The Cellist - Featured in Sharing Nightmares

The Cellist - 1

He does not commission the mellow hum of his cello to delight the ears. It is not to stir the emotion in one's heart, nor to stoke the imagination of one's mind. No, his music is for the soul, and it is for the souls of his audience only that he plays that haunting number.

He plays with but the finest bow upon a most handsome neck and body of crafted spruce. I could call upon a thousand more adjectives to describe such a wondrous instrument, though its looks are not wholly so enchanting when once I describe its strings.

Remarkable as this cellist may be, he is made more curious by the fact his cello plays without a single one to be seen. And yet each string has its distinctive voice as his bow caresses them, fulfilling each note clearly as if made of something crystalline, so pure, so ... untainted by the hands of man.

For, you see, each year the cellist performs a recital, precisely at 9 o'clock on All Hallow's Eve. The common man does not buy seats to such a concert. Nor do the wealthy, the influential, or the academics ... Strangely, the cellist performs only for those of his choosing, and each year it is four.

When asked why he must keep up with such bizarre traditions, he will chuckle in that charming way of his and tell you that one day you might come to understand. Until then, he assures you every man has his secrets and must abide by them, but I know the ominous truth. If his admirers knew the same, they would not love him so much as they do, as if he were the talented and delightful son they never had.

The posters have already been up for a month. It is a disconcerting feeling, seeing his lustrous face with that devious smile pasted on every corner I pass. Even in print his eyes are dead and dark, as if they are windows to the other side. Throughout October he is the talk of the town, but that is nothing he isn't already accustomed to.

Varian Stone, the young cellist who won his fortune at auction. Most remain incredulous at this headline, assuming at once this boy of twenty has blood on his hands. Alas, if only they knew the darker reality of how he came to fame they might not be so hasty to convict him of betrayal.

He seldom comes out of that mansion of late. Some say he stays locked in a single room for all nights of the year save one, but I can vouch that this is not the case. He is a private boy, often found alone on the balcony at the top of the staircase, consumed by his music. He will sway and toss his head as though caught in the grips of ecstasy. Other times he hums – though he is no great singer – while admiring the very grand and very small of all things left to him in that mansion.

There is nobody around him to expect much else of him. No eyes to judge him for his eccentricities, no tongues to nag him for his idleness. Only me. And only when he so yearns for the company of a fellow gentleman.

I can tell he does not love his life on those other days. He is soulless, only animate and connected with the world through the voice of his cello. It is not for another that he plays. He is inherently selfish that way, and does not even play for me when I ask it of him. But on the 31st of October, he comes alive. His burnished eyes are aglow with anticipation, of joy, and perhaps, when he thinks I have not noticed, of nerves.

The cellist ... Might he be the same Varian Stone mentioned in The Sinister Fate of Joseph Redding? You'd be right. This story is a short written for the Sharing Nightmares Anthology available at The_Write_Place.

It links the first novella of the Joseph Redding series (A Man of a Thousand Pieces - available on my profile) with the upcoming second, which introduces this mysterious man of music, Varian Stone.

If you haven't yet read the first novella, head over there and check out this chilling Victorian horror!