This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
--- Chapter One ---
It was a dark and stormy night. The windows in the band room were moaning eerily. An army of ants could be seen crawling across the floor, finding small traces of pop and spit everywhere. For the most part, the band room was lifeless.
For the most part. In the office of the band director, Mr. Neller, a light could be seen. A single light in the midst of an abyss of darkness. This could mean only one thing. He was back again.
Not Mr. Neller. No, Neller went home exactly twenty minutes after the end of the school day, and not one minute too soon. He was a very quirky man, reminiscent of one's grandfather. His eyes were a soft brown, and he had a patch of baldness slowly growing on the back of his head. He looked after his band students as though they were his own children.
The other band director, Mr. Veterson, was quite the opposite of Neller. He was rarely seen away from his office in the band room lounge, always giving a lesson or practicing his trombone. Veterson was part of a jazz band group in a club that performed weekly, as if by clockwork. He seemed to be a more angular man than old Mr. Neller, as was his manner toward the students. His attitude could be attributed to the fact that he taught the select members of the Wind Ensemble. The flame behind his pupils glowed mysteriously, differently from all of the other teachers at Surbandale High School. Nobody really knew what he was like. Nobody.
And at that particular moment, those mysterious eyes were glued upon the source of the single light… the eerie blue glow of a computer screen. Nimble fingers, well used to playing the day away upon any instrument under the sun, clicked away at the keyboard under the darkness of nightfall while Mozart's Symphony No. 25 hummed from the speakers on the desk. And should a very brave, or very stupid, person have dared to step into that office, they would have discovered a secret of secrets…
Suddenly, Veterson's eyes glanced up from the screen upon which they had been fixed. A noise, somewhere in the darkness, just audible above the music playing… His ears had been trained to detect the slightest tuning of a note; certainly, they were well able to detect the footsteps of an intruder! Slowly, silently, Veterson rose from the swiveling computer chair, and walked to the closed door of the office with all the stealth of an assassin. As he left the desk, he picked up a long, metal cleaning rod, just as a precaution. Placing a hand upon the cool, brass doorknob, he twisted it just lightly enough to slide the door open without a sound.
The scraggly gray carpet muffled his steps as the director made his way into the pitch-black band room lounge. The thought occurred to him that it was quite strange that anyone daring to enter the room would not have bothered to turn the lights on; what with the multitude of chairs and stands strewn across the floor, any stranger to the lounge would surely have collided with one in the darkness by now. Veterson's eyes, sharp from years of observing marching drills, scanned the darkness, the faint light from Neller's office his guide. Knowing the lounge's layout as well as the back of his own hand, Veterson stepped forth into the blackness…
Suddenly, a metallic flash! A cry in the night!
The next morning, Neller arrived at the school early and ready for work, only to discover a sight more ghastly than anything he had seen in thirty years of marching band.
Murder!