Excuse me if I lack social grace, the past few years of my life have been spent in seclusion. My body repulses at the idea of telling this story, but I am afraid that after tonight my mind may be too far gone to repeat it. I want to commit this story to paper, so that people may know how I heard the music of Erich Zann.
The first thing that greeted me at the hallway of the student halls was a beheaded fish. It rested on a wooden cutting board with a butcher knife covered in a mess of guts next to it. I took a couple of steps into the hallway. I was greeted by the head of the fish.
A shirtless ginger held it in his hands as a crowd of people gathered around him. They were all screaming, some of them trying to start chants, some of them simply shouting the word ‘lad’. As the crowd produced phones to etch this moment into eternity, the ginger lifted the fish head in the air, took a deep breath and swallowed it. The drunken crowd went wild; some clapped, some dry heaved, some simply screamed. These people would be my roommates for the next year.
I had moved to Scotland for my studies. The universities back home were small, the job markets were limited and I figured getting a start in an English speaking country could open up more of the world to me. I thought that moving would be the first step towards adulthood, instead I got the student halls.
The building I was moved into was a work-in-progress. The halls had three floors, but only the bottom floor was suited for student accommodation. The other two floors were strictly off limits to us. The closest people ever got to them was sneaking cigarettes in the emergency escape stairwell. Life was contained to the different dorm rooms and a communal kitchen in the center of the halls. I was assigned the room closest to the kitchen. The life in the halls was chaos.
I tried fitting in. After the initial shock of my arrival I stuck around for a couple of drinks, I tried some drugs, I went out to the sweat stenched clubs where everyone would spend their evenings. Yet the binges made me vomit, the pot put me in a self-aware panic and the one time I ‘pulled’ it took me a dozen showers to wash off the shame of my one-night stand. During one outing I even stole a traffic cone with some of the other freshmen. My trophy was proudly displayed in the kitchen but after everyone had gone to sleep I returned the cone back where it belonged. It seemed cruel to let people stumble into the pothole on the street. The cone was there for a reason.
Everyone around me was engaged in wanton self-destruction but seemed to be doing just fine. They would snort horse tranquilizers in the evening, barely be able to talk during the night, but would be functioning students come afternoon. Meanwhile I would stay sober and struggled to get out of bed any hour of the day.
The one habit I did pick up in the halls was smoking. Along with a handful of other smokers I would sneak out to the fire escape stairwell for the occasional cigarette. The staircase had become the smoking room of the halls, someone had draped a condom over the smoke-detector and set up a small jar to serve as the ashtray. Within a week or two the jar was overflowing with stubs. After a month the jar disappeared completely, in its place was a mountain of cigarette butts that everyone just added to. A small gust of wind could feed a poorly put out cigarette and set the whole mound on fire.
It was in the ‘smoking room’ that I would manage to have actual conversations. One-on-one, people strayed away from the caricature of drunken fresher’s culture. They had opinions, they had stories, I even managed to find a handful of people who wanted to check out a jazz concert at the café across the street. Yet as soon as we started to make plans, as soon as other people started getting invited, the group would morph into a crowd. The crowd had a mind of its own. The crowd wanted to go to places where the walls were wet with perspiration. The crowd did not like jazz.
I woke up late October to a knock on my door. It was around half past three it wasn’t the first time I was woken up in the night.
About thirty minutes earlier the kitchen got loud. Two separate groups of club-goers had collided while returning home. All the bars were closed but they still wanted to drink. A meager supply of booze was fetched from their rooms; the rest of the building was searched for alcohol. I was already halfway conscious when someone was screaming about not being able to find anything worth drinking on the forbidden floors. By the time the knock on my door came I was fully awake.
It was the ginger, he had a nasty looking black eye but seemed no less cheery for it, he wanted to know if I had any liquor. I didn’t. He went on to the next door.
The ginger made his rounds and managed to obtain some leftovers from some of the other people in the halls. The newly awakened joined the gathering in the kitchen. The alcohol ran out again. The ginger made a scene of being irritated about the lack of booze. He ran through the halls screaming about how he just wanted one more drink. He finished off his rant by smashing his head through one of the flimsy dorm doors. The door he chose to break through was mine.
