On Monday mornings, I send out a story via email: ultra-brief tales of 1,000 words or more, usually in genres including horror, science fiction, and the supernatural. Those stories collectively are called Once Upon A Time. I’ve also published several ebooks and compendium volumes of those stories so far.

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Here's story 220, of 240 so far.

Round the Corner

Bill McCorquodale had no problem with the old guy next door, whose name was Jim something. He was in his late seventies at least, but active enough for his age, and always courteous and accommodating. Older neighbours tended to be that way, probably because they needed you more than you needed them.

It had been almost a year since Bill had moved in, just retired but still on the right side of his sixties. He got out a handful of years early, mostly due to stress and anxiety from personal circumstances, but he liked to tell people that it was for good behaviour. In nearly half a century of employment, he’d only ever worked for two companies. He’d worked his way up from coffee boy to apprentice to senior engineer to VP over the course of a few decades, and when he finally walked out the door for the last time, he truly knew that he wouldn’t miss any of it. He had been right.

Fresh from a divorce two years earlier, Bill knew something else, too: he would never have another serious relationship with a woman. At his age, he might never have any kind of relationship again, but if he did, it would be as casual as he could make it. He’d done all that already, and it had worked really well until it hadn’t anymore. He considered that part of his life fully explored and concluded.

The two men got into a habit of nodding to each other, and exchanging pleasantries and small talk when it was appropriate and necessary to do so. Bill put out Jim’s bins on the proper days, and offered to help with any bulky deliveries the older man might be receiving, and in turn Jim treated Bill’s garden as well as his own, knowing that Bill had no particular interest in the green things of the world. It was amicable and ideal for both.

Bill had the feeling that the old guy was in need of a friend, because Jim would often talk for longer than was strictly within the bounds of etiquette for two men who weren’t related by either blood or marriage, but that was an acceptable burden to bear. As time rolled on, he even began to feel responsible for keeping an eye on his neighbour, especially if the weather turned particularly cold, or he hadn’t seen him in a few days.

On one fine summer afternoon, Bill was in his garden just to tear up some boxes for the recycling, and Jim appeared with two tall cans in his hands, offering Bill his choice of a cider or a stout. Neither would have been in his first several preferences at the pub, but Bill smiled and chose the cider, accepting the convivial drink despite it being only a couple of hours since lunchtime. He reflected that it would probably be his earliest drink in about two decades, but it was a social gesture, and such things were to be accepted without a compelling reason otherwise.

It was a pleasant hour or so, as the two men spoke about the things that men speak about. Jim’s car, in need of a spark plug. Bill’s vague intention to repaint his living room. The welcome change in the weather. Politics, and the news, and a little bit from Jim’s long-ago career as a teacher. Eventually, the talk turned to family, and already knowing Bill’s situation, the older man was circumspect, simply asking how his relatives were. Bill appreciated the tact.

“And how’s your wife?” he asked, realising that he hadn’t seen Jim’s spouse in a week or more. It wasn’t unusual, but he felt he should ask. Older people could go downhill without warning.

“Fine, fine,” Jim replied, but there was something in his tone that made Bill think he should press the point.

“Puttering around indoors?” he asked, but Jim shook his head.

“No, she’s out,” he said. “Round the corner. I expect she’ll be back before long.”

Bill nodded, satisfied, because he had no reason to disbelieve the other man. It felt like he needed to say something else, though, and he settled on something that had been in his mind several times but he’d always neglected to bring it up.

“She’s some kind of musician, is that right? A string instrument. I hear her sometimes when I’ve got the window open. She’s really good.”

Jim smiled, and there was both pride and sadness in it. “Violin,” he replied. “She was in an orchestra for much of her working life. Been playing since she was five years old. I don’t like to brag, but I’ve heard a lot of violinists in my time, and she’s by far the most accomplished.”

Bill nodded and took another sip of the too-sweet cider. He could believe it about Jim’s wife; the music he’d heard was haunting, like there were other violins playing alongside her, and maybe some additional, less identifiable instruments in the background. She must be quite the virtuoso.

“Did she get to travel with it much?” he asked, for something to say, and Jim looked at him strangely.

“Too much,” he replied, his voice quiet now. “Too much, and too far. That’s the worst part.”

Bill was unsure how to reply to the sudden note of seriousness, and he was in the process of coming up with something conciliatory when Jim stood up. “Come with me,” he said. “I’ll show you.”

Various responses popped into Bill’s mind, but the only viable one was the one he chose. Setting the can down on the plastic garden table, he got up and followed Jim onto his property, then into the house, up the stairs, and to a room at the far end of the upper hall. Jim opened the door and walked inside, gesturing for Bill to follow.

The room was dark because the curtains were drawn despite the beauty of the day outside. There was a music stand with some handwritten sheet music on it, and the notation looked unfamiliar to Bill. There was also a small desk with a simple stool, and an armchair that had seen better days. Finally, on a side table, there was a violin case lying open, revealing the red velvet interior. It was empty.

“That’s the corner I meant,” Jim said, pointing to the junction of the two walls diagonally opposite them. There was nothing there, the nearest object being the side table a couple of metres away. It was a conspicuously empty space, and Bill was confused. He was about to ask for an explanation when Jim began to speak again.

“It’s her music, I think,” he said. “Or her, or both together. She can play things I’ve never heard anywhere else; bring sounds from that violin that you wouldn’t believe. It would put a chill up your spine. And somehow it lets her travel. That’s where she goes.”

He was pointing into the bare corner again, and Bill had the queasy feeling that perhaps his neighbour was succumbing to cognitive decline due to his age — but then he heard it. The faintest sound, as if from a mile away through the clear air, but the windows were closed behind the curtains. Musical notes, shrieking and wailing, distorted and echoing, but getting closer. It was coming from the corner.

“Here she comes now,” Jim said, as if this was nothing at all unusual. “The music opens up the edges between things, you know. Lets her go to places beyond. I’m not sure where. But she says it’s beautiful. The things that live there, the language they speak is like the sound of the violin.”

Bill instinctively took a step back, but then he saw the scene before him begin to shift. The internal geometry of the room seemed different somehow, making him feel off-balance. The bare corner which had been perfectly normal a moment ago now had the unsettling quality of looking like it might protrude into the room instead, and didn’t the walls perhaps now look like they didn’t quite match up? A trick of perspective, changing without moving at all, as his eyes and mind struggled to process it.

It was a normal room, but it also wasn’t, and for a sickening moment it was almost as if Bill could see the cuboid space from the outside, vertices splayed at impossible angles, creating a higher-dimensional pathway that his brain insisted couldn’t possibly be there. Then he saw the old woman he’s spoken to a number of times before in perfectly ordinary circumstances, now anything but.

She was behind and between and beyond the edges, moving without motion, squeezing through and soaring over the walls, violin tucked under her chin and bow flying furiously, commanding the movements of the angles by the power of her music alone. A few seconds later she stood in the room in front of the two men, eyes blazing with accomplishment even as Bill felt his mind begin to lose its grip on sanity.

“Welcome home, love,” Jim said.

JINX

KESTREL face a new and terrifying enemy: an all-seeing mastermind who already knows exactly who they are, and many of their deepest secrets. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the line between privacy and liberty is razor-thin…

Book 3 in the KESTREL action-thriller series.

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