Growing up, kids in my town would always tell me stories of The Musician. Scary stories, the kind you use to frighten each other at camping trips and sleepovers. I suppose you could call him a story or a legend. I always just thought of him as a nightmare.

Y'see, it was about a hundred or so years back, a man by the name of Franklin Phillips stepped through our town when it was still carving its niche in the world. Franklin was a nice enough gentleman, a bit of a loner, but nothing too out of the ordinary. And, like all nightmares before they become legends, he had a wife and a passion.

Franklin's wife was a beautiful woman in both heart and face, and the two loved each other dearly. Franklin's passion was music, the violin especially. He opened up a little music shop in town where he'd sell and teach people how to play assorted musical instruments; it was a small town at the time, so people had to rely on him for just about all our needs of such variety. Franklin had a real talent for music, and he'd often stay up late playing his violin long into the night. During the day, he'd teach and sell. At night, he'd play for his wife and he was content.

But like all good things, Franklin's contentment was not to last. If it were, he would have simply died Franklin Phillips, and our campfire stories would likely have had some other ghastly feature instead of The Musician. You see, musical instruments are expensive and difficult to produce, and it was not long before Franklin went bankrupt. He'd sold what he could bring himself to sell, everything except for the clothes on his back, a dress for his wife, the tiniest little crawlspace they could rent to live in, and his violin. He worked day and night at factories trying to scrounge up a living, but still at night he played his violin, refusing to give up his last shred of happiness. As a result, his health and work suffered, and he became increasingly deranged. One night, his wife attempted to get him to stop playing his Violin so that he could get a good night's sleep. Franklin did not oblige.

The disagreement quickly escalated into a fight; something that was quite unusual and doubly painful for the couple that was once so in love. It is not known what happened next, only that his wife was found horribly injured the next morning, barely conscious and her throat covered with thin cuts. She was too injured for the doctors to do anything to help her, but it is said that until her last breath she was humming a strange, sorrowful tune as she gurgled up her own blood. The only evidence of the murder was a scrap of violin string found embedded in one of her wounds. Franklin was nowhere to be found.

It would later become apparent that Ms. Phillips' death was only the first of its kind. As the years went by, and even as recently as two years back with Timothy Fischer, more deaths of the same type would pop up. All the victims would be found alone in the dark, some sort of music device nearby- earlier on a phonograph or a simply instrument, and within recent years CD players and iPods. It seems they all survive long enough to be found before they bleed to death. An old woman was discovered a few years back who lived alone, and she wasn't found until 3 days after forensic scientists said she must have sustained her injuries. Yet she still managed to survive just until the moment she was discovered. All had necks sliced thin like cheese by violin wire, and all humming that same sad song.

Of course, whenever something like this happens, people always say the real Musician isn't real. That he's just a hoax to scare little kids. They reason someone probably uses his methods as a sick joke, and it's reasonable to assume that they're right. But it's also reasonable to decide that, if it's dark and you're alone, you may just be best off listening to the sounds of silence.