text: Never in my life had I experienced the sublime tranquillity of the Earth as I did then. Standing there felt like standing on the edge of the world; the precipice into which all things, dead and disintegrated, eventually drift. The fell was beneath me. I had climbed to the top of a rock to survey that untamed land. Stars stretched to the bounds of my vision; the night was not an unpleasant one. It was certainly cold and as desolate as the end of time, but the light was fair, and the winds were calm. The grasses danced at the wind’s breath, the shadows of trees reclined across the fell’s multitudinous undulations, the lake glistened with its pastiche starlight; like a looking glass to the heavens, and though my heart was heavy and bleak, the world before me embraced my approach. Within, I knew this search a vain exercise. She had been missing for two weeks, none of the search parties who had gone by day had found her body. The discovery of yellow boots was enough though; enough for them to decide that she was dead, and if she were not, she would be by the time they found her. Though I could not help but agree, I embarked upon one final search. My sister wept until sleep overcame her anguish, and in sleep she was plagued by those nightmares a mother should never suffer. It was for Helena that I was here, hoping to discover Alexandra’s body, though I knew it would be ravaged by nature, and a sight more saddening and terrible than I could endure. The children in the schoolhouse swear she heard him, out in the church above the bog. That Plutonian sound that emanates from a, once glorious, but now battered and rusted organ, was a staple in the spoken stories of the fell-folk. Generations of little boys and girls had heard the tale of The Organist of The Mire; the demon who played the repertoire of Rhadamanthus. A warped and wicked monster who, sat before the ancient instrument, upon an accursed stool, and bound by immortal curses, summoned forth Satan’s songs. Each note that gushed from those profane pipes was said to have a curious effect on the mortal soul. An inexplicable curiosity befell individuals who experienced the songs of the organist licking at their ears. And unless stopped by outside intervention, the listener would walk, unimpeded by sensibilities and fear, deep into the heart of the church’s surrounding mire, where they would be swallowed and lost -- that is what was believed. I cannot say that I was here without fear. Indeed, those stories scared me as a girl. I can recall the countless nights I lay awake with my fingers shoved deep into my ears, fearing that I should be lured from my home towards subsequent death. But I am a woman now. At 35 years old it is not a demon that crawls in the darkest shadows of my imagination. There you will find worse things than pointy-eared gremlins, and fictious beasts -- there you will find Man. It was for that reason that I had come armed. Fear of mad and desperate people, not for slaying creatures of the night. A sickle was the best weapon I could furnish myself with. I had hoped with every fibre that I would not have to use it, but its presence settled me. Descending from the rock I came at once into the expanse of uncultivated earth. The waxing gibbous, like a tired eye blinking into waking, provided me with ample light that I could see far across the sprawling fell when I had been upon the rock. But now I was off it, the eye suddenly fluttered shut. Those trees once tinged with silver, now took on the aspect of spidery voids, slowly extending towards the sky. And only once my eyes had adjusted and had drawn out all the light from all the stars, could I proceed further. ‘Alex!’ I called repeatedly into the night. My shouts drained me of all vitality. With every call, my determination and fortitude seemed sucked from me by an external force. An unwelcome visitor happened along. A dense fog lifted from the distant mire and came rushing on the wind’s back straight upon my path. The light from my gas lantern was sapped and thrown all about like some horrid, opaque, milky vapor. The nuisance to my vision was the lesser of the evils brought along with this haze. For, though it could have been the whistling of wind, I fancied there was an insidious note playing in the distance. The curious sound entrapped me. I hearkened to it with an intensity ill befitting the severity of my situation. Panic had begun to set in, and I had been rushing blindly onward. Any moment now I could have stepped into the mire and drowned with no lack of suffering, but the thought did not distract me from that single, mellifluous note. Was it the recollection of those infernal stories that subconsciously enlightened my superstitions and stole my senses? Or was it indeed demoniac sorcery? Regardless, the thought of Alex’s corpse stewing in this unhallowed soup tore me from this mesmerist’s spell. ‘ALEX!’ I called again. My voice did not penetrate the dense, uncanny fog, instead dropping like lead at my feet; heavy and inane. Sightlessly I continued, the firmness of the ground the only indicator of my imminent insecurity. I knew that if nature impeded me with such intent, I would lose what little chance of success I had in this grave mission. The ground softened suddenly. My right foot plunged into the viscous mire. The temperate beating of my heart surged into a fearsome tattoo, and I thought my life would soon be gone from me. With desperate hands, I groped at the earth, simultaneously screaming, and crying for aid, as I felt the mire’s foul grip tightening around my legs. I had dropped the sickle in my tumult, instinctively flinging it away as I felt myself dropping into the esurient sludge. With every twist and contortion of my body, with the flailing of my legs beneath the surface, I was swallowed further. Had it not been for a stick which lay close by, I would have joined the halls of the dead which the mire had claimed. The stick was long enough that I could use it to gain purchase on the sickle, pull it towards myself, take it in hand, and plunge it into the firmer ground. With strength I had never known, I wrenched myself up from the mire’s grasp. That moment of all engulfing terror had shaken me free of every ounce of courage hidden within. I sat, weeping against a rock. The dam, holding back the feelings I had trammelled inside, burst. I had lost both my boots to the earth, and I was saturated up to my waist. My grief and fear entwined in a rhapsodic lamentation; the tears that fell freely on the earth were the beatings of a rising drumbeat, the omen of a coming requiem. There was no doubt that now the sound coming to me on the