Frankenplot: Aeolian

 

The bungalow had clearly been empty for some time because the front gate had fallen victim to the tentacles of a fearsome-looking bramble, wrapped python-like around the wrought-iron pattern work. His father kicked it with some force, and it gave way, just enough to shimmy past without consequence.

They had collected the key from the agent's office in the town centre some thirty minutes earlier and driven, in their trusty Vauxhall Wyvern, to this small village some miles away. It was yet another of Mum and Dad's afternoons out looking at vacant properties; something he found quite exciting because every house they looked at had possessed something unexpected.

A narrow pathway through the overgrown garden led to a front door that clearly had a story to tell. Much of the flaking green paint hung exhausted from its host, and two of the four small, frosted panes of glass making up the small, square window, were cracked. A large black wooden knob hung loosely by the keyhole, and a fading sign fixed to the wall to the right of the door had the weather-faded word 'Aeolian' painted on it.

His father inserted one of the two long-shafted keys they'd collected and wiggled it about for some time until eventually turning the lock and twisting the large, black, wobbly knob. The door creaked in protest and gave way to his advances. As he pushed it fully open, the boy was sure he'd felt a strange breeze rush past his face, as if escaping from within. It was warm against his skin as it passed, and he heard a completely unexpected sound, as if someone had just run their finger across the strings of a guitar. His mum noticed his reaction and asked him if he was OK. The boy smiled and said he was.

In the hallway, by the front door, were a number of coat hooks, one of which was occupied by an overcoat and a hat, as if someone had just arrived and hung them up. The hallway was longer than he expected, with a number of open doors on both sides and one at the very end painted a gold colour, which was closed. His parents went straight into the first room on the right and were soon discussing knocking down walls and moving windows, but the boy stood in the hallway, staring at the closed door and wondering why it was painted gold. He walked slowly towards it, as if somehow beckoned.

He was just about to grasp the handle when he heard a strange humming noise coming from inside, and his heart jumped. They'd been told that the bungalow had been empty for several years, but he could sense that someone was in there. He was really quite scared, but felt strangely compelled to turn the handle and push back the door, not daring to step inside until he could see what was in there. It swung back slowly until it came to rest against a stopper, and what was in there was something he'd never seen the like of. He just stood staring at it, rooted to the spot.

The room was completely empty apart from a huge alien creature standing motionless in the centre. The walls were bare, and a varnished border around the edges of the room clearly indicated where a large carpet had once been. He felt the warm breeze again, stroking his face, a breeze unlike any other he'd experienced, a mysterious, warm whisper. The afternoon sun poured in through a large window and cast the alien's huge shadow across the bare floorboards. The boy stared at it, his mind racing, trying to process what exactly he was looking at.

He stepped across the threshold and walked towards it as it stood dominating the room, a giant golden warlord, seven feet tall, with a huge, many-stringed bow, a conqueror from a distant world. He felt yet another movement in the room's warm air, an unnatural disturbance. The large window was firmly closed, and the afternoon was still, yet the air in this room was on the move and, as it did so, the strings of the giant's bow began to speak to him. Softly at first. A low hum on a single frequency, but then joined by another, and then another. It was the same language that he'd heard by the front door, and it seemed to have much to say.

This golden giant was like nothing he'd ever seen before, even in his Eagle comic, where Dan Dare engaged in adventures against the Mekon across the galaxy. Yet here it was, in this abandoned bungalow, sending out strange messages to distant parts of the cosmos.

The boy reached out fearlessly and touched it, and in that same instant the voices stopped abruptly, as if interrupted. He stepped back and instinctively apologised, and the alien heard him and began to speak again in its soft, soothing voice. New frequencies joined in until a whole choir of amazing sounds washed over him, filling the room with such overpowering vibration that the boy closed his eyes as it covered him like a huge blanket.

And it was then that he saw him. The man who must be the owner of the coat in the hallway, standing behind the alien, smiling at him as he ran his fingers across its many-stringed bow, creating these overpowering sounds.

The man looked at him, then at the giant, and smiled again.

'Beautiful, isn't it?' he said.

The boy nodded, unable to speak.

The man's fingers moved again, and the giant responded. A low note trembled across the room, followed by a second, higher sound, and then a third. The boy watched the man's hands moving effortlessly over the strings.

'He can hear you,' the man whispered.

The boy looked up at the alien's enormous golden head. For a moment, he was certain that two dark eyes had opened somewhere beneath its curved brow.

