The Devil of Echo Lake (31 page)

“Do what you will. I have no use for frozen music.”

“Will you help me kill him for the joy of it?”

Pan smiled. “For the joy of it, yes. He has masqueraded as a cheap perversion of what I am. Bring your master to your monster and we shall play.”

Pan gazed into the pool for a moment with a look of faint amusement on his craggy face. He said, “There is something else you must bring.”

Twenty-two

When Billy arrived back at the church and climbed the stairs to the loft, he found Rachel watching TV and biting her nails.

“Rock-and-roll camp is over,” he said to her and climbed into bed, still wearing his hoodie. He pulled the comforter over his head, curled into fetal position, and was soon engulfed in sleep.

When he woke, it was dark and Rachel was sleeping beside him. He sat up and blinked. Had he really burned up the whole day? How long had he slept? It was dark by four in the afternoon now, so it might not be
that
late. But he knew it was. He wouldn’t find Rail and Jake downstairs still working, and that was good because he had awoken with absolute clarity about what he had to do.

Sleeping in the hoodie had glazed him with sweat. He tugged it off in a tangle with his T-shirt and threw the clothes on the floor. Wearing only his jeans, bruises and tattoos, he walked barefoot across the catwalk and saw the studio was dark and empty below. He went down the spiral staircase, opened the control room doors and stepped into what felt like a gem-flecked cave of red, green and amber lights.

The multi-track tape machine in the corner was more brightly lit than the rest of the room, emitting the yellow parchment glow of the VU meters, their needles all lying dormant. Billy went to it. He took one of the boxed master tapes from the shelf above the machine—he didn’t care which, didn’t even read the song titles listed on the spine. He removed the reel from its box and threaded it through the rollers and capstans as he had so often seen Jake or Ron do. Then with both hands, he punched in all of the RECORD READY buttons, four at a time until 24 red lights were lit. All tracks armed. He pressed PLAY and RECORD and watched the big wheels roll.

There were five master tapes. Billy had erased two and was starting on the third when he heard the doors open behind him.

“What are you doing?” It was Rachel. “Are you recording something?”

“I’m recording nothing.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’m recording twenty-four tracks of nothing.”

Rachel picked up the tape box and read the song titles in Gribbens’ neat hand. “You’re
erasing
it? What’s wrong with you? Stop. Stop it!”

Billy held a hand out to keep her away. She shot out her arm under his, too quick for him to stop her. She slapped blindly at the surface of the machine. Billy pushed her back and tried blocking her like a basketball player, hoping she wouldn’t remember there was another STOP button on the remote control tier near Jake’s chair. Finally, he stopped her flailing by seizing her shoulders, pressing her arms close to her body, and looking into her eyes.

“What do you care?” he said.

Still struggling, she said, “How can you even ask me that? That’s your best work. You think I’ll just stand by and let you destroy it?”

“It’s not my best. You just want to be able to tell everyone you were here when I did it.”

“Is that what you think I am?
My
performances are on there, too, you know. I got you off, so you could get into it. I’m your fucking muse, and I have as much right to stop you as Rail.”

Billy released her at the sound of Rail’s name. He uttered a sardonic laugh. “Oh, you don’t want to be in league with him. He’s a sick fuck. Don’t you know that? This album isn’t mine; it’s his. It’s his baby, and we’re just his pets. I’m his trained canary.” Billy’s voice had risen, spittle flying as he ranted. He no longer needed to physically restrain Rachel; his intensity was enough to hold her at bay for the moment.

“He’s been sucking me dry for years, sucking my soul out, and leaving a husk. Mutilating my music and feeding his fortune with my fame. How can you be on his side after what he did to us last night?”

“What
we
did, Billy. What
we
did last night.”

Billy felt a growing revulsion for her. “He put something in that wine. He tried to kill me and make it look like an accident.”

“Don’t overreact. We’re taking your creative process to extremes. Don’t back down now.”

He took his hands off her and stepped back in horror. She lunged for the buttons, and he sloppily threw his weight against her, knocking her to the floor with him. A chair rolled across the room and crashed into the wall. The tape reels continued their slow revolution. Rachel found her feet again. She launched herself from the floor, threw the double doors open, and ran to the wooden support beam where the fire alarm was mounted.

