Nocturne in the Key of Death

By Barrymore Tebbs

Teddy Emerson leads a simple life. Within the four walls of his one room walk up atop Telegraph Hill, he reads his books and listens to his radio. Four nights a week he plays piano at Rayburn’s Supper Club, dreaming of a concert hall career that will never come to pass. Teddy is as normal as any other guy struggling to get by in a world that is often unkind to the creative, sensitive soul.

But a chance encounter with a stranger on the street sets in motion an unnatural chain of events which incites Teddy to inhuman levels of violence. For Teddy has come face to face with his own destiny – death at the hands of a malevolent being which appears to be his identical twin.

Set against the wintry backdrop of fog-enshrouded San Francisco in the 1950s, Teddy’s journey will lead you into the darkest recesses of the human mind – and beyond.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barrymore Tebbs
• Release date: May 8, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463571446

Barrymore Tebbs

Barrymore Tebbs' writing combines the brooding atmosphere of Gothic fiction with the unexpected twists and turns of the Psychological Thriller to create "historical, doom-laden creepfests about people struggling (and often failing) to make sense of the situations they find themselves in." A polished stylist with an uncanny ability to transport the reader to a specific time and place, in recent works he has moved from the form of Gothic horror popularized by such mid Twentieth Century writers as Daphne du Maurier and Thomas Tryon into the genre of Pulp style crime - resulting in Nocturne in the Key of Death and a Dark and Lonely Highway, both modeled on the writings of Cornell Woolrich. If you enjoy his stories, please consider leaving a review to help other readers discover the dark joy of Barrymore Tebbs' unique style of storytelling.

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Nocturne in the Key of Death

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2019 by Barrymore Tebbs

Teddy’s Tale

It was like looking into a mirror where there wasn’t any – his face, my face reversed.

It was nearly a month ago that I first saw him, a tall silhouette against the glare of light struggling to be seen from behind the clouds, staring – rooted to the spot where he stood – his watchful eye trained directly on the front widows of the upper floor of my apartment building. I wasn’t close enough then to see that he was me, but when I think back over the uncanny events of the past few weeks, I know now that that was my first glimpse of the man who looks exactly like me.

I had come from the studio on Fillmore where I practice three or four days a week. In my line of work I mostly play standards, but my aspiration has always been the concert hall, and so I take my portfolio of music and exercise the eye and fingers with the works of Schubert, Chopin, and Bach, often losing myself in the mesmerizing beauty of their music. On my way home I stopped at the barber on Broadway for a shave and haircut, picked up a sack of produce from the grocer at the bottom of the hill, and began the daily trudge up the tiresome Kearny steps. The moment I saw the figure outside the building, a red rubber ball came bouncing frantically in my direction, young Jimmy Grimaldi in heated pursuit. Jimmy is eight or ten and lives with his brother further up the hill. I set down the bag of produce and managed to catch the ball before it bounced into the middle of oncoming traffic on Broadway, pitched it back to Jimmy, and when I looked up again the man who had been staring so fixedly up at my window was gone.

He might have been a salesman who realized he’d come to the wrong address, or someone looking for rooms to let. But he was not. He was looking for me. I was certain. Perhaps a private detective hired, for reasons unknown, to keep tabs on me. I glanced around before I went into the building to be sure he wasn’t hiding among the rows of cars, ready to pounce and apprehend at any moment. I am an honest man. I have never done anything illegal, even unknowingly. But even an honest man can become a victim of mistaken identity. I might have been wrong about the man, but I was not. It was me he wanted.

I went into the little room of my cold water walkup, threw the bolt home in the door, craned my head out of the narrow window, and when I was certain he was not still lingering in the neighborhood, forgot about him.

The second sighting came just a few days later when I went out to pick up my laundry. The elfin Chinese woman – so tiny she had to stand on a stool at the counter to greet customers face to face – attended to a gentleman in front of me. He wore a gray suit and fedora and appeared to be nothing more than a customer seen from behind, but when the woman’s eyes glanced over his shoulder to see who had stepped inside with a jangle of the bell above the door, her eyes met mine, then looked up at the man in front of her and widened with surprise.

Oh, so sorry, she stammered and dipped her head in apology. These shirts for Mr. Emerson - you no Mr. Emerson. Her laugh was colored with embarrassment.

She slid the package along the counter away from the other customer. I stepped up to the counter, paid my dollar, and as I turned to go I caught sight of his profile. He had the sort of bland Anglo Saxon features that caused one of us to look much like another – a weak, ineffectual chin, an unobtrusive nose which might have been unnaturally small, thin lips. It was easy to see how the laundress had mistaken him for me. He looked exactly like me.

Sensing my eyes on him he turned briefly, exposing the whole of his face so I felt that I had stepped in front of a mirror. The proprietor found his order. The stranger turned, paid his bill, and left the shop. As he departed, I looked out the window. He stared back at me as well, perhaps as confused as I by the unexpectedness of the encounter.

After he had gone I blinked several times, certain my eyes had deceived me.

Who was that, do you know? I asked the woman.

Oh, no, she shook her head. I don’ know he name.

Have you seen him before?

Oh, I don’ know. She bowed. I no good with faces.

I understood. Most Chinese look the same to me.

Her fingers toyed with a tab of paper.