His drunken face was embedded in the door. He looked at me in frozen terror, as if he was just planted into this situation out of nowhere, as if he had woken up with his head smashed into the strangest of places. Then he started to laugh. He kept on trying to put on his best Nicholson impression and say “Here’s Johnny!” but his laughter kept on breaking his act. He was almost able to do the whole thing without giggling, but then he paused. He turned his attention inwards, took a deep breath and vomited on my floor. Then he left.
I had a hole in my door and puke on my floor. A couple of people popped by my new window and mumbled half-hearted apologies. Then someone fished out a guitar and the whole crowd engaged in an intoxicated rendition of Wonderwall. I didn’t know what to do.
The thought of leaving the country and moving back home was nothing new. The first week in the halls set up a need to escape and the rest of the stay just provided more justification. I could move back home, go to a local university, be back around my high-school friends, perhaps reconnect with my high-school sweetheart. I kept on trying to assess whether life in Scotland could be salvaged. I didn’t want to leave, withdrawing felt like failure, like I was tested by some foreign force and found wanting. The thought of retreat often kept me up at night as I balanced my options. On the night my door was smashed, however, there were no options. I just wanted out. I just wanted to sleep.
I don’t remember exactly what I said, the anger strung me along without my input. I yelled about the vomit, about the broken door, about how they were keeping everyone in the flat up. It was with the last point that I realized the extent of the gathering; everyone in the halls was present. I was the odd one out.
The crowd jeered at me. Everyone had something to say, but since everyone was talking at the same time I couldn’t make out a word. I listened to the undecipherable wave of hatred. I started to doubt myself. Maybe I was in the wrong here, maybe I was being uptight. But wherever I stood, I just wanted out. I just wanted to sleep. Someone yelled something about the rooms upstairs being free, if I didn’t want to be a part of the crowd I could be on my own, the rest of the freshers nodded on and cheered. Not wanting to listen to another barrage of insults I grabbed my blankets and went upstairs. I took the stairwell to the forbidden floor.
When it became apparent that I am, indeed, leaving, the crowd went wild. A rendition of ‘hey hey, goodbye’ was drunkenly sung as I made my way up the stairwell. I could still hear them singing when I reached the second floor, but as soon as I left the stairwell and closed the door behind me there was complete silence. The entire floor was perfectly still.
The second floor was a perfect copy of the one below. The only visible difference was that it was much cleaner, the walls weren’t smudged, there were no vomit stains on the floor, no broken doors in sight. There also was a draft in the hallway, rather strange on a calm night, but I paid it no mind. The still silence of the floor was the only important part. I sulked off to the room next to the kitchen out of habit. The door was unlocked. I rolled myself up in blankets and passed out.
The next morning I woke up on my own. For the first time since I entered the halls, I came out of my slumber without outside influence. There was no arguments in the hallway, no loud sex, no people smashing their heads through through doors. I just woke up. I woke up in surprisingly good spirits.
Nothing had really changed, but there was calmness in the air. The thoughts of dropping out started to seem rash. My mind raced with possibilities; I could join university societies to meet likeminded people, I could check in again with the smokers who liked jazz, that café across the street seemed ripe for a visit. Things looked hopeful.
I spent a good hour in bed, thinking about how I could whip up my life into better shape. How I could go out there and experience the world and do the things I liked to do back home. Maybe there was a second-hand instrument place where I could pick up a saxophone. It had been a while since I had played, but the appetite to create music started to rise in me. I wanted to compose and read and talk and experience the world. The urge to go and do something got too strong for me to stay in bed. It was a beautiful day. I picked up a book from my old room and went to the café across the street.
That day still sticks in my head. I walked around with a pioneering optimism, rallying myself to face life. Every hurdle seemed passable. Memories of the past didn’t sting. I started to realize that maybe the whole Scotland experiment wasn’t a total failure. I had just had a troublesome arrival and was placed in a community that wasn’t to my liking. I could meet new people, I could try new things, I could be happy.
In the evening I moved the rest of my things to my new room and settled down with a couple of shows. Then I went to sleep. As I drifted off I recall being excited about the day to come, about setting up a life for myself in which I would be happy. That was the last time I felt sane.
I woke up gasping for my breath. After a couple seconds I managed to compose myself, my breathing mellowed, but I still felt a tightness in my chest. Whatever optimism I had during the day was now gone. It was replaced with a feeling of dread. My thoughts were so scattered I couldn’t focus on any specific thing. All I knew was all was ruined and it was all my fault. That’s when I noticed the music.
