In a dim basement in a blue house on the edge of a small prairie city, twenty-eight people were gathered on two rows of seats arranged in a wide semi-circle. In the centre of the room a grand piano loomed out of the half-light like a broken slab of Stonehenge. Its open lid reached skyward, a captured shard of monument that perhaps, if viewed from the right angle, revealed sacred celestial patterns in the stucco ceiling. Beside the piano stood a tripod holding a recording device. The blue light emanating from it announced that it was active and ready to document tonight’s sacrificial ceremony—possibly to be uploaded to the gods in MP3 or even .wav format.

The Ritual started innocently enough. A young woman in a pale blue gown sat at the piano, a Steinway that had been kept impeccably in tune. She took a deep breath, shifted on the bench, pulled it a little closer to the keyboard, and smoothed down her skirt. Her posture, normally closed off and demure, had changed dramatically. Her shoulders were relaxed, chest open to welcome cosmic inspiration into her heart, face serene, arms suspended before the keys as though floating in a tranquil pool. The tips of two slender index fingers touched two of the keys as elegantly as a butterfly lighting on the headstock of your guitar while you played an outdoor festival gig.

She played F and G together, a discordant major second interval, six times. She expanded it to E and G, a minor third, and played another six, her tempo shifting twice before the six eighth-notes had finished. Her right hand missed at first as she moved to a wider interval, D and B, the new notes sounding approximately five and a half times. Finally, she reached the octave, stumbling once more as she closed the intervals, one by one, folding the gap back to F and G. Then she started again.

Watched by the twenty-eight utterly silent people, Juniper fumbled through Chopsticks two more times. Her audience barely breathed. The blue light of the audio recorder gave a deviant twinkle as it caught every slip and stutter of the piano keys.

Rex cringed. Jo stifled a laugh. Aaron shrank into himself and Jaymie thumped his head against Aaron's shoulder in defeat.

Then Miranda spoke in a low monotone, a string of incomprehensible syllables that tripped their way out of her mouth, collided with the heinous piano playing, and attempted an about-face to get back in. When she stopped, twenty-three voices echoed the chant back to her. Miranda vocalized again and the non-sensical call-and-response continued.

Unperturbed by this interruption, Juniper flubbed away at the keys. She showed no sign of embarrassment at her brutal performance, her bearing as regal and unapologetic as that of a concert pianist with years of Alexander Technique study under their belt.

Then something extraordinary began to happen.

The melody shifted. First the chords of Chopsticks morphed into a thickly harmonized jazz improvisation in 7/4 time. This soon became something else, an unrecognizable piece of music, new and never before heard, somber and gentle and reassuring. And truly beautiful. The chorus of chanters fell silent and her song filled the room, growing and quieting, twinkling melodic arcs becoming rolling chords and then decrescendoing back to a pedal-point murmur.

Jo watched and listened, dumbstruck. Mesmerized by the wonder of Juniper's fluttering fingers, it was some minutes before she glanced at the girl's face. It had grown dangerously pale. Her lips took on a wet, blueish sheen even as Jo watched. Her eyes glazed over and clouded. Jo suddenly saw how thin she was, ragged shoulder blades carving drastic angles in the folds of her dress. She looked back at Juniper’s hands, the harsh blue lines of her veins standing out on white doll’s wrists, and she felt herself stiffen in horror. Juniper's hands danced like skeleton spiders across the gleaming ivory. A limp rag doll musician, a wooden marionette, sinew stretched through ancient porcelain about to crack from strain and neglect.

In Jo's mind the piano was no longer a monument, but a dying beast. Its ossein keys were parched bone; its gaping lid revealed a criss-cross of innards, tight intestine strings stretching from its pins to the pelvic curve of its soundboard, inviting the dying girl who stroked it to crawl into the wound to warm herself and await rescue in the still-steaming depths of its belly.

