These Evil Things We Do: a Novel & Four Novellas by Mick Garris

Author:Mick Garris
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Encyclopocalypse Publications

The school had been somewhat somber after Miss Featherstone’s death. Chatter was softer, the mood darkened; even the sky stayed grey, with a shroud of snowfall piling high on the leafless trees and hedges. The fabled laughter of schoolchildren was muted and hesitant.

David was the youngest pupil in his Composition class, but easily the most talented. Though his reach was less than an octave, his hands were active, adventurous, agile. His playing skills were impressive, especially for a nine-year-old, but it was his writing that was his most prodigious talent. He created music that twisted and turned on itself, muscular exercises that stretched the boundaries of the musical scale, that had mathematical logic, but sought and found beauty in the most unimagined places. The melodies he produced were fragile, delicate, and wrapped in cadences that came from someplace otherworldly. It was the rare creature like David that spawned the idea of divine inspiration. Surely a child, a protected, unworldly, shy child like this could not draw from a lifetime in the arts to create such original, imaginative work. But David, who hated God for letting Miss Featherstone die at his feet, had no room for divinity; his music was his own, borne of his own brand of rapture.

So, as he performed this new piece for the class, for Mr. Potter, and for Miss Featherstone, he lost himself in his music, grunted and hummed in blissful oblivion as he laid his grace at the feet of the woman he loved. When he finished, the room was momentarily silent, and David had been transported elsewhere, to a void, a deep and distant blackness where he floated as he played. But the sudden outburst of enthusiastic applause from the other students—most of them teenagers and unlikely to enjoy the creations of a mere nine-year-old—along with Mr. Potter’s own cheers of “Bravo!” brought David back to our planet, where he gave a simple nod to acknowledge his gratitude.

But he was not really playing for any of them; he was playing for his beloved, in the hopes that his devotional might bring her back from the dead.

Class over, David sought solitude as he walked alone down the hallway and out of the building. It was afternoon, and in winter, afternoon was practically night. Shadows were vanishing like ghosts in the waning light, and David was alone with his thoughts as he watched the other students head anxiously to their dormitories. David sat at the feet of an old stone lion, sketching notes on a staff as he notated changes in his new creation. It would be his greatest composition yet. Snow settled on him like ash as he worked until it was too dark to read and write.

He closed his notebook and looked across the schoolyard to the dormitory, where warm light filled the windows, then up at the heavens, where the moon had yet to reveal itself. The Music and Drama building towered and glowered over him, the lights of the classrooms blinking out for the night, one by one.

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