The music was coming from the room above me. The sound was faint, even in the silence it was difficult to hold on to. Yet as soon as I heard a small succession of the strained notes the melody started to grow. My mind drifted with the music, as it caught on to a string of notes, quieter melodies emerged. I dug my nails into my palms. I squirmed. The music clawed at my soul.
It was a sort of fugue with recurring melodies at its surface but beneath it all there was an inescapable dread. The notes whimpered, as if they were pleading for their life, yet they were intercut with bursts of chaos, as if they knew their plea wouldn’t be answered. The piece sounded like total anarchy, yet had a sort of order about it. Music indescribable with words. It was divorced of any genre, of any culture. It was divorced of anything human.
Yet as uncomfortable as it made me, it drew me in. As much as the music disturbed me, as much as it made my eyes bulge and muscles tense, there was something strangely alluring in it. Something graspable. Something forbidden.
I laid in bed, trying to figure out what instrument could produce such harrowing tones. The more I focused, the louder the music got. I started to recognize a familiar sound in the chaos; an alto saxophone. Without thinking I got up, put my winter coat on and made my way towards the stairwell. Something deep within me was pulling me towards the unearthly melody. Something was demanding I get closer to the source.
As I ascended the stairwell the music grew louder. The louder it got the more layers started to emerge. The melody transcended the instrument it was played on, it chipped away at something darker; a sort of cosmic truth. Whoever created this music was supremely talented. I needed to see them play. At the top of the stairwell I encountered an orange traffic cone. Someone must have stashed it up there, fearing a building inspection of the dorms. I pushed it aside and entered the third floor.
The third floor was barren. There was no carpeting, there was no kitchen, just a long row of doors. A small bit of light emanated from one of them. It was the room from which the music came.
I made my way towards that door. The creaky floor sounded off beneath my feet as I made my way across the hall, the groans of the wood accompanied the music, as if all in existence was part of the maddening tune. I stopped at the door and took a deep breath. I was standing in front of a stranger’s door wearing nothing but my underwear and a winter coat. I wanted to think of what I was going to say to this stranger, but before I knew it my hand had knocked on the door.
The music stopped. For a moment everything was still, as if the person on the other side of the door was pretending they weren’t home. Then the floorboards started to creek. The blinders of an unseen window were pulled shut and then the room went silent again. My common sense was telling me I should leave. The music was gone and my head started to clear. I wanted to be back in bed. Yet my hand knocked for the second time.
A flurry of activity arose on the other side of the door. The wooden floor creaked as someone ran around the room, furniture was rattled, things were pushed around. I could hear him taking deep breaths. Then he opened the door.
His eyes were manic. They leaped all across my body as if he was recognizing a human for the first time in his life. His face modulated between fear and joy, as if he didn’t know which to choose; before me stood a clearly unstable old man.
I introduced myself to him and told him I had heard him play. He opened his mouth to respond but froze. A strained squeak escaped out of his toothless gums. He grabbed me by the hand and led me to the room. I followed.
He immediately made his way towards a small desk and started writing something out on a piece of paper. His room was barren, missing many of the usual pieces of furniture a student room would have. There was no wardrobe, bookshelf or even a bedframe. The old man presumably slept on the old mattress on the floor. The mattress possessed a strange bump, as if something was hiding beneath it. The only furniture in the room was a rickety looking desk and chair. The old man finished writing. He picked up the paper in his bony fingers but as he moved toward me he took pause. He studied me, a glint of pity showed in his eyes, as if whatever was written on that note would bring me great harm. The blinders on the window quivered from an unfelt gust of wind. He handed me the paper.
Excuse me if I lack social grace, it has been many years since I have had a visitor. My name is Erich Zann, my voice is mute but I can play an instrument. Would you like to hear a song?
I nodded. That is why I came there. To hear him play.
Zann excitedly reached beneath his mattress and produced his instrument. As I had guessed, it was an alto saxophone. The alto was in a horrible shape however, covered in dents and scratches, there was no way it could produce any sort of a clear sound. The insanity of the situation started to dawn on me. I wanted to get up and leave but the old man seemed so excited. His eyes now sparked with pure joy, any hint of anxiety had been stifled. He looked at me for reassurance. I nodded. He picked up his sax, started tapping his foot and mouthed a countdown.
