The Music Box: Chapter Forty-Five

Emily couldn’t see a thing. All was black as can be, an all-consuming darkness that allowed no sense of anything beyond the self. She realised that even the self wasn’t all that conceivable – she struggled to grasp any idea of where she was, what she was.

“I’ll start by touching my nose,” Emily thought, but there was no sensation of having done so, no matter how she tried. Trying not to panic, she thought through what might have happened. The last thing she recalled was the intensely white light that enveloped her inside the music box. She had heard the choir reach incredible heights of song, an incomprehensible cascading of the most beautiful sounds with which her ears had ever been caressed.

This black was as deep and dark as the white was rich and bright and although she was disconcerted at her inability to make head or tail of it, Emily felt she had at the very least escaped the confines of the music box, which was, she knew, the first step to getting home. A sudden thought struck her – her weightlessness and the ‘foggy’ feel, the lack of a sense of her own corporeality, suggested she had arrived back in the chamber in which she had been thrust into the box in the first place, the one in which Crouch first trapped her and then stole her body.

Now it was all coming back to her. Bernard or Oscar (she couldn’t remember which had agreed) were to arrive separately, and – using whatever technique it was with which they passed through from one side to the other, she had never really found out - with their bodies intact. They would then make sure Crouch’s body was still in the chair where he had left it and still unoccupied, then start the chamber up and get Emily fed from the chamber into his form.

With everything so quiet, Emily began to fear the worst. Who knew whether they were going to arrive as they should? Despite developing a bit of a soft spot for them, Emily was not so deluded that she credited them with any great deal of competence. For all she knew, they had got distracted along the way by a chance passerby, or perhaps came across a morning tea that they simply couldn’t resist.

She did not have to worry long, however, for she soon heard the sound of the chamber coming back to life. Although she still had no feeling of limbs or body parts as such, Emily still felt a surge throw her across the chamber, before squeezing her through a narrow opening. She was tossed about in a looping passage before coming to a sudden halt.

Everything was bright again - Emily could finally see. She looked at her hands to make sure, and almost fell over backwards when she saw the long, pale, slender fingers, the pale half moons at the base of each of the fingernails. Turning them over, the smooth palms were no less a surprise, but somehow less confronting. She looked past them and saw Oscar trying to hide on the stairway – failing miserably, as the railings really didn’t hide all that much and he was a most rotund little man.

“Oscar – you made it!”

Another shock as her voice came out in Crouch’s unmistakeable baritone, the rich tones that had put her at ease sounding decidedly out of place carrying her cry. Oscar seemed to be willing the ground to swallow him then and there, shying a little further back into the shadows. Emily realised he would be scared out of his wits, being addressed so by Crouch.

“Oscar, don’t be afraid – it’s me, Emily!”

Still he held his ground, although he did seem to be poking his head a little higher over the banister.

“Prove it,” he challenged, clearly ready to run (he would never get very far mind you) if need be.

“How?”

He thought about it for a little while.

“Tell me what riddle I asked when I met you in the forest.”

So much had passed since then, Emily was sure she wouldn’t remember. But she had been so annoyed once she realised the riddle was useless to her that it had somehow stuck. She first remembered the fawn, and the rest soon followed.

“What sleeps through a storm, rises afore dawn, shares thoughts with a fawn, is already torn and has never been born?”

Emily was relieved to see Oscar break into a smile.

“I don’t know – tell me.”

“Oscar! You know I don’t know.”

“Oh I know you didn’t, but I wondered if as Crouch you might have been able to tell me.”

Emily felt her temper rise, but then realised what Oscar had said. Perhaps he had a point. Although Crouch had left his body here seemingly empty, surely there was some way of accessing his mind. Whether it was getting into his memory or tapping into the part of his brain that calculated his dastardly little plans, there must be some way of making use of this opportunity to find out what Crouch was up to – and how she could thwart his evil intentions. She had been unable to do so from her dreams, but this was different, this was him, his body she was in.

Yet this was no time for sitting around – Emily had to get going and find out just where Crouch was and what on earth he had been up to since he crammed her in that box, mistakenly believing she would never get out.