The August Selected Story is by
David Landrum
Please feel free to email David at: davelandrum@yahoo.com
THE GHOST’S CD
by David Landrum
Alec Brighton sat in his unlit bedroom and listened to “Crossing the Line,” the new release by his band. The song was steadily inching its way up the charts. It had gotten a lot of air play and had a good chance of being number one.
The lead lines he had done treaded over the rhythms of the original version of the song; years of listening to the bluesmen he loved—Mississippi John Hurt, Big Bill Broozy, Furry Lewis—had taken him back to the roots of rock and R&B so that music critics recognized him as one of the best lead guitarists in the business.
But his band’s version of the song left him uneasy. He turned it off halfway through.
When the song was recorded, Alec was the only one who had an objection. Rather than trying to create an authentic Delta sound by doing a more unplugged version of it, the band had gone rock on the number. The changes his group incorporated into the tune bothered him. They had done it too fast, the guitars too loud, and the nuances of blues overwhelmed by the heavy cadences of rock and roll.
“It’s blues,” he protested when they started the recording session. “It’s supposed to have a certain style and a certain sound. We’ve turned it into a rock song; actually, it sort of sounds like pop.”
“So what?” Les Lofton, the bass player and leader shot back. “America wants pop.”
“I mean—blues is an art.”
“And what we do isn’t art?”
“That isn’t what I’m saying. Blues is true American folk music. I don’t think we should change the form of it that much.”
“Look what Clapton did with ‘Crossroads.’ His version doesn’t sound like the Robert Johnson original at all. It was a huge hit—made him millions. He did it heavy.”
“Clapton later said he was sorry for doing that. He thought he’d violated the genre by changing it from slow blues to fast rock and roll.”
The band overruled him. They recorded “Crossing the Line” in a revised musical format, more like rock and roll and less like blues. And they seemed to have been right. People liked their version and it was selling well.
But he could not help but notice that right after “Crossing the Line” went to number one, the trouble started.
*****
It began with Denise. She dated Les, the band’s bass player, for years. Though they had never married, they lived together when the band was not touring.
He went to her house with Les and found it quiet. They entered, calling for Denise, and Les said, “She must be sleeping.”
“I smell coffee,” Alec said. “I’m going to get a cup. Want some?” Les said he did.
Alec walked into the kitchen and saw Denise sprawled in a chair, her eyes open but blank, and a bloody hypodermic dangling from her left arm.
He stopped, his breath caught in his throat. Denise’s sightless eyes stared at him. Her mouth hung open, a thin line of drool dripping from her lower lip. A hypodermic needle poked into a red bruise at the crook her elbow. A line of dried blood stained the soft flesh of her inner arm. Her right hand lay folded in her lap as if in a formal pose.
As he gaped at the body, Les came into the room. Alec would never forget the screams.
*****
For weeks the band laid low as their leader came to grips with the loss of his girlfriend. But they were contracted to perform, and eventually they had to go back on the road.
In the middle of a concert in Atlanta, Alec felt the stage start to shift. In a few moments it teetered left and fell in a huge roar.
Alec shielded his head as an avalanche of speakers and amps came crashing around him. A speaker box fell on him, pinning him to the floor. Blood flowed from his nose. The weight of the box pressed his guitar into the soft tissue of his stomach, sending waves of pain through his body.
In the theater, the crowd screamed and panicked. A stampede of people rushed for the exits. Alec pushed the box away from his body, and suddenly and EMT was there to help. But two of their roadies were hurt, and valuable equipment was destroyed. The band members were bruised and shaken.
Only two weeks later, a groupie died as she waited backstage during a performance. The last Alec heard, the autopsy was still pending.
*****
They were having a midwinter party in Grand Haven. Lake Michigan lay quiet that night, the stars above it brightly shining, the air frosty. At the end of the dock, Alec heard someone playing guitar.
Thinking it might be drunkenness, he asked Len if he heard it.
Len raised his head, clocking his tears toward the end of the dock. “I hear it. Blues. Sounds like River Coleman.”
Alec walked toward the sound of the music, wondering how anyone could play on such a cold night, how the guitar held tune, and what someone was doing there at this particular time of night.
As he walked out toward the end of the jetty, to the lighthouses and the abutment where it ended, the party faded into the background as the blues got louder and more distinct. He recognized the song as “Belle’s Quick Catwalk,” a song River Coleman had done in the 1920s.
Alec reached the guitar player and saw it was a man. The man stopped playing and looked up. They stared at each for a long, silent moment.
“Nice playing,” Alec finally said.
Thanks.The man did not move his lips, but Alec heard the words in his head. He was a black man about fifty years old. He held a vintage red Gibson.
“What are you doing out here?” Alec asked. “Aren’t you cold? Won’t the cold air knock your guitar out of tune?”
Not for a while.
He looked at the man’s face more closely. Alec’s eyes got wide.
“River Coleman?”
