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In Hamilton County Texas in the early years of the American Civil War, John McAllister joins the confederates, leaving his wife Mary to care for their farm. They have a small son named William who is cared for by Sarah, a Native American Indian who was captured in a raid by another tribe and given to the McAllisters.
Sarah’s father was a powerful shaman and taught her his preparation of medicines and spells. She uses this knowledge to hasten the death of Mary so she can have control of William. Sarah is obsessed with the boy. She awaits the day that William will become a mature young man. She plans to place a curse on him then, a curse that only she can control with her father’s spells and the carnal use of her own body.
Two migrant workers, former slaves, drift by the McAllister farm. They see William is hard-pressed to work the land on his own and offer to help and teach William how to plant cotton. Sarah is wary of the two at first, and then recognizes they will offer no threat to her control over William. Not long after the workers have put up a shed and established their residence on the farm, Sarah knows the time is right for her to place the curse on William.
Sarah’s power is endangered soon after when a family arrives to take over an empty farmhouse and land adjoining the McAllisters. Silas Caldwell and his two daughters came down from Arkansas to take possession of the old farm left to him by Silas’ aunt. Silas is a lazy, dangerous man and wants to marry one his daughters to William in order to combine the two farms.
Threatened by Silas’ plans, Sarah decides to use her magic to place a spell on one of the former slaves so he will kill both of Silas’ daughters. Tragedy results for all involved, culminating in a fatal encounter between Silas and Sarah.
With Sarah gone, there is no one to control the curse William carries. He has no idea why his body transforms into a fearsome beast at night and must shun the light of day. He is lost, confused and terrified. He searches for a hiding place and finds, at the top of a steep cliff, a derelict church that has been serving a congregation of only dust, cobwebs, and birds that roost in the rafters. He lives there hidden in the cellar, cursed never to walk in the tortuous sunlight, cursed to roam the woods on the cliff at night struggling with the violent desire to kill while striving to preserve the remnants of his own humanity.
There is a ranch at the bottom of the cliff. William keeps a close watch on the family there: a man named Samuel Stark, his wife Vera, and their adolescent son Michael. Years later Michel runs the ranch with a family of his own. One day he must leave his children while he attends to important business away from home. By mistake, the pact is broken and the family falls under the wrath of the beast in the cellar. One family member, the youngest daughter, held captive by the beast and is at first she is terrified by the creature who imprisons her, but her terror unexpectedly turns into something more endearing until she finds herself falling in love with the creature.
Unknown to them, this bond of love is the only cure for the original curse to be removed, but even it will have a cost. As the beast begins to revert back into a human being, his captive, his beauty, inwardly becomes more like the beast she cured and when her father finally returns and finds his home and family destroyed, the once powerful William must face him with all too limited and very human power.
Music Box Sonata is the second story from Once Upon a Time in Texas, a collective series of dark variations of popular fairytales by Timothy C. Hobbs.
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