Sound Never Lasts

by Corey Farrenkopf

It had been a church, then a playhouse, now a private residence. The pews had been hauled out. The altar split for firewood. Tapestries and velvet curtains stripped from the stage. Boxes of attic-bound playbills became tinder. Stained glass replaced by clear panes. Candelabra with electric bulbs. Statues of saints huddled in the backyard by the blackberry patch, prickling canes wrapping their haloed heads. The ceiling was painted in imitation of a true cathedral, wall-papered canvas mimicking classical cuts of marble and inlaid stone. Once Dennis found the ladder, it too was peeled away.

Only the pipe organ remained.

Gurt, a concert pianist, desired the ivory keys, the looming bronze cylinders, their mouths yawning open, waiting for sound to fill their throats. The range of keys was much shorter than the pianos she’d played in the past, but that added to the allure, the restrained pallet on which she would compose her next arrangement to bring her career back into focus.

Paying gigs had fallen off. No new studio work was forthcoming. No movie score offers waited in her inbox.

Dennis didn’t mind the change of scenery. He worked in investments and could do his job remotely. He didn’t mind moving from the city if it meant Gurt would be able to get back into the spotlight.

He’d make the sacrifice.

***

“Do you ever think of the other songs people played on it?” Dennis asked after their second month of habitation.

“All the time. If you listen real close, you can still hear them,” Gurt said, leaning in towards the pipe organ.

“Really?” Dennis asked, looking up from the adventure novel he’d been reading in an armchair by the fire, heat climbing to the vaulted ceiling overhead.

“No, of course not. Sound never lasts.”

***

Dennis slept with earplugs, tucked away in the master bedroom that had once been the priest’s quarters.

Gurt found the darker hours more ideal for composition, her mind lighter, more open to nuance and surprise. Her fingers moved across the keys, summoning high notes, then low. Each bellow filled her chest with a swelling sensation. Multiple microphones dangled around the instrument, patch cords leading back to a mixer leading to her computer. Each note spike marked a blip on her recording program, endless hours of failed takes spooling away.

The writing hadn’t been going as she hoped. She could stitch the notes together, but in the morning they pulled apart.

A single bulb burned by the organ, casting flickering shadows over the instrument. Gurt leaned away from the keys, a song’s strain dying in the air.

“Too repetitive,” came a voice from behind her.

Gurt turned, expecting to find Dennis, uncorking the earplugs from his ears.

Instead, the large room was empty. Only the flickering candles and dim firelight shifted in her sight. Gurt shook it off, assuming the words had pried free from her subconscious.

They were right. The song was too repetitive. Gurt nearly crashed her fist into the keys, but held back, remembering their fragility, their necessary role in her rebirth.

***

“You aren’t really listening,” the same voice came the following night. “Slow down.”

Gurt had decided to keep a hammer on the table by her recording equipment, the interruption from the night before more concerning when viewed the following morning.

She’d asked Dennis if he’d gotten up in the night.

“Nope, slept right through,” he’d replied over his coffee.

***

It continued that way for weeks. Odd comments drifting to Gurt mid movement, cutting off her flow, the room still empty, despite her certainty she hadn’t imagined the speech. Maybe she was cracking up? she wondered. Other musicians had done so under the pressure, their golden years dimming in a dull haze. Why would she be exempt? She’d never been as stable as she’d wanted, always relying on Dennis or medication to get through her rough patches.

Her songs continued to fail. Each iteration leaving a stale taste on her tongue. Frustration was getting to her, her desire to tear the organ apart, piece by piece, accelerating in time.

Each night, after searching the room, examining every corner, she’d return to the organ, stretch her fingers, and reluctantly resume playing.

***

“Why move so far to waste your time?” the voice asked.

Gurt was quick, turning on the bench, hammer in hand.

In the armchair by the fire sat a woman, dark hair curling about her shoulders, a pale blue dress pooling at her feet. Her eyes resembled glass, clearer than polished crystal.

“Are you going to use that on me?” the woman asked, gesturing to the hammer.

“No, I wouldn’t…” Gurt replied, dropping the hammer.

“I can help you if you’d like?” the woman asked. “I used to be the one who played it.”

“You were with the church?”

“No. The playhouse. Slide over.”

Gurt complied, pushing to the edge of the bench as the woman settled next to her. She was warm, a furnace pumping through her skin. The woman’s fingers flexed over the keys, running through scales. Then she played snips of songs Gurt vaguely recognized, familiar choruses or verses. Time fell away as the woman moved through each.

“I know those,” Gurt said when the woman paused. “How will that help?”

“Oh, they won’t, but I have a few originals I can teach you. Songs that haven’t been remembered,” the woman replied.

“That would be amazing.”

“I need something from you first.”

“What?”

“It’s lonely here. I need company.”

“We’re not planning to move any time soon.”

“That’s not what I mean,” the woman said, eyes drifting towards the bedroom where Dennis slept. “I still have needs.”

“I can’t,” Gurt replied.

“You know he’s been fine with every sacrifice so far. Why not this one?”

“This is different.”

“Not really,” the woman said, playing once again. The song was slow, brooding, somewhere between a hymn and a peasant song. The space between the notes echoed in their silence. The chord progression swelled in her bones. Gurt had never heard anything like it. A forgotten masterpiece, an arrangement stolen from deserving ears. She couldn’t turn away. Nothing she’d ever heard could equal what the woman played.

When she stopped, the woman reached over and picked up the hammer, dropping it in Gurt’s lap.

“We both know you don’t have another song in you,” the woman said.

“You don’t know…”

“I do. Once you lose it, you never get it back. But I can do it for you. For as long as you want. I have hundreds of songs. Hundreds,” the woman said, nudging Gurt.

She rose, grasping the hammer.

“It will be quick,” the woman said.

“You’ll teach me all of them?” Gurt asked.

“All of them.”

Gurt turned from the pipe organ. She’d known for some time things weren’t improving. The music was a stagnant pool in her gut, breeding nothing, silence preferable to what her fingers pulled from the waters.

“It will be quick,” the woman reassured her as Gurt carried the hammer towards their bedroom.

Dennis had never minded the sacrifices before.

Why start now?

Bio: Corey Farrenkopf lives on Cape Cod with his wife, Gabrielle, and works as a librarian. His short stories have been published in Tiny Nightmares, The Southwest Review, Cemetery Gates Media, Catapult, Flash Fiction Online, Reckoning, Bourbon Penn, and elsewhere. He is the Fiction Editor for The Cape Cod Poetry Review. To learn more, follow him on twitter @CoreyFarrenkopf or on the web at CoreyFarrenkopf.com