Darkness Creeping (28 page)

And with that, Madame Magnus and Lee Tran walked into the chill of the night and far into the woods, until they reached the old guesthouse. The old woman unlocked the many locks on the door, and soon it creaked open into a musty world of old furniture that was kept in perfect condition. A grandfather clock ticked away, ominously marking the time.

“Did you think it would be a dungeon?” asked Madame Magnus, laughing when she saw the surprise on Lee’s face.

And yet, in its own way, the place did have the feel of a dungeon about it.

There was music coming from a back room, and Lee wondered why he hadn’t heard the music outside as they approached. Slowly he looked around, and then he understood the reason—the windows weren’t just painted black, they were padded thickly, so that no sounds could escape.

Now listening to the music carefully, Lee noticed that it sounded familiar, and yet it also sounded totally new.

With Madame Magnus on his heels, he followed the sound into a back parlor, done in red velvet—the same red velvet, Lee noticed, that lined his violin case. There, hunched over a grand piano, sat the old man who had grabbed Lee through the broken window. He was pouring his heart into the music. Yet, as beautiful as the music was, it somehow seemed old and tired to Lee, not unlike the man himself.

As Lee listened to him play, once again the familiarity of the music tickled the corner of his brain. The music was romantic and sentimental, perfectly composed. It sounded like Gershwin, Lee finally decided. But this was nothing Gershwin had written in the short thirty-nine years of his life.

Lee studied the ancient figure still playing away at the piano. The old man could have been a hundred by the looks of him. He glanced up from the keys, and upon catching a glimpse of Lee, he sighed, then returned to his playing.

“I’ve brought you a young friend,” said Madame Magnus to the old man.

“Is he the one?” the old man replied.

“The finest violinist alive, and the finest young composer in the world,” answered Madame Magnus. And as his teacher said this, Lee held himself up proudly.

The old man just looked away, then returned to his music.

“You’ll have to excuse George,” said Madame Magnus. “He’s not used to visitors.”

And then Madame Magnus did something strange. She went to the piano and closed the lid over the keys so the old man could no longer play. “Time to rest, George,” she said. “Time to rest.”

The old man threw a sad look over at Lee and stood, his bones creaking. Then he went to lie down on the velvet sofa in the corner. He folded his hands over his chest, closed his eyes, and let out a singular long raspy breath. It didn’t take long for Lee to realize that the old man had died.

Feeling panic beginning to set in, Lee turned in terrified awe to Madame Magnus. But she said nothing. She simply walked over to the fireplace and took down a dusty violin case from the mantel.

“For you,” she said, opening the case to reveal a Stradivarius violin that must have been hundreds of years old. “It belonged to Mozart himself,” Madame Magnus announced. “Take it.”

She held the violin out to Lee, and although he felt afraid to even touch it, he could not refuse the magnificent instrument. To play a Stradivarius violin was the dream of a lifetime.
Could this truly have been Mozart’s?
he wondered as he took the beautiful wooden instrument into his hands.

Madame Magnus produced a handwritten manuscript of music, aged and as yellow as her skin. “Play for me, Lee,” she said. “Play like you’ve never played before.”

And Lee did.

For the first time in months he launched himself into a real piece of music. The Stradivarius was magnificent, and the piece of music glorious. It sounded like Mozart, but like no Mozart Lee had ever heard before. It was a rich musical tapestry full of life and youth and joy. Lee lost himself in it. He felt his soul plunging into the music. And as he played something happened—not to the room, not to the air, but to Madame Magnus herself. With every note it seemed the life of the music poured into her; the youthful, joyous tones seemed to drain into her flesh as if she were some musical black hole.

Lee couldn’t keep his eyes off the woman, and although terror began to fill him, he couldn’t stop playing. No longer looking at the sheet of music, he played, his fingers flying over the strings, creating music fast and fiery—music that exploded out of the violin.

But nothing caught fire.

