Dark Muse (25 page)

The band had always been there. They treated
him as an equal. When they heard him play his sax in class, they’d
almost knighted him on the spot. Nobody, besides his parents, ever
took him at face value before. His old neighborhood didn’t, simply
because he wouldn’t play their game, especially after Iron took his
cousin from him.

And here he stood, in a living metaphor for
the jungle from where he came.

A howl bled from above. A vast tapestry of
green and purple hung from the cavern’s ceiling, woven into a
living trap from the stalactites. Something squealed from the left.
Another something echoed from the right.

He’d assured the guys he would be okay. He
always said that, even when he knew things wouldn’t be all right.
This was one of those times.

His parents named it the jungle, not the
townsfolk from the “better” side of town. Those people simply
didn’t refer to it at all. The kids and cops called it Iron, for
the factories that once drove the town now sat abandoned like
sleeping leviathans waiting to swallow whole the rest of the
neighborhood’s soul. Cultures bled together like a soup so
distasteful it choked many who stayed behind. Black, Hispanic,
Indian, White, you name it—if you lived there, nobody thought much
of you. The sense of community had died a long time ago and
survival was the only motto that mattered. His parents’ lifestyle,
from when they’d attended high school in town, had faded and
decayed in to a laughing nightmare.

Some people still got along, tried to hold
onto something, but the gangs, drugs, and apathy strangled anything
from blossoming.

That was why his family left. After a beating
that nearly killed him and left his cousin dead, Corey’s parents
had abandoned their world and moved to the side of town where many
people welcomed them with open arms. His parents, that is. He now
wore the sign of pariah as teens from his school either feared him
(the new neighborhood teens) or despised him and wouldn’t mind him
dead (the old gang). He suspected some of his friends were thankful
he’d escaped, but they would never dare say it in public.

Here, once again, he found himself in a
jungle, but of a much different kind. A literal kind that would
never be found in any science book he devoured or on any
documentary he watched religiously.

The sounds coming from above, the sides and
even below his feet rang out in clanging melodies and off key
harmonies, which threatened to bring on one of his legendary
migraines. He couldn’t allow that to happen if he wished to survive
and save the others. Who’d save him down here?

* * * *

Corey looked around, overwhelmed as his eyes
swam out of focus. A plethora of life sung to him, humming his
death song. It hung like a barbed wire blanket wrapped in poison
and electricity over his head.

A path wound its way down the middle of the
forest and he immediately thought of two things: Ray Bradbury’s “A
Sound of Thunder” and one of his favorite songs, “Jungleland.” One
took him away from Iron by nourishing his imagination and the other
helped him deal with the hell in which he lived. That sax player
helped guide him into a therapy of sorts, musical therapy, when
he’d begged his parents for his own saxophone and told them he
wanted to be the next Clarence Clemons. Now he needed both heroes
to help him stay alive.

The stench filled his nostrils. A mixture of
deep pine meshed with rainforest fleshed out with the rot of
something long in decay.

“Why are you here, boy?”

What? That voice—where did it come from? He
whipped around, swinging his horn as though it were a bat. Was
there someone hiding in the mass of trees and vines? The voice had
emanated from the vines and flora overhead in a convoluted chorus,
just out of sync with itself.

Go home, boy. You aren’t strong enough to
pass. Death will be your last song.

“I didn’t come this far to die in demented
terrarium,” Corey said stubbornly to the air. “Who’s there?”

“Who’s there?” The phantom voice echoed
his.

“Stop messing with me. It won’t pan out well
for you.” He attempted to steel his voice but it shook, at least to
his
ears.

“Does this feel like home, little man? We
hope so, because it will be the last home you see. All of us plan a
very, very long sleep for you. A
forever
bed would do you
well and it’s only steps away.”

Each of the slow, lingering voices bounced
off the walls in a pseudo-stereo effect, leaving him to decipher
who, or what, said what from where.
Keep them talking and just
keep moving
.

