The Music of Souls Read online

  The Music of Souls

  Liora Summer

  Book Title Copyright © 2019 by Liora Summer. All Rights Reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Cover designed by Germancreative

  Language editing and proofreading by Gitta Wolf

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Liora Summer

  Visit my website at www.liora-summer.com

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Acknowledgments

  Impressum

  Chapter 1

  People say incredible things about me. They call me “one of the most talented songwriters of all times”, “the musician that knows how to move people” or even “a talented virtuoso”. I should feel flattered by those words. Proud and confident. Many people in the showbiz industry try long and hard to earn such headlines as I did after just a few songs. They try to climb the ladder of success for years. Sometimes they make it and sometimes they drop into oblivion. You need to be someone special or else people stop talking about you after a few days. The business is hard, and I know people hate me for how easily success fell into my lap. And to be honest, I dislike it too. I saw many people at my company crumbling after trying for so long and never succeeding. And to start with, it was only by coincidence that a song of mine was produced. An accident. It shouldn’t have happened, and people should never have listened to my songs. Yet it happened because I hadn’t been careful.

  It’s not even a true musical talent or the result of hard work. I call it my personal curse, my nightmare that I can’t wake up from. Since I was a child, I heard melodies all around me. At first, I didn’t realise that other people couldn’t hear what I heard. I thought it was normal to always have music playing in the background. I didn’t know what it was, but I felt scared to ask others about it. Something always held me back. At some point, my mother asked me about the songs I was always humming.

  “The song that is playing right now, can’t you hear it?” I said. It was the first time I talked about it and I remember that I felt nervous. It was one of the melodies I tended to hear all the time when I was at home. I loved it so much because it always reminded me of home and of my mother. She looked at me worriedly before smiling.

  “No honey, I can’t hear a song playing. But the humming sounds nice,” she answered and continued to brush my long black hair.

  “It’s one of my favourites,” I said. I felt overjoyed and relieved because I finally had a reason to talk about the melodies.

  “Do you hear other songs too?” she asked. I nodded eagerly and clapped to the rhythm of the melody I was still listening to.

  “I hear different songs all the time,” I replied. My mother didn’t respond then and she looked deep in thought.

  “Have you told other people about it?” she asked me after a while.

  “No,” I answered, and she nodded.

  “It’s our secret then,” she told me, and I was so excited about keeping a secret only my mother and I knew about.

  I felt encouraged about the more or less positive feedback I had received from her. That’s why I began to express the music I heard more often, while keeping a secret where my ideas for the songs were coming from. At that age, I didn’t realise that my mother wasn’t actually at all thrilled about what I had told her. The fact that I was supposedly the only person who was able to hear those melodies didn’t bother me.

  At school, the teachers noticed my interest in music too. It didn’t take long for them to propose to my parents that I should learn to play an instrument. My parents weren’t great art lovers. They were more practical and theoretical people. My father was a well-known lawyer and my mother an insurance agent. They wanted me to aspire to a profession similar to theirs, something that had to do with business, law or medicine.

  But the thought of expressing myself with an instrument intrigued me. After me whining about it for days they finally gave in. Every day after classes ended, they allowed me to play the piano at school. I never needed to learn how to read notes, because I played by ear from the start. It was as if I was born to play the piano.

  The teachers thought I was a child genius. But they still wanted me to learn the theory too. I had been a whiny little girl about it, refusing to learn something I knew I wouldn’t need. They said that if I wouldn’t learn how to read notes, they wouldn’t support my piano lessons anymore. Naturally, that’s not what I wanted, so I learned to read notes. The piano became something very important.

  Especially because the older I got the louder the melodies became. Sometimes so loud and invasive, the piano was the only way to get rid of them. Whenever I played a new melody I’d heard somewhere, I felt better. Otherwise, I was stressed and in a bad mood, I felt bad when I didn’t play the piano.

  Meanwhile, my mother dragged me to several doctors. She wouldn’t tell them I heard melodies but said that I was having headaches all the time and suffered from mood swings. She never again mentioned the melodies I could hear after we’d talked about it that one time. In fact, she was avoiding the topic as best she could.

  After several check-ups, the doctors proposed that I had too much stress. Their worst-case scenario was a bipolar disorder, which they didn’t think likely. But for my mother, that seemed like a good explanation. It’s possible that people with bipolar disorder show symptoms of auditory and visual hallucinations. Not that the doctors knew about the melodies I could hear, but she knew. She kept on at them about the matter for some time. At first, though, the doctors refused to medicate me. They weren’t convinced that I actually did suffer from a bipolar disorder. I was a happy and healthy girl, there was nothing wrong with me.

