Upon a Midnight Dream (London Fairy Tales #1)(65)

After the servants had gone to bed, a slow haunting melody began burning in the back of Dominique’s mind. Closing his eyes against the onslaught of music, he put the pillow over his head. But the music would not quit. Minor chords filled with dread and pain drifted in and out of his mind until he thought he would go mad. Finally, unable to keep his body from moving his fingers carefully started playing the melody in the air, imagining the piano keys underneath his finger tips as he played the song that would not leave him.

The song progressed, it became more and more angry. The hair on Dominique’s arms stood on end. Surely he would die this way! The music was finally coming for him! There was no other option in his mind! He had always thought on how he would die. There was nothing simple about dying for any prodigy. For a musician, there is always music. Always a benediction telling the sad tale of a person’s life that had gone unlived.

With a squeal, Dominique ran downstairs to the practice room. If he was to die, he needed to be next to the music, the only hope it seemed was to play that song and pray it never return into his head!

He threw open the doors to the practice room just in time to see his father point a pistol at his mother. She dropped limply to the floor. Dominique tried to scream, but his father had loaded and lifted the pistol again. This time, he pointed it at the music teacher. Mr. Field fell across Dominique’s mother in a hump. His father turned hate filled eyes towards Dominique. With sickening fear, he noticed that both bodies were lifeless, unmoving.

“What are you about boy?”

“Papa!” Dominique froze in place. “Papa, you hurt Mama! What have you done? You—you beast!”

“Beast?” His father laughed, madness etched across his face. He took a stumble to the sideboard and poured himself more brandy, not sure at all on his feet as he took a seat on the sofa. “I give your mother everything! I give you everything, and she repays me with betrayal!”

His voice shook the walls in the room and suddenly Dominique knew where the music had come from. Just as his teacher had said, it had come from within, he had sensed the danger, and the music, once silent as he entered the room, came back full force as his father’s eyes trained on him.

Blood still dripped from the prince’s hands as he smiled and threw the glass of brandy on the ground, shattering it into pieces.

“So you think me a beast, boy?”

Dominique slowly backed away towards the door, his only hope it seemed was to somehow escape the nightmare he had walked into.

“Answer me!” His father wailed throwing another glass to the floor. “Answer me now, boy!”

“No, no, Papa, you are no b-beast.” Tears fell from Dominique’s eyes of their own accord streaking his face with the salty wetness of death.

In a flash his father was behind him locking the doors. The music crescendoed again, the finale—he could hear it; he could see it in his mind’s eye.

“Well, boy. Why don’t you go ahead and play, play for me, play for your dead mother and your wicked teacher. Play for us all!” His shout vibrated off Dominique’s ears. His father thrust his hands into the air as if direction some invisible choir.

He was mad! The teacher’s body lay ever so lightly across his mother’s, he needed to step over them in order to get to the piano. In that moment, Dominique knew he would die, knew that he would never get to play with other little boys. The cold stream by his house wouldn’t get any use, for he would be dead, and dead little boys did not swim in cold streams.

With a deep breath, Dominique sat at the piano and began to play the melody.

His funeral march.

His benediction.

“Ah, such music is so pleasing. It is so sweet, Dominique, it nearly makes me ache with want, which is apparently what your witch of a mother was aching with. Don’t you agree?”

Dominique continued to play, tears now blurring his vision. Perhaps a servant would hear the music and think it odd? His mind rejected the notion. It was impossible, for he was often playing music through the night. But this night was unlike any other.

As he finished the song, his father yelled. “Keep playing!”

So Dominique continued to play and nervously trembled as he did so. He repeated the same song for there was no other melody in his head he could find. His father came up behind him, casting a shadow in the candlelight.

“For your sins, for the sins of your mother, I will punish you once and for all! May you never play again.”

With a curse, his father poured hot wax from nearby candles onto Dominique’s hands. When Dominique screamed and tried to pull away his father merely held his hands next to Dominique’s, taking the punishment with him. His hatred was so deep that he would rather hurt himself and his son than not give any punishment whatsoever.

With a curse, his father threw him to the ground and marched over to the fireplace, taking Dominique’s sheets of music with him.

“No! Papa, no!” Dominique wailed, for he had worked his entire existence on those songs. They were his everything. With a sneer his father threw them into the fire.

“Follow them into the fires of Perdition, for all I care.”

With a scream, Dominique charged his father, his blistered hands reached into the flames, grasping at the remnants of the music. It wasn’t until his hands hit the scorching heat, that he noticed his father was holding them there as well.