wind was not of natural birth. I ceased my crying. Looking up through the fog, I saw nothing new. But fresh sounds were certainly discernible in the distance. Recalling all those stories of the Demon Organist did not dissuade me from listening intently to the oncoming song. In the arrogance and pedestrian nature of maturity, I listened, confident that I was in control of the moment. Confident that what I heard was a sound from a distant village, diffusing into the air in the serenity of this winter night. I soon found myself rising from the ground and walking confidently forward. Through the mire I experienced no obstruction; discovering, inexplicably, an invisible path of solid earth which led me directly through. All the while the music was growing. The first notes were mournful and prolonged; sublimely deep and filled with sorrow, and with every yard I progressed forward, so did the organist’s music. The following notes climbed, reaching higher pitches, and encapsulating more emotions. I was willingly entrapped. I knew that it was not by some mystic force that I had become ensnared, it was by beauty that I had become so irresistibly besotted. The church climbed up before me sooner than it should. I longed to be within the instrument, to feel its power and its energy pulsing through me, for it to cast its thunder upon my soul and wrench the extent of my emotions from the deepest pits of my being. Placing a tremulous hand on the heavy wooden door, it came open with infinite ease. When my foot stepped onto the stone floors of that unhallowed church, the music halted. I froze. Elevated high on the console, above the sullied alter, someone stood. I looked up at the figure, who looked down at me. I say they looked but, there were no eyes. And just as there were no eyes, there was no nose. And just as there was no nose, there was no mouth. No hair fell below the tall pipe hat the creature wore upon its pallid, blue-veined head, and a haggard and clawed hand tapped at the console’s rail. I beheld the musician, free of the terror you would expect me to have felt, for I knew nothing which could play such music should be feared. Here was a creature of pure unfettered sorrow. One of those long and bestial fingers was soon extended to point towards a pew in the middle of the church. I took up the unspoken command and sat. The organist nodded in thanks, brushed the cobwebs from his tailcoat, and once again took up his seat at the organ. I regarded the instrument. Torn and rusted; it should not have been able to produce the music it did; the music of heaven. But all doubts were washed away at the very instant The Organist produced the first note of its second song. Now within the bounds of the church, I experienced this music at its most magnificent. The ancient walls were flooded with the euphonious ambrosia of the organist’s music, it lapped at the windows and shuddered the pews with its devastating potency. As one note rose from the deepest depths of hell, the other rattled the firmament, calling up to the angels to sing entwine. This music was nothing like I had ever heard. It extended itself to me and plucked at every chord of rapturous elation, and spun yarns of the most abject grief. There were moments of playfulness, and moments of severity. Divine fire lit up within my breast as The Organist struck his notes, I could not believe him a demon, not for the pure and profound emotions he inspired in me. In the enjoyment of this music, I felt myself renewed, as if imbued with secret knowledge of the celestial forces that govern our world, I sensed that the masochistic onslaught of time lost its effect on me, I felt younger by taking in this aural magic. Here was the Balm of Gilead, more sublime and revivifying than ever thought. Following countless hours of selfish, impuissant listening, I eventually noticed that, beneath the plethora of emotions this organist sang through the vast and formidable instrument, something flowed quieter than the rest. A stream of desperation trickled as the river of sadness roared. Where joy swelled in waves, pleading rippled with serenity. This was not music that said: Fear me. Hate me. This was music that said: Pity me... Kill me. And now I realised it -- as if through some psychic connection -- the music stopped. The organist rose from that accursed stool and turned to me. The hand which had bidden me to the right of the church now bade me look left. There, sat upon the parallel pew, was Alexandra. All around her were the bones of those who had sat before her. She had listened, as they had, until life departed her. I rushed over to my niece. Her aspect was not the tortured and fearful one I had expected to see. The song Alex had heard had been one solely composed of jollity and playful contentment, and that was clear upon her cherubim face. Had she heard what I had heard she would not have succumbed to the inescapable hand of Death, but that would never have been. Her childlike sensibilities had seen only happiness, had been innocent of the emotions of torment and pain which I had sensed, and I was glad of it, for she would never have been able to do what I was now to do. Turning from Alexandra, I looked up at the organist. It looked not at me, but at the pew I had departed. There, lay the sickle, looking keener and more redoubtable than ever it had been seen. I took it up in hands trembling with anger and contempt. And then, with it clasped like a warrior, I ascended the wooden staircase which led to the console. That once emotionless face was now filled with sentiment, not from physical expression, but transposed from the wraith's music. I saw the sadness I had heard; I saw the pleading; I saw the fatigue. These stories had been in this country for centuries, and so had this thing; this unageing, tortured revenant, cursed to play this music until it was understood. It bowed its wretched head in thanks once more. And, without further thought, I swung the sickle hard. As if empowered by divine forces, the tool cleaved the creature’s head from its shoulders. Its body crumpled and sprawled out across the console, sounding the final beautiful note that instrument would ever play. And that infernal, featureless head went rolling down the aisle, coming to a halt where Alexandra sat. Through the beautiful stained-glass windows, the dawn came flowing in, casting colour and light all about that dingy and forgotten place. I had waited for it, fearing to walk out into the mire without The Organist’s spell over me. But once day finally sprung up, and in the fullest brilliance I had ever seen, I took Alexandra’s body in my arms, and returned her home.