Ghost Music Read online

  GRAHAM MASTERTON IS . . .

  “A master of the genre.”

  —Booklist

  “A mesmerizing storyteller!”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “One of the most consistently entertaining writers in the field.”

  —Gauntlet

  “The living inheritor to the realm of Edgar Allan Poe.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “A first-rate horror writer.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “Horror’s most consistent provider of chills.”

  —Masters of Terror

  “A crowd-pleaser, filling his pages with sparky, appealing dialogue and visceral grue.”

  —Time Out (UK)

  “One of those writers who can truly unnerve the reader with everyday events.”

  —Steve Gerlach, author of Rage

  “In the premier league of horror scribes.”

  —Publishing News

  Other books by Graham Masterton:

  PREY

  THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT

  SPIRIT

  DOORKEEPERS

  DEVIL IN GRAY

  MANITOU BLOOD

  NIGHT WARS

  EDGEWISE

  THE FIFTH WITCH

  DEATH MASK

  BLIND PANIC

  DESCENDANT

  GHOST MUSIC

  GRAHAM MASTERTON

  DORCHESTER PUBLISHING

  Published by

  Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

  200 Madison Avenue

  New York, NY 10016

  Copyright © 2008 by Graham Masterton

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Trade ISBN: 978-1-4285-1222-1

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-4285-1204-7

  First Dorchester Publishing, Co., Inc. edition: November 2011

  The “DP” logo is the property of Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  * * *

  Visit us online at www.dorchesterpub.com.

  * * *

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  About the Author

  FOR WIESCKA

  1946 - 2011

  There are no accidents in love.

  We open doors; and there they are

  Our lifelong companions

  Standing by a window; sitting in a chair.

  Not even turning round, or looking up.

  They do not recognize us yet.

  But the smallest gesture

  A fastened dress; a hand held, crossing the street

  Will join our destinies forever:

  Turn both our faces to the same warm wind.

  “Is there anybody there?” said the Traveler

  Knocking on the moonlit door;

  . . . But only a host of phantom listeners

  That dwelt in the lone house then

  Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight

  To that voice from the world of men.

  —Walter de la Mare, The Listeners

  One

  As she followed her husband down the front steps, she turned her head and looked up at me, and I was so taken by her smile that I totally failed to notice what was so unusual about her. Nearly three months would pass before I realized what it was, but when I did, it would make me feel like my whole world had collapsed, like some shoddily built stage set.

  She was slight and thin-wristed, with ash blonde hair that was cut in a very straight bob. She was wearing a short-sleeved blouse, in the palest of yellows, and high-waisted gray slacks. But it was that mischievous smile that got me—and the way her eyes narrowed a little, as if we already shared a secret.

  “Hey, Lalo, where does this thing go?” called Margot, from the kitchenette.

  “What thing?” I asked her, still watching the woman as she crossed the street.

  “This thing that looks like a fire extinguisher.”

  “That’s no fire extinguisher. That’s my batter dispenser.”

  Margot came through to the living room, holding up the shiny metal gadget in disbelief. “Your batter dispenser?”

  “Sure. I couldn’t live without it. It makes sure that every pancake is perfectly circular. They still taste like latex, but they’re perfectly circular.”

  “Lalo, you stun me sometimes. You really stun me.”

  It was a warm afternoon in the first week of September, on St. Luke’s Place, opposite James J. Walker Park in Greenwich Village—a row of fine Italianate brownstones, with ironwork railings and pillared doorways, and even gas lamps outside. I was leaning out of my window on the second floor, with a cold bottle of Michelob Amber, taking a five-minute chill from putting up shelves.

  I had moved into this apartment three days ago, but even with Margot to help me I was seriously beginning to believe that I would never get the place straight. The hallway was blocked with three tea chests full of books and music scores and pictures and orange enamel saucepans. The bedroom was wedged with suitcases bulging with clothes and cardboard boxes full of towels and CDs. I had never realized that I owned so much stuff. As my dad used to say, “You can’t have everything, son. Where would you put it?”

  Margot twisted open a bottle of beer and came to the window to join me. She was short, dark and pretty in a heart-shaped Betty Boop way, with flicked-up hair and enormous brown eyes. She was wearing oversize Oshkosh dungarees and a tight pink-striped T-shirt and fluorescent pink Crocs. She made me feel more like her big brother than ever, although she was at least six months older than I was, and in some ways, she was a whole lot wiser.

