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The Piper

by Patrick Malone

276 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #03-1443; ISBN 1-4120-1074-8; US$24.00, C$27.00, EUR19.50, £14.00

Seducing children, and the insane, with their darkest desires, an ancient evil kills at peak of pleasure. Can a blind flautist, and her crippled student end the Piper's danse d'mort?

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about the book      about the author      excerpts      catalogue info

About the Book Kelly O'Neill, a lovely, young, and accomplished flautist, overcomes her blindness, determined to live life to the fullest and obtain her heart's desire: playing with the New York Philharmonic. She gets by with the help of her close friend and fellow musician, Marta, her loyal canine companion Beau, and Curtis, her favorite 12 year-old crippled music student. All she wants now is that special someone in her life, but she learned very early that having a handicap can make romance elusive. For the first in a series of events celebrating ancient music from around the world, Professor Erik Grossman travels to the U.S. from Germany with his country's newest archeological treasure, a flute as old as it is unique, which he will play during the event. Marta is determined to see Kelly make a romantic connection with the handsome and worldly professor, but catastrophe strikes during Erik's performance. The ancient flute is stolen that night, and new york detectives investigate the theft while impossibly horrific events lead the professor to entertain an unimagined possibility. Professor Grossman's theories are met with disbelief by the detectives, but Kelly remains understanding and supportive though her mind reels from the frightening tale it tells her. In an unfortunate turn of events involving her student, Kelly is forced to become more involved than the professor would wish, and soon they all will come to know exactly what it means to pay The Piper.

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About the Author After enlisting in the U.S. Navy in 1987, I wandered through six different countries and five different universities and colleges. I began work at GENENTECH as a research assistant in 1998, and later took a faculty position at the UCSF School of Medicine, under Nobel laureate Dr. Stanley Prusiner. Later, working in the American Red Cross Viral Testing Laboratory, I fell victim to a terrifying accident and have not been back to biomedical research since. After modeling and acting for a year, first in Portland, Oregon, and then in Hollywood, I discovered a great passion for writing. In the last year I have completed 14 feature-length screenplays, 3 TV pilots, 4 episodics for current TV series, two novels and 6 short stories. This year, I plan to sleep. Maybe.

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Excerpts

All the little boys and girls,
with rosy cheeks and flaxen curls,
and sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls,
tripping and skipping, ran merrily after
the wonderful music with shouting and laughter.

When, lo, as they reached the mountain-side,
a wondrous portal opened wide,
as if a cavern was suddenly hollowed;
and the piper advanced and the children followed,
and when all were in to the very last,
the door in the mountain-side shut fast.
- Robert Browning

Diesel exhaust and old sweat dance a dervish frenzy, whirling like bats on a malodorous wind, driving bird and beast deeper into the dark woods. Like the Reaper's scythe tearing through the ancient forest, heavy machinery ground granite to sand beneath steel treads, leading the way for grunting laborers, stabbing the turf with pick and spade. Herbert Weisgerber, the general foreman, stood behind a massive, work-weary pickup truck, eating his lunch over a surveyor's map spread across the tailgate. After unsuccessfully swallowing an overzealous bite, he forced a cold, sloppy gulp from this morning's coffee while watching an excavator twist around on its base, bringing steel fangs to bear on Earth's naked flesh. The bucket bit hard, stripping away root and stone, like a wolf shredding tendon and crushing bone between its twenty-five hundred pounds per square inch jaws. The driver shifted his levers, lifted the load free, and dropped it thunderously into a groaning dump truck.

The driver set his big machine to task once again, his own mind still in neutral, when crumbling dirt obscured something long and silver in the fresh hole. Greedily curious, the heavy man clambered out of the excavator, and lumbered over to inspect the site. Looking over both shoulders first, the corpulent driver filtered dirt through his thick fingers, searching for anything of value. After several handfuls and a torn fingernail, the Earth revealed some of her long kept secrets: an old coin, and a child's femur.

"Mein gott- Mein gott in Himmel!" He screamed, dropping the bone with terrified disgust, and ran to the foreman in growing panic. Quickly, other laborers gathered behind him to satisfy their own ghoulish curiosities, digging through sandy loam and human clay, their hands pushing, ripping, and scraping away ancient soil to expose more than a dozen small skulls and broken limbs.

"Mein Herr! Herr Weisgerber! I swear it ... I had no hand in this!" The driver shouted in German, staggering in fright, and falling to his urine stained knees before the foreman. Slowly, he raised his muddied hands to show his employer the prize he'd stolen from the mass grave, lowering his head in shame.

"What the hell?" The contractor turned, looking over the driver's quivering mass towards the job site.

"I have no idea," Weisgerber said, squinting his sixty year-old eyes and following the contractor's gaze. Something strange caught his eye and he started walking, then running up the hill to the excavator, quickly followed by the contractor and several more laborers.

Root-entangled bodies tumbled free from the hillside between shovels and spades mixing dangerously with tanned forearms and callused fingers. Desperate hands, eager for a quick boost up the economic ladder, sifted through tiny bones and rotted bits of cloth, madly searching for anything clever fingers might fix, mend, or polish to barter for a share of some antique collector's Deutschmarks, Francs, and of course, good old American greenbacks. Suddenly, under disappointed and inspired eyes alike, an old, leather skinned laborer stood triumphantly, brandishing a strange, pewter-colored pipe with marvelous, silver, clockwork keys.

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Catalogue Information

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