You said it, son.
Alec could only gape.
I know you like my music.
“Like isn’t the word for it. I try to learn it and try to sound like you.”
If you really love it, do it justice. Whatever happens, justice is going to get done. And with those words, he was gone.
Alec stood near the end of the dock and strained his eyes to see where the figure had gone. The lake undulated quietly, a mass off chilly black water. Stars flashed in the sky and a meteorite tore through the heavens. Far out, the lights of a small boat traced a line.
He heard someone approaching on the dock. It was Johanna.
“Alec, you shouldn’t be out here by yourself. You’ve been drinking.”
“So have you.”
“You’re right. Let’s go back in before both of us fall in the water and drown or freeze to death.”
They returned to the house. The party went on all night. Johanna got caught up in the spirit of the night, took off her blouse and bra and began a topless dance. Then most of the guests took off their clothes and ran laps around the house.
He took Joanna up to a private bedroom, held her head as she vomited out the window. After she bathed, they made love as the sun came up and filtered into the room. When they came downstairs to greet the others around eleven, Alec realized that the neighbors had not called the police about the noise.
Maybe, he thought, the streak of bad luck is ending.
But he remembered the apparition from last night and wondered if he had really talked to River Coleman or if he had just been drunk.
He went home and spent his last day off writing new songs and listening to music. By that night, he was packed to leave for yet another tour.
Snow glittered under a clear sky and full moon, filling the room with pale light. Frost had formed lace patterns on the windows. In forty-five minutes he would board a private plane at the Grand Rapids airport, meet the other band members at in Chicago.
He dug out a CD of River Coleman’s music, deciding to play the original version of the song as a sort of atonement for how his band had revved it up and rocked it. He slid the disc out of the cover, set in his CD player, and pressed the play button.
A jolt of pain tore through his body, the force of it knocking him out of the chair. He grabbed for the edge of the desk, but his hands slipped and he careened back, upsetting a CD rack, sending the discs crashing with clacking sounds, falling all around him as he tumbled down.
He hit the floor with a thud and lay there, hardly able to breathe.
He fancied he smelled burnt flesh. A short, he thought. It had almost electrocuted him. He lay still and fought to get air into his lungs. His arms and legs tingled, and streaks of blue and purple shot across his eyes.
He tried to get up but did not have the strength. I must’ve got hit with a good jolt, he thought, again sniffing the smell of burnt skin. It puzzled him that the shock had come through the CD player. He could not understand how such a low velocity set could have delivered such a stultifying surge of electricity.
He lay still in the grayish dark. The snow outside glowed as moonlight reflected through the windows. After a while his breathing became less painful and his lungs felt less constricted. The numbness receded from his arms and legs. He could not feel his feet, but he managed to roll to one side and get out his cell phone.
When he opened the phone, the light did not activate. The shock must have also gone through the phone and disabled it. How was that possible?
He swore and let the phone drop.
Then the CD player kicked on, so loudly and suddenly, he screamed.
Realizing what had happened, he calmed himself. “Crossing the Road” came on—the old version by River Coleman, with its slow, smooth rhythm and his strong voice and meticulous guitar. He listened, feeling some of the tension and fear leave him.
He managed sit up, telling himself he was okay. It had been close, but now it was behind him.
He held up one of his fingers and saw how much the shock had burned it. A jagged black line ran up from the pad to the knuckle of his right index finger. Pain radiated and his nostrils quivered with the acrid smell drifting from the injury. He could also smell what he thought might be melted wires or circuits.
Alec pulled himself to his feet and tried to take a step. At that point the CD began to whine, scream, and squeal. The noises started him so badly he let go the edge of the desk, lost his uncertain footing, and fell again, landing in the mass of discs on the floor, shattering several with his elbows and knocking over another rack of them. The squealing blasted through the room—a sound unlike any he had heard a bad recording make—it rang more eerily, the noise bearing a strangely human-like tone. He got to one knee and raised his hands to put them over his ears when the high, Theremin-like sound changed to laughter.
Alec heard low, steady chuckling coming from the speakers. He tried to remember if there was a cut on the recording where Coleman laughed because the laugh echoed his voice. The CD player had started working again and kicked on to another track, he told himself—maybe sound effects. But as he thought, the laughter stopped. A voice spoke.
No, boy. It ain’t a song. I’m here and I’m coming for you.
Fear tore through him. It had to be something on the CD. Just then “Crossing the Road” began to play once more. As the song faded and another one began, he heard footsteps in the landing.
The stairs leading up to the room where he transacted business and listened to music were carpeted, but the landing that led off the three rooms on the second story of his house was hardwood. He heard footfalls and boards creaking.
He got to his feet. He felt woozy from the shock and, now, from fear. He would run. He would make a break for it.
As he resolved to do so, the doorknob turned.
Alec felt his skin tingle. Wobbly, hair set on end, heart racing, face hot, he stood there. The knob clicked and the door swung open.