  By then my mother had already figured out how playing the piano helped me to calm down. To get me to receive the treatment she made me stop playing the piano for a few weeks. I wasn’t able to sleep and when I did manage to drop off, I kept waking up several times during the night, unable to forget about the melodies. When she brought me back to the hospital the doctors didn’t need much convincing anymore. Bipolar disorder was the diagnosis I ended up with.

  Back then I couldn’t understand why my mother wanted me to stop expressing myself with music. Why it bothered her so much that I could hear melodies in my head. What I realised was that the melody I used to hear at home and loved so much, had changed to a much darker tone and I didn’t like it anymore. It was one more reason for me to stay away from home for as long as I could.

  But my mother seemed happy about finally getting treatment for me. She always talked about getting rid of the bad ghosts in my head. She promised me I would feel much better when I’d be taking the medicine an
d since I was a good girl, I did whatever she told me to do. I took the medicine and I stopped playing the piano as well. The melodies in my head disappeared when I started taking the medicine. The need to play the piano left me, and so did any happiness I had experienced to begin with, and my mind grew dull as if dark heavy clouds followed me wherever I went. Being tired and dizzy all the time became my new normal.

  At some point, I learned to cope with it, but I never felt good. The doctors couldn’t be blamed, they tried their best to adjust the dosage or even change the medicine. The side effects were never-ending.

  When I was fifteen years old, I met Maddy and she got me to stop taking the medicine. She was a ray of sunshine and the first light entering my life since the day I started to take the medicine. Everyone loved and adored her. She was the girl that all the boys had a crush on and the kind of popular girl every girl was envious of. Everyone wanted to be friends with her. She had beautiful dark skin and long blonde hair. She looked so unique and exotic. I did not understand what made her want to be friends with me, but she changed my life. She was a blessing for me, and I was her misery. She made me see that being able to hear these melodies in my head was something special, that I should embrace it. That it was a gift. She was the only person aside from my mother who knew about the melodies. Instead of being disturbed by it she seemed interested and intrigued. Always wanted me to talk about it or even compose a song. Because of her, I understood that the melodies weren’t random sounds I heard, but that they came from the people around me. She made me see what people sound like and she had the most enjoyable melody around her. Happy and carefree, like a walk in the sunshine. When I was around her, I was really happy.

  It didn’t take long for my mother to realise that I had stopped taking the medicine and it also didn’t take much longer for her to want me to stop any contact with Maddy. My father was against my friendship with Maddy too, even though he had never cared about my friends before, not that I’d had any in the first place.

  I always had been a good girl, always did what my parents told me to do. But stop seeing Maddy? Absolutely not. Now that I am older, I think that I should have. If I had been a good girl then -

  “Avalynn,” Rose said, touching my arm carefully. I opened my eyes and looked at her. It took me a moment to realise where I was. An office. Right, I am at work. “Did I fall asleep?” I asked and yawned.

  “Just for a moment. We have to drive to the studio soon,” Rose said and looked at her phone again. I listened to her melody for a moment, it was calm, not overly happy but calm and relaxing. One of the main reasons I was glad that Rose had become my personal assistant. I always need people around me with a calm melody, otherwise I cannot concentrate.

  “I see,” I answered and leaned back in the chair. My back was hurting from the uncomfortable position I’d fallen asleep in. I could hear a soft knock on the door and immediately after, the door was pushed open. A load of melodies flooded the room, making me catch my breath.

  “Close the door,” I gasped, and the young man quickly closed the door. I wasn’t prepared for that degree of noise. Especially after flashbacks to the past, I am more sensitive to melodies than usual.

  “Normally you wait until someone asks you in, right?” I said, eyeing the young man. He looked nervous and swallowed hard. I tuned into his melody, a quick and mismatched mix of notes hit me. He wasn’t balanced at all. I sighed.

  “I am sorry,” he stuttered.

  “No, I am sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped like that,” I apologised. My temper keeps getting out of hand when the melodies overwhelm me.

  “How can we help you?” Rose asked, sounding strict. Unlike me, she was always a little rude towards strangers.

  “The car is ready,” the young man said quickly.

  “Good,” Rose answered without looking up from her phone. I sighed again; I should probably talk to her about her behaviour at some point. We needed to stop creating a reputation as the two scary witches.

  The young man shuffled uncomfortably. I raised my eyebrows, wondering why he hadn’t left yet.

  “Tsk.” Rose looked up from her phone and shot him her best glare. He froze and I was afraid he would pee himself any moment now.

  “Is there anything else you need?” she asked with a forced smile.

  “I just thought that maybe...” he stuttered. Rose slipped the phone into her bag and crossed her arms in front of her chest. She would lose her patience soon.

