Organic Screams

The approach of the autumnal equinox filled the residents of Ardenshire with a sense of trepidation; not just because it was the time for harvest before the bite of winter sank its teeth, but the actual day brought about the annual performance of the Organist. 

For decades, the old cathedral at the top of the hill stood as a decrepit haunt, a shadowy reminder of its past grandeur. The old folks could still remember when it saw crowds of hundreds every week, sometimes drawing in visitors from faraway places. How they reminisced on its gilded linings, its ivory supports, and the vibrant frescoes that peered benevolently down upon them, as they celebrated Mass or hosted weddings. Truly there was no better place for the invocation of God.

The cathedral’s shining highlight was its organ. It took up an entire section of wall by itself, its turrets and pipes rising majestically like a miniature cityscape. And the sounds that blasted from it...like a chorus of angels had temporarily taken refuge within it, triggered by the organist’s keys, delighted to pump forth their sweet music for all. It could be heard all throughout the hills, Ardenshire’s official soundtrack. No one ever complained. To them, the music was just as necessary and present as the grass and the air.

Then...one day, the organist stopped coming to the cathedral. Disheartened, the village rallied to search for him, one Sir Johnathan Tremblay, but he seemed to have disappeared off the face of the Earth. For weeks, the cathedral remained silent, an empty shell whose void ought to be filled by music.

Until one Sunday night, when a young chap from the village snuck into the cathedral after hours and tried his hand at a few chords. His “music,” if you could call it that due to his inexperience, lasted for less than a minute before it silenced. 

Monday morning’s light shone down upon his body, impaled down his throat with a pike through the organ’s bench, stuck in a sitting position. The empty space in his mouth had been stoppered with congealed blood. Stricken with terror, the hideously-positioned corpse was removed and attendance to weekly masses plummeted to zero. No one wished to test whatever murderous entity now called the cathedral its home.

But that year, on the autumnal equinox, the music played once more. Morbidly curious villagers gathered outside the ajar wooden doors, peering through the crack to find its source. 

They had never seen the man before. He was garbed in a black cloak and a chapeau, his back to them, seeming to writhe with harmonic ecstasy among the organ’s levels. The music was beautiful...and horrifying. Minor keys and ghastly tritones. Every stop had been pulled, the deepest bass ranges exploited to their darkest depths. 

As the villagers approached, the Organist struck a sour chord - perhaps intentionally - and slowly swiveled in the bench to face them. The crowd gasped and surged backward. His face was covered with a white mask bearing an unsettlingly blank expression. He stood and raised a pallid hand towards them.

“Hark!” he cried, his voice high and cold. “Have you enjoyed the music? Nothing gives me more earthly pleasure than to enrapture the masses with my notes. But hear me now...on this night, every year, you will gather in this place and lose yourselves to my music. It is pertinent to your souls, believe me...lest you incur my accursed wrath!”

Then, with a swish of his cape and a shearing bolt of lightning, he vanished.

And so the terrified villagers complied. On the night of the autumnal equinox they’d gather in the chapel and venture through the dark musical journey the Organist had planned for them. Normally the bizarre ritual would be no cause for concern. The concerts would last a few hours at most, and the villagers would return to their beds, or their fields. Then they wouldn’t have to worry about him for another year.

Except for one small, agonizing detail. By the end of the concert, they would realize that a few of their own had gone missing. 

But no one dared to challenge the Organist. His influence was too strong, and no one desired to be the one to damn their village to his wrath.

*

The evening before the equinox, sixteen-year-old Bella Northcott collapsed in her bed after a long day’s laboring out in the fields. Her family had gotten a head start on the harvest so they could wrap up the day tomorrow and attend the concert early. If the Organist’s accursed wrath would be incurred, it wouldn’t be because of them.

Sleep came easy to her, and it appeared she would slip through the night without a hitch.

...until midnight, when Bella sat up straight in bed, fully alert, her heart sinking as she heard this distant melody of organ music up the hill. “Oh no, he’s started early!” she whispered, springing to her feet and rushing over to her parent’s bed. “Mother! Father! Wake up! It’s started!” she pleaded, shaking their motionless forms. “I can’t say why but it’s started already! We must hurry!”

Her father awoke first, slowly stirring under his sheets and rubbing his eyes. “What are you saying, Bella?”

“Listen - the music’s started! We have to go! We don’t want to be the ones to doom us all!”

Her father blinked, then stared at her like she had just uttered a disgusting swear. “Bella, there is no music. You were dreaming. The concert will start tomorrow night, as it always has.”

“No! Do you not hear it?” Bella demanded. “I can! I can feel it in my bones! It’s happening!”

Her father was more awake, still glaring at her, and next to him his wife stirred. “Bella, you are merely fearful, and imagining things. There is no music. The night is silent. Go to sleep.”

“No...please…” But her parents had already nestled in, either asleep once more or ignoring her. 

