The Black Rondeau

So, here's the deal. Tristan is bedridden with COVID right now, so I'm taking over this week. Hell of a way to spend the New Year.

 

I'm Squirrel, musician and audio engineer by day, person-shaped thing that looks into cursed audio by night. Let’s talk about the Black Rondeau.

In our line of work, when you want to research the weird shit we find, sometimes you have to create or perform it. Sometimes that means you have to emulate the Hemaphytes and paint with your own blood, or put on a production of Love's Labours Surrendered, or playing a game of Calliope (never again). In my case, it means trying to perform various pieces of cursed music. Some stuff isn't too bad; sure, Everdeath's discography will make everyone who listens to it have a nosebleed, but that's only a danger if you're on blood thinners. But there is something I will never play again.

The Black Rondeau is an incomplete piece for cello from 1748, and the first recorded performance of it was in 1749, but the most infamous performance took place in Cleveland in the 1970s; if you've ever read about the Severance Music Hall massacre, you now know the cause. 

The sheet music that we have for it is seven pages long and can be played in about seventeen minutes, but it was originally believed to have been thirteen pages and required approximately twenty-three minutes of playtime. The last six pages were destroyed after the original performance.

The piece is notable for requiring two people to play it, despite technically being listed as a soloist piece. One person mans the fingerboard to help generate the chords, while the other actually plays the notes on the strings. It’s a difficult piece to play, and getting it wrong can cause horrible consequences. Getting it right can do even worse things-- again, Severance. 

The 1749 performance was a private one, held in Leipzig. Approximately thirty people were in attendance, and the performance was done by twins, Hans and Alfons Koch. Otto Koch, their father, composed the piece. Hans and Alfons were both cellists in an orchestra at the time, and both of them bemoaned the ease of the pieces they had to play; their father is said to have written their Rondeau in an attempt to challenge them. We’ll get more into what happened during this performance in a little bit.

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The performance I put on occurred in mid 2018. While I did the chords on the fingerboard, I had my brother, “Matt”, play the strings. It was an awkward set up, with me having to sit in his lap. We had an audience of ten people, seven from our community, and three willing participants from outside of it. We took all of the appropriate measures we could-- we left appeasements, we said prayers, we took showers to cleanse ourselves. But the whole time, I was afraid it might not have been enough.

One thing I have to stress about this: if you’re a student of classical music and manage to find a copy of The Black Rondeau and want to play it: don't. It's a test of endurance after you get through the last intact page, and can take anywhere from five minutes to six hours. You can not stop playing.

To play the Rondeau, the cello has to be tuned in a specific manner; the D string has to be slackened, which risks compromising the integrity of the instrument. By contrast, the A string has to be tightened to the point where, if you try to play pizzicato, you end up slicing your fingers open; this is completely intended.

The performance began with a standard canon progression. The sound it made was the musical equivalent of a train wreck-- it sounded utterly wretched, but it was completely enthralling. The three members of the audience from outside of the community tried covering their ears in some manner as we progressed through the first several bars. Matt was clearly uncomfortable playing his cello from high school in a manner that was potentially destructive to the instrument. But that discomfort was nothing compared to what came next.

At the start of the eighth bar of the piece, the playing instructions call for the person who’s manning the fingerboard to pluck the A string as hard as they can. Despite the thickness of the cello's strings, it drew blood. I gasped in pain, and those who weren’t in the community looked ill when they saw blood flowing down the fingerboard. But as it did, the tone of the music literally changed.

I felt like an entire symphony was grabbing onto the fingerboard beside me. Notes that could not have been played by one, two, or maybe even ten people resonated from the instrument, and the temperature plummeted. An invisible, slimy hand came up against my bleeding finger, and an invisible tongue licked my blood from between the strings. The good news was that we had begun playing it correctly: but without the final six pages, how it would go from there was up in the air.

#

In 1749, Hans and Alfons began their performance to an audience of thirty, including some celebrities among the Electorate of Saxony’s musical scene. Accounts of the time confirm a similar finger-slicing to what happened here, with Hans being the one to spill blood. The music that came from the cello after this was described as ‘sonorous and wild… like a murder of crows learning  how to sing an aria’. 

As Hans’s blood flowed down the neck of the cello and began pooling onto the floor, it reportedly flowed uphill from the small pit where they were performing, and up into the audience. It stopped at the front row, and one of the people in attendance there reported that it felt like the blood was somehow ‘looking at me… as if a million invisible eyes were judging my reaction to the piece’.

Others reported feeling claustrophobic in a room that was big enough to hold an audience of two-hundred. One man felt something sharp pressed against and eventually into his skull, right above the eyes, but no blood was produced. Eventually, one woman-- the wife of a nobleman-- stood and bolted for the door.

