The Last Musician
A Novel
Jason Peterson
Copyright 2013 Jason Peterson,
All rights reserved.
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-1355-6
Slim Chance Press
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are creations of the author’s imagination and are not real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Slim Chance Press, [email protected]
Original design by Anthony Maro
For Lauren
How have you left the ancient love
That bards of old enjoyed in you!
The languid strings do scarcely move,
The sound is forced, the notes are few.
William Blake
1
In the land of Greenwood, in a time before this, a very peculiar thing happened on an otherwise very ordinary day. The music stopped.
At Greenwood community church, the music stopped during Edie Westerboum’s solo performance of “Thy Hymn Remains the Same.” The rest of the congregation thought Edie finally, thankfully, blew out her off-key voice until they realized they also couldn’t hear Bessie Mae Miller’s spot-on accordion accompaniment.
At Joe’s Barbershop in downtown Greenwood, the music stopped right as Joe’s Actual Barbershop Quartet started a rousing rendition of “Sweet Greenwood Eyes.” Joe, who was cutting Carl Anderson’s hair while he sang, was so surprised by the sudden silence that he lopped off the chunk of locks Carl used to comb over the rest of his bald head.
At Greenwood’s infamous Overlook Point, the music stopped just before Herb Gillespi was about to debut the love song he’d written for Maria Keys. Maria, certain Herb had gotten too nervous to actually play the song, kissed him anyway. Herb suddenly did not care about the strangeness of strumming a soundless guitar.
At Greenwood’s Biograph Theatre, the music stopped during a performance of Puppet Time with Pigwilly Pete. Pete flailed away at his one-man-band gear to no effect while the audience, thinking this was a part of the show, roared with approval until it became clear this was no mere act. A wary hush settled over the crowd.
On that fateful afternoon, all throughout Greenwood, people slowly began to realize something was amiss. Once the realization spread, it quickly turned to concern, and the concern to panic.
Greenwoodians gathered in front of each other’s homes, trying in vain to sing or play their instruments. They stopped each other on the street, asking if they could hear any music. One by one, family by family, they began filing towards Greenwood’s town hall. No one knew where else to go, and it seemed as though something must be said about the matter.
All of Greenwood gathered together that day. All except for one boy. The boy’s name was Kristoffer Snider, and, although he did not know it yet, he was about to have the greatest adventure of his short life.
2
Almost exactly thirteen years before The Great Silence (as Greenwoodians were starting to refer to the inexplicable event), a baby in a basket had been found on the edge of the forest near the main entryway to Greenwood by a Mrs. Ethel Snider.
Mrs. Snider, a widowed, childless woman around the age of sixty (though she never would tell anyone her actual age), was going for her morning walk when she saw it.
She later told anyone who would listen that immediately before she spotted the basket, she had seen a blur shoot out of the forest and back again. No one quite believed her of course, but then again, she had found a baby in a basket, so who was to say?
The baby became the light of Ethel Snider’s life. Her friends tried to convince Ethel to give the baby up to a young family to raise him, but Ethel would hear none of it. He was a gift to her, she would say, and if she was given this precious gift, then she would also be given the strength and longevity to raise the boy.
After Greenwood’s elders approved her adoption, she named him Kristoffer, after her beloved late husband, and set about the task of raising him the best way she knew how.
None of this, of course, was on anyone’s mind as they sat in Greenwood’s giant town hall waiting on one of the elders to speak. They gossiped and theorized and speculated and worried.
“I’ll bet its God’s punishment for Edie Westerboum’s voice. He finally had enough.”
“Maybe it’s a disease. What’s the thing that happens in your throat? Larynmidas?”
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. It’s not just voices, you know. And it’s laryngitis. Larynmidas would be if your throat turned into gold.”
“Good one, Val.”
“But what does it all mean?”
“Maybe it’s Urizen.”
“Please don’t say that name,” someone said.
“What?”
“Urizen!”
The crowd hushed at once.
The council of elders slowly began arriving to the stage. Because of the rush to get there, the five elders were not wearing their usual robes, though no one seemed to care.
Carl Anderson, Greenwood’s chief elder, spoke first. While no one in the crowd noticed the lack of Carl’s official robes, everyone noticed his awful toupee, which was perched on top of his usually combed-over head. The ridiculousness of his appearance broke some of the tension building throughout the hall.
“Thank you all for coming,” Carl said as he unconsciously patted the top of his head. He thought the snickers and guffaws around him were caused by nervousness and fear, not his toupee, which he thought made him look ten years younger.
“I know you’re all concerned about what is going on. We, the Council of Elders, are concerned as well. We do not know much about what happened, but this is what we do know: at approximately 11:30 this morning, people ceased to be able to play or sing music of any kind.”
He paused, and the murmuring was replaced by an eerie silence.
“We don’t know why this happened, what it means, or if music will suddenly return as quickly as it disappeared.”
Edward Rogers, an elder and the bass in Joe’s Actual Barbershop Quartet, spoke next. He squeezed his large frame out of his chair and waddled to the front of the stage, carrying a few instruments with him.
“Is there anyone here who can still play or sing?” He strummed a ukulele, and, like every other instrument played since the music stopped, it made no sound.
“What I find so strange,” he said, “is it’s only music that’s gone. Not all sound.”
“What do you mean, Edward?” said another elder, Missy Davis. Her large, pointed glasses sloped down her pointy nose, and she pushed them back up.
“I