Black Mad Wheel by Josh Malerman
Ellen is no longer visible in the metronome and Philip understands that she’s on the floor behind him, feeling what he felt the day Doctor Szands snapped.
Philip looks to the painted goat upon the drum above him. Up close, the drum itself looks different; a cork in the neck of a bottle.
As if there is more open space behind it.
“What you need,” he says, “is a blanket in this bass drum.”
He stands up. Does the man see a drum? Does Ellen?
Philip tries to dislodge it, to pull the cork free.
“Sit down.”
But what’s behind it?
“It dulls the sound, gives it more punch.”
“SIT DOWN!”
Philip hears hooves on wood. Then, in the metronome, the color red, a white swaying beard, and watery eyes lost in an aging face.
He feels a thin, strong hand upon his shoulder and thinks of Mom retrieving him, as he searched for the place within himself, the center of things, when the scales had already been played and the practicing was done, that magic minute of creation, the minute when Philip was free.
The man grabs hold of the drum and the drum becomes simply a painting, hanging on the wall, then a drum once again.
Close up, the old man is older. Deader looking than even when he played a ghost.
Philip looks to the piano and the old man’s expression changes, as if he’s just realizing that he’s in the wrong room, too close to the source of the sound.
Creation. Unearthed.
The man turns quickly to leave. Philip grabs his wrist.
With his new strength, his drug strength, he holds tight to the old man.
Then Philip, still standing, still holding tight to the fractured wrist, plays a song of his own.
One handed.
“Be Here.”
He hears Ellen moaning. He feels the onslaught wash of sound.
But he does not close his eyes.
Instead, he sees the man in red as he’s crushed like a can, so suddenly that it looks like he was taken by a wind, or the wake of a huge rolling wheel.
Ellen is on her side on the floor.
Philip goes to her. She’s pointing to the drum.
“Hiding . . . something . . .” she says.
But Philip already knows this.
He returns to the piano bench, climbs upon it, and removes the drum from the wall.
Behind it is a tunnel. And from that tunnel come voices, ensconced in natural flat echo, the voices of men who call to him, who have recognized the song that he played.
61
Wonderland is no more. The Danes have a new studio, far from downtown. It’s more of a room, really, what was once used as an office, but now houses Duane’s drums, Larry’s amp, and Ross’s blue guitar. Philip’s piano rests against the far wall, so that he has to pass the others as he gets ready to sit down, ready to play. Nobody in Detroit knows about this place. And the Danes look over their shoulders as they arrive, as they enter through the front door, as they wonder, will this be the day the United States government finds us? Will this be the day they take us to similarly nondescript rooms with no instruments to play?
Is this the day they question us until we break?
Philip keeps contact with Stein and Greer, but this, too, is clandestine. Pay phones far from the city. Clipped, brief conversations. And even those don’t feel necessary anymore.
Lovejoy was the only one found dead. Not crushed, though. Larry said he died as naturally as a man could, held prisoner in a stuffy, poorly ventilated cell beneath a desert. Philip wears his red armband now, not because he wants to remember the time shared with the Mad Blond but because it reminds him of the terrors that exist in the shadows just to the right and to the left of the Path.
“What key?” Ross asks, whispering, though he’s about to play through an amplifier. It’s hard not to want to be quiet these days.
And yet, there are precious, magic moments when they get to get loud.
Ellen stands by the door. She always looks concerned these days and Philip knows it’s because of the drugs. He’s asked her to stop telling him how much they have left. The day is coming when he’ll have to face the pain of the injuries he suffered. But when it does, he has a lover, a friend, a nurse to help him.
“F,” he says, fingering the key that hangs from his neck. The F from Every Good Boy Does Fine. The F from FACE. The end of one saying and the start of another.
“All right,” Duane whispers, though he is about to play a drum set. “We ready?”
“Ready,” Larry says.
“Yeah,” Ross says.
“Yes,” Philip says.
His dark skin nearly blending in with the shadows, Duane looks something like a ghost himself as he clicks his sticks together.
The Danes should be quiet. The Danes should lay low. They shouldn’t draw attention to themselves, give someone a reason to call the police, to wonder about the noise coming from the supposedly unoccupied office on Hilton Road.
But today the Path has led somewhere loud.
And so today . . . they will be loud.
“One, two, three, four—”
~lights out~
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In 1985, two years before meeting the guys I’d eventually play 2,000 shows with (touring America as a homeless, crazed band for six years), I was a ten-year-old boy trying to write his first novel. I didn’t finish the book. It was too hard.
In those days, the idea of playing music, in any form, was nuts. No different than if someone had said, “Son, you can be a tree if you wanna.” It wasn’t that I didn’t already believe a man might do anything he wanted to with his life (the full scope of that way of thinking was far off, but its crumb trail was in sight), it was that I thought music was made by someone else. Somebody born to want to do it, perhaps. Someone taller, too. Better hair. Better jacket.
Someone cooler than me.
Other people.
But then . . . I met a couple of those other people.
At its root, Black Mad Wheel is a book about a band. And not a writing session went by without me thinking of the following guys, the guys who not only taught me how to play, to play live, and how to live it, but also introduced me to all the sweet songs in the first place:
Derek Berk–drums
Jason Berkowitz–guitar
Jon Gornbein–drums
Adam Mellin–songwriter/singer/guitar
Mark Owen–songwriter/singer/guitar
Stephen Palmer–guitar
Chad Stocker–bass
Thank you, Kristin Nelson, Wayne Alexander, Ryan Lewis, Candace Lake, and Zack Wagman. Thank you, Ecco/HarperCollins. And thank you (on repeat, echoing into forever), Dave Simmer.
Thank you, too, Allison.
And the High Strung. Again.
Now let’s go make a freakin’ album. How about one in F?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JOSH MALERMAN is the acclaimed author of Bird Box, as well as the lead singer and songwriter for the rock band the High Strung. He lives in Michigan.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
ALSO BY JOSH MALERMAN
Bird Box
CREDITS
COVER DESIGN BY SARA WOOD
COVER IMAGES: © SHUTTERSTOCK [MAN & LETTERING]; © SASHA GUSTOV/GETTY IMAGES [DESERT]
COPYRIGHT
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
BLACK MAD WHEEL. Copyright © 2017 by Josh Malerman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-
FIRST EDITION
EPub Edition May 2017 ISBN 9780062259707
ISBN 978-0-06-225968-4 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-06-267713-6 (international edition)
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON M4W 1A8, Canada
www.harpercollins.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand
Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive
Rosedale 0632
Auckland, New Zealand
www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF, UK
www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
www.harpercollins.com
Josh Malerman, Black Mad Wheel