I'm having a bad trip, Jo thought. Had they drugged her? She reminded herself to take a few deep breaths—this was nothing she hadn’t dealt with before. Then Aaron, beside her, clasped her arm tightly. He was frozen in fear, barely breathing. On her other side, Rex stared transfixed at Juniper, jaw hanging slightly open. They were seeing the girl the same way Jo was, her life slowly leaching away. Jo was experiencing something much more sinister than a bad trip.

Through the dread that gripped her, a knowledge emerged, that she had to act. And quickly.

There was a dusty Martin acoustic in the corner. It was the same one she'd embarrassed herself with on the night they'd arrived, and it was old and in need of new strings, but it was playable and kept its intonation. Jo rose slowly from her seat, hoping she wouldn't be noticed. Fortunately, everyone was either watching Juniper or had their eyes closed in reverence, completely absorbed in the haunting melody emerging from the Steinway. Jo moved like the shadow of a grizzly bear around the outside of the room, picked up the guitar, and pulled the strap over her shoulder.

She touched the low E string and a fraction of a note sounded out, an infinitesimal pianissimo, too quiet to be heard by the crowd. She half heard and half felt it resonating against her lower ribs, and identified the barely existent note as being a minor third below the root of the key Juniper played in. They were in G. The People's Key.

Juniper's piece was in standard four-bar phrasing; Jo recognized the progression as one she'd heard a lot in pop songs produced circa 2012. Why did the most beautiful, haunting music, once analysed, always turn out to be a diatonic four-chord progression you'd heard a lot in 2012?

Jo waited for the beginning of the next phrase, then gently plucked an E minor high on the twelfth fret. She voice-led to the nearest C chord, fingerpicking a soft pattern across the strings. From there, a few steps to G, then D, moving down the neck of the acoustic, picking up the melody from the piano, working it into the upper strings while maintaining the roots lower down.

Every head had turned in her direction. Miranda stood with her fists clenched at her sides, evidently unsure whether she should cross the room to stop Jo and risk breaking Juniper from her trance.

Juniper broke anyway. The piano fell silent and she looked around, blinking. She stood shakily, her gown swirling around her, a confused zombie bride, drunken and starved. Then she fainted over the piano bench and Jo finished the song for her, the blue light of the mic glittering away in the darkness.

***

“So, you can see our problem,” said Miranda.

Rex and Aaron huddled over Juniper, checking her pulse and cushioning her head. The cult members had relaxed and were leaning back in their chairs or muttering amongst one another.

“Uh… you perform a terrifying demon-possession ceremony that murders everyone who does it?” Jaymie gulped.

“Yes, exactly.” In the fuzzy lighting her eyes were invisible behind her thick glasses, the blue glow dancing eerily on the lenses. “Well, not demons. Spirits. Ghosts, if you like. Only talented ones, obviously. The chant summons the ones with great works of art or music or literature left uncreated in their lifetimes.”

“But these, uh, spirits… They can’t possess someone long enough to make a good… product… without killing them,” said Jaymie, struggling to grasp what he’d just witnessed.

“Correct,” said Miranda.

Jo put the guitar back in the corner, looking stunned. “What the hell do you want us to do about it?” she demanded.

“Not you. Jaymie,” said Miranda bluntly.

“Me?” And then it clicked. “Oh, shit,” he said. “Right.” His band stared at him, perplexed.

“We don’t want to die. But this work matters more than anything else. More than life,” said Miranda. “So, you need to teach us the right way to do it.”

“Because I got possessed without… without dying,” said Jaymie, his voice hoarse with dismay. Aaron surreptitiously face-palmed.

“Because, somehow, you keep doing it, writing song after song, giving performance after performance. And the next morning you wake up, unharmed. While we do not,” said Miranda.

“Shit,” said Jaymie again.

“Will you help us?” Miranda asked, just as she had at the breakfast table days ago.

Jaymie looked around at the desperate, hopeful faces, and at the withered young woman unconscious on the floor.