The dark, spongy path led straight ahead.
Straight ahead was never a good thing, not without a solid plan and
plenty of firepower, of which he had neither.

Except for his instrument.

He gazed down at it, the strange metal
glinting off the phosphorescence of the leaves and glimpses of the
bright wall behind him. Strangest sax he ever saw, he mused,
keeping one eye on his surroundings.

He wondered what John Coltrane or Clemons
would have done now. Those guys wouldn’t turn tail and run, would
they? Maybe one of those guys on the easy listening stations would,
but not them. Satch, his music teacher, wouldn’t either and he grew
up in Newark.

“Fight or flight,” he said to whatever hung
above him.

When they showed themselves, he knew both
options were imperative if he were to survive.

* * * *

Long, serpentine-like creatures poured from
everywhere like streamers from Hade’s New Year’s party. From mere
inches long to stretching a yard or so off the walls and ceiling,
they reached out in waves toward him.

Each whispered, holding still, but many
opened massive jaws, flashing fangs at him.

“Come lay with us and give us your song. You
belong here.”

A long striped tendril with teeth wrapped
around his left leg and tugged, its mouth turning upwards to his
frightened gaze. The pressure pained him but he froze, fearful to
yank back in panic. Maybe that’s what would trigger it to bite.

“They don’t want you back home, do they?”

His head swiveled left and right, aware of
the green and red creatures inching closer to him, the fetid odor
reaching into his lungs.

Could they read his mind or was this just a
mental trick they tried on everyone? Anyone who trespassed this way
would be an outlaw or outcast attempting to flee to a better life.
He pushed the familiar fears back and turned away with the
instrument.

He swung the sax like a sword to slice the
creature in half on his leg, then with a few sickening thuds, he
crushed every sinuous thing that tried to bite him. They hung,
broken from their branches or vines, some dead, some simply
stunned.

Gotta move
, he told himself, beating
his way through the thick vines to find the path. Was it straight
ahead? Too much debris hung over the path for him to see. It was
better, he reasoned, to keep going steadily. He knew he’d be dead
if he stopped moving. More and more of the vine-creatures lashed
out as he crashed through the forest, some hitting him with quick
strikes, others surprising him with a sneak attack.

At first, they numbered maybe a dozen or two,
but the more he swung, the more emerged. His mind recalled the
hydra, the monster that grew two heads for every one that Hercules
cut off. Within a minute, they had surrounded him and bit at the
metal in his hands. He dropped instinctively to the ground.

I’m as good as dead, he thought. Just when we
thought we would find acceptance, maybe show our world we could
play with the best of them—here I am, snake bait.

“Your music is our song now,
horn
boy
.”

Horn boy? Something clicked. The switch
flipped on inside of him. His weapon had greater potential than
he’d realized. It was time for that power to emerge.

He licked his lips and thought of the song
which probably inspired this gauntlet device. Maybe even
Springsteen himself had come here and fueled the fire without
realizing it. It seemed as though every other great musician had
been through the River.

Now or never
, he hummed to
himself.

He blew out a long G, a lower note in the
sax-like thing’s tenor tone. Both lungs emptied into the metal as
his jaw tightened on the ivory mouthpiece. The note shook the
living tapestries above and beside him. It also shook its taunting,
hungry inhabitants. Each snake-thing quivered, hung in place and
then retreated.

It was working!

He nearly screamed aloud, but instead watched
as they recovered the moment he stopped the note. He sounded
another one, a long Eb, a powerful somber note that shook some of
them to the ground. Quickly, as they lay stunned, he ran forward
and let loose. He recalled the best lines of his heroes and inhaled
as much as humanly possible before blitzing the walls and ceilings
with a rain of sweet tones.

“Why? Why are you doing this? We would help
you live here.”

He played harder.

“You’re hurting us. Why? We only wanted your
song. Why would you hurt music?”

Corey couldn’t help but grin in victory, even
though he still couldn’t see the end of this trial. Maybe he
would
make it out alive. Poe and the others needed him to
finish the mission.

