Free The Bellwether Revivals by Benjamin Wood

at the base of his neck.
    The voices came next. Yin’s deep baritone drawing outwards, then Jane and Iris in unison, their sweet, songbird tones off-setting it, forming a volley of words that Oscar couldn’t quite understand. The singing and the fluid cello countered the spikes of theclavichord, anchoring the music, giving it gravity. He wasn’t sure if it was just his mind playing games with him, but he swore he was falling out of consciousness. The music pushed and retreated in his head, steady as the tide. He was falling away. He could still hear the voices of the others, but they were muted now, just words passing through a long, dark tunnel. His eyelids felt heavy. There was a metallic taste in his mouth. A dry ache on his tongue. A sedating heat against his neck. And the next thing he knew, he was wide awake and blinking.
    Iris was on her haunches, looking up at him, one hand on his thigh, the other touching his face. ‘Oscar, can you hear me? Oscar?’ She seemed slightly panicked.
    ‘Woah,’ he replied, adjusting to the light. ‘I think I fell asleep.’
    Everyone laughed, and the sound seemed to pull him further into consciousness.
    ‘Can you feel anything?’ Iris asked. ‘Are you alright?’
    ‘Yeah. I’m okay, I’m just a bit groggy. What happened?’
    She replied in a wary kind of way: ‘Look down.’
    He peered at his feet. Nothing. He checked his right side. Nothing. Then, as he looked towards his left, he saw it—a thick roof-nail, about four inches long, skewering the loose skin on the back of his left hand, just below the knuckle of his middle finger. He flinched, feeling like he might throw up, and tore his eyes away. ‘Jesus! What the hell have you done? You said it wasn’t going to hurt.’
    ‘I think if it hurt you’d be screaming by now,’ Eden said.
    Oscar waited a few seconds for the pain to register, but it didn’t. He gave it another moment, allowing his brain the chance to catch up. But he felt nothing. ‘You hypnotised me?’
    ‘In a manner of speaking,’ Eden said.
    There was still no pain in his hand at all. Everything else felt fine—he could wiggle his fingers and feel the leather against his skin.
    ‘I told you I could prove it,’ Eden said.
    ‘By sticking a nail through my hand? Thanks a lot. If I get some kind of infection, I swear, I’ll—’
    ‘Oh, relax,’ Marcus said. ‘It’s been sterilised. Perfectly clean.’
    ‘You might be a little sore in the morning, though,’ Iris said.
    ‘Take it out. Take this thing out of me
right now
.’
    Eden shook his head, folded his arms. ‘If I take it out, it’ll hurt. Trust me, you’ll want me to put you under again. It’d be like a dentist pushing a rotten tooth back into your jaw. Not very nice.’
    ‘Just get this thing out of my hand, okay? Or I’m going to—’
    ‘Going to
what
?’ Marcus laughed. ‘Calm down.’
    Yin spoke up then. ‘Okay, come on, guys, fun’s over. Take it out, Edie. Give the guy a break.’
    ‘Fine, not a problem. It’ll just take a sec.’ Eden looked at Oscar. ‘Lean back. Close your eyes.’
    Again, the silence. Again, the brooding melody of the clavichord, followed by the cello, followed by the heat and the voices, followed by drifting, drifting, drifting. Something like an ether consumed him, gradually. When he woke up, the furniture was back in its right place. A dressing was taped to his hand. And the five of them—Eden, Iris, Marcus, Yin, and Jane—were all sitting around him, in an arc of chairs, leaning on their elbows, talking.
    ‘I didn’t understand the questions at the start,’ Jane was saying.
    ‘Oh, I was just having some fun with him,’ Eden said. He was not paying attention to Oscar as he woke. ‘Smoke and mirrors, that’s all. I could’ve kept him under a lot longer if I’d wanted to.’
    Oscar felt a pain in his left hand, like a searing burn, and he grabbed for it with his right, as if holding it might lessen the agony. He didn’t understand