  Margot and I had been friends ever since our first day at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. We had simply liked each other the moment we had bumped into each other by the notice board, and I had asked Margot if I could borrow her pencil. In the spring of 2005 there had been several weekends when our affection for each other had grown so strong that we had been only a heartbeat away from becoming lovers, but by the time I had managed to disentangle myself from Cindy the PMT Pianist (as Margot used to call her), Margot had started dating a nostril-flaring Cuban dancer called Esteban, and so we had never managed to get much more intimate than sprawling on a couch, drinking red wine and listening to Beethoven piano concertos and old Dire Straits albums. Now we knew each other so well that going to bed together would have felt like incest.

  “I
just saw the people downstairs,” I told her.

  “Oh, yes? What are they like?”

  “Midthirties, I’d say. Smart-conservative. Well-heeled.”

  “Well, you have to be very well-heeled to live here. You have to have diamonds on the soles of your shoes. Unlike East Thirteenth Street.”

  “Your loft is wonderful. It’s like Narnia.”

  “Sure it is. Teeming with intelligent rodents.”

  I said, “How about I take you to the Café Cluny tonight, as a thank-you for everything you’ve done?”

  Margot looked around the apartment, with its high white ceilings and its shining oak floors. “You know, Lalo, what this place badly needs is a woman. In fact, what you badly need is a woman. Man cannot live by composing TV scores alone, even if he does have perfectly circular pancakes.”

  I looked across at her. The trees outside made leaf patterns dance on her cheek. “I have you, don’t I?”

  “Of course you do. But you need passion. You need danger. You need somebody who washes dishes in the nude.”

  Two

  I met her for the first time two days later, when I was climbing the stairs with a sackful of groceries from Sushila’s. She was standing on the landing outside my apartment door with a fluffy white Persian cat in her arms. The expression on her face was curiously dreamy, but as I came up the stairs toward her she turned to me and smiled, almost as if she had been expecting me. I caught a hint of her perfume, very light and flowery, but I didn’t recognize what it was.

  “Hi there,” I said. “Were you looking for me?”

  “I was looking for Malkin, as a matter of fact. She gets very inquisitive whenever somebody new moves in. She wants to know all about them.”

  Close up, she looked younger than she had when I had first seen her on the steps outside. Twenty-nine maybe, just touching thirty. She had a delicate, finely drawn face, as if she had elvish blood on one side of her family. Her eyes were as gray as rainclouds, and slightly hooded. The muted sunlight on the landing made her ash blonde hair gleam silver. See? I had known her for less than thirty seconds and already I was waxing poetic.

  “Gideon,” I said, shifting the grocery bag to my left arm, and holding out my hand. “Gideon Lake, but most of my friends call me Lalo.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “It’s after Lalo Schifrin, who wrote the music for Jaws and Mission Impossible. That’s what I do. I write music for movies and TV and stuff like that. Well, commercials, too. ‘Come on home, come on ho-o-ome, to your family and your friends . . . just one taste of Thom’s will take you home again.’ You know . . . Thom’s Tomato Soup.”

  The woman didn’t stop smiling, but she shook her head.

  “You never heard it?” I said. “You must be the only person on the planet who hasn’t. My mom says she’s going to strangle me for writing it; she can’t get it out of her head.”

  Just as I had shifted the grocery bag from one arm to the other, the woman shifted her cat, and held out her hand. “Katherine—Katherine Solway—but do call me Kate. Pleased to know you, Gideon. I hope you’re going to be very happy here.”

  I unlocked my front door. “Would you like to come in for a drink? I haven’t finished sorting the place out yet, but I’m getting there.”

  “I’d love to,” said Kate. “Thank you. You don’t mind if Malkin comes in, too? You’re not allergic?”

  “Of course not. I’m only allergic to John Williams compositions, and wasps.”

  My living room was already beginning to look West Village elegant, thanks to Margot’s talent for interior decoration. She had arranged my two pale blue antique sofas so that they were facing each other, and two spoon-back chairs at angles to the main window. In the center of the floor there was an oval blue rug, and a low table of lime-washed oak with a statuette of Pan on it, skipping through the reeds by the river.

  On one wall there was a large gilt-framed mirror; and on the opposite wall hung a magical realist oil painting of two women in pink bathing-suits standing in a blue desert, signed “Jared French.”

  Kate set Malkin down on the floor. The cat shook herself and started to pad around the apartment, sniffing at the furniture.

  “Have you lived here for long?” I asked.

  Kate went to the window and looked out over the park. I could just make out her transparent reflection in the glass. “It depends what you mean by ‘long.’ Longer than I should have done, I suppose.”

  “I see,” I said, although I didn’t. “What would you like to drink? I have iced tea or zinfandel or beer. I even have Dr Pepper.”

  “Zinfandel would be nice. Did you know that Jared French used to live here once?”

