The Tell-Tale Harmonica

     Yes, I have been called mad, it’s true, very mad indeed — I see the young ones pass my porch and point and giggle to themselves — but do not mistake my madness for a lack of harmony in my soul: for I was a musician; a harmonica player; but I was not great, to my everlasting remorse. Yet, it came to me once that I could fashion a musical automaton of sorts; a music box made large with every orchestral instrument for its limbs to play for my listening pleasure. My creation took me years: I started with a Clockwork Grundo and placed woodwinds in its joints, drums on the soles of its feet, and bells in its eye sockets — you get the idea. But my automaton grew too ungainly and rigid; once completed, no matter how I wound its key, all I could elicit was the merest of movements, causing just the faintest tintinnabulation from its lifeless tin eyebells.

     Morose and near defeated, I took a walk into the woods one inky, tenebrous night — only vaguely aware that it happened to be Halloween — when from a cloud of violet smoke before me, a Dark Faerie appeared with a sly grin on her face.

     “What troubles you, Techo?” she demanded.

     When I explained my efforts to create the perfect music machine — explained my desire to make music beyond my natural abilities; music beyond the abilities of any Neopet — she laughed and shot lightning from her fingertips that gave her face a phantasmagoric glow.

     “Is that all?” she sneered. “I’m not really the three wishes type of faerie, but it is Halloween, a night for tricks and treats, so here.” She handed me a smooth and heavy harmonica — how could she have known it was my favourite instrument? — and as she did so, she explained, “This curs…curiously crafted harmonica will give you the power over music itself, but be warned: no gift of this sort comes without a price.”

     I happily, unquestioningly, accepted the faerie’s gift — oh confounded greed! — and ran home to the dilapidated mansion where I live. I brushed through the cobwebs o'erhanging my front door and entered into the gloom that seemed to emanate from the house’s very walls. The lonely rooms seethed and echoed with the haunting refrain of a harmonica not played for some few months, and as I contemplated — and dismissed — the faerie’s warning, I drew her gift from my coat pocket and ascended the stairs to my workshop.

     The moon seemed to bathe the room in a silvery glow and I could just see my abandoned clockwork orchestra — a chimerical monstrosity with faint Grundo features underneath — as it lay upon my workbench. With shaking hands I brought the harmonica to my mouth and the notes that I unleashed were like no music I had ever made: this was a tune of the faerie realm — fast and berserk, no doubt continuing beyond my range of hearing — and although it rang between my ears in a painful, jarring throb, I could not bring the instrument away from my mouth until the melody was finished. And when it was finished…when it was finished, that cursed automaton, that orchestral monstrosity, rolled its Grundoish head towards me, the bells falling from its eye sockets with a burst of euphonious rhyming and chiming.

     I must confess: How it swells! How it dwells! How I immediately dreaded the ringing of those disembodied bells! For as I stood there, harmonica by my side, I vowed to never draw it to my lips again, and yet…I watched in horror as my own arm, beyond my control, brought the accursed instrument to my lips once more. And once again, the tune I played was beyond my abilities — beyond all ken and understanding, with feverish crescendos, my breath coming in ragged gasps — and this time, those newly animate eyebells joined in in a cacophonous syncopation that burst my mind into purple light. Oh what terror their turbulency tells! The clang and clash and roar of those incorporeal bells!

     It went on all night — the maddening counterpoint betwixt harmonica and ghostly bells — until the dawn broke bright and rosy and I collapsed into a heap.

     When I woke from a dreamless sleep, I turned and gazed upon the bells with horror, but their bewitchment seemed ended. I stood and nudged one with my toe and the bell gave just the faintest dull tinkle. Sighing with relief, I grabbed the pair of bells, and along with the accursed harmonica, I buried them ‘neath the floorboards of my study; knowing that it was hubris to want to create music beyond my abilities; understanding at last that true harmony comes from accepting one’s own gifts and limitations.

     As the sun set that evening, I retired to my study to catch up on some reading. But as I opened my novel, I heard a chime beneath my feet. A tintinnabulation, a rhyming and a chiming, then a clamour and a clanging, growing ever louder, until tolling, tolling, rolling in a sort of Runic rhyme, and the harmonica! The harmonica wailed like an avenging spirit in the Haunted Woods, sending chills up and down my spine; it wailed and it whined as the bells distinctly chimed in a symphony of insanity as I sat frozen in my chair. It went on for hours that felt like eternity, and as the next day dawned bright once again, I leapt up, my hands pressed injuriously hard against my ears although the discord had now stopped. But as I searched for the loose floorboards, wanting to remove the blighted instruments and destroy them once and for all, I could not find where I had hidden them. Neither gap nor seam betrayed the spot, all was smooth and impenetrable; my floors seemed sealed by some dark magic.

     It has been a year now, and every night since the first, as darkness falls, I make my way to my study against my will — my feet moving inexorably like some clockwork toy — and am the solo audience to a deranged concerto for bell and harmonica. I have been given the gift of creating music beyond my abilities, and I’m afraid it has made me quite mad.

     Listen? Did you hear that? It sounds like something is moving in the workshop over my head. Yes! Yes! One foot, then two, hitting the floor like kettledrums. The twang of a violin string, the honk of a clarinet; something large and ungainly is making its way towards the staircase. Oh, but the bells are starting to ring underfoot and the harmonica answers the tune; there’s a crash of cymbals on the highest step that nearly drowns them out.

     “Villain!” I shriek towards the staircase. “I admit my hubris! If you are at my command, tear up these floorboards — here! here! — and retrieve the telltale harmonica. Anything to stop the wailing of its unearthly, hideous tune!”

     The cymbals crash to the next step, the bells clang and clatter underfoot, the harmonica improvises a blues riff. And I wait. I wait in my madness to see how this will end. Somewhere in the distance, a Dark Faerie cackles and disappears in a cloud of purple smoke.

     The End.