We had read that strange story of Erich Zann and the fate he met tinkering with musical threads of the ultimate void. Nor were we ignorant of the savage music with which certain tribes in Haiti summon their evil Gods.
We had tried for years to find copies of various forbidden tomes of ancient lore; the Necronomicon by the mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred, the strange Book of Eibon, and Ludvig Prinn’s hideous De Vermis Mysteriis — but in vain. We had lived the simpler weird excitements — nights in haunted houses and mouldy graveyards… digging corpses by candle-light…. But we wanted the real thing, though always it was just beyond our fingertips. Even our learned friend in Providence could not help us. He had read passages from a few of the less terrible books, and cautioned us time and again. Now I am glad we never found them, for what we did unearth was bad enough. I am tempted to believe that our friend, with his wide influence among the fantaisiste, made an effort to keep those selfsame books from reaching us. Certainly, several good leads vanished into thin air.
On one of my rounds of book-shops in Spokane I had found, by sheer accident, an English translation of the Chronike von Nath by the blind German mystic, Rudolf Yergler, who in 1653 finished his momentous work just before his sight gave out. The first edition sent its author to a madhouse in Berlin, and earned for itself a public suppression. Although modified by the translator, James Sheffield (1781), the text was wild beyond imagination.
As Baldwyn gradually disclosed his scheme for composing the music of the stars, he referred again and again to passages in the Chronicle of Nath. And this frightened me, for I too had read it, and knew that it contained odd musical rhythm patterns designed to summon certain star-born monsters from the earth’s core and from other worlds and dimensions. For all that, Yergler had not been a musician, and whether he had copied the formulae from older tomes or was himself their father, I was never able to find out. Surely Baldwyn had dreamed a strange dream.
He said the preliminary work would require solitude for a week, at least. That would give him sufficient time to decipher the sinister formulae in the ancient book, and to make adjustments on his Luna- chord upstairs. He was a master technician, and had found on his instrument tonal combinations that baffled fellow musicians. Milt Herth, of radio fame, has done the same thing on a Hammond Organ, which the Lunachord closely resembles. Since a Lunachord’s tones are actually electrical impulses, controlled by fifteen dials on the intricate panel above the two keyboards, and capable of imitating anything from a bass horn to a piccolo, the variations are endless. Baldwyn estimated that there were roughly over a million tonal possibilities, although many would possess no distinction. I wondered at first how he had planned to invent such outre music on a mere piano; but here, ready-made, was the solution — a scientific achievement awaiting exploration.
Walking homeward beneath a pale half-moon, my enthusiasm waned. He had not mentioned precisely what he intended to summon with his alarming music. Yergler himself was singularly vague on that point, or else Sheffield had deleted sections of the hideous text — an entirely logical premise. Indeed, what earthly music — i.e., musical tones audible to the human ear — could call from the gulf something totally unearthly? My better judgment revolted. Baldwyn was lighting dangerous fires, but the very limits of man’s knowledge regarding space, time and infinity would keep him from getting his fingers burned. Still, Yergler had done it; or something just as bad, and I recalled Sheffield’s preface, which gave a guarded account of the alchemist’s mysterious death in the madhouse.
During a severe thunderstorm there was heard outside and above his room a hideous cacophony, seeming to come from the very heavens. There had been a broken shutter, a wild scream; and Yergler had been found slumped in a corner of the room in an attitude of extreme terror, dead eyes bulging upward, his face and body pitted with holes that resembled burns but were not. However, I knew that many early historians had possessed the grievous fault of gross exaggeration and verbal distortion.
I could scarcely wait for the ensuing week to pass, realizing that Baldwyn was alone in that upstairs room, browsing in a blasphemous book from the past and composing weird music on his devil’s machine. But at last Saturday came, and I approached his door about one o’clock in the afternoon, because I knew he hadn’t seen the sun rise for years. Encouraged by seeing a finger of smoke twist from the leaning chimney, 1 opened the sagging wooden gate, crossed the shadow of the maple and knocked on the door.
Presently it opened, and I was shocked at the change in my friend’s face. He had aged five years; new lines creased his pale brow. His greeting was mechanical. We sat in the parlor and talked, while he lit one cigarette after another.
When I asked him if he’d had any sleep or solid food, he refused to answer. Baldwyn did his own light housekeeping, and unless watched, never ate enough to keep more than half alive. I told him he looked terrible, but he passed it off with a wave of his hand. What hellish thing had made him a gaunt image of his former self? I remonstrated; I demanded that he leave that sinister music and get some rest. He wouldn’t listen.
I began to become afraid of what he’d discovered, for it was evident he had met with success of a sort. His very manner said so. Without further conversation, he remarked that he’d be busy all afternoon, and told me to return at ten-thirty that evening. I inquired about the experiment, but it was of no use. I left, promising to come back at the appointed hour.
When I rapped on his door again I had in my pocket a.38 revolver I’d bought in town that very afternoon. I cannot say precisely what I planned to shoot; the gesture was prompted by a feeling of impending tragedy. There had been in Baldwyn’s manner a reticence I didn’t like. Always before he had told me of his triumphs and discoveries.
Without a word Baldwyn led me to the upstairs room. Motioning me to a chair near the Lunachord, he sat on the bench and turned the switch that operated the electric motors. The thinness and pallor of his cheeks frightened me. He crushed out his cigarette and faced me.
“Rambeau, you’ve been very patient — I know you’re curious. You also think I’m killing myself. I’ll rest up for a while when I get through — here. I think I’ve found what I’m after — the rhythm of space, the music of the stars and the universe that may be very near or very far. You know how we’ve hunted for those other books, the Necronomicon, and so on? This translation of Yergler isn’t very clear, but I’ve tried to bridge the gaps and produce the results he hinted at.
“You see, at the very beginning there were two altogether different types of music — the type we know and hear today, and another one that isn’t really earthly at all. It was banned by the ancients, and only the early historians remember it. Now, the negro jazz element has revived some of these outre rhythms. They’ve almost got it! These polyrhythmic variants are close; boogie-woogie has a touch. Earl Hines came near with his improvisation, ‘Child of a Disordered Brain.’…
“What will happen I can’t say. Yesterday I had a letter from Lancaster in Providence, and he’s positively scared! I told him my plans the last time I wrote.
“He finally admitted that he’d read the original Chronike, which is infinitely more terrible than this book we have. Lancaster warns me repeatedly against playing the music he’s afraid I’ve written. Actually, it can’t be written — there are no such symbols! It would require a new musical language. I’m not going to try that just yet, however…