Then, the voices chilled him with what he
knew couldn’t be a ploy.

“We might die, but he won’t. He’ll be waiting
for you. He always waits. He eats the song you play. He devours
all
.”

“What the heck does that mean?” He let the
sax fall away for a moment to cry out, knowing they wouldn’t tell
him anything, but fear burst through his veins, stronger than it
did the night his family left the old neighborhood.

That night, over a year ago, the darkest,
most soulless eyes watched him get into his father’s car and mouth
their final words to him. “You will never be free of here. We will
find you and pay you for deserting the place where you belong.”

But he didn’t belong there, not with their
guns and drugs and lost dreams.

And he certainly didn’t belong here. Others
awaited him—others he belonged to and they to him.

He quickened his pace and played his heart
out. He was going to make it. The tapestries slowed their movement,
the snakes and worm-like things dropping, hanging silently as he
sensed he was nearing the end of this nightmare.

And nearly ran right into
him
. It.
Whatever the bowels of this world spit up through what could only
be the sewer of this cavern.

“Clarence, don’t fail me now.” His voice came
out in a hoarse whisper, but he forced himself to play on, blazing
a fiery blues lick straight into the thing’s maw.

Only to hear it laugh at him with fetid
breath—and open up wider.

* * * *

The path through the dense forest turned into
a dark walkway with a hardened surface. He began to feel safe from
the dangers surrounding him until it came to life beneath his
feet.

With a quake, it turned a full rotation,
twisting from its back to its belly to unveil a sight Corey knew he
would wake up screaming at for weeks, if he survived.

Like an annoying mouse on a python’s tail, it
tossed him aside, preparing to deal with him another way. Maybe he
jumped; it happened so fast his instinct took over. Images of that
King Kong flick where the ape shook the crew off the log bridge
into the nests of insects below whizzed through his mind. He
wondered if this was what people meant about the end of one’s life.
But then the wooden path completed its turn and what he saw caused
him to vomit all over it.

Legs. Hundreds of them. Maybe more. All
twitched, spasmed and grabbed at the air as they shook free from
the ground beneath them. He wouldn’t have to fall to enter that
movie nightmare.

The creature’s wordless voice shook the
ground beneath its body as Corey feared staring at it eye to eyes.
Its maw opened wide as eyes on stalks longer than his body focused
and swung down at him. Over two bodies tall, the segmented creature
towered over him and breathed. A wave of decay from a meal it may
have had ages ago wafted down at him, causing him to envision
half-digested maggots burrowing through his hair.

He threw up again and the fluid sent the legs
into a tizzy. They smelled food. Him.

He held his sax in front of him in defense,
but knew on too many levels that it wouldn’t help one bit if he
swung it. One errant step and the myriad legs would pull him in,
crushing him like a nut that the head would devour in one chew.

Finally, resolve forced him to meet the face
that wasn’t anything like any other he could imagine. At least six
stalks now bore into him with pale, emotionless eyes. Corey
wondered if it could actually see. If it lived this far into the
depths of this alter earth it might be utterly blind, relying more
on movement, but seriously, did it really matter?

Each stalk locked onto him as the mouth
unfurled itself. He could only imagine the alien from the movie of
the same name. One set of jaws drooped low to allow another set to
reach forward and drip something viscous onto the ground before
him. The ground sizzled in its acidy odor.

It
was
alien.

“Give me your song.” The mouth rose up higher
as the legs retracted and the segments contracted, causing it to
lurch forward and upward, sensing its prey’s futility.

A thought rumbled through his fear of a
night, close to Halloween, late after his parents had fallen
asleep. He’d watched the myth of the Saint of Ireland, who’d lured
the serpents away from the citizens who’d cowered in despair. The
Saint had used music to hypnotize them, to draw them out of the
country.

Corey had one chance, one that would likely
kill him, but the Accidentals didn’t give up, especially when
everyone—now everything—expected them to do just that. He smiled
and winked at the behemoth, but still shook in fear.