She found it locked from the outside. And as she panicked, trying to pull it open, the music intensified. 

#

The locked door was likely intended to contain whatever the hell the Black Rondeau summoned. Thankfully, times have changed, and now all that’s needed is a few powerful electromagnets to keep them from escaping.

These beings, what Alfons called ‘oneiroi’, had flooded the room. One of the non-Institute members stood and fled, screaming about how something was trying to strangle him. As he ran out, the electromagnet hummed, and I picked up the brief impression of something falling against the floor with a thump.

At the midpoint of the piece-- at the top of page six-- Matt was required to make his own sacrifice. He pulled away the cello’s bow as I plucked the strings during a brief interlude, and with a grunt of pain, yanked out a lock of his hair, jamming it it into the horse hair of the bow. He continued playing, and the oneiroi howled.

One of the other non-audience members, an older woman, looked around wildly; part of me wonders if she was looking for hidden cameras, like this was some kind of prank show. Our researchers just took notes, some discussing their experiences with each other. Once you experience an unsound or three first-hand, musical aberrations like this cease to really amaze.

Blood continued flowing from my finger, and as I turned the page, my heart sank; we were on the last one, but we had to keep playing to a point at which the oneiroi were satisfied so that they didn’t tear us apart. That happened before-- in 1749.

#

We'll call the man who felt the blade by his eyes Sebastian. After seeing two people faint from fear, he decided to put a stop to the performance, drawing a pistol and aiming it at the performers. “Cease!” he called. “Cease this devilish music at once, or I shall silence you forever!”

Hans and Alfons either didn’t hear him, or didn’t care. Another witness reported at least one of them crying, trying to pull his fingers away.

When Alfons moved to join his hair with the bow, Sebastian loaded and fired his pistol. The bullet hung in the air about three inches in front of the barrel, and was slowly flattened and molded by something. It reportedly glowed red-hot for a moment, before being rolled into a long, needle-like shape, and shoved into his eye.

Sebastian didn’t scream in pain-- he just stood, startled, as lead that was still practically molten metal penetrated his left eye and exited his right. His eyes became clouded by cataracts as he fell unconscious; he would not awaken for the rest of the performance.

That left everyone essentially glued to their seats until the song’s conclusion. Hans and Alfons kept playing like a gun hadn’t just gone off within ten feet of them.

#

We reached the end of Page 7. From there, we had to keep playing to satisfy the oneiroi. Both Matt and I are musicians, but we’d never actively hurt ourselves performing, and this was starting to take a toll. We had some sheet music that we’d managed to adapt for this set-up, something from Beethoven. We could only hope it would suffice. 

The cut on my finger had started to scab over, so I plucked it open again. There’s only one non-community member in the audience by this point, a young woman. She kept trying to look over the shoulders of Institute members to read their notes; one of them invited her into an empty seat, and they began discussing what was happening. We had a new convert, maybe someone to replace us in case shit went fully sideways. 

There was some discordant muttering from the oneiroi. They recognized that we weren’t playing the music that called them forth in the first place, and several of them growled. I kept playing as we transitioned to a more modern piece, something from the 1920s. This seemed to satisfy them.

We renewed the sacrifices every few bars. I had to cut open my finger on the same string, and Matt had to pull out more hair and jam it into the bow while I improvised pizzicato. I felt sick, but there was no applause still, so we couldn’t stop. This was the most difficult performance of a cursed piece I’d ever pulled off.

Twenty minutes turned into twenty-five. Thirty. Forty. I lost count. The group members are looking worried, and a few of them are debating how to safely put a stop to the performance. I just had to keep going until I passed out, or the oneiroi applauded.

#

Hans and Alfons failed to finish their performance.

After two more people collapsed from fright, with Sebastian barely breathing, someone in the audience took the initiative to storm the pit they were playing in. They were a Frenchman named Gernons, and they were directly responsible for the only death that night.

They strode up to the stage, and kicked Hans Koch in the sternum, driving them five feet away from the cello, and interrupting the performance. He began berating Hans in French; what he said is lost to time. But his kick drove Hans directly into a set of invisible arms. First, growling came from around Hans. Then, heat and music filled the room, tones that were both beautiful and incredibly angry.

The heat didn’t ignite Hans. It dried him out, ‘like a tomato’ as one account puts it. He shriveled into a leathery sack (no bones were reported as being seen) before an invisible knife began cutting off a piece of his skin from his back and forming it into a sheet. Blood was splattered onto the page, and musical notes formed on it.

