence out, he found he was grateful for the lack of emotional triggers in the flat, dry hip-hop beats and ego trip rhymes ricocheting around the room.
A hot blonde VJ in a Santa hat appeared amid swirling graphics. Jake didn’t know what she was talking about. He flipped the channel, landing on a car commercial. Early morning golden sun, winding California coastal road, chiming anthem-rock guitar lines designed to evoke a yearning for wide-open spaces, or more likely a yearning for the sleek black car that was cruising through them. Jake felt a drop of moisture hanging from his nose and was surprised to find that he was crying.
* * *
Snow swirled in the headlights of the Pontiac on the secret dirt road to the studios. The accumulation silenced the already quiet winter woods. For a fleeting second, Jake saw a spotted deer standing at the side of the road when his high beams turned the animal’s eyes into violet-tinted mirrors. He startled, pumped the breaks, and fishtailed the unwieldy vehicle.
He sat there with his heart hammering until the deer bounded across the road and into the woods. Having lost traction and momentum in the dead stop, he backed the car up to flatter ground and got a running start on the steep hill up to the church. As he cleared the top, he saw Trevor Rail’s BMW still parked under the tallest evergreen, right where it had been when he left.
Jake considered turning around, but decided that would be just chickenshit. Rail might have seen his headlights by now or heard his engine working hard up the hill. He would want to know why Jake was here. Best to walk right in and give an excuse for coming back. He could say he wanted to grab a rough mix cassette of the edits he’d been obsessing over.
Maybe Rail would leave while he was dubbing a copy. But the church looked dark. The stained glass cast a weak, dirty glow onto the snow. It reminded him of the yellow light of dying batteries in a flashlight, struggling and failing to erase the shadows of the guardian pines. Jake was thinking, That light can’t hold a candle to the moonlight, when it struck him that it was candle light.
He turned off the headlights thirty yards or so from the church and parked behind the shed where Buff kept a snowplow, a chainsaw, and some shovels. Hiding the car only increased his anxiety. If Rail found it tucked out of sight like that, no excuse about rough mixes would do. But hiding suddenly felt right.
He thought again about whether or not his headlights had hit the church windows. Probably not. And the snow under his tires would have masked the sound of his approach far better than the usual gravel. Maybe Rail didn’t know he was here. He opened the car door and immediately realized that he didn't have to worry about being heard. Bass pulsed out of the church loud enough to remind him of the dance clubs in Miami. If he could hear it from here, it had to be deafening in there.
He cut a wide approach to the building keeping his footprints in the shadows of the trees. When he had halved the distance between the shed and the church, he recognized the song. It was “I Know It’s There.”