Most of the photographs of River Coleman he had seen were taken when the man was old and had grey hair and a wrinkled, wizened face. The apparition that stood in front of him was a middle-aged man, healthy, robust, eyes shining with strength and energy—but it was still River Coleman, the same man he had seen on the pier at the Grand Haven party.
Coleman looked grayish and faint, his body semi-transparent, not as solid as he had looked out by the lake. Alex thought to make a run for it, push by whatever came through the door, fight if he had to. But the ghostly presence reduced him to jelly. He could not move or speak, and he could hardly breathe.
Coleman pointed at the CD player and the music stopped.
They faced each other in silence. Terror had taken over Alec Brighton. The ghost of River Coleman smiled, as if faintly amused.
How you doing, boy? Coleman’s lips did not move. Alec heard the words in his head, not with his ears, just as before.
Alec swallowed, throat so constricted with fear that he could not speak. He nodded.
You play the guitar really well. I fancy I heard a little of my style in what you play.
Alec nodded again.
You try and pull it off pretty well. Not as well as Clapton and Richards, but you do okay.
“Are you going to kill me?” Alec asked, his voice coming back at last.
If I’d wanted to do that I could have done it when you touched your CD player. Or out on the pier. I didn’t come to kill you, I came to save you.
“Save me?”
You’ll find out soon enough. You’re the only one in your group who has any respect. The others had their warning. Like, I said, they got no respect.
“Respect?”
For the blues, Coleman said, and for some reason he suddenly looked scarier and more threatening. The blues is something that can get somebody like me up out of his grave.
“I couldn’t stop them. You know I played on the cut. I went along with them.”
I was in the music business all my life. I know how it is. I did a lot of things I didn’t think were right because of managers and agents and because of what some of the people I played in bands with wanted. So I know where you’re coming form. You ever think of splitting from those guys?
Alec hesitated and then said, “Sometimes.”
I think you’ll do fine on your own—doing your own stuff—maybe even throw in a little blues here and there.
“Maybe I will.”
You’ve had a bad electric shock. I think you ought to rest.
Coleman’s eyes turned bright red. His figure became less substantial. He began to waver, as if he were made of smoke or mist.
I think you need to rest. Lay back down, son, there on the floor.
*****
Alec woke up to Johanna shouting and grasping him. He felt the warmth of her face and smelled the fragrance of her hair.
“He’s alive! He’s here! Thank God. Oh my God!”
She wept and trembled. Alec realized that he was still on the floor. Johanna knelt by his side. A police offer stood over him.
“How’re you feeling?” the policeman asked, his face drawn with anxiety. “The paramedics are on their way.”
“I’m okay…please, we don’t need the paramedics.”
“What happened?” Johanna asked. “Why are you here? Why didn’t you make it to Chicago?”
Alec pointed to the CD player. “I went to turn it on and—it shocked me. I must have passed out. But, how did you know? Why are you here in my house?”
The others gazed at him with an astonished look he could not understand.
And then Johanna told him. She had come to check on him because all the other members of his band had died in Chicago.
He fainted again.
*****
The next months passed in a muddle of grief, funerals, condolences, meetings with bereaved relatives and friends; then with press interviews about what he planned to do now that the others members of his band were gone.
Alec said he would never perform “Crossing the Road” again out of respect to the other members of his original band—and, he added cryptically, out of respect to River Coleman. He planned to continue his career in music, he said, but not be for a while. He had to heal. Nothing was certain, he told inquiring journalists.
Naturally, “Crossing the Road” skyrocketed. It went from a hit to a megahit. The band gained the added notoriety of death. As it was with Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Holly, Nick Drake, Jim Morrison, and Janice Joplin, their songs became iconic and their musical careers—cut short so suddenly and so tragically—crossed to the realm of myth.
His finger was burned but doctors could find no nerve damage and it healed more quickly than he had thought it would. He was physically ready to play music at any time, but emotionally he couldn’t heal.
The touring contract was for the band, and the band was dead. He didn’t have to be anywhere anymore. He avoided going out in public, and spent his time alone. He had groceries delivered so that he could spend his days lying in bed. He started drinking too much and eventually Johanna stopped coming to see him.
On the anniversary of the death of his band, moonlight reflected off the snow and filled the bedroom with light, just as it had done a year ago.
And Alex had an epiphany.
He would launch a new career doing an entirely different style—the style he had always loved and venerated.
He knew it was possible because he had heard from a reliable source that he would be fine on his own, doing his own stuff, and maybe throwing in a little blues here and there.
David W. Landrum’s speculative fiction has appeared in numerous publications, including Love at First Bite, Deathly Encounters, Night, Hunters, Separate Worlds, Aofie’s Kiss, Sanitarium, Roar and Thunder, Danse Macabre, and Erotique. His novella, Strange Brew, is available through Amazon. He teaches, lives, and writes in West Michigan.