Gernons took the music and fled the room, never to be seen again. All of the candles in the room flickered and died, before spontaneously re-igniting an unknown amount of time later; Alfons was curled up sobbing by the cello, which was completely shattered.

Another casualty resulted from that night; Sebastian, who was completely blind from the cataracts the oneiroi gave him, attempted to get surgery the next year. Said surgeon was a quack doctor, and Sebastian died from complications at age sixty-five.

You may have heard of him; his full name was Johann Sebastian Bach. 

#

Two hours turned into two and a half, then three. I couldn’t feel my fingers. My mouth was a desert. I cried as I tried to stand upright, until my knees buckled, and I fell over, exhausted, tears in my eyes. I once played the violin for six hours, but I didn't have to self-harm every other bar.

There was whispering all around me, and for several minutes, I was sure I was done for. Someone in the group tried to pick up an electromagnet to contain the oneiroi swarming around me, but it would have been a temporary measure; they’ll eventually find me, and I’ll just become another piece of sheet music.

However, Matt managed to finish the performance with a flourish, before he also collapsed. Our eyes met as he landed on the floor and then closed, as we waited for the worst. I muttered for people to evacuate the room, but nobody heard me.

Then, the room broke out into thunderous applause. It’s like I’m in a stadium with the acoustics of a concert hall. My ears rang after three minutes, and it took another five for me to realize that they’ve dispersed. 

That one woman from outside of the research group was a nursing student. After she treated us with some help from one of the Institute's medics, she asked the typical questions (“What the hell was that?” “Who are you people?” “Is anyone going to believe me about this?” “How can I help?”) and the questions are answered in turn (“Long story”, “Concerned parties”, “Probably not”, “You already are.”). We gave her our Telegram link, and we got her on the path to help figure out some of the more bizarre parts of the world of media.

I haven’t played cello since, and even playing guitar is harder, thanks to the scar on my thumb. Like I said, I’m an audio engineer; because of this performance, a lot of the music I make nowadays typically involves a lot of MIDIs in the melodies.

#

The piece of music made from Hans Koch’s skin is called the Bloody Minuet; a short piece, only one page, front and back. I’ve heard that performances of it have occurred as recently as 1995, but it’s fallen off of the face of the earth. Honestly, I’m not even sure if the Bloody Minuet is cursed, or if its just a novelty, with it being printed with human blood and skin. 

I'm one of the Institute's lead music experts, but I don't try to perform classical music anymore. The Black Rondeau was bad enough, but in 2020, I was subjected to one of the Posthumous Symphonies. I recoil at the sight of clarinets almost three years later.

Assuming Tristan's condition improves, he should be back next week. If not, we have plenty of other people who can do essays. 

Can't Get You Outta My Brain

Tristan here. Guess who fucking caught COVID in L.A.?

The material I was going to write about this week is only accessible in-person, so until I’m out of quarantine, you’re going to be hearing from some other members of the Institute. Flora (she/her) is an intern who joined late last year, and has chosen to study anomalous music, something I am woefully unqualified for-- I can’t even tell you a single song that released in the last year, let alone fill you in on the specifics of a literal earworm.

Original essay written by Flora Miller, junior researcher

Novelty songs are popularly regarded as somewhat childish in comparison to other pieces of music, but despite this they sometimes have remarkable staying power. Consider, for example, the long-lasting appeal of the works of “Weird Al” Yankovic, or the ubiquity of “Monster Mash” whenever the month of October rears its head. It is a considerable relief that the song “Can't Get You Outta My Brain” did not experience the same kind of popularity. The origins of this particular track are a bit sketchy at best, and it is difficult to determine how many dormant copies of the song exist, but the earliest recorded incident occurred in August of 2000.

Brian Wilson was a computer programmer and amateur music critic who ran the now-defunct website “Just for the Record”, a blog where he reviewed various albums and the occasional single. Fortunately for the continued existence of humanity, it was not an especially popular blog.

According to Mr. Wilson’s final blog posts, he first encountered the song on a CD entitled “Novelty Hits of the Swingin’ 60s” which he acquired at his local thrift store. The disc contained a number of popular novelty songs from the aforementioned decade, including “Surfin’ Bird”, “The Lurch”, and “The Name Game”. As far as can be determined, aside from “Can't Get You Outta My Brain”, none of the other songs in the collection possess any hazardous traits. His initial review of “Can't Get You Outta My Brain” was as follows:

“Track 24 was a little unusual to me, it was a short little number called ‘Can't Get You Outta My Brain’. Now, most of these songs are at least somewhat familiar to me, but for the life of me I swear I have never even heard of this one before, which is a shame because it’s pretty good! Honestly, with a few minor changes, I would have expected this one to get mainstream success. It’s got a nice, slightly jazzy soft rock instrumental backing, with a beat that just makes you wanna snap your fingers to the rhythm. Definitely good music to dance to.

