Sullen crooning from the pipes of a church organ—the notes were muffled by the ceiling above Maxwell Davis's head yet still as loud as if he had attended a concert with a front row seat. But a few notes had punctured the air when Maxwell recognized the song.
“Toccata and Fugue,” he said to the homeowner, Jeremiah Orwell.
“Yes,” the plump man said, and looked past the living room chandelier. “Sounds like my daughter's playing.”
While the song had interrupted the two men's previous conversation about the future of the home, neither criticized the organ's poor timing, and they both sat and listened as the song unfolded. Jeremiah's interlaced fingers rose with his belly into his gray, bushy beard as he watched the ceiling the way a person might the screen of a planetarium. Maxwell leaned his jaw against his knuckles and closed his eyes, letting the notes ferry him to the grand halls of a cloud-darkened castle, its pillars meticulously sculpted into the grand shapes of gargoyles stalking the terrified shapes of fleeing and huddled men.
Maxwell hadn't memorized the whole song, to his disappointment, but he found, to his pleased amazement, that the song he heard now sounded like a gramophone spewing the version he had memorized from his own record. Once the organist finished the portion he knew by heart, he said, “She's quite talented.”
“She is,” the old man agreed.
Maxwell realized the possible significance of the two trophies he spotted resting on the fireplace mantel upon entry into the living room and, pointing to them, asked, “Are they your daughter's?”
The old man followed Maxwell's finger to the trophies and said, “Yes, she won them both in competitions.”
“Might I have a look?” Maxwell asked.
Jeremiah permitted him with a hand gesture.
Maxwell stood up from the leather wing chair he had been sitting in and approached the mantle, whose shelf sat chin level to him, though he wasn't short by his society's standards. So he had some minor issues browsing through the cluttered shelf and at the trophies, but the golden shine of their organ-shaped figures were like flashlights floating in a midnight forest.
And it wasn't just the minutiae of the fireplace: every item, every piece of furniture, every architectural design was draped with dull and washed-out colors of an era long extinct. To Maxwell, it was like viewing the film reel of a movie born during the infancy of the colored camera. And there was so much clutter, as if Jeremiah disposed of nothing throughout his life, competing for room on the tables and desks that crowded about the living room, like his house doubled as an antique shop without For Sale signs or was an antique museum that charged nothing for a viewing of its exhibits. And with Jeremiah's choice of clothing and the organ playing, Maxwell, if he didn't know better, might have suspected that the old man's front door was a disguise for the time portal it really was.
Maxwell noticed the slight pressure pushing down on his bladder. He knew it was tolerable, but he wasn't sure how much longer his talk with the old man would last, since their conversation hadn't gone too far in the past hour. With the lull brought upon by the Bach piece, he asked Jeremiah, “Where's your restroom?”
The old man pointed out of the living room and said, “It's just out here, beneath the staircase.”
“Thank you,” Maxwell said, and exited out the living room. Immediately to his left was the edge of the staircase, and a few steps further revealed an ajar wooden door beneath the highest steps of the staircase. Yet his urge to relieve himself fled as he heard the organ's playing louder now, coming from the zenith of the steps. As if possessed by the song of a siren, his hand glided over the polished railing as he followed the somber crooning up the carpeted flight of steps.
The song played louder with each step, and Maxwell soon found himself at the top of the staircase, staring down the long, dim corridor. Closed doors to his left, and closed doors to his right.
Maxwell put an ear to each of the doors on the left, the organ's song emanating from that direction. The first two doors had only silence from within to share, as the organ eluded him further down. Three doors from the staircase, and Maxwell knew without putting his ear to the door that this was where the organist held their practice. Even so, he laid his ear against the door to obtain better clarity. The result he received bestowed him with no satisfaction, so he curled his fingers around the tiny doorknob and opened the door slow as he could, careful not to alert the organist to his peeping eyes.
His greatest fear was the old hinges creaking, as they were wont to do in the aged films he had seen, but they were perfectly silent, and Maxwell took advantage of this. The instant there was a crack in the barrier between him and the organ, the air rang pure with clarity. Excited by this but not yet entirely satisfied, Maxwell opened the door further, aching to steal a glance of an organist at play.
As he opened the door further, the sound stopped, and he flung the door back, thinking that he had been spotted. However, no other sounds escaped the room: no “Who's there?” or, “Is that you, Dad?”
