My dog Sally is a Siberian Husky, if anyone knows about the breed, they’re known for being escape artists, and when there’s an opportunity…their hearts say, “Soar.” I remember the first time she got lost, it was on the first night we brought her home. Back then her tail only played a few sounds, it was a triangle ringing all day and rain drops falling on the roof during the night.
I woke up after I realized the absence of her sound. I figured she was exploring the house, but when I went downstairs to get some water I realized I couldn’t hear her anywhere. I didn’t need the music to know what the sinking feeling in my stomach meant. Sally was gone.
I ran to my mom’s room and woke her up. I was in tears and dragging her arm, but my mom didn’t seem worried at all. Instead she had us get dressed, grabbed some flashlights, and out the door we went. I remember being upset at my mom because she was walking so slow, I kept having to walk in front. Turning my head back and telling her to hurry! When she smiled at me I remembered getting angry, “It’s not funny! Sally’s missing mom!”
“It’s ok, we’ll find her.”
I looked at the miles of road around me, the endless stretches played funny things in my head as I began to realize how impossible it would be to find her. I stomped my foot on the ground in frustration and the road stretched a note in my head beyond my view. It sounded like graphite from a pencil being slashed across a page.
I stomped again and heard myself 100 paces away. I kept stomping up the road as my mom kept an eye on me from behind. I must have been an angry little pebble in her eyes.
But mom was right, we did eventually find Sally. I was so excited when I started to hear the sound of rain drops splattering on the back of tin pans. I started running and calling, “Sally!” Her sound stopped for a second before it came roaring back, her tail thumping and the ‘awoo’ ‘woo’ of her flutes escaping alongside my puppy’s cries.
Though now, I can’t seem to hear her anymore. Not since the Cymbal Man grabbed me. For the first few days after, all I could hear were the cymbals. It was nearly impossible to hear anything else. It got so bad that I laid in my bed and curled up beneath my sheets. I had a fever as my head split from the throbbing between my eyes, the upturned cymbal upon my head wore like a brass cap - shimmering along the surface of my brain as it rang. Day and night, I could hardly get in a wink. And finally after 8 grueling days, it disappeared. I haven’t heard the Cymbal Man again since, but I don’t know if he’s left his nightly scrawl outside my window because all of the music is gone.
I can’t hear the danger…or the good.
Even my favorite places, such as the art museum. Have no sound. I used to enjoy going right before they close; the last tours have ended, all of the schools on field trips have gone home, and the few stragglers left don’t even look at one another. It’s here that I let the exhibits sing to me.
Many paintings have different sounds, and they usually don’t match how they look. The great ones do, though. And I pass by all the ones with no music at all.
I had gone to see my favorite painting. It is a lesser known one by Van Gogh. It used to sound like a cord coming down from the sky. The translucent string is strummed once from beyond the clouds, and the sound travels slowly down. The first time I came close to it, I didn’t hear anything, so I began walking away before the music touched the ground.
Then it were as if a portal to the south of France opened behind me. Large rolling fields brushed by the wind whistled softly. I could hear the blues and the green. The orange and the whites. The sun soaked reds, screaming in the light. Hearing what he saw, feeling what he felt.
But even my favorite painting fell silent after what happened to me. I left the museum as empty as I had come. I was sure that it would have worked, but it didn’t. To make matters worse I had overstayed, and the last city bus had left so I was forced to walk all the way home.
“Dig,” I heard the man say. I had been walking for over an hour when I passed by an empty lot, a straggle of houses lined a nearby cul-de-sac that was otherwise barren. The man was crouched over a hole in the ground, he was disheveled and dirty, but there were no sounds coming from him other than, “Dig,” he repeated.
I looked at him and smiled as I passed. His eyes gorged in his skull as he gathered the few belongings on the floor and scampered away. I didn’t mean to scare him and I am sure that running after him didn’t help either, but my feet moved on their own as I wanted to apologize for startling him.
I hadn’t taken 3 steps into the field before I heard it.
The sound curled my spine backwards. I almost felt as if I would bend. My feet jumped and I took several steps before feeling it crawl through me again. It was sharp and fierce, a single nail on the chalkboard. I didn’t want to walk back there again, even though the street was still in view. The sound I had heard still haunting me. I turned to see a chain link fence with a swinging gate. I took a few steps toward it and another sound shoots through me. I could feel the tears welling hot in my eyes as I backed up. Stopping in the middle of the lot as if I were in a minefield. I placed my foot in front of me again, to where I had heard the sound last. It screamed.
I gripped the straps on my backpack and ran toward the gate. The ground lit beneath me, each note striking and strumming as the cords were pulled, plucked, pummeled from below clawing themselves into my chest. I closed my eyes and kept running, their long blistering wails following me until I ran chest first into the fence, missing the gate. I didn’t bother with it now, as the air in my lungs fought to leave, anything to get away from this horrible vibration.
I climbed over the fence and landed on my back. And for a moment the music stopped as my head hit the dirt. The blue in the sky made everything look fake, the clouds like paintings. And that is when I heard it clearly, the sounds of a broken violin.
Trembling, I took out my phone and called, “Mom. I found her.”
I waited on this side of the lot until I saw my mom’s car stuttering to a stop on the road. It was still running when she swung open the door and ran across the field in a straight line toward me. The police cars came a few minutes later.
They brought K9s with them. I was glad they didn’t expect me to walk that field with them. I didn’t get to finish watching them dig as my mom carried me towards the car. I could still hear the violin as we crossed, the pieces of the girl stacked in the black bags beginning to resemble a rhythm, as I passed. My eyes were growing drowsy as we neared the group of people gathering behind the yellow perimeter, amongst them was the disheveled man. There were so many people that I couldn’t tell what his sound was, but I recognized his face and the dirt beneath his nails. I pointed my finger at him and one of the officers noticed.
When they walked toward him, the man didn’t even try to run. Instead, he began to cry. His tears drawing clean lines down his ashen face was the last thing I remembered seeing that night before I fell asleep. It was the first good night I had in over a week.
A few days later we would be told that the dismembered girl’s DNA matched the lock of hair found in the other lot. That the man they apprehended on the scene had previously been a suspect when the girl was reported missing. The police friend of my mom’s told us that they hadn’t released it to the public yet, but the man they took into custody was the violin girl’s brother.
The officer also asked me if I would be willing to come down to the station some time. That there were other pictures he wanted me to look at. And some evidence bags. I don’t know if I can do it, but I do want to help, now that the music is back.