“No…” she moaned again, grabbing her cloak and stepping outside into the night. The cathedral atop the hill was dark, but the music still emanated, clear as day. It was even echoing off the rolling slopes in the distance. How could she imagine that? It had to be playing for real, it just had to be...so why was no one else peering out their windows or hurrying up the street, drawn to the Organist’s call?

Wrapping the cloak tighter around herself, Bella trudged up the path towards the cathedral. The moonlight was almost as full as day, and cold gusts slapped at her, hard enough to make her pause. But she forced herself to continue. Maybe she alone would meet the Organist, prostrate before him and beg for forgiveness, to spare the village from his wrath…

Her legs burned as she powered up the slope, and by the time she reached the doors she was sweating despite the cold. Swallowing a lump in her throat, Bella laid her palms on the doors and pushed with all her might.

They swung open with a rusty creak, and the dilapidated vacuum before her seemed to suck her in. The music was deafening; her chest trembled from the vibrations. Her eyes adjusting to the light, she could make out the massive instrument in the back. Just as she suspected, no one else was in the cathedral with her. 

But as she drew closer, she noticed the Organist too was missing. In fact, the organ seemed absolutely inert. No reverberating pipes. No moving keys. 

“What?” she said. She was mere feet away from the organ now; she had to cover her ears against the music. It crescendoed, became overwhelming...hit a sour note...then stopped. 

Slowly Bella lowered her hands. The silence that followed could have been present for centuries. Had it all been a dream, or a hallucination, after all?

“Beautiful, if I say so myself.”

Bella jumped and screamed. Sitting in the front pew, inconspicuous in the gloom, the Organist rose to his feet, staring directly at her. “And the music was nice, too,” he added. Bella could almost hear him smiling behind the blank, white mask.

“What’s going on? Why were you playing before the night of the equinox?” Bella demanded, backing away from him. 

“Calm yourself, girl,” he said soothingly. “Your village is not in danger. And I was playing...but not for them. For you. For only you could hear it.”

“What...what do you mean?” she asked, her voice low.

The Organist sighed, running his pale hand across the console. “I was drawn to this place like a moth to the light. I am a creature of music, it is my design. I have loved this instrument like no other. I have cared for it like my own child.

“And like such, sometimes it fails. Gets sick. Becomes injured. And what am I to do when my child falls ill? ...why, I must heal it somehow. In this case, one of the stops is defective. It’s quite common, at least one requires a fix each year.”

“So…” Bella’s tone became curious. “...you needed me to fix a stop?”

The Organist looked at her. “In a manner of speaking.” 

He turned fully towards her. “...Did you know us organists call the air that passes through the pipes, ‘wind?’ I, along with others, consider that too poetic. Gushy. Wishy-washy. No...I very much prefer the more arcane term. ‘Breath.’”

The Organist then lifted his hand and removed his mask.

Bella screamed. The creature’s face was black as coal, charred to the skull, lipless with bared, mummified teeth...but its eyes were burning red, like two roaring stars in its sockets…

It raised a hand and squeezed the open air. Something in Bella’s horrified mind snapped, and she fainted, falling into darkness.

*

When Bella came to, she thought the darkness hadn’t gone away...but she looked up and saw a perfect circle of light above her. She tried to move...and gasped as she found her limbs were pinned to her body by some cold, metallic force. She was inside something. Something long, tall, and cylindrical. 

She let out a panicked yell, but her voice channeled through the pipe and melded into a single whining note. The sound of an organ key.

“Enough of that. I have not yet started playing,” the Organist’s voice hissed, clear and close as if right next to her ear.

And suddenly there was a shooting, agonizing sensation that rocketed up her leg, burrowing through her insides, and up her neck. Her first split-second thought was of the boy they’d found impaled in the cathedral all those years ago...then the pain hit and she screamed again. Screamed as her insides gave way and filled with blood, screamed as her lungs tore and strained against the pike jutting up her body... 

“My voice!” the Organist proclaimed. “My breath!”

Tears poured down her face as her own breath failed her, and all she could emit was choked, desperate croaks. But the metal pike through her body suddenly burned red-hot, and it forced another scream out of her. It came out as another drawn-out, bellowing note. 

“Cured!” he cried. “My instrument! It is fixed!”

The burning disappeared, and Bella’s voice deescalated to more sobbing rasps. She never imagined what the feeling of her life leaving her body might be like, but she was sure she knew now. It seeped away like sand through her fingers, and as she fell into another darkness, she heard them. 

The others’ voices. All stuffed in pipes next to hers, their spirits likewise condemned to shriek the Organist’s notes upon command. 

“Ladies and gentlemen of Ardenshire,” he proclaimed to a gathering crowd, “there will be music tonight! Let your souls run free, and give in to my glorious designs!”

Even in death, as he played, Bella continued to scream. And she would continue screaming for him. 

Each night, every year, on the autumnal equinox.