Thinking that perhaps Jeremiah's daughter was shy or perhaps fearful of the sudden opening of her door, Maxwell cracked the door open again and said through the gap, “I beg your pardon, I didn't mean to interrupt.”
Only silence escaped the room.
“I'm Maxwell Davis,” he introduced himself, and started opening the door to show the woman that there was a face to the name. “I came to talk to your father about—”
He stopped, his words thieved by the sudden confusion brought upon the occupant resting on the bench before the organ: not a woman nor a girl nor even a human being, but a doll. Garbed in a dark green dress with thick brown strings of yarn for strands of hair, the doll the size of a nine-year-old child slumped before the organ, its frail arms resting at its sides.
With furrowed brows, Maxwell inspected the sides of the room, seeking the location of the organist. To the right were black shelves housing dozens of smaller dolls and scores of items that looked like the belongings of a small girl: children's books, lettered blocks, sketchbooks and crayons. In the corner beside the door was a nightstand facing diagonally, and in the far right corner was a second nightstand, this one taller and with a single urn on its surface. The left half of the room was almost a mirror version, save for the nightstands, which were replaced with an additional shelf squeezed into the assembly that displayed even more dolls, toys, and souvenirs that knocked one another over in the competition for space.
Maxwell checked behind the door and found nothing in hiding. He inspected the shelves, trying to guess if someone could perhaps hide behind the chaos but concluded that even if a child small as the doll could fit on the shelves, there'd be no more room for the already-piled items. He gauged the distance from the rear of the organ to the back wall, but it looked like there was space only for insectile tenants. And save for the chandelier with flame-shaped light bulbs in its candle holders, the ceiling was flat as could be: no hatches to the attic.
Maxwell started suspecting that the house was full of surprises: secret compartments and entryways to neighboring chambers. He also surmised that perhaps the organ was self-playing and Jeremiah had mistaken its notes for his daughter's. Still, he couldn't free himself of the flood of uneasiness he found himself struggling in.
“I thought I'd find you in here.”
Maxwell cried out and nearly left his skin with the jump he made into the room. He pivoted around, heart racing, and found Jeremiah in the doorway.
“I'm sorry, I didn't mean to frighten you,” the old man said.
“I should apologize to you,” Maxwell said, finding himself short of breath. “I didn't mean to nose around like this.”
Jeremiah didn't look at him as he talked but instead past him at the doll sitting before the organ. The old man made no response.
Maxwell, though his insides were replicating a whirlpool at the existence of this thought, said, “I don't mean to be nosier than I already am, but do you happen to know the whereabouts of your daughter?”
The old man shot him a peculiar look, the kind irritated by his intrusive attitude or by his ignorance of his research into the members of the household. Then he looked away and pointed to the nightstand in the corner.
Maxwell followed his finger and said, “I don't understand.”
“She's in that urn.”
Maxwell cocked his head at the object and said, “I'm afraid I still don't understand.”
“That urn contains my daughter's ashes.”
Maxwell's organs must have condensed together into a point so heavy that they dropped far as they could, and his jaw mimicked the act. “She's dead? But”—his head whipped to and fro the old man and the doll—“how is that possible? I thought you said downstairs that your daughter was playing.”
“Did I?” The old man raised a bushy brow.
“You did.”
He lowered it and said, “My apologies for the misunderstanding.” He turned around and started out of the room, hunched over with his cane as a third leg.
“What is this room, then?”
Without stopping or speaking over his shoulder, the old man said, “It's where my daughter used to practice before the car accident. Now it's where I keep her things, especially that doll on the bench. She and it used to be pretty close.”
Maxwell's eyes glued themselves to the lone doll flanked by an audience of smaller dolls that appeared to be either sleeping or uninterested. Nothing moved in the room, but he could have sworn that he had seen movement from either corner of his eye: the dolls catching a glance or waving an arm. Yet when he looked, he saw that his imagination was toying with him.
“You don't mean to say that—”
Maxwell couldn't bring himself to finish his sentence, and the old man showed no interest in what he had to say. He found himself wrapped in a fine suit of gooseflesh chilled by the brooks of sweat dashing across every pore of his body, and so he hurried out of the room and shut the door, which he never again opened.
ns 15.158.61.17da2
