Secret Chiefs 3
Le Mani Destre Recise Degli Ultimi Uomini

You know it well, or at least you should know: you must never harm a little duck, EVER. You knew it, yet you did it. And for having stained yourself with this grave fault, you will have to descend into the great beyond, where you will live in terror and you will know all the colors of the dark—yes, all of them, but most of all RED, deep red mixed with the black of black cats with nine tails crossing the road in front of you, perhaps terrified by the sinister call of birds with crystal plumage, amidst sighs and witches and fragments of the mirror that Alice shattered, heedless of your passage. Hell and darkness and fear in the city of the living dead, where all are deceased except the dead—until from afar, in the fog, a villa next to a cemetery will appear to you, precisely that house with laughing windows, down there, where you will enter hearing voices and moans echoing from the depths; and making your way through the darkness, you will arrive at a large room with a long table at which no one is seated because no one will be there to await your arrival, and right in front of the table you will stop. A sudden light will be ready to reveal the gruesome spectacle that was hidden above the table: four flies on grey velvet, seven notes in black and the thirty severed right hands of the last men who passed through there (perhaps unsuspecting patrons...?) which a scythe plummeting from above cut cleanly, leaving them in their places, macabre witnesses of a dusty, dark, inextricable past.

You will sit at each place and observe the hands, examining them all: chubby little hands and withered skeletal hands of old men, gentle hands adorned with precious stones, filthy disgusting hands of murderers. And in touching each one, you will hear music, sinking into forty minutes of total enchantment/hypnosis. Enchantments of guitars that speak of ancient times, unmistakable and familiar yet chilling sounds, noises fading into new nightmares, new sonic harbors in a rapid, imperceptible succession. Whispering flutes and detuned cellos, sepulchral choirs and luciferine orchestras accompanying an impromptu Sabbath, dark rooms to the sound of a Hammond B3, embroideries of a dulcimer in the hallways of a desecrated castle, the howl of a wind that forcibly drags people and things away in its race. And Morricone-like melodies, Simonetti-like keyboards and Pignatelli-like basses, rhythms suddenly slowed, breath held (and the blood halting) at the murmur of a music box, tumultuous awakenings from indistinct crossings of dream and reality. And—astonishing to say, if it is true that this is the great beyond—a perverse pleasure increasing hand in hand, theme by theme, instrument by instrument in a breathlessly chasing sequence. Relaxation, and again palpitation. Boredom is a guest that has never sat at that table.

If pleasure (just like vice) is a closed room, surely Trey Spruance holds the key.