Three…
Two…
One…
The old man launched into his song. There was a joyous rage in it, nothing like the music I had heard moments earlier but fascinating nevertheless. Zann played with the mark of a prodigy, his ability on the saxophone were breath taking.
As fascinating as the music was, however, his movements took away the show. He had transformed from an old feeble man to a wild youth dancing across the room. His frail body bounced around off the walls as the piece got more energetic; he came alive through the music. His energy built until he reached a crescendo. Then he fell into his chair.
I applauded. That was hands down the best performance I had ever witnessed. The old man was joyous, his toothless smile beamed. I complimented him once more, but told him that it was not this song I was after. His face froze. I, once again, thanked him for his performance but asked him whether he could play the song he had played earlier. He propped himself up from the chair, took a few labored breaths and then started to tap his feet.
Three…
Two…
One…
The man launched into the same song he had just finished playing. The music was still enthralling but he was exhausted from his previous performance. His fingers started to slip, he was fumbling notes, the previous running around the room was now replaced with a slow shuffle. Seeing the man clearly struggle I interrupted him.
I explained, once again, that I was very thankful for his initial performance but that I wanted to hear the song he had previously played. He avoided looking in my eyes; his gaze kept on shifting over to the window. I repeated both my appreciation and request. He nodded his head.
Three…
Two…
One…
It was the same damned song. I grabbed him. I explained myself once again. I wanted to hear the song that he played before. The man seemed terrified, but I had come far enough to hear what I came to hear. I figured I would jog his memory with the tune itself. I attempted to whistle out a couple of the tones. His eyes bulged at the sound of them. The blinders on the window shuttered. He slapped me.
We both jumped back from shock. He held his hand as if it were some foreign appendage. He looked up at me in horror and pressed the finger to his mouth. Shhhhhh!
He kept on making the sound as he ushered me out of the room. Shhhh!
He slammed the door. I heard him sit down on his mattress. As I stood in the hall I could still hear him shushing something in his room. It was as if my whistling of the notes had been such a brazen insult that he had to calm the cosmos itself. Shhh!
The slap didn’t hurt, Zann was far too frail to cause any pain, but it knocked some sense into me. I was standing in the middle of a locked off area in my underwear and winter coat. I just received a concert from a strange old man who hides at the top of my student halls. None of this was normal. It was time to sleep.
I woke up to an unpleasant surprise. A stern-looking university employee was lecturing me on how breaking housing rules could jeopardize the future of my education. I was forced back down to the chaos of my old room.
A building inspection had arrived early in the morning. They were greeted with stained carpets, broken glass and smashed up doors. The first student they met had a face covered in sharpie cocks. We did not pass inspection.
The halls were, once again, reminded of the rules about student housing; Quiet time after ten PM, no drinking in the halls and an absolute avoidance of the other floors. We were put on a probationary period, there would be a housing inspection coming to our halls every week. Everyone was livid.
Somehow it had become an accepted truth that I was responsible for the building inspection. The fact that there was a reminder e-mail sent out the previous week about university employees coming to the halls was completely irrelevant. This was all somehow my revenge for the door that the ginger slipped into.
Within half an hour of the building inspection people started ‘accidentally’ dropping cans and other garbage through the hole in my door. Apparently it looked just like a trash disposal. I wouldn’t be getting a new door for at least a week.
I spent the whole day in bed. The room reeked with freshly-cleaned vomit, people kept on shouting in the halls, trash kept getting thrown into my room. Yet none of it mattered, the only thing that I could think about was the horrid melody I had heard the night before. I was paralyzed in my bed.
My mind was filled with horrible realizations. As the music played in my head I was consumed with images of home. If I returned my parents would be disappointed, my friends would have moved on, I would be alone. In my heart of hearts I knew that the person who I had cared so much about during my high-school years was now with someone else. A stranger that they had met in a bar, a stranger that they had grown to love, a stranger that was better than me. Erich Zann’s demented melody accompanied all of those thoughts, a soundtrack of the world moving on and leaving me in a shallow grave.