There’s something weird about the backing though, no matter how many times I listen to it I just can’t quite make out one of the instruments, it’s like nothing I’ve ever heard before. It sounds a little bit like some kind of modified guitar, but there’s this unusual resonance to it that I can’t put into words. It was a little distracting the first time I listened, but now that I’m used to it I think it really works with the song!

The main reason that it’s considered a novelty song is most likely some of the nonsensical lyrics. Aside from the chorus (Baby even though you cause me pain/I can’t get you outta my brain), most of the verses contain frequent nonsense words. For example, the opening verses of the song are ‘Oh my baby is special, a real shaladrak/She always makes my tzagthoth krulanak’. Like, sure, it rhymes, but those aren’t real words, y’know? The whole song is like this, but strangely enough it kinda works. I keep finding myself coming back to this track, it’s a real earworm.”

After completing his initial review of the CD, Mr. Wilson began to show signs that something was wrong. According to a surviving friend, who prefers to remain anonymous, “He kept shaking his head a lot, like it was hurting. Sometimes I’d catch him scratching at it, and I swear when he drew back his hands there would be blood, but he always wore that stupid baseball cap so I couldn’t see the damage. He also never, and I mean never, stopped humming that stupid song.”

After the review of “Novelty Hits of the Swingin’ 60s”, Mr. Wilson proceeded to post 27 consecutive reviews devoted entirely to “Can't Get You Outta My Brain” over the course of a week. During this time, he apparently did not go to work, sleep, or eat, and only consumed the bare minimum amount of water to keep himself alive. The later “reviews” eventually devolved into simple repetitions of the song’s chorus.

Below is an excerpt from one of his later posts:

“It’s beautiful. Legitimately, I think it is the single greatest work of art ever produced. I hope that when humanity goes extinct, our lasting legacy is this song. I want this broadcast throughout the universe, I want every single inch of stone on the planet carved with the lyrics. Everyone needs to know about this song, okay? EVERYONE. I didn’t get the words at first. I didn’t know what zolanor even meant, much less why it would be good for it to be alerious, but now I understand. THEY whispered it to me in my dreams. It hurts sometimes. Baby even though you cause me pain/I just can’t get you outta my brain. Baby even though you cause me pain/I just can’t get you outta my brain. Baby even though you cause me pain/I just can’t get you outta my brain.”

Mr. Wilson’s repetition of the song’s chorus continues for around 5000 words.

During the last week of Mr. Wilson’s life, he produced numerous copies of “Novelty Hits of the Swingin’ 60s”, mailing them out to various addresses, including the White House, multiple radio stations, and several of his friends.

Only 7 days after Mr. Wilson first listened to “Can't Get You Outta My Brain”, he died of an apparent seizure while attempting to send more copies of “Novelty Hits of the Swingin’ 60s” through the mail. Officially, the cause of death was listed as a cerebral hemorrhage. The true autopsy report was never released to the public.

Upon opening up Mr. Wilson’s skull, the pathologist found that a significant portion of his brain had been consumed by unidentified insects, similar in overall appearance to the larvae of Hermetia illucens. Preserved specimens are accessible to members of the Institute, with the address of its storage unit in Indiana available to qualified parties.

As a result of Mr. Wilson’s efforts to share “Can't Get You Outta My Brain”, there were 47 casualties, 4 of whom were members of the Institute. To date, anyone who has listened to a full recording of the song, even once, dies within 1-2 weeks. During this time, victims universally develop an intense fixation upon the song, particularly the incomprehensible lyrics. The exact mechanism through which the hazardous effects are spread are not fully known, but the source is believed to be in the so-called “nonsense words” contained in certain verses. Simply listening to the tune or chorus are not enough to result in fatality, and reading an incomplete portion of the lyrics seems to generally be safe.

Since the initial outbreak, there have been 4 other recorded incidents involving “Novelty Hits of the Swingin’ 60s”, resulting in a total of 13 further casualties, and during one such event a copy of the song was uploaded to YouTube. Fortunately, the video was not picked up by the algorithm, and once detected by the Institute the recording was swiftly taken down via copyright strike.

It is of the utmost importance that any copies of “Can't Get You Outta My Brain” are immediately neutralized, as widespread dissemination of the song could potentially result in the near-total extinction of humanity as a species.

The Concordance Dagger, and How to Deal with Snowmen

Sorry for being radio silent for a moment. To explain why, I need a moment to talk about Hollywood, and Los Angeles as a whole.