Billy couldn’t figure out what she was doing until she had already done it. As he watched her pull the alarm, he felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. A siren rose from the vented metal box high in the steeple. It wailed across the silent woods.

*  *  *

Jake woke to the ringing of his phone. He plodded into the kitchen in the dark, and answered.

“Jake, it’s Eddie.”

“Yeah.”

“The fire alarm went off at the church.”

“Kay.”

“Your client’s not answering the phone up there.”

“Um… I’m going. Okay, I’m going. I’ll check it out.”

“Thanks. I’d go myself, but you’re a lot closer. If it’s a false alarm, call the fire department right away and then call me.”

“Got it.”

“Go!”

There was no fire Jake could see when his car jumped out of the snow-laden trees at the top of the hill. The church was dark. He exhaled hard; he'd expected to see the place ablaze, considering how things had been going. He left the engine running, headlights focused on the front door, and ran through the misty beams and into the church.

The big room was empty. The siren blared overhead. In the murky light of the control room, Jake saw Billy standing at the tape machine. Several disturbing aspects of the scene struck him simultaneously. Red lights on the machine. Lots of them. All of them. Rachel strapped to his chair with what looked like an entire roll of duct tape. Racks of effects-processing gear overturned on the floor amid a litter of ashes and cigarette butts.

Billy said, “I know what I’m doing, Jake. Go home.”

“Stop him,” Rachel said. “You have to stop him! He already erased some of the tapes.”

“Jesus, Billy, is that true?”

“Two down, three to go.”

Jake stabbed the STOP button on the remote tier. Nothing happened. The reels behind Billy kept rolling.

“I unplugged it,” Billy said.

“You can’t do this,” Jake said.

“Sure I can. It’s my dime, right? It all comes out of my advance.”

“Billy, I know you’re under a lot of stress. I know Rail’s a psycho, I truly do. But you’re right, you’re burning money, man. A lot of it. You’ve been here for two months filling those reels. You
owe
them a record. Don’t screw yourself.”

“I’m done with my contract, whether anyone likes it or not, and it’s none of your business anyway.”

“None of my business? Then what
is
my business? I’ve spent every waking hour on those songs. If you do this, I may never work again. For fuck’s sake, Billy.
Please.
Think about someone besides yourself for once.”

Jake took a step forward.

Billy swept up a razor blade from the surface of the tape machine and waved it back and forth in the space between them. “Get back!” he barked.

Jake shifted his weight to the right and looked past Billy’s right arm, then lunged to the left. The feint wasn’t good enough. Billy brought the blade around, ripping Jake’s right forearm open with a ragged gash that traveled from four inches above the wrist all the way to the elbow before the half-dull blade fell from his grip.

Blood sprayed the stainless steel face of the machine and splattered the meters. Jake fell to his knees and Rachel screamed. Billy stood back, eyes wide.

Jake held the bleeding arm against his stomach, soaking his T-shirt through with blood. With his good arm, he reached up over his head and clawed at the big square buttons. There was a loud mechanical clack, and the tape stopped rolling.

Billy’s eyes blinked rapidly and ticked from side to side. He looked like a trapped animal. Then he touched his smooth bare chest where droplets of Jake’s blood were running in little ribbons. It brought him back to his senses, and he ran to the bathroom to grab a heavy towel. He knelt beside Jake and stanched the wound.

Rachel said, “Jesus, Billy, is that thing even clean?”

“Yeah.”

“Cut me out of this chair, so I can help.”

Billy ignored her and kept pressure on the wound with both hands. Red roses bloomed on the plush white towel. Jake unclenched his teeth and spoke through white lips, “Call the fire department.”

“What?”

“Tell them not to come, there’s no fire. Button’s labeled on the speed dial.”

When Billy was sure Jake could keep the pressure on by himself, he got up and made the call. Then he knelt beside Jake again and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to go down like this. I just lost it.”

“Yeah, you did.”

“Does it hurt a lot?”

“Like a motherfucker. But I don’t think it’s deep. There’s a first-aid kit under the sink in the bathroom.”

Billy ran for it.