In the evening most of the halls went out to drink. The floor was still not quiet. Knowing that the halls are almost empty, the people who were left behind visited each other’s rooms and engaged in roaring acts of passion. The grunts and moans echoed through the halls, yet the music of Erich Zann persisted in my memory. The sounds of ecstasy became a backing chorus to the otherworldly melody stuck in my head. What once sounded like cries of pleasure now sounded like wails of hopelessness; the tune bent the world, it forced the universe to justify its existence to the beat.
Around midnight the moans had died down. Snoring could be heard from one of the rooms. I had spent the whole day trying to conserve enough willpower to move. My reserves had finally gathered enough energy for me to go have a cigarette. I put my coat on and headed towards the stairwell.
The stairwell was untouched. It seemed like the building inspection had somehow missed all of the fire-code violations. The mountain of cigarette butts still lay where it was the night before, the condom still covered the smoke detector. I lit up and looked outside of the window at the café across the street.
I desperately tried to latch on to the memories of the day I had spent in that café. I searched my soul for some sort of trace of contentment, a sign that the state of things could be redeemed. Beneath my current state there was something else, there was a reality that I lived when the world was fine. I almost tasted that sweet elixir of the past, but then I heard the music.
The memory of Zann’s melody paled in comparison to his harrowing performance. His song reverberated through the stairwell. As soon as those first notes sent a chill down my spine I knew I had no choice. I threw my half smoked cigarette on the pile and ran upstairs.
My movements were not my own. I was present, but it felt as if I had passed on the controls of my body to some other force. I sprinted up the stairs with no attention for my safety. Even though my body shuddered with dread the closer I got to the source of the music, it craved to near it. I needed to hear more.
When I reached the third floor the safety cone was back where it was the night before. I threw it aside, not paying any mind to how it had traveled back to the door. I moved swiftly, but as soon as I reached the wooden floors my movement slowed. I found myself crouched, each step calculated by a force outside of me as to not produce any creaks. I snuck my way towards Zann’s door as the music grew.
The music had always sounded bizarre, but the closer I got the more convinced I was that it was outside of the human realm. Zann played alone, his alto was the most prominent within the composition, but there were other instruments hidden within. Strings, percussion even the hint of a moaning voice could be heard, but only if one focused. When other thoughts entered my mind, such as the insanity of the entire event, the other instruments died down. Yet my focus would always be restored; Zann’s demented melody would not allow for other thoughts to coexist.
I wanted to press my ear against his door, I wanted to be fully consumed by the dark song that he played, but instead, the door opened. A gentle gust of wind had slowly unlocked the door and spread it open without alerting Zann. I could finally see the master at play. The man was clearly in pain.
All of the gusto and energy of the previous performance were gone. Instead of jumping around the room Zann was curled up with his saxophone on the floor. It was as if he was lost at sea and his instrument was the only thing keeping him afloat, as if his music was a cry to be rescued from certain death.
He faced the window, as if he was playing to it. The blinders had been lifted and one could see outside. Except what was outside of Zann’s window wasn’t the quiet skyline of the city. It was pitch darkness. Beyond the glass lay the abyss and within that abyss something called to me. I took another step forward.
The floor creaked.
Zann didn’t even turn around to see where the noise had come from. As soon as the creak sounded off he launched at the blinders and pulled them down. Keeping whatever was beyond those blinders secret was more important than his self-preservation. He held them still as they quivered and only once he was sure that whatever was beyond the window was safely concealed he turned around.
His eyes searched me once again. His face went through a flurry of different emotions until it finally settled. He smiled his toothless smile. A sort of relief seemed to have passed through his body, as if being in company had made whatever terror he was facing subside. He grabbed me by the hand and led me into the room. As soon as I was inside he wrote a quick note on his desk. As he handed me the paper he let out something akin to a laugh. His eyes were wet. He was on the verge of tears.
Excuse me if I lack social grace, my better years are past me and I am not used to others. You have come here for an explanation of the music, and I apologize for withholding that previously. Please, give me some time to explain myself.
I nodded. Zann sat down at his desk and started to diligently write out his story.
As he wrote he would occasionally stop and stare at the page, as if he himself could not believe what he had written. After a moment of shock, he would start to laugh. It was not a laughter of humor, rather an imitation of laughter, something forced, something to coat what was on the paper with a hue of absurdity which he did not see. During these painful bursts of faux-amusement Zann would look over to me for reassurance, as if he wanted me to laugh with him. I would give him a polite chuckle and he would continue writing.
