The Seven Gifts (3 page)

“Never you mind about that, Sunshine," said
Coalhole briskly, suddenly making up his mind. “Tomorrow night is
going to see the first appearance of Coalhole Custer's new band -
by appointment to Her Regal Majesty the Ice Princess herself. And
it'll be a stormer, believe me - the start of a new musical era."
He chuckled and picked up his guitar.

“Rehearsal time, Psycho my old buddy. Let's
run through the programme."

The city streets were athrong with people;
noblemen and their ladies, Princes and minor Princesses, courtiers,
ministers and Royalty from neighbouring lands; all clutching their
gold-embossed invitations and wending their way to the ball. The
gutters had been whitewashed, and the common people sent out into
the fields for the night. The city was clean and tidy, as befitted
the Coming-of-Age celebrations of a cold-blooded Ice Princess.

Gay bunting filled the streets and gay
people the carriages. Trumpeters stood on either side of the Palace
steps sounding a fanfare for the arrival of each carriage. The
Royal Standard flew from the flagpole. At the top of the steps the
Ice Princess stood in her new ball-gown cordially greeting her
guests, while backstage of the ballroom Coalhole Custer's new band
was tuning up.

Finally, all the guests were received, and
the Ice Princess made her regal entry to the ballroom on the arm of
a suitably handsome neighbouring Prince. She looked very beautiful;
quite splendid in fact, and was rapturously received by all the
guests spread around the room sipping champagne. The ranks parted
to allow her escort to guide her to a small daïs close by the main
stage, which she mounted before turning to the assembled
company.

“I thank you all," she said, “for your fine
gifts, and I welcome you to this Grand Ball. Let the music
begin."

The heavy drape curtains drew back from the
main stage and the wild, yellow-haired figure of Coalhole Custer
stepped forward. He turned with a smile and bowed low to the Ice
Princess. An audible gasp came from her lips and she stared at him,
tight-lipped with anger. Belligerent murmurings rumbled from the
crowd.

Ignoring their reactions, the guitarist
walked slowly into the centre of the stage and surveyed his
audience. They glared at him challengingly: the nobility of the
kingdom; soon to be sliding slowly beneath a sea of champagne and
lust. And why not? the glares implied.

It was their night. A night for pleasure.
The night of the wrong wives. When the guardians of the Nation's
morals might forget their own.

The common herd was in the fields; armed
guards at the doors. Who need pretend between these walls? The band
must conform. Their scowls relaxed into satisfied smiles. The
singer dare not censure them.

Coalhole Custer smiled too. Then he turned
and addressed the glowering Princess: “Your Highness." He bowed
again. “My first song is for you. A celebration of your
flowering."

He stepped back, picked up his old thirteen
string guitar and slung it round his neck.

“OK!" he shouted. “Let's go. One, two,
three, four."

The audience was stunned, as a melody of
exquisite gentleness flowed softly from Coalhole Custer's band. It
was conventional, beautiful, and totally unexpected. The ballroom
was hushed and they all listened, as Coalhole Custer sang:

You must be sad, my little Princess,

in your boudoir full of incense,

when there's nothing in the world

you haven't tried.

How much d'you have to pay

to get your body through the day?

Have you ever seen your soul, or has it
died?

Since this morning's scented bath

not a cloud has crossed your path -

your life's a crossword someone

slowly fills each day.

Today your hair is fair

and your breasts are almost bare,

for your body is the key that pays the
way.

He sang slowly, in a clear, well-modulated
voice such that every word was perfectly audible to the Ice
Princess and her guests. The Princess stood on the daïs rigid, her
face white and set. The guests began to mutter. Coalhole ignored
them and continued singing, waving in a little extra bite from the
Elephant Tusk Horn Section;

I grieve for you, my Princess,

safe within your cloud of incense

where you never see the world that's going
round.

You'd rather take a bath

than walk the endless winding path

to where the Roller Coaster Road can be
found.

The muttering turned into uproar, with
guests shouting and brandishing their fists. The guards from the
main door advanced on the stage, called in by the irate
Princess.

Suddenly the singer chopped his hand through
the air and the song finished abruptly; on an ill-fitting,
expectant note. It caught the attention of the guests and the
ballroom went quiet. The guards paused and looked to the Princess
for guidance; but she had left.

In the momentary silence,
Coalhole Custer's voice carried clearly to all parts of the crowded
room: “For you, my friends; drunk, drugged, satiated; occult-ridden
in the endless hunt for happiness, I give
PANDORA’S BOX
”.

He raised his guitar high in the air and
struck a chord that dug deep into the marrow of the watchers'
bones, freezing them like a charmer his snake. The sound lingered,
as though resonating within the guests. There was something
peculiar, almost purposeful, in the manner of its going.

Then the band echoed it, in a wild soaring
run of theme and variations that streamed among the spellbound
guests like a plague of spiders, spinning its web of music to hold
them entranced, and captive before the stage. And on this
foundation the musicians layered yet more music until the whole
palace trembled in a desperate attempt to contain the ever-rising
crescendo of sound. Then they stopped. The sudden silence was
almost unbearable.