Rachel said to Jake, “You probably need stitches, you know. You shouldn’t have told him to call off the fire truck.”

“I’ll be okay.”

Jake got to his feet and staggered into the big room, holding his arm in what had become a bright red bundle, dripping blood on the floor every three steps. He typed a code into the keypad on the support beam. The siren stopped abruptly, its echo circulating in the rafters a second longer. He sat down at the picnic table in the kitchenette. Billy came in and laid the first-aid kit on the table, sat astride the bench, and popped the latches on the little metal box.

Jake winced as he pulled the towel away from the wound. It was a good gash; there was no denying that. If the blade had been sharper, he might have been better off, but it was one that he had used a few times to splice tape. Billy got busy cleaning and dressing the cut with trembling hands and fierce concentration. Jake pondered the fact that magnetic tape was made mostly of rust particles. Would that mean he might need a tetanus shot? He guessed not.

Billy said, “You should have stayed put and told me how to kill the alarm.”

“Let’s just hope it didn’t wake up Trevor at the Mountain House.”

“For someone who was trying to stop me, you don’t seem to want the cavalry to show up,” Billy said, wrapping a tight band of medical tape around the already dimly stained gauze pads on Jake’s arm.

Jake’s voice was shallow when he said, “You don’t have many friends. I want to at least know what the hell you’re thinking before things get out of control.”

Billy opened his mouth to say something, but the sound of an approaching car engine left his jaw simply hanging. He sprinted to the front door and locked it. He crept back to Jake and said, “We’ll pretend I’m sleeping until he goes away.”

“Rail? How do you know it’s him? And who’s gonna believe you slept through the fire alarm?”

Billy held his forefinger to his lips.

Jake turned the palms of his hands upward with a raised eyebrow:
what do you want to do?
It hurt to twist his arm that way and he winced. He whispered, “My car is parked out there. One of us has to answer the door. You should—”

There was a loud triple knock on the heavy door.

“Go and roll Rachel into the bathroom,” Jake said, and then added uncomfortably, “Tape her mouth first. And get the reel off the machine fast.”

The knock came again, harder.

 “Throw it under the couch, if you have to. Go!”

Billy started to move, then froze at the sound of a key in the door. He stared at Jake, eyes wide. Jake waved Billy aside to where the door would block him and his blood-streaked upper body from view. The bolt went
CLOCK!
Jake reached the door and pulled it open five inches, stopping it with his foot and keeping his bandaged arm behind it. He stuck his face into the gap.

Eddie was standing there, hand on the handle, scowling at him, white hair jutting out at odd angles over his baggy eyes. He said, “What the fuck, Jake? You didn’t call me.”

“Sorry, Eddie. I called the fire department. There’s no fire.”

“I can see that. What’s going on?”

“Uh… Billy and Rachel are getting a little wild, that’s all. Private Christmas party, so to speak.”

“Who’s Rachel?”

“She’s sort of his girlfriend.”

“Why are you all sweaty? You look like shit, kiddo.”

“Yeah. I, uh, rushed up here. I’m fine. Intense project. But no worries, they’re not trashing the place or anything. Just horsing around. Pulled the alarm by accident.”

“Really? You sure they weren’t burning anything? Those detectors will take a lot of bong boiling before they go off.”

“Yeah, everything’s fine, really. I should grab my bag and get out of here. They’re not exactly decent.”

“I see.” Eddie couldn’t help peering past Jake’s head. “They keep goin’ with you around?”

Jake shrugged and said, “I’m like the butler; they’re used to me. You should go home and get some sleep, Eddie. I’m just going to move a few mics out of the way, so they don’t get knocked over, then I’m outta here.”

Eddie put his hand on the door (it was a big hand) and pushed it toward Jake slowly but firmly. Jake’s boot slid two inches. Eddie said, “You’re being a good soldier, Jake. All that stuff about confidentiality… I know; you heard it from me. But there
are
limits, believe it or not.”

“Really? There are?” Jake said with perfect sincerity.

“Why don’t you tell him to throw a robe on. I’ll talk to him.”

“No, it’s cool. It’s not like they’ll be at this kind of thing again. Project’s finished, actually. Rail wrapped early. I think it’s their last night here.”