'David?'

His mother's voice.

The music stopped, and the boy opened his eyes. The room was empty. There was no man. No alien. No distant world. Only the afternoon sunlight, the bare floorboards, and the enormous golden creature standing silently in front of him.

'David?'

His mother was standing in the doorway as his father appeared behind her.

'What's he doing in here?' his father asked.

The boy was standing with one hand resting on the polished wooden frame of the enormous instrument. He was staring upwards, completely mesmerised.

His mother looked at him, then at the object, and then back at him.

'Oh,' she said softly, smiling at the giant. 'I certainly didn't expect to find one of these in a place like this.'

The boy turned towards them.

'You saw him, didn't you?'

'Saw who, David?'

'The man.'

His mother crouched beside him.

'What man, darling?'

'The man who was playing it.'

She glanced at her husband, and he smiled back at her.

'There wasn't anyone here, David.'

'Yes, there was. He was standing here, stroking the strings on the alien's bow.'

His father walked slowly around the great golden structure, examining it from every angle.

'I think,' he said, pausing, 'you may have discovered what that word painted on the board by the door means.'

'Aeolian?' his mother asked.

'Aeolian.'

The boy looked back at the sign in his mind and then at the enormous creature in front of him.

'What's aeolian?'

His father ran a finger carefully along the edge of the wooden frame.

'It means related to the wind, David.'

The boy frowned.

'The wind?'

His father nodded.

'Look, I'll show you.'

He crossed the room and opened one of the large windows a fraction, and at first, nothing happened. But then the afternoon breeze found its way into the room, and a single string began to tremble.

The boy's eyes widened.

Another string answered, then another, then a soft chord seemed to float into the room.

'It's called a harp, David. It's a very, very, big harp. It's known as a concert harp.'

The boy stared at it.

'But it looks just like an alien.'

His father laughed quietly. 'I suppose it does.'

The three stood together for a while, fascinated by something so unusual, so large and so out of place.

The breeze moved through the room again, and the strings answered it with a sound so soft that it seemed almost impossible that something so large could create something so delicate.

The boy looked at the harp differently now.

He could see the curved neck, the enormous soundboard, and the rows of strings stretching upwards. He could see how the afternoon light caught the golden varnish. He could even see, perhaps, how the shadow he'd mistaken for the body of some gigantic creature had been cast across the floor. But he still couldn't quite stop seeing the alien.

His mother took his hand, and they left the room together. As they passed through the hallway, the boy looked back through the open door at the golden giant standing there silently in the sunlight. For just a second, he thought he saw the man standing beside it. The man smiled at him, and the boy smiled back as a warm whisper brushed his cheek. His father called him, and he turned away.

On the journey home, the Vauxhall Wyvern hummed steadily along the country road as he excitedly told his parents everything. About the alien. About the golden armour. About the message it was transmitting to a distant planet. About the man who had played the strings and how the creature had spoken to him in a language made entirely from sounds.

His parents listened without interrupting, his mother occasionally turning around in her front seat and smiling at him.

'And what do you think happened when you touched your alien?' she asked.

'It stopped talking.'

'And then?'

'I said sorry to it.'

His father glanced at him in the mirror and smiled.

'And then it started again.'

His mother nodded thoughtfully.

'So perhaps it wasn't an alien after all.'

The boy looked out of the window.

'I know it was a harp,' he said, pausing. 'But it was an alien first.'

His father smiled again.

'I think that's probably fair,' he said. 'Couldn't really be anything else, could it? Certainly not in an abandoned bungalow.'

They drove on as the sun began to sink behind the hedgerows, and the shadows of the trees stretched across the road in long, dark fingers. After a while, his mother spoke.

'That harp was probably designed to respond to the wind. That's why the people who owned it would have called their house, Aeolian.'

The boy was quiet for a moment, thinking about what his mum had just said. Outside, the wind moved through the fields, and he imagined it travelling across the countryside, over the hedges and trees, all the way back to the abandoned bungalow, slipping beneath the golden door and into the empty room, searching out the alien.

He imagined the great harp waiting patiently in the afternoon light and, somewhere beyond the Earth, in another galaxy, a golden warlord receiving the messages it was sending back. The boy closed his eyes and he could almost hear the first note.

Then a second.

Then a third.

And in the darkness, behind his eyelids, the alien began to sing, and he felt its warm breath stroking his face.