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The Phantom

In the City of Music, I am haunted by the cries of the dead.

The souls of deceased humans usually find their way into the afterworld, but occasionally some are misdirected, left behind as unsettled echoes, doomed to rove the world, out of sync with life.

The lost spirits can sense my former status as lord of phantoms, god of the afterworld, but many of them don’t understand that I no longer have the power to grant them safe passage.

I cannot guide them or give them rest. My lack of response infuriates them, so I have become a locus for their anger, the eye of a howling hurricane of wretched souls. I rarely know a moment’s peace.

I’ve been abandoned by my summoner, the one who raised me from my cursed sleep.

He is a hybrid creature, a blend of shape-shifting púca and wicked Gancanagh, love-talker and soul-eater.

I was his goal, his hope, the next step in his complex plan…

and yet he was foiled in his purpose, cheated when his enemies trapped me in this form.

I’m not the powerful ally he wanted. With my memories blurred and my powers reduced to a mere flicker of the inferno they once were, I’m useless to him. Useless to everyone.

The feeling of being unwanted and outcast is familiar to me. I was always hated by the other gods, most of whom still sleep, bound to earth and darkness.

One of the gods is awake, though. I can sense him distantly, can feel the incessant dirge of his wrathful mourning for the glory that once belonged to the Tuatha Dé Danann. He feels me too, and he despises my existence. I try to shut him out of my consciousness, like I do with the ghosts.

Left alone in this subterranean lair while my summoner pursues his goals elsewhere, I wait and I wander, empty of purpose, tortured by voices. I meander through dripping tunnels and forgotten halls, aching and angry.

“Stay here,” my summoner told me before he left. “Stay away from humans at all costs. If you must go out, stay in the shadows and wear this.” He handed me a white mask, designed to cover every feature except my mouth and jaw. “You’re disgusting without it.”

I could not answer him. For weeks after being trapped in this form, I could barely move, and I had trouble speaking my thoughts.

The blond vampire who locked down my powers possessed a compulsive voice, a mental control I’ve never seen, not even in the days of old.

A magical mutation of sorts. I still hear her voice in my head sometimes, a low, sinuous threat, a golden chain, deceptively beautiful and horribly irresistible.

Thanks to the echoes of her voice, the sneering rebuke of my summoner, the distant roar of the sea god, and the cries of the merciless dead, I am going mad.

The only time I feel the slightest relief is when I listen to music.

In my subterranean dwelling I have a radio—my summoner called it an antique—and I listen to it with the volume turned all the way up, to drown out the wails of the ghosts.

There is something called a record player as well, and a few boxes of records my summoner purchased from a shop somewhere in the city.

He said they were cheap, that no one wanted them anymore.

I cannot fathom such disregard for music.

Music is a mercy. It tears my emotions out of my chest and lets them soar in midair, exposed and soothed at the same time.

I began with the radio and the records, but they did not provide enough variety for my voracious appetite.

Before my summoner abandoned me, he left me a few treasures to ensure my survival—a laptop, a phone, and a plastic rectangle called a debit card, apparently connected to a vast supply of human currency.

The laptop sits on a desk, plugged into a yellowed socket in a wall of bare brick.

Through it, I have discovered a world full of music…

and other possibilities. I can purchase food and clothing for this body, and I can have them delivered to the old service door at the end of the canal.

With the laptop, I can investigate any subject as deeply as I desire. I can access a vast library of music composed within the past several decades. Most of my days are spent devouring music, studying its structure, reveling in its ascendancy beyond scientific rules into a realm of creative magic.

And yet, despite having all this at my fingertips, I feel empty, haunted, hollow.

There is an aching void inside me, as deep as the chasm in which I dwelled for centuries.

I am always searching for new music, for a song that will perfectly express everything I feel…

and for the perfect voice that will serve as the balm to my wretched soul.