He had about five pages of his story written when he paused again. This time, however, he did not look at the page; he stared at the window. It was imperceptible at first, but as soon as he drew my attention I could hear it too. A low tone came from the outside, the blinders started to vibrate. Zann quickly went back to writing. Now his careful lettering was gone. The man started to furiously scribble, trying to get out as many words as possible. His breath quickened, he started to whimper.
The tone from the window grew. It strengthened in volume and grew in pitch. With every second that the tone advanced Zann started to write more and more erratically. The tone had reached an unbearable tenacity, what was once a whisper in the silence was now an unearthly roar. The blinders bounced up and down on the window, trying to contain whatever force hid behind it.
Zann wrote his last words and leaped to his feet. He pressed the stack of papers into my hand and started to usher me out of the room. He wanted me out, whatever mad writings I had in my hands were to get as far away as possible. That is when the window burst.
It all happened quickly. The tone had reached an unbearable frequency, the glass of the window cracked and exploded beneath its pressure. Suddenly, a blast of wind rose from the window and circled around the room. It started to pull towards the outside. The blinders were ripped away to the darkness beyond, the whole room bent towards the window.
I tried holding on to the papers, but before I knew it they were out of my hands. They flew out of the window and immediately disappeared into the darkness. Whatever was beyond that window was angry; the tone had grown from a high-pitched squeal to a low growl. I wanted to run, but instead my body pulled me closer to the window. The abyss beyond beckoned.
Zann tried to hold me back, but my arm knocked the frail man down. I could hear his whimpers for a few moments, but the growl from the abyss soon overpowered any notion of sound. I tried grabbing on to the table so that I could stop, so that I could turn around and go back to the safety of my own room, but my body refused to cooperate. I reached the window and wrapped my hands around the outside. I was pulled out into the nothingness.
The growl suddenly disappeared. As I leaned outside of the window a still silence took hold. The abyss motioned towards me. My fingers squirmed on the windowsill, I tried to look away, but there was something there that demanded my attention. I was being invited in. I was being ordered in. I jumped.
When my consciousness returned my body was immediately seized with a flurry of pain. I had landed in a bush, breaking most of my fall. My jacket had shielded me from most of the harm, but it was destroyed in the process. I tangled myself out of it, escaping with a couple of scrapes. I watched the fire.
By all accounts it had started in the emergency stairwell. The smoke detector had somehow malfunctioned and by the time the fire was noticed it was far too late to save anything of the building. By sunrise the halls were gone. None of the students were injured, but all of our possessions had turned to ash. The idea of asking about Zann seemed insane. I vowed to keep the events of that night to myself, and until tonight, I have.
I left Scotland shortly after the fire. The university provided us with new halls, and the building I got assigned to was significantly calmer, but I wanted to get as far away from the source of the music as I could. I moved back home and tried to carry on with my life.
On the surface things have been normal since then. I stumbled through my twenties in an unremarkable fashion. I would go to work, I would get paid, I would come back home. I’ve had friends, even the odd relationship, but they never would stay for long. People would filter in and out of my life, but the memory Zann’s music stayed constant.
When I first arrived back home I felt aimless. I would spend days lying in bed wondering what I was meant to do with my life. In a bout of mania I fished out my old saxophone and played it. I figured that perhaps playing some music could make me feel better. When I played my mood had not improved, but whatever took control of me that dreadful night had returned. As soon as I got out a couple of notes, Zann’s melody returned to me, that horrible tune started to burrow its way into my head once more.
I have been practicing. For years I practiced every waking moment that I could afford. I have lived frugally and settled into the life of a hermit. It has taken me years, but bit by bit I was able to rediscover fragments of Zann’s music. Whenever I would play a series of those demented notes, the room would grow cold, the blinds on my window would quiver. I have never been able to play the whole song, sections would emerge in my mind but I lacked the practice to perform the full piece. I have never been able to play the whole song until tonight.
I do not know whether I will come from this performance with my mind in tact. Every fiber of my being is telling me to let this Zann business go and there is nothing more that I would like to do than to wake up and be freed of the music’s grasp. But I have no choice. The melody demands to be heard. What I do now I do not of my own free will. May this document serve as evidence of that.
I bid you a good night, may you turn away when you are faced with temptation.
Three…
Two…
One...