Scabs by Wrath James White Page A

to imagine what it would feel like to spend an eternity attached to one of those things. She had to keep playing.
     Day fell to night and Lisa lost herself in the labyrinth of notes and melodies. She played until there was no one else in the room but her and her music. Until she forgot why she had to play. Until she forgot everything. Until all memory of death was gone.
    The night enshrouded the entire room in a stygian veil that absorbed the devils into it so that they were invisible to her. Lisa could no longer even see the keys, still she played. She could feel her mother beside her shivering in terror as she stared at the terrible creatures. She could feel the weight of the woman’s fear and exhaustion. She was exhausted too. So terribly exhausted. But she had to keep the music going.
    “Talent does what it can…”
    Hours dragged by like days and still Lisa’s fingers struck the keys without pause. The sun rose back into the sky as Lisa pounded the keys to a Little Richard tune and set again as she slowly plunked out an old somber gospel melody that she’d heard once somewhere she couldn’t remember. She was thirsty, hungry, exhausted, but she let the music lift her outside herself, away from her frail body and its needs. She let it carry her up into the clouds. She played a modern composition by Arvot Part, a minimalist piece that would let her fingers rest. The beasts stirred. One of them with an extra head on each shoulder looked directly at Lisa’s mother and smiled in triplicate, then it turned to Lisa.
    “You did this you know? You called us here.”
    The demon spoke. Then, the melancholy head lolling stupidly on his left shoulder chimed in. It was the face of an elderly woman who looked as if she’d once been quite handsome. Now age and the endless atrocities of hell had weathered her features into wretched ugliness.
    “You called them? You did this? Do you know what you’ve done? Do you know what you’ve done?” The old woman shuddered and fell silent again. A tear raced the length of her cheek. On the creature’s other shoulder sat the head of a boy no older than ten. He said nothing. His face was scarred and burned, the hair completely singed from his scalp, and his eyes were sunken deep into his emaciated skull. All the horrors the boy had witnessed echoed endlessly in his haunted eyes. His bottom lip trembled but he still did not speak, nor did he cry. He just sat there with hate boiling off of him like waves of humidity as he stared at Lisa. That’s when Lisa’s mother began to weep.
    It began as a sprinkling of light tears that splashed on Lisa’s shoulder, moistening her dress. Then she began to sob violently. Her body hitched and spasmed with sorrow as her grief took her over.
    “I’m sorry, Mom. You told me not to. You told me not to play those songs. I should have listened.”
    “It wasn’t you, Lisa. You didn’t do this. No music did this. There’s no music this evil.”
    But Lisa knew. Her mother hadn’t heard Lisa’s last composition. She hadn’t seen reality melt and fold around her as she assaulted the keys as if she were trying to scratch out the piano’s heart. She hadn’t seen the sun turn red as she reached the last crescendo, a violent rolling collision of notes like the sound of time screeching to a halt.
    “I can’t hold on.” Her mother whispered to her. Then she kissed Lisa’s cheek and collapsed into the midst of the awakening beasts.
    “Mom! No!!!”
    Lisa heard her mother’s scream as the demon’s tore into her and began ripping her apart.
    “Keep playing, Lisa! Keep playing!”
    Lisa turned back to her piano and stared at the blood-speckled keys. Her tears struck the ivory turning the red splotches pink as her mother’s screams dulled to a gurgling death rattle. Lisa knew they would be coming for her next, but she wouldn’t be here when they came. She would be off with Beethoven and Mozart playing at the New York Symphony Orchestra. And her Father