Now all the power of the music funneled right into Madame Magnus. Her eyes burned with its intensity. And to his horror, Lee saw that with each note, Madame Magnus grew younger—younger and more powerful.

Finally the piece ended, and Lee was drenched in sweat. Gasping for breath, he let the bow and violin fall to the floor, for they were burning his fingers.

Before him stood Madame Magnus, a young woman, now no older than twenty-five, and she threw back her head and laughed a hearty, horrible laugh.

Lee willed himself to run, but he just stood there, unable to move. Then, looking down at his legs, he saw that heavy metal shackles now fastened him in place.

“How marvelous!” Madame Magnus cried with delight. “How perfectly marvelous!”

“What’s going on?” Lee demanded. “I don’t understand!”

The young Madame Magnus smiled her sly smile, only now, on a much younger face, it seemed more than just sly—it seemed evil.

“Come, now,” she said. “Don’t play dumb with me, young Master Tran. You know precisely what’s going on.”

And Lee did, but he couldn’t admit it to himself. He didn’t dare.

“The other young musicians in this conservatory—none of them are good enough to feed me the truly powerful music I thrive on. I needed a great master—a
young
master, someone whose genius would fill my ears with the fresh fire of youth and make me young again. You are the one, Master Tran.
You
are the one I need.”

Lee could only stand there, shaking his head. Not a single word rose to his lips.

“Oh, there have been others—
many
others,” said Madame Magnus. “Mozart did not die young. He lived to be an old man . . . in my care, of course. And there was Schubert—he, too, grew old . . . with me. And of course you met dear Mr. Gershwin. As you saw, he didn’t die young as the rest of the world thought . . . and neither will you.”

“No!” screamed Lee. “I won’t stay here!”

Then Madame Magnus stepped forward and looked deep into the boy’s terror-stricken eyes. “You’ll do
exactly
as I say for the rest of your life, young Master Tran. You’ll play and you’ll write music for no one but me. You’ll feed me with your music as the masters before you did. And your music will keep me young and strong . . . until it is used up.”

Madame Magnus picked up the violin and bow, then put them back into Lee’s hands. “Now play for me,” she said, any kindness that had once been there now gone from her voice. “Play me something
you
wrote. Something with
power
.”

With no other choice, Lee tucked the Stradivarius beneath his chin and began to play, and instantly he felt his music swallowed whole by Madame Magnus’s hungry, hungry ears.

I am the greatest
, Lee told himself, fighting back tears of terror.
I am the greatest in the world!

But that didn’t matter anymore, since no one else would ever hear him play. Now his music would have to be enough, because now music was all there truly was for Lee Tran . . . and all there would ever be.

“This is gonna be great, Brent!” says my older brother, Trevor.

“I can feel it.”

I smile. Trevor always says that.

The trip to the top of a roller coaster always seems endless, and from up here the amusement park seems much smaller than it does from the ground. As the small train clanks its way up the steel slope of a man-made mountain, I double-check the safety bar across my lap to make sure it’s tight. Then, with a mixture of terror and excitement, Trevor and I discuss how deadly that first drop is going to be. We’re roller coaster fanatics, my brother and I—and this brand-new sleek, silver beast of a ride promises to deliver ninety incredible seconds of unharnessed thrills. It’s called the Kamikaze, and it’s supposed to be the fastest, wildest roller coaster ever built. We’ll see . . .

We crest the top, and everyone screams as they peer down at the dizzying drop. Then we begin to hurl downward.

Trevor puts up his hands as we pick up speed, spreading his fingers and letting the rushing wind slap against his palms. But I can never do that. Instead I grip the lap bar with sweaty palms. And I scream.

You can’t help but scream at the top of your lungs on a roller coaster, and it’s easy to forget everything else in the world as your body flies through the air. That feeling is special for me, but I know it’s even more special for Trevor.

