Apprehensions and Other Delusions Read Online Free PDF

out of Cummings Hall some three hours later. “I still want you to see the doctor tomorrow,” Faster was scolding her. “I can’t have you fainting during a performance.”
    “Not to worry,” said Vanessa. She was feeling a bit embarrassed for putting these two men—and the tuner—through an hour of anxiety. “I’ll be fine.”
    “I want to be sure of that,” Faster said, then rounded on Warren as they reached the edge of the street. “What were you thinking, putting all that equipment around her? Didn’t it occur to you it might hurt her?”
    “How could it?” Warren asked as calmly as he was able.
    “I don’t know. It’s your equipment. You should know better than anyone what it’s apt to do.” Faster signaled for his town-car, and kept his hand protectively on Vanessa’s arm.
    “I don’t think it was his equipment,” said Vanessa, startling both men. “I think it was the forte-piano.”
    The two men stared at her with varying expressions of disbelief. Finally Faster spoke. “You sure you’re okay? That sounds a bit ... nuts.”
    “To me, too,” she said, watching as his Lincoln pulled up to the curb. “But it happened before Professor Warren set up his monitors, only not so intensely.”
    “What happened?” Faster demanded, his patience finally failing him. “What are you talking about?”
    “About the fugues,” she said, and laughed sadly. “It set ... I don’t know ... something off. Something that the forte-piano is part of.” Although Faster opened the door for her, she didn’t get in immediately. “It’s still there, you know. It’s still at Lowenhoff, and it always will be.”
    “You mean the instrument?” Warren asked.
    “If that’s what it is,” said Vanessa as she allowed Faster to assist her into the town car. She stared straight ahead as Faster got in and they sped away, leaving Warren alone on the sidewalk.

    About Fugues

    This title refers both to the musical and the psychological form of a fugue, both of which are present in the story.
    Forty years ago, I was allowed to play a forte-piano—the immediate ancestor to the modern pianoforte—for the greater part of a month. The experience made the music of Mozart and his contemporaries much more understandable to me, including the on-going effort to keep the strings in tune.
    There are many legends and stories about possessed musical instruments, and the belief that musical instruments possess magical powers is nothing new. In the 13 th century, a Papal commission was appointed to determine which instruments were holy and which were damnable: those clerics decided that the rebec (ancestor of the violin) was played by the Devil, and the crumhorn (ancestor of the trombone) was holy. Assigning such virtue, or lack of it, to a musical instrument strikes me as chancy, although this forte-piano undoubtedly has an odd kick in its gallop—or perhaps Vanessa has one in hers.

RATS didn’t taste nearly as good as he hoped they would—even spiders were tastier. He managed to choke the third one down, pulling the tail out of his mouth as if it were an unpalatable length of spaghetti. He put this in the little plastic bag where he had already stowed the heads and skins and guts and paws of his other rodent-prey, then closed the bag with a knot. That done, he sat down and waited for the energy to rev through him as he knew it must. This time it hit him hard, making his veins fizz with the force of it. This was so much better than anything he’d gotten from bugs and lizards. He got up and paced around the basement, suddenly too full of vitality to be able to remain still. It was everything that he had hoped, and that thrilled him.
    When the call came for dinner, he made his way up the stairs, the bag of innards and skin at his side. After his feast he was almost convinced he could levitate, so full of life was he. Everything in him was alive, from his hair to his toes. He felt like a hero in a comic book, or maybe an action