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Time travel. Reincarnation. Alternate universes. A sick obsession of my own making. I’ve thought of a million different explanations for the things I see, unbidden daydreams of a man I murdered. God damn him to hell, if there is such a place.
This is what I know: my name is Christine Day. I love music, or perhaps I’m haunted by it. And ever since I found one particular lost song, I have been suffering visions of myself in another time and place. There is always music in these stories, and always a composer, a man of great love and even greater cruelty. Twice I killed him, and twice I thought I was rid of him for good, before I accepted that there were more visions to come- an endless supply.
With her town ransacked and burned in a conflict beyond her understanding, a poor Swedish girl huddles unseen in the snow and prepares to die. The only thing that saves her is a lilting melody, so lovely it makes her open her eyes once more. She sees a god, or perhaps an evil spirit- the distinction isn’t clear- with a face so radiant she cannot make out any human features. He carries her away from the wreckage and she grows to become his priestess, forgetting the god for whom she was named.
He loves her, but no mortal woman can lie with a god and live. He needs a human form, and so he orders her to gather one for him in bits and pieces.
Sometimes the visions come when I sleep, and sometimes they seem to blend into what I tentatively call my waking life. I remember murdering the composer who was going to make me a star, I remember leaving his apartment in ruins and a clear trail behind me, but I’ve heard nothing of the incident from the law or the papers. I suppose that night was as real or false as anything else.
A troubadour and a princess fall in love, and every night she listens to his songs beneath her balcony. It can never be- they both know that- for she must marry a man of means, and he must travel on his way. The last night he visits her, he begs her to travel with him, and plays a ballad that breaks her heart. She steps toward him, as if in a trance, and falls from the balcony to her death. The princess loved the troubadour from afar, you see, and never saw the skull that sat beneath the hood of his cloak.
I can’t say that some of the visions haven’t been...beautiful. They lend my life a certain romanticism, poetry perhaps, that I carry with me through the subways and stairwells of New York City. I live my real life as much as I am able to, all the while knowing there will be another one waiting for me soon enough, with all the glamour and terror I could ever wish for. Perhaps not tonight when I close my eyes. But perhaps tomorrow night.
There is a great old house with a maiden desperately trying to escape. Her abductor scarcely needs to chase her, for the house is like a maze, and everywhere she turns she seems to find another locked door. Soon he will be upon her, soon she will be his mistress whether she wills it or not, and all the while she can hear him playing the violin. It comes from every direction, as if the music is woven into the very architecture of the manor. When he starts to sing, his voice as angelic as his intent is wicked, she falls into a swoon.
She awakens in a canopied bed. When he leans down to kiss her, she bites out his tongue.
I destroyed the paper that carried his music, but I carry it in my mind as well. As long as I can hear it in my head, I doubt I’ll ever be rid of him. I don’t know if what I’m seeing are scenes from the past, scenes that might have been, memories from a parallel world or one that never existed, but in all of them the music stays the same.
A penniless urchin sits beneath the window of a great musician, and his practicing lulls her to sleep. When she awakens, she finds jewelry in her lap and blood on her hands. Inside, the music still plays.
Sometimes I find myself speaking in languages I don’t understand. Even in English the way I talk has been forever changed, as I find myself drifting from one era to the next. I shrug off ordinary worries because I know that greater ones wait for me, I drift away from my friends because I have seen so many murdered. (Meg hangs onto me, though, as if with talons, and tries to keep me present and sane. But rather than saving my soul, I believe this has doomed hers. She surfaces in my visions now, with an alarming frequency.)
The only hope I have left, if I cannot escape these visions, is to control them. If they come to me unbidden, then they will now come when I call. As I write this, I sit before a mirror in the dark. All the noise of the city seems to dim when I murmur a song.
Your eyes see but my shadow, my heart is overflowing...
Perhaps this will be one of the times I kill him. Perhaps I will remember everything, all of my other visions, and safeguard myself against loving him. Perhaps this time I shall escape before I ever hear the music. Perhaps.