  “The realtor told me. That’s why I bought a Jared French painting. I almost lost consciousness, though, when I found out how much they were asking for it.”

  “All of the houses in this row have their ghosts,” she said, raising her voice so that I could hear her. “Theodore Dreiser lived next door at number sixteen—that’s where he started to write An American Tragedy. Sherwood Anderson lived at number twelve. Jared French shared this house with Paul Cadmus. He was another artist. Both gay, of course. Paul Cadmus was always painting sailors in ridiculously tight pants.”

  I came back from the kitchenette with two large glasses of chilled white wine. “Hey—I like places with ghosts. It makes you feel like you’re part of history, you know? So long as I don’t get goosed by some ice-cold finger when I’m taking a shower.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to worry about that. The ghosts in these houses are all at peace. Most of them, anyhow.”

  “Glad to hear it. You haven’t ever seen one, have you?”

  “When we first moved here, I was sure that I heard somebody weeping, in one of the rooms up in the attic. A woman, it sounded like. But when I went up there and knocked on the door, nobody answered.”

  “Spooky!”

  “It was probably the wind, that was all. This house can be very drafty in the winter.”

  We sat for a moment in silence. I had an odd feeling that Kate wanted to tell me something, but didn’t know how to say it. She kept glancing at me, but when I looked back at her, she gave that secretive little smile and sipped her wine.

  “You don’t have children?” I asked her. “I haven’t heard any children, anyhow. No skateboards in the hallway.”

  “We did once. A little boy. But we lost him.”

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize.” I felt terrible. Talk about opening my mouth and putting both feet in it, Nikes and all.

  But she said, “No, please, don’t feel bad about it. It was a long time ago now, and you weren’t to know.” She paused, and then she said, “I wanted to try again, but Victor was too angry about it.”

  “Angry?”

  “I don’t know. Angry with God. Angry with the doctors. Just angry.”

  I nodded, although I didn’t entirely understand what she meant. You feel grief-stricken when your child dies. But angry?

  “I would have loved to have a little girl,” Kate told me.

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yes. I would have named her Melinda. I could have dressed her up in frilly frocks, and fussed with her braids, and taught her how to bake chocolate-chip cookies.”

  “Wow. It’s not too late, though, surely? Maybe you could twist Victor’s arm.”

  “Victor’s arm is untwistable. Besides—it’s always too late.”

  I didn’t really understand what she meant by that either, but she didn’t seem interested in discussing the subject any further, and so I left my next question unspoken.

  “How about you?” she asked me, after a while. “Do you like to travel?”

  “Travel? Are you kidding me? I hate to travel. I have to go to L.A. every month, to work at Capitol Studios. I can’t wait for them to invent a Star Trek transporter. You know—step into one cabinet in New York, step out of another cabinet ten seconds later in L.A. Mind you—knowing my luck, I’d have a fly in the
re with me.”

  “I didn’t mean that kind of travel. I meant Europe. You know—Rome, and Vienna, and Prague.”

  “Oh, like culture? Well—I was in London once, for a week, but that was for work, too. I saw the inside of a post-production studio in Soho, and that was about it. I didn’t even get to see Buckingham Palace.”

  “You should travel,” she said. “It’s good for you—good for the soul. And you can learn so much. The farther away you go, the more you discover about what you’ve left behind.”

  I waited for her to explain what she had discovered, but she didn’t say any more. I distinctly felt that we were talking at cross-purposes—either that, or she expected me to understand something about her that should have been obvious, but which I couldn’t fathom at all. Everything she said made perfect sense, but somehow it didn’t make any sense at all. It was like she was carrying on a different conversation altogether, or else she was speaking in riddles. It was strangely provocative, as if she were flirting with me, but it was frustrating at the same time. Maybe she didn’t want Malkin the cat to know what she was telling me. Maybe Malkin would report back to Victor—he of the untwistable arm.

  “More wine?” I asked her, although she had taken only three or four sips. “How about some potato chips? I have sea-salt or jalapeño or something herby.”

  Again she shook her head. “Tell me something you’ve written,” she said.

  “Well . . . the theme music for Magician. Did you ever see Magician? That’s the cop who used to be a stage magician, and he solves all of his crimes with conjuring tricks.”

  “Yes, I think I saw Magician once. I can’t say that I remember the theme music.”

  I leaned over and picked up my Spanish guitar, which was leaning against the end of the sofa. I gave it a strum, and then played her that soft, eerie, complicated melody, which rose higher and higher with every bar.

  “That was very good.” Kate nodded, when I had given her a final flourish. “That was almost beautiful.”

  “Almost beautiful?”

  “Debussy is beautiful. Delius is beautiful. That, on the other hand, was a little too commercial for its own good.”