May I? I said and took the ticket from her without waiting for permission. The number 257 was written in bold red letters on one corner of the tag. In the blank line where the customer name is generally written was simply the letter E.

My name begins with E.

I stared at the single letter, smiled, and pushed it back across the counter. At the curb outside I glanced up and down the street. Whoever he was had quickly vanished. Puzzled, I shook my head.

A few days after that I went down to the Geary Cellar to hear Brubeck play. After two glasses of Canadian Club and two draughts of beer I went to the lavatory, elbowing my way through the narrow, smoky hall. As usual there was a brief wait in line, men jockeying for position as one came out and another went inside the narrow water closet. I hadn’t paid much attention to the faces around me, but when I became the first man waiting at the door I exchanged places with the last man to come out – at least I thought he was the last man. I pushed through the door and ran square against the chest of a man my height and build. I muttered an apology, and then looked up.

My eyes met his directly and I saw that he had my face – thin blonde hair swept carelessly to one side, hollow eyes that always seem to register a state of surprise no matter my true emotion, even a quarter inch slash of red on the apex of his cheek in the same position where I had carelessly nicked myself in my haste to shave earlier in the evening. Unless one is unnecessarily drunk, most men would apologize upon running so bodily into someone. Not he. When our eyes met, his eyes blazed with a black fire so sudden and unnerving that it caused me to pardon myself once again. I stepped aside, giving him room to pass. When I finished my business and washed my hands at the sink I looked at my face in the mirror, perturbed that it was the same exact face that I had seen on my way into the toilet.

Returning to the club room I found myself distracted and unable to enjoy the performance. Though the whiskey had begun to warm my brain, I knew the man I saw in the restroom was the same I had seen at the laundry. Eager to see his likeness again I cruised among the tables, peering directly into faces in the low-lit room, more than once provoking irritated sneers to let me know my scrutiny was unwelcome. The incident must have left me more disturbed than I realized for I drank two more whiskeys in rapid succession, finally slouching on a stool at the bar.

The following day was gray and misty, a comfortable blanket for my hangover. I walked down the hill and sat at a breakfast counter on Broadway near Columbus, drinking coffee long after the crumb-strewn plate had been taken away. After four or five cups my heart began to race. Even though it had begun to rain, I could no longer sit still. I left the restaurant, berating myself for leaving my apartment with neither hat nor umbrella. I tucked my head inside the collar of my coat, as if keeping it tilted down would magically keep the rain from saturating my head.

Immediately I ran into someone coming in the opposite direction. I looked up, startled – in my agitated state expecting that I had once again encountered my phantom twin. But this gentleman was older than me, well dressed and refined of manner. He apologized profusely, muttered something about having gone out without an umbrella, and just as quickly disappeared beyond the veil of rain. I was not the only fool unprepared for sudden deluge.

The rain increased rapidly until it cascaded from awnings over the shops along the street. I would be soaked to the skin if I attempted to climb the hill under current conditions. I stopped dead in my tracks, my back against a storefront door which had not been completely shut. It gave way behind me and I stepped inside. A heavy metal bell on the door announced my entrance.

The room was small and dark, a cave illuminated only by a row of candles mounted on an altar on the wall at the feet of a statue of the Blessed Virgin. A beaded curtain parted and a slender, dark-skinned boy appeared.

It’s like a faucet suddenly turned on full blast, I said, self-consciously dripping water onto a braided floor rug. I looked around the room, momentarily confused by my surroundings.

The boy was in his teens. His eyes were bright and green and rimmed with impossibly thick black lashes. He wore a simple white shirt with a red scarf knotted at his throat. On the bulb of his left nostril a tiny red gemstone sparkled like a glistening drop of blood.

Why not have your fortune told while you wait for the rain to stop? he said.

Perhaps it was the sudden change of weather, perhaps it was the conflict of caffeine and alcohol warring in my blood, perhaps it was the peculiar sight of the boy before me, but I found I was agreeable to the momentary amusement he offered.

I said, Why not?

The boy called into the room beyond the beaded curtain in a language I did not recognize, then pointed to a simple table in one corner of the room and invited me to sit.

Would you like some tea?

I said yes, then thought better of it and changed my mind. The boy didn’t smile, but shrugged, then came around and switched on a lamp suspended on a chain above the table. Just as I sat down, the beads parted again and an old, steel-haired woman whose face was a map of heavily striated wrinkles came tottering out on unsteady feet. The boy ran to support her by one elbow, guiding her to the chair opposite mine. Always mannerly in the presence of women, especially one my elder, I jumped to my feet when she appeared. Then I saw that both her eyes were filmed with a milky blue glaze. She would not have been offended had I remained seated. Her sightless gaze was directed somewhere beyond the four walls of the parlor, perhaps even beyond this mortal realm itself. The youth and the crone exchanged brief words in their native tongue and then the boy said to me, Grandmother says to place your hand on the table, palm up.

I did as I was told. The boy took the lamp down from its hook, holding the light directly over my palm as he leaned down, face inches from my hand. When he hung the lamp back above our heads, his grandmother began to explore my open palm with a touch so light it gave me chills. Her fingertips followed the trails of the hills and valleys. After a few moments she began to speak in a language I guessed might be Russian or Hungarian. My ear knew no difference – but by her appearance she was the incarnation of the old gypsy woman so often