“I don’t know how to help you,” he said.

***

Miranda didn’t like the idea of imprisoning people against their wills, but she was certain that once the Bukowskis understood what her co-op was all about they’d be enthusiastic to work with her.

She also, like any good follower, had total faith in Jaymie’s leadership, loved everything he’d made in the course of his musical career, and adopted all of his opinions the moment he voiced them. But that didn’t mean she trusted him not to depart prematurely. So, for the course of the past week, she and her people had kept the band busy and under constant supervision until they could witness the miracle of the Ritual.

It wasn’t as thought their stay had been unpleasant. Jaymie seemed to genuinely enjoy leading the group in workshops, preaching his ideas to them, and making up his own rules, such as, you shouldn’t eat breakfast until you’ve written at least three pages of stream-of-consciousness thought, in your bed, about anything you want. This and many more of his suggestions were immediately implemented as law.

As for the others: Jo was promised a limitless supply of her favourite entertainments, which turned out be mostly indicas and access to HGTV. Done.

Aaron seemed like the kind of person who was going to be slightly miserable wherever he was, so the best you could do was give him someplace comfortable to sit quietly or play his drums. He'd amused himself at first by pretending to be Jaymie and trying to confuse the group with new rules of his own invention, until they'd learned to tell him apart by his general air of discomfort or, if they glimpsed it under his hair, the little scar on his left cheek.

Amusingly enough, a few of them had spent several hours tree climbing in the nude for creative inspiration before discovering this identification technique. (Two caught mild colds; Aaron displayed little remorse.)

Rex, in between giving bass lessons, had spent most of the week discretely exploring second base. For the most part, everyone respected their privacy too much to ask for details of their new relationship. Miranda and her cohort were happy to see Ronan with a friend; they were fond of him and thought it unfortunate the group didn’t have other teenagers for him to socialize with.

So, Miranda didn’t feel particularly bad about the soft-kidnapping of the Bukowskis. Making art was the greatest work a person could do, and saving the talents of the dead from being lost forever was the most important sacrifice a person could make. Surely, the band would understand now that they’d seen it in action.

“I don’t know how to help you,” said Jaymie.

“That’s a pity,” said Miranda. Not knowing what to do, she nodded to Steve, who was standing by the piano. He didn’t have a plan either, but he moved toward Rex, Aaron, and Juniper in a way that looked vaguely threatening, and Jaymie, whose imagination had been morbidly stoked by the events of the last twenty minutes, cried, “No, please! Wait!”

He put his hands up in surrender. “I’ll do it. It’s no problem. When’s the next ceremony? We’ll work it all out.”

Miranda smiled in appeasement, her faith in him complete and unshaken. Still, she noted his hesitation and decided to keep him under surveillance, just in case.

“I knew we could count on you,” she said.

“Ha. Yeah. Of course,” said Jaymie. He looked nervously at his brothers, whose faces only registered shock, to Jo, who was pale and tense but nodded back at him resolutely. He gathered himself.

“Next ceremony, we’ll get you your masterpiece. With no casualties,” he promised. He knelt beside his brothers. “Now, can we get this poor woman off the floor?” The group hastened to help out.

“By the way, what did it feel like?” Steve asked Jo.

“What did what feel like?” said Jo, still watching Jaymie.

“When the spirit took you! It moved from Juniper and it finished it’s work in you.” He gazed at her reverently. “A transition… and it was so seamless. And to have survivors! We’ve never had something like this happen before.”

This got Jo’s attention. “Is it that hard to believe I’m just good at this?” she snapped, jerking her chin in the direction of the guitar. “Some dead guy’s spirit must be—”

“No, I, um, I just thought because you both were playing the same song—”

“Sexist asshole.”

“Ok, oversensitive…”

“What’s wrong with your brother?” Miranda demanded. “Is he possessed too?”

“No,” said Jaymie dismally. “He’s just having a panic attack.”