When I was a small boy, there was a house at the end of the street, nestled in a wooded ravine. It was the only house in the ravine, which was often wet and swampy. In the house lived an man, a man who never seemed to age, he was ancient already. His eyes were white with cataracts, his shoulders slumped with time.

Around that time children had gone missing in our neighborhood. Oddly it was all the boys from the local church choir. A few hours after my friend Billy, the soprano in ther choir went missing, Mark, Stuart, Jeff and myself were sure it was the old man in the house kidnapping them, and took it upon ourselves to investigate.

We snuck up to the house through the swamp and entered through a broken basement window. We quietly climbed the steps that led to the main floor, listening for sounds of the old man. We left the basement and started down a hall where the sound of tinkering could be heard. We peaked into the room at the end of the hall and could not believe our eyes.

There hovering in some sort of greenish liquid above the floor were the missing members of the boys choir. Attached to their heads was some sort of contraption that plugged into a huge pipe organ. We entered just as the old man finished making some adjustments and played his first notes. We were frozen in place, as if paralyzed by the ghastly music. This is what we heard.

The Old Man's Machine