Erotica Exotica: Tales of Sex & Magic by Richard Labonté (editor)

Author:Richard Labonté (editor) [Labonté, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781602826069
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Published: 2011-09-16T00:00:00+00:00

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On the afternoon of his third day in the house, he hears the music for the first time.

He is napping on an overstuffed sofa in the library—Fox curled at his feet—when he hears what sounds like a hunting horn in the distance, a repeating pattern of seven notes in the round brassy tones of a cornet. He sits up and looks around the room. Fox leaps off the sofa, instantly wild-eyed and awake, his hackles bristling along his spine, his head cocked to one side as he triangulates the source of the sound.

As they listen, the music becomes more complex. French horns repeat the opening tones, calling back and forth to the cornets. Strings join them, starting low and growing to surround the brass like the rising tide. Gabriel remembers the libretto in the Craigslist ad and thinks of Siegfried confronting the Rhine nymphs. The music sounds broad and orchestral enough to be Wagner, but he doesn’t recognize it or know enough about Wagner to pinpoint the melody.

Fox scrambles out of the room and runs down the hallway. Gabriel follows him, listening to the music and looking for speakers. He can feel the melodies surrounding him, pushing against his body like waves as the music accelerates, urging him forward not with the syncopated percussive sounds of modern motion—not trains or automobiles or starships—but with an older, fuller sound he associates with the unfurling of giant sails and the rush of water against wooden hulls. Violins leap and canter through the melody like dolphins or otters frolicking in the ship’s bow waves. And then a pair of male voices rise out of the symphonic river, a tenor and a baritone, their voices intertwined in an intricate, beguiling song.

He follows the music from room to room.

When he finally finds Fox, the dog is standing beneath the painting of the river gods watching a black disc spinning on an ancient Victrola.

There is such a disconnect between the booming clarity of the music and Gabriel’s expectations of the Victrola’s sound quality that it takes him a moment to identify the device. His mind is still grappling with the problem as he kneels next to the dog and removes the needle from the spinning disc. It scrapes against the grooves and the music abruptly ends. In the ringing silence, Fox lets out a mournful howl that makes the hair on the back of Gabriel’s neck stand on end.

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