Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer, #111: Music and horror: "The Ghost's CD."

If you have read my blog with any consistency, you know I write about music quite a bit, so I won't elaborate on how and why. You can dip in past posts and won't get very far until you read about my stories that deal with music and musicians, so the one I will discuss today is one of many. It is a horror story and appeared in one of the finest horror journals on the web, The Horror Zine. In The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis talks about ghosts, spirits, and souls who cannot get into heaven and so lurk around the earth, their former home; one of the types he mentions are "library ghosts, who lurk in libraries to see if anyone is reading their books." If writer-ghosts are concerned about the writing they did while they were alive, do ghosts who were musicians show concern about the songs they did before they passed off the scene? My story "The Ghost's CD," suggests they indeed do.

"The Ghost's CD" is about a successful rock and roll singer name Alec McBride. Alec is the lead guitarists and, like Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, and many other successful guitarists, has studied and imitated the guitar styles of the old blues players who styles were foundational to rock and roll. They have hit it big with an updated recording of a song by a bluesman named River Coleman. They have ramped it up, rather like Clapton ramped up the Robert Johnson song, "Crossroads," doing it fast and with more contemporary cadences and rhythms. Alec objects to the major alterations to the song and wants to do it more traditionally, but the band overrules him. The recording goes on to be a major hit. Everything is going well for the band.

Well, almost everything. It seems like they have struck a streak of bad luck. One of the live-in girlfriends of a group member dies from an overdose. The stage collapses two weeks later, injuring Alec and some of the other band members. A couple of months after that, two groupie girls who have come home with the band members get the idea that stopping up the cold air returns in their rooms will keep them warmer. The house has an old-fashioned gravity furnace. When the cold air returns are blocked, carbon monoxide builds up and kills them. The band is exonerated of wrongdoing in the incident, but Alec is concerned at the series of misfortunes he and his colleagues are seeing unfold.

Grand Haven Pier in  winter

One night during a wild winter party in the Michigan beach town of Grand Haven, he walks out on the dock to clear his head and sees an older man there, playing blues guitar. It is cold, too cold to have a guitar outside let alone be playing it. It is dangerous to be on the pier in bad weather, but curiosity drives him on. He approaches the figure and stops to listen. They converse. Alec realizes it is River Coleman—his ghost. He congratulates him on how well he plays guitar and notes he is the only member of his band who has "respect" for the blues. Coleman tells Alec he does justice to his music; and adds, ominously, that whatever happens, justice will be done.

Alec does not understand about justice. He has no idea how to make his band render the song they did in a more traditional way. And it's too late to do that anyway. One night, Alec's girlfriend goes to bed. He goes to his studio to listen to some music by River Coleman. When he touches the button to CD, a jolt of electricity knocks him to the ground.

Alec realizes he has been hit hard. His right index finger is burned and he can barely breathe. But the CD by Coleman is playing. Then he hears Coleman's voice in his head, as he did on the pier at Grand Haven, saying he is coming for him. Though terrified, he can't get up. The jolt of electricity has immobilized him. He senses Coleman's ghost getting closer and soon sees him in the studio. Coleman appears and compliments him on how well he plays guitar and says he can tell Alec imitates his style. Alec asks if Coleman is going to kill him. The ghost of the blues players says he could have done that when the young man touched the CD controls. And he says he didn't come to kill him but to save him. He is worth saving because he has respect for the blues. The other members in the band, he says, don't. And when he says this he becomes scarier. Then he tells him, I think you’ll do fine on your own—doing your own stuff—maybe even throw in a little blues here and there.

Alex falls asleep and wakes up to find his parents, a police officer, and his girlfriend standing over him. They take him to ER and treat him for electrical shock. After he is released from the Emergency Room, they tell him the grim truth:  the other band members, whom he was supposed to join that night, were killed in plane crash on the way to Chicago.

The song they recorded by Coleman, already popular, becomes a mega-hit. His band joins the ranks of performers like Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, who are cut off in the prime of their careers. Alec takes a year off to decide what to do. But he knows he will become a solo artist. He publicly announces he will never do the Coleman song again. He tells his girlfriend he will become a solo performer and not organize a new band.

He has it from a reliable source that he will be fine on his own, doing his own stuff, and maybe throwing a little blues in here and there.

The story appeared in The Horror Zine.  Read it here.

For more titles, check out my Writer's Page.

I would love to hear your comments.