Imagine if you took an area of desert seven times the size of Washington, D.C., hired someone to drain the land around it of all water, and packed it with over four million people, several of whom don’t actually live there for tax reasons. Next, imagine it populated with people on the run from the law-- to be exact, run from patent law, as Edison was unwilling to let filmmakers use his camera technology to make films. Now sprinkle in a few decades of bigotry, sex crimes of every flavor, regular crimes of a few lesser flavors, and self-obsession so severe that it makes Narcissus look like Mr. Rogers, and we have modern L.A.

I may be a film student, but I have no illusions about Los Angeles. For God’s sake, the city doesn’t even have decent public transportation, something New York had figured out a century before it got anywhere near L.A.’s modern population.

So why, pray tell, have I wasted the last three weeks of my life in the City of Angels? Let me tell you why.

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Hollywood is several things, but ‘wasteful’ is not one of them-- at least, not when it comes to props and sets. You might be familiar with trivia along the lines of the PKE Meter from Ghostbusters appearing in Suburban Commando, or how a early 2000’s Power Rangers series reused armor from Starship Troopers, or how Forbidden Planet’s Robby the Robot prop has been recycled so many times, it actually has an entry on IMDb as a distinct actor. Stanley Kubrick actually ordered all of the props and sets for 2001: A Space Odyssey destroyed specifically so they couldn’t be re-used for the inevitable sequel. Prop recycling has been common practice in Hollywood for decades.

Certain props, however, fall out of circulation, only to be found years or even decades later-- in some cases, even after the original film has been lost. What drew me to Hollywood in the middle of the holiday season was the alleged appearance of a prop from The Concordance; people who have been reading lately (I thank you for your continued patronage) will know this film has been a bugbear of mine for a while, and I’ve been trying to find an intact copy of it for almost six years. That said, props and pieces of the sets keep popping up, and this was a fairly notable one.

The Concordance is a 1912 silent film set during the 1500s, during a witch trial in central Europe. The titular Concordance is a ritual the film’s protagonist, Ysolde, is attempting to enact in order to catapult her somewhere more civilized, where she’s treated like a human being instead of like a woman in the 1500s. A central prop in the film was a ritual scythe-like dagger used by Ysolde to carry out the sacrifical murders needed to power the Concordance. Like most props up to the modern day, it was easier to just use an actual dagger than to make one out of a flexible or harmless material, and simply make edits to the film to make it appear as if a murder had taken place. But rather than steel or iron, the prop was apparently made of bronze, as the metal’s color made it look suitably ‘unnatural’ on film at the time.

The dagger has been missing since a warehouse fire in 1965, on the backlot of the relatively small RKO spin-off Breaker Motion Pictures. On December 2nd, 2022, it re-appeared in the LAPD evidence impound in their Hollywood precinct. I had no details beyond the fact that it was covered in fresh blood.

“Tristan, surely you’re not going to confess to stealing from a police station on your blog. Do you want to go to jail?” Cecily actually asked me this, but there were about half a dozen instances of “fuck” in there, including at least two “fucknugget”s and one “you fucking moron”.

There are several problems with this thesis: firstly, I did not steal anything, and the circumstances under which I acquired it were legal, for a certain value. Secondly, I am in the process of having any and all charges dismissed or pled down. Thirdly… it’s almost awards season, and with all due disrespect to the LAPD, they have more important anomalous phenomena to get driven mad by this time of year. They aren’t going to miss one potentially paranormal knife when they have to deal with meta-cocaine and celebrity doppelgangers.

I flew down to LAX and took an hour-long cab ride from there to Beverly Hills (L.A. traffic is one of the closest things to Hell an American can experience), where I met my contact; he had experience with extricating items from evidence lockup for research purposes, but he wasn't part of the Institute. Riley, who you may remember from my investigation into Money for Nothing, had agreed to do me another favor in exchange for information I had found in the last few months regarding actress Zelda Pleunick.

His house was small for Beverly Hills, but to someone who grew up in Rural Wisconsin, it was basically the Biltmore Estate, but with several more Fortnite action figures strewn about the floor by Riley’s grandchildren. “Their mom’s got ‘em visiting Universal Studios,” he explains as he pours a measure of bourbon for himself, notably not offering any to me. “And not just the theme park-- Goldblum owes me a favor.”

“Like Jeff Goldblum?” Easily the third-dumbest question I’d asked that week.

“No, Percy Goldblum. Christ, kid, don’t you have a film degree?”

“You looked into me, then?” I asked.

“I looked into your whole organization. You know how fuckin’ surprised I was to learn that the guy who runs you is Egyptian? Figured he’d be some pasty white motherfucker who looked too long at Ivo Dorakis’s Shattered and went crazy.”

