by James M. Maskell

The key is to learn how to play quietly and independently right in front of your mother’s eyes. Get down on the floor. Set up your space. Line up books and knickknacks as you build a city street for your toy cars to traverse with little fanfare. Include a bit of innocuous dialogue, maybe even some occasional sound effects suggesting you’ve transported yourself into some playful world of make-believe, all the while remaining totally aware of your surroundings. Respond when she calls your name; don’t look up, but respond so she knows you’re mindful. Her complacency is the goal. Start out in her presence. Be just annoying enough for her to send you into the next room, and soon you’ll be moving about the house however you please.  

This is how I like to imagine gaining access to my older brother’s room when I was five, that there was some calculated decision on my part, carefully crafted by my five-year-old brain. In honesty, he may have simply left his door cracked one day, or my mother could have sent me in there to put some folded laundry on his bed. Who knows? What matters most is, at one point I managed to find myself inside that room unattended. I’m sure I may have gotten myself into all sorts of trouble had I’d dug deep enough, thought to climb up and see what he had on the top shelf of his armoire or tucked inside that cool wooden box on top of his dresser. But I had no reason to look any further than his crate of vinyl records, sitting right there on the floor in front of me. Sometimes at night, he’d let me sit with him and listen in the dark, the only light the blue glow from his stereo receiver. He’d lay on the bed while I sat on the floor nearby, transfixed by the bouncing needle on the VU meter keeping time with the music. Now, in the daytime, I had a chance to see what I’d been listening to, study the images and gain a new understanding of the link between art and sound.   

We’d all had full access to the family records out in the living room, a much better collection than I realized at the time: Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Dolly Parton, Elton John. Covers that had been drawn on and tossed about by any one of us over time, whose dried glue had grown brittle and was failing at the seams, and whose corners were bent and frayed from years of mishandling. We knew them all, knew most of the songs, and enjoyed many of them, felt safe in their familiarity if nothing else. But here in the unfiltered world of my brother’s room were enigmatic covers hiding a world of haunting musical decadence and wonder, a world that years later would grow to be my obsession.  

I double check the hall to be sure my mother is still occupied and crouch down on the floor to begin my examination. The first, a chest of toys tucked away in the attic, open and bursting with life. The teddy bear’s gaze oddly intense as the elephant and troll help the toddler drag the key ring back up into the image like a scene torn from the pages of Lewis Carroll. I catch a fingertip on the corner, flicking the albums slowly forward one by one as the air between softly cushions the transition. I pause at the business handshake: confidence on the left, conflagration on the right, flames scorching the edge of the frame. I flip to the back cover where sand flows from the tear beneath the faceless man in the derby as he stands on the side of the dune offering up a crystal-clear copy of the record itself. Next, the white cover with the spinning wheel, a scattering of flowers and butterflies, planes and zeppelins, all floating around that unsettling, faceless smile. I turn the wheel just right and the band appears in the tiny cut-out windows, then I quickly turn it back, erasing my tracks before flipping to the next selection. A bearded, disheveled, long-haired man leans forward, reaching into his overcoat while his sinister smile suggests the bad intent behind his stare. Another flip and my heart quickens, hands tremble. There she is: pale green face, hollow eyes, long black hair fusing with the blackness of her robe as she stands before the mill, the sky reddening behind her, more visible through the leafless trees as the bitter winter approaches. I want to run but I know she’ll be standing behind me if I turn too quickly. I’m so rapt I don’t hear my mother’s footsteps coming down the hall and when the door creaks open, I jump in terror. My mother only warns me to finish up soon, that my brother will be home in a little while. She peeks into the crate of records, looks back at me with a smile and says, “That one always creeped me out too.” 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James M. Maskell has taught high school English in Massachusetts for over twenty years and writes in the early mornings before heading off to class. His poetry and fiction has been featured in Loud Coffee Press, Lucky Jefferson, and the Dance Cry Dance Break podcast. His first non-fiction work is forthcoming in Windmill: The Hofstra Journal of Art and Literature. You can read his work at jamesmmaskell.com.