Organ Music by Margaret Mahy

You’ve made a fortune.’ She tilted her glasses so that she and Winnie Finney stood, apparently, eye to eye.
    Winnie Finney screamed like a tormented man.
    Fool! Stupid fool! thought David. Go on! Set us free! ‘Fall down!’ he shouted aloud. ‘Roll over!’ Winnie Finney dropped obediently to his knees.
    â€˜Come on!’ Harley was scrambling unsteadily onto his hands and knees. He called in a strange, thick voice, ‘Now!’
    David leaped between Quinta and Winnie Finney toward the door.
    â€˜Funny, though! I can see right through you!’ Quinta was saying, laughing a little as she spoke. ‘These boys here – I’m using their energy, their force , their words as weapons. I’m working through them.’
    Winnie Finney screamed again.
    David paused in the open doorway. He couldn’t help it. He had to know what would happen next.
    â€˜Come on !’ yelled Harley, already trying to turn the door handle.
    As David watched, a slow, dark slug undulated over the curve of Quinta’s cheek. As if she were about to speak to him, she turned her head slowly towards him. Light struck the slug, showing it a rich, thick red colour. With her dark glasses still tilted up on her forehead, she looked directly at him.
    Quinta had no eyes. They had been cut out of her head. Below those two ragged caves her smile was horrifying.
    â€˜Rubbish off the street!’ screamed Winnie Finney, rolling on the floor at her feet. He had wriggled back against his desk. ‘I gave your eyes to someone who uses them properly – a wonderful artist.’
    Quinta laughed. ‘I don’t hold it against you,’ she said. ‘How can I? After all, you have my heart. Frozen!’ She let the top of her coat fall open. Her bare chest was revealed, like some sort of winter seed pod, cracked open and empty. ‘My heart and more besides.’ She wrenched the coat wide. The whole body it had concealed seemed to split open, tumbling tubes and pieces that nobody could use – that nobody had wanted – on to the floor between them.
    Winnie Finney writhed and struggled, collapsing still further, as if air were escaping from him.
    â€˜Oh, what a piece of work is man,’ said Quinta. ‘Woman, too!’
    â€˜Come on!’ yelled Harley from the doorway.
    Winnie Finney began gasping as if he would never get air into his lungs again. His heels beat up and down on the floor, kicking over his rubbish basket. Crumpled paper spilled out as if it were anxious to be free. His hands slapped the polished boards in desperation. His gasping gave way to a kind of wet, dirty gurgling. At last he lay still.
    Quinta carelessly patted her dark glasses back into place. Smoke was rising behind her. David thought it was part of her ghostliness – a special effect with dry ice, perhaps.
    â€˜He could have done with a better heart himself, couldn’t he?’ she remarked. ‘I don’t suppose I was much, back when I was alive, and probably the people who wound up with my eyes, my liver, my kidneys – all my bits – made better use of them than I would have. But I reckon you ought to offer your own eyes before you start volunteering other people’s, don’t you? I was determined to get him. But until you two walked in and I found someone who could believe in ghosts, nothing worked. I really pulled myself together when you two came along. And Scag, that guy with the tats, Fabrice and Finney did the same thing to him that they did to me – turned him into a desirable product hooked up to machinery so they could use pieces of him when they needed to. But they’re both dead themselves now. And now I’m off. I don’t know what comes next, and I don’t care. Whatever it is, it’ll be a good change.’
    As David stared, Quinta grew transparent. She became nothing but patches of colour in the air. Her dark glasses, hiding the empty eye