That stunned me. “You know Hemaphyte art?”

“Some of the newer stuff’s harmless. There’s going to be a showing in New York next-- but you’re not here for that. You’re here about the knife.” He offered me a seat.

I nodded and sat down, scanning the area for exits, my hand on a bit of Institute tech in my pocket. I noticed we were far away from the windows, no clear lines of sight for anyone to see us talking, but also close enough that I could bolt if I really needed to. “You know,” I said, “There are some more… extreme members of the Institute that want Hollywood to go up in flames.”

“What, like the city?”

“Like the concept. They figure you’re too dangerous to be left alive.” I rolled my shoulders. “You hear about how the entire cast and crew of that Marvel film in Georgia got food poisoning a few years back?”

“Delayed production worse than the pandemic did. America’s ass went through a dozen pairs of--” he paused. “Fucking hell, that was you?”

“Not me personally, but there are people in the Institute who hate the MCU so much that Alan Moore looks like Stan Lee.” I left out the fact that it wasn’t food poisoning.

“Christ. Anyway, the knife.” He leaned back. “From what I can tell, a Jane Doe-- she's alive but refuses to talk to the cops and doesn't have ID on her-- walked into a secondhand store with her clothing all wrecked. She tried to buy all sortsa stuff with weird-lookin’ bills, obvious fakes. Thrift shop owner calls the cops after he realizes the bills are fake. She pulls the knife, police come in and cuff her.

"And the blood on the knife?"

"Fresh. No more than a couple of hours old. That gonna affect the value?"

“It’s not for me to sell. I’m here to get it and store it. Besides, this isn’t the first time I’ve encountered a bloody prop.”

“First time you’ve probably seen one used as a murder weapon, though."

I blinked. "Before I got on the plane, you said they hadn't found a body. Did that change?"

"Murder wasn't done this century." Riley sighed. “So, here’s the deal. The knife was lost in the Breaker Backlot fire back in ‘65. The blaze supposedly killed four people and cost the studio over seven million dollars in lost or damaged props. All of the people who died were workin’ on the same film-- a Bible epic, In the Beginning.”

“Genesis? Ambitious.”

“Yeah, but Hays code meant no Garden of Eden stuff-- restrictions against nudity. Vincent Marché was the director, and the first body they identified-- he just got new caps put on his teeth a week before the fire.”

“Marché… why do I know that name?”

“Probably because his brother Casmir was the closest thing to Epstein you could get in the 1960s. And Vince, shall we say, partook of his brother’s supply.”

“How do you know this?” I grimaced. “You’re… sixty-five? You wouldn’t even be in high school when this happened.”

“Sixty-four. And my family’s old Hollywood; my uncle worked as gofer on a lot of BMP’s films, and when I was getting into the industry, he gave me a list of people to stay the fuck away from. And no, you can’t see the list.” He took a drink of his bourbon. “Casmir caught a bullet in September of ‘83, and I’ve always wanted to shake hands with the son of a bitch who shot him.”

I nodded. “The second victim, then?”

“Simon Tzan.”

I blinked. “Like… Tarzan: Force of Nature Simon Tzan? Edgar Margullis’s Treasure Island Simon Tzan?”

“Yeah, everyone forgets he died in ‘65 because his last film got released in ‘72. He had polio as a kid, damage to his bones is how they managed to figure out it was him. He was meant to play Adam. He got along really well with the kid they got to play Cain. He was the third body-- you wouldn’t know him, eighteen-year-old named Sam Yanner. Got cast because he looked just enough like Tzan that he could pass as his son. Yanner is the only one who we know didn’t die in the fire.”

I blinked. “But you said he was the third body?”

“Yeah, but the fact that he had knife wounds all over his back, including one in the base of his skull, the M.E. was damn sure that he died before the fire started. Shape of the blade matched the dagger you're after.”

I winced. “At least he died quickly.”

"Small mercies." Riley shook his head.  “Then we have the fourth person, the reason they were all in the prop warehouse that night. Gwen Lyons. She was meant to play Eve.” He shut his eyes, and took a sip of his drink. “The way my uncle told it… she was getting ‘uppity’ with the three of them. There was a scene where Eve confronts Cain after he murdered Abel, and Yanner ‘ad-libbed’ feeling her up.”

“Fucking Christ.”

“Yeah. She slapped him and walked off the set. Tzan tried to apologize on Yanner’s behalf, but…” He sighed. “My uncle said they decided to ‘teach her a lesson’, and the school supplies were a glass of Jack with enough benzo to kill an infant. They dragged her into the prop warehouse because it was dark, unsecured, and… there were a lot of things they could use to…” He sighed. “To hurt her.”