  “We don’t have all day, boy. Spit it out,” she said.

  “I thought that maybe I could get an autograph,” he said in a low voice, eyeing me for a moment before dropping his gaze to the ground. His whole face lit up and even the tips of his ears were bright red. This was the point where Rose would lose her temper so I stepped in before things could escalate.

  “Sure,” I said. I could hear Rose exhaling, annoyed about my interference. I hated giving autographs or interacting with strangers in general and she well knew it. He looked at me with a stunned expression.

  “Really?” he asked as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “Hurry up before I change my mind,” I replied. He quickly pulled a card out of his back pocket. I took it and stared at the picture of myself. People always tell me I have quite a pretty face, but I can’t agree with them. Especially my eyes always look dead to me and my nose is a bit too long and a bit too pointy.

  Where did he get that photograph in the first place? My music might be popular but the actual person behind the music isn’t. Most of my music is sung by other artists after all and I avoid being seen and known by the public. There has only ever been one photo shoot after my first single got released, but we decided that we wouldn’t hand out autographs after I voiced my concern over privacy.

  I shook my head and grabbed a pen from the table and wrote my signature before handing the card back to him. I didn’t really care where he got it from after all, I just wanted him to leave me alone. A huge smile formed on his lips and for a moment his melody stopped. My heart dropped to the floor while I tried to tune into his melody again. Usually, the melody only stops when people die abruptly. It can’t be heart failure, right? He looked completely fine. Before I could lose my mind, he started talking again.

  “Thank you so much. You are such an inspiration to me. Because of your music, I finally started to play music in front of other people. This means a lot.” And just as suddenly as it stopped his melody burst out of him, nearly knocking me off my feet.

  The unbalanced and mismatched sounds that were coming from him had changed to a strong and confident march. I stared at him while he was still admiring that stupid card in his hand. I could not form any kind of sentence. I knew that the melody of people could change over time, but I had never, ever experienced a sudden change like that. His melody basically went from 0 to 100 within a few seconds flat.

  The shock of his missing melody still scared me to the bone though, causing my hands to tremble. I pushed them into my pockets to hide them.

  “Great. So, your life is all better now. We need to leave, so if you would excuse us,” Rose said and pulled me by the arm out of the room.

  “Thank you,” the young man shouted after me.

  We hurried through the crowded rooms, the melodies crashing into my head. I couldn’t keep them out. I was too unstable to handle them all at once and Rose knew that. She didn’t know what caused my break-downs, but she knew about the warning signs. In order to keep me from being gossiped about and to protect my privacy, she always tries to hide me away as soon as she can whenever a panic attack surfaces.

  She opened the car door and pushed me inside. A few seconds later she got into the car herself, ordering the driver to start driving. I took a few deep breaths. Slowly I pushed the melodies out of my head and focused on Rose’s melody. A few minutes later all I could hear was Rose and I took another few moments to relax. When I got myself under control again, I quickly listened to the driver’s melody. I couldn
’t make out anything out of the ordinary and I finally felt safe. I have realised a few things since I came to understand more about the melodies I could hear. Certain people are just not right for you. Normal people, without being able to listen to other people’s souls, usually have to find out the hard way. I know just from listening to someone’s soul whether I can connect well with them or not. Who is good or bad for me.

  At least there are a few positive aspects to all of this, even though it feels like a burden most of the time. I looked at Rose and she already had that look on her face. I knew what she would say. “You have to get it checked.”

  I sighed. Whenever these kinds of things happened, she wanted me to see a doctor about it. She didn’t know that I’d avoided doctors like the plague ever since they’d given in to my mother and put me on that stupid medication. “It’s fine, Rose,” I replied with a shrug, trying to act as if nothing had happened.

  She shook her head. “You get triggered more often lately, Avalynn.”

  I glared at her. “Stop prying, Rose. I think we talked about it already.”

  For a moment she looked seriously hurt, before setting her face to look as if nothing could unsettle her. I felt bad for snapping at her, I know that she was just concerned. But I didn’t need people forcing a trip to a doctor on me. Especially because I knew they wouldn’t be able to help me.

  “Fine,” she replied and turned around, staring at the road in front of her. I sighed again and looked out of the window too. The world was flying by quickly and we arrived at the studio just a bit too fast.

  I opened the door and got out of the car, Rose staying in there a bit longer to talk to the driver. I took my phone and scrolled through the news. Another assault had taken place close-by again, another person killed. Another melody faded from this earth without being heard by people, cut off in the middle of their song. It was stupid to feel bad about it, it’s not that I could produce a song for every single person on this planet. But it always felt like such a shame when a life was ripped from the earth in such a way. Their souls will never have the chance to reach the end of their songs.