We reach the bottom of the first drop, and I feel myself pushed deep down into the seat as the track bottoms out and climbs once more for a loop. In an instant there is no up or down, no left or right. I feel my entire spirit become a ball of energy twisting through space at impossible speeds.

I turn my head to see Trevor. The corners of his howling mouth are turned up in a grin, and it’s good to see him smile. All his bad grades, all his anger, all his fights with Mom and Dad—they’re all gone when he rides the coasters. I can see it in his face. All that matters is the feel of the wind against his hands as he thrusts his fingertips into the air.

We roll one way, then the other—a double forward loop and a triple reverse corkscrew. The veins in my eyes bulge, my joints grind against one another, my guts climb into my throat. It’s great!

One more sharp turn, and suddenly we explode back into the real world as the train returns to the station. Our car stops with a jolt, the safety bar pops up, and an anxious crowd pushes forward to take our seats.

“That was unreal!” I exclaim, my legs like rubber as we climb down the exit stairs.

But Trevor is unimpressed.

“Yeah, it was okay, I guess,” he says with a shrug. “But it wasn’t as great as they said it would be.”

I shake my head. After years of riding the rails, Trevor’s become a roller-coaster snob. It’s been years since any coaster has delivered the particular thrill that Trevor wants.

“Well, what did you expect?” I ask him, annoyed that his lousy attitude is ruining my good time. “It’s a roller coaster, not a rocket, you know?”

“Yeah, I guess,” says Trevor, his disappointment growing with each step we take away from the Kamikaze. I look up and see it towering above us—all that intimidating silver metal. Somehow, now that we’ve been on it, it doesn’t seem quite so intimidating.

Then I get to thinking how we waited six months for them to build it, and how we waited in line for two hours to ride it, and I get even madder at Trevor for not enjoying it more.

We stop at a game on the midway, and Trevor angrily hurls baseballs at milk bottles. He’s been known to throw rocks at windows with the same stone-faced anger. Sometimes I imagine my brother’s soul to be like a shoelace that’s all tied in an angry knot. It’s a knot that only gets loose when he’s riding rails at a hundred miles an hour. But as soon as the ride is over, that knot pulls itself tight again. Maybe even tighter than it was before.

Yeah, I know what roller coasters mean to Trevor. And I also know what it means when the ride is over.

Trevor furiously hurls another baseball, missing the stacked gray bottles by a mile. The guy behind the counter is a dweeb with an Adam’s apple the size of a golf ball that bobs up and down when he talks. Trevor flicks him another crumpled dollar and takes aim again.

“Why don’t we ride the Skull-Smasher or the Spine-Shredder,” I offer. “Those aren’t bad rides—and the lines aren’t as long as the Kamikaze’s was.”

Trevor just hurls the baseball even harder, missing again. “Those are baby rides,” he says with a sneer.

“Listen, next summer we’ll find a better roller coaster,” I say, trying to cheer him up. “They’re always building new ones.”

“That’s a whole year away,” Trevor complains, hurling the ball again, this time nailing all three bottles at once.

The dweeb running the booth hands Trevor a purple dinosaur. “Nice shot,” he grunts.

Trevor looks at the purple thing with practiced disgust.

Great,
I think.
Trevor’s already bored out of his mind and it’s only this amusement park’s opening day.
As I watch my brother, I know what’ll happen now; five more minutes, and he’ll start finding things to do that will get us into trouble, deep trouble. It’s how Trevor is.

That’s when I catch sight of the tickets thumbtacked to the booth’s wall, right alongside the row of purple dinosaurs—two tickets with red printing on gold paper.

“What are those?” I ask the dweeb running the booth.

“Beats me,” he says, totally clueless. “You want ’em instead of the dinosaur?”

We make the trade, and I read the tickets as we walk away: GOOD FORONERIDEON THERAPTOR.

“What’s the Raptor?” I ask Trevor.

“Who knows,” he says. “Probably some dumb kiddie-go-round thing, like everything else in this stupid place.”