That statement sunk in. “And… Gwen? You said there were three bodies. What about her?”

“Never found, but it was assumed she was incinerated.” 

As he raised his glass to his lips to finish off his bourbon, I said, “Bullshit.”

“Huh?”

“A fire has to be at least 1400 Fahrenheit to completely incinerate a human body.” I stood up and started pacing. “Fatal burns can be caused by temperatures as low as 180 Fahrenheit, but given the state of other props in the warehouse, the fire couldn't have been hotter than 550-- aluminum props were damaged, but they weren’t slagged. And bronze doesn’t melt until you get up to the thousands….”

Riley had a look on his face that made me wonder if he wanted to call the police, or the psych unit. “You… know a lot about fire. Should I be worried?”

I shook my head. “My dad was a firefighter. Retired after fighting a freak blaze in Douglas County back in 2015.” I sat back down, “Point is, there should have been no reason the dagger from The Concordance was lost when even the aluminum props were undamaged. And the absence of the body…” .

My eyes widen and I spring out of my seat. “God dammit. I hope I’m not right here.”

“What?”

I paced again, scratching my head. “Certain… items used to produce forbidden media can take on… odd properties. Vincenzo di Monteriggioni’s brushes can supposedly transmute oil paints into blood, the Typhon scroll constantly produces salt water, and the instruments that play the Posthumous Symphony-- I’m getting off track here.” I shook my head. “What do you actually know about The Concordance, Riley?”

“Just what you told me in your email. Witch kills people, and uses the magic to teleport somewhere where they’ll treat her decent.”

“She… doesn’t teleport, though.” I swallowed. “Ysolde’s spell… it’s alive, and it comes to the conclusion that she can never, and will never, be happy in a world where superstitious men rule. It takes her out of the 1500s… and into the middle of London on December 31st, 1910.” I’m shaking as I look at Riley. “The Concordance, among other things, was notable for being one of the first depictions of time travel in film.”

Riley gawps at me for several minutes as he processes what I just said. Then, he laughs. “You can’t be serious, kid. Time travel? That would…” He paused. “That…” he looks through texts on his phone. He gets the same nauseous look that people whose worldview has been upended tend to get in these circumstances. He pours himself another glass of bourbon, hand shaking as he types out a text. 

“Riley?”

“...my contact in the Hollywood precinct, I… I asked him why they thought the bills were counterfeit.” He licked his lips. “The Doe was trying to pay with twenties and fifties, but… none of them had security features. No reflective ink, no watermarks… and none of them have dates of issue after 1963.”

We were both still for a moment. Riley hoped it wasn't real; I’m dreaded that it was. “I need to get to the Hollywood Precinct now.”

“What?” Riley snorts. “Are fucking time cops going to come to take her away?”

Riley’s lack of imagination is probably one of the main reasons he’s such a successful producer. By the time he’s poured himself another drink, I’ve ordered an Uber to take me to Hollywood. By the time he cracks the time cop joke, it’s arrived. “I’ll text you once she’s safe.”

“Safe from what?” Riley calls after me as I nearly tripped on an action figure in the front lobby. “Kid!”

#

Oscar Wilde published an essay in 1891 called The Decay of Lying. One of the main points in it is that Life imitates Art more than Art imitates Life. But things have gotten far more complex since Wilde died; in the modern day, Life imitates Art because Art rules Life.

Look around you right now. If you’re in public, how many people can you see wearing some sort of clothing with a video tv or film reference on it? If you’re on your phone, how many apps do you have installed that are some kind of microtransaction-fueled game? If you’re at your computer, can you honestly tell me that somewhere in the last two dozen Youtube videos you watched, there isn’t a clip of some show or anime, or a trailer for a video game, or some thinkpiece about how Game of Thrones Season 8 wasn’t a complete dumpster fire? When was the last time you quoted Tv Tropes in a conversation?

Life imitates Art because Art pervades Life. But there’s a line that cannot be crossed; it’s one thing if a conversation you had with your father reminds you of a novel you just finished, but it’s another if characters, locations, phenomena or items from that work starts bleeding into reality. Bad things happen. 

People were gathered outside of the Hollywood Precinct; I could hear a fire alarm blaring within. The entities I described emit massive amounts of ozone; in a smog-filled hellhole like L.A, it wasn’t an unfamiliar scent, but someone probably assumed there was an electrical fire and pulled the alarm. The fire department wasn’t there yet, but I was at a loss as to how to actually get in--

And that’s when a member of the LAPD came up to me. He looked like he was a detective, badge on his belt, gun beneath his coat, and… at first, I thought the look on his face was anger at some tourist gawping at the incompetence of the LAPD, but then I realize the sheer terror in his eyes. “Are you Tristan?”