Somewhere a window shattered, splintering
and tinkling to the polished floor of the ballroom. Its faint
echoes accentuated the silence. Then Coalhole Custer began to sing,
the ‘Half Ton of Nutty Slack' filling in behind him to build
complex, subtle patterns of strange and oppressive music. It seemed
to permeate the very fabric of the palace, reaching out through the
walls as though to escape, and Coalhole Custer sang:

You take the path to Wonderland

Through the door marked forty-nine

Where the werewolves lope in moonlight

Through the snows within your mind

And the vampires rise to swallow you

In the land of unknown time ---

You'll never hide away from what is true

For the images reflect what lies in you

Another window broke at the far end of the
ballroom and some plaster rattled down off the wall. The music was
throbbing heavily now, weird and vaguely out of control. It began
to pound at the walls and pierce the windows, trying to break its
way out. But Coalhole Custer sang on:

When spiders crawl across your eyes

And your limbs begin to shake

When snakes swim through your daylight

From the darkness of their lake

When reality is doubtful

Will you know which path to take ---

You'll never hide away from what is true

For the images reflect what lies in you

As he sang, oblivious to all around him, his
strange music filled the ballroom like an alien entity. It crept
into every crack and carving; it ran along the exquisitely moulded
lines of plaster that covered the high ceiling; it swirled around
the paintings, the icons, the graven images.

Wherever its delicate fingers probed, it
drew out resident demons; sucked them from their sanctuaries to be
cast helpless and screaming into the spiritual wastes of the
ballroom. And as they went they dragged their hiding places with
them, pounding the terrified guests with broken images, bricks and
dying paintings.

Then it suddenly retreated; permeating the
bones of the musicians as though to hide from the horrors it had
disturbed. And its alien resonance drove them into a wild frenzy of
playing that fed it and strengthened it, charging it with energy
from a long and furious run of riffs and discordant key changes
that took the musicians to the very brink of their already
crumbling sanity. Then, rejuvenated, like a bolt of lightning it
struck back into the room.

It left Psycho foaming at the mouth,
clutching at his psychological synthesizer like a man possessed.
The copper triple bass player was kneeling on his instrument in a
desperate attempt to stop it levitating, his eyes bulging like
balloons. The Elephant Tusk Horn Section was upside down, pumping
out a strange, grinding dissonance that seemed to drive the other
instruments berserk. The dodo drums appeared to be dancing;
pounding away blindly by themselves as the drummer lay flat on the
floor in a trance.

Only Coalhole Custer seemed untouched by it
all. He stood at the front of the stage dragging indescribable
chords out of that old thirteen string guitar, his long yellow hair
flailing in the peculiar breeze that seemed to blow from
nowhere.

Then a heavy truss crashed from the ceiling,
pinning guests to the floor in a shower of dust and debris. Unable
to reach the exit through the jam of bodies, the ones still able to
move added their screams to the wild, electrifying music. And
Coalhole Custer sang on:

When the cities fall in ruins

Will you damn the human race

When the sun goes supernova

Will you smile upon its face

And when Armageddon strikes us

Will you cross yourself in case ---

You'll never hide away from what is true

For the images reflect what lies in you

The music was now clawing at the very
structure of the palace, breaking up foundations and vibrating the
huge oak roof beams into clouds of feathery dust which filled the
air, choking guests and musicians alike. Deprived of support, half
the roof collapsed in a roar that almost drowned out the music.

Smoke poured through the gaping hole and
Psycho in his frenzy could see Heaven itself, the eyes of God
peering through the stars at the carnage caused by Coalhole
Custer's music.

And through the smoke and fire, the broken
beams and falling bricks, the screams and the running feet,
Coalhole Custer's band played on; its manic music whirling around
the insane and dying musicians, to pour ever more violently into
the shattered ballroom, pounding, hammering, tearing at the
nerve-ends; juddering the brain, roaming round the room now way
beyond the control of the musicians.

Psycho was lying on his back with one leg in
the air, a completely vacant expression on his foam-flecked face.
The psychological synthesizer played on by itself, a great steel
beam piercing it from above. The copper triple bass player was now
airborne, clutching at the curtains as his maddened instrument
struggled up through the dust towards the stars.

Small fires had broken out around the stage,
licking up the heavy drapes, but still Coalhole Custer stood firm
at the front. His yellow hair was singed and blackened with a smoke
that seemed to dance to the unearthly harmonies flowing from his
old thirteen string guitar, which he now held high above his head.
And still he sang:

With the universal life force

Of the cosmos at your feet

You're standing at the crossroads

Where the planes of life all meet

And when you look inside yourself

Who do you think you'll have to greet?

Then the demons his music had released
turned on Coalhole Custer. As he stood at the front of the stage,
his yellow hair plastered with dust and sweat, his chest heaving
with exertion as he jerked out the closing chords, he was struck
hard in the neck by one of the guards' spears. Travelling with a
force that no human could have imparted, it knocked the singer
right off his feet, hurling him backwards and nailing him in a
cloud of spraying blood to the front of the huge leopardskin bass
drum.

The music stopped instantly. An eerie
silence fell on the room like a blanket, stifling every tiny sound.
Coalhole Custer hung motionless, spreadeagled and dying in the
middle of the stage.

The tableau remained, still, in a silent
snowfall of soot and dust; the only sound the soft crackle of
subdued flames. Coalhole Custer's old thirteen string guitar lay on
the floor at his feet, where it had fallen.

As the dust slowly settled on its strings it
began quietly to play, alone, with no human intervention. The
tranquil notes, clear and liquid in their simplicity, curled
cleanly upwards through the few remaining rafters, to fall like
crystal rain around the dying singer's face.

Coalhole Custer opened bloodshot eyes that
were squinted in pain. With a supreme effort he twisted his head
and gazed upwards into the blackness of the night sky. And as the
guitar notes sprinkled on his upturned face he called out, slowly
and agonisingly:

“There ... goes ... my ... last ...
band."

Then he died.

And his death aroused a great wrath

in the music he had formed.

Around his empty body

the discords gathered like storm clouds,

sweeping all that was harmonious before
them,

and the stars were darkened

as Coalhole Custer's music went to war

with the very demons it had itself brought
forth.

For it came not to bring peace

o ------------------------
o

The young boy closed the
book on the First Gift