I started to bolt. He puts out his hands. “Whoah, easy. Riley called, he said that… said that you could take care of what… of what’s happening in there. Can you?”

I inspected the crowd, plan formulating in my skull. “Is there another way in?”

“Fire exit around the back.” He starts leading me there. “How the hell are you meant to help? You’re a kid.”

“I’m twenty-seven, and I’ve gotten rid of these things a few times.”

The fire exit was wide open. “Good news is that they hate the noise. Was she alive when you last saw her?”

“Yeah. I think so. But she… she wasn’t well. We found benzo in her system, and she was having trouble waking up.”

“Then there’s probably hope.” I entered the deafening precinct, light and sound threatening to overwhelm me, but beneath it all, I hear screaming from the direction of the holding cells. As I entered, I saw a trio of beings around the cell holding Ms. Jane Doe-- or, as I was now assuming, Ms. Gwen Lyons.

There are a variety of names for these entities; for the sake of simplicity, let’s call them Snowmen. They look roughly like people-- body, two arms, two legs, something vaguely head-shaped-- but they look, and sound, like they’re made of television static, or ‘snow’. There’s a constant low, crackling drone when you’re in their presence, a white noise that threatens to overtake all thoughts and leave you helpless. If they touch you, they pass right through you, but they can leave you numb for weeks, or even months, at a time; a colleague of mine ran through one in November 2019, and couldn’t feel the left side of her body until next June. And that’s if you aren’t their target. 

In the modern age, they’ve become their own worst enemy. Snowmen emit massive amounts of ozone, which anyone who’s touched a lightbulb in the last century will tell you is a scent associated with electrical fires. Modern fire alarms produce a sound that the Snowmen hate, and it also blocks out their white noise. The ones that are in front of the cell look like they’re writhing in pain, until I come in.

And I swear, for the barest instant, that they recognize me. There’s something about the cadence of their white noise that changes when they see me, almost inquisitive, like ‘hey, remember me?’. 

“You don’t want her,” I said. “She’s innocent. She’s here by accident.”

One of them managed to adapt to the sound, and began melting through the bars of the holding cell. Gwen screamed.

“You don’t want her!” I repeat. “I can give you what you want,” I admit, reluctantly. “Just… don’t take her. Please?”

The Snowmen leaned in close to me, their bodies of static casting a glow upon my face. “Look, you don’t even have to destroy it. I… I think I can neutralize it. Do you understand? Neutralize? Make inert? Break?”

They peeled back from me, and just stood there. I fired off a quick text to Riley, and he responded with details as to where the dagger is being kept. What I did next made me die a little inside, both as someone who’s studied The Concordance, and someone who believes in the preservation of film history.

The evidence bin was easy enough to find. The dagger was beautiful; it was cast entirely out of bronze, and it still shone in my hands as brightly as it must have when The Concordance was being made over a century ago, barring the blood across the sickle-like blade. For a moment, I can’t bring myself to do it; then I hear screaming from the holding cells, and know it has to be done.

I found what I needed in the maintenance closet-- a drill. I drilled straight through the blade in front of the Snowmen, and once it got weak enough, I snapped it in half in front of them. We’re meant to say something to the Snowmen when they leave, some sort of ritual the Institute’s head figured out back in the 90’s. I struggled with the pronunciation, they got the gist of it. “Xekínise, Eumenides.” Begone, Gracious Ones. 

The Snowmen faded away. Gwen was left sitting in her cell, confused, and sobbing.

#

For legal reasons, I can’t disclose what happened to Gwen, but I can confirm that the woman in the cell was, in fact, Gwen Lyons, removed from the 1960s to the modern day. Rest assured that, for now, she is safe.

The dagger was rendered inert by my damage, as promised. The Snowmen haven’t shown up again to check up on it, at the very least, which is something that does happen. I’ve entertained the thought of getting it reforged into its proper shape, but for now, both halves are on display on the wall above my computer.

As for me… I discovered that Riley’s power over Hollywood, however vast it may be, isn’t immutable. He doesn’t know every cop, and I ended up with a pair of taser bolts in my back when I tried to get out of the station through the fire exit. I was arrested for trespassing, destruction of evidence, assisting escape, instigating a false fire alarm, and a bevy of other things.

In short: for Christmas, I have a court date. The only reason I’m writing this from my computer in Wisconsin and not from a hotel room with an ankle monitor attached to me is that the Institute has very good lawyers. Unfortunately, said lawyers have asked me to lay low until the New Year, but they said posting an update should be fine.

So, Happy 2023 everyone, and may your pursuits of knowledge not end up with you getting handcuffed.