Scenes From the Second Storey
Page 19
She walked straight past the lounge, making her way to the far end of the hallway and the door that stood straight ahead of her. Had the song ever sounded so loud? Doubtful. It seemed that, after being neglected for so many years, the tune was determined that she should never forget it again. She was approaching it fast now, that door.
As a child, Kim had suffered from a low attention span — something which continued to plague her throughout her life, though it proved to be less of an issue as she grew older. Learning the piano took time; it required dedication and patience — qualities that Kim lacked in abundance. She gave up, exasperated by her inability to master the instrument overnight and annoyed with herself for not persisting. Kim knew that only her yearning to play that one song had kept her going for as long as she had, until long after it became obvious that she would never reach the standard necessary to actually master the stupid thing. This realisation drove her to long sessions of sitting by herself at the piano, playing notes in ones and twos and threes, trying to find the proper sequence, to match the sounds her fumbling fingers created to the lilting beauty that tripped through her head. Once or twice she even thought she had something, but in the end these solo sessions too led only to frustration.
No one else in the house seemed bothered with playing the piano, but, as far as Kim knew, it was still here.
She heard the tune so clearly now; surely it wasn't just in her head. Kim rarely felt the need for anyone, but right then she wished there was someone beside her who could say, "Yes, I can hear it too." But there was only her.
It sounded for all the world as if somebody were actually playing it; her tune. Right here and right now — playing with a lilting surety she could only envy, yet using her piano to do so. For the music was coming from just beyond this door. Kim took a deep breath and reached for the handle. At the same instant she was struck by a fresh spasm of pain in her head. What the hell was going on? She'd never been one for headaches. Then, the oddest thing; the door handle seemed to shift, to jump, almost as if trying to avoid her, to escape her touch. The illusion passed in an instant and her fingers fastened around the handle. For a moment she simply gripped the cold metal, squeezing it firmly, as if making sure it was real, that it was solid and not inclined to turn insubstantial and slip away from her grasp.
Still the music drew her on.
She turned the handle and pushed the door open.
Light flooded the hallway, causing her to squint. Suddenly she realised why the place had seemed so dark earlier — because of this door. Had she ever seen it closed before? Not that she could think of, except perhaps in the winter, at night, when it might be shut to keep the heat in. Otherwise, the door had always stood open, allowing light into this back-end of the house. Amazing what a difference such a simple thing could make.
The music never faltered.
She stepped into the room, dazzled by the light and the sound. There was her piano, looking exactly as she remembered…and there was a young girl, not yet a teen, sitting at the piano and playing. Playing her song.
But of course — what else would she be playing? After all, the young girl was her, as she'd been when she was twelve. No, eleven — she remembered that dress, how much she'd hated the dark patterning of bright flowers set against a black background. Funny, it struck her as perfectly okay now — pretty in a prim and proper way — but to her eleven-year old self it had been the ultimate humiliation to have to wear such a sombre, dreary thing, for all that her mother insisted it was 'smart and lovely'. This was the dress she was required to wear when her parents had 'guests' — smiling elderly faces to whom she and Ed were to be presented. Lord, how she loathed them — Mum and guests the same. Not Dad, of course, who seemed oblivious to how awful this all was for her. She was certain that he would have put a stop to such performances if only he'd realised. Yet never certain enough to actually test the theory by asking him to.
Kim watched in awe as the fingers of her girlhood self danced across the keyboard, playing her song as she had always dreamed of doing, as she had always yearned to do. She felt a great upwelling of joy as she realised that she could play this, that she had always been able to.
She blinked away tears, and knew this to be the happiest, proudest moment of her life.
The girl-that-was-her looked up, smiling, and invited Kim to join her with a shallow nod and a movement of the eyes. The woman sat on the stool beside this apparition from her past, and, after watching for a few careful moments, felt confident enough to join in. Her playing was effortless, unhesitating, the music seeming to flow through her, coursing throughout body and soul to direct her unpractised fingers. She closed her eyes, the tears running freely now, soft and warmly ticklish where they trailed down her cheeks. Somewhere along the way the girl left or disappeared, leaving her to play the song, her song, alone. And it was beautiful.
Without warning the headache returned, but more, much more. She gasped, blinded by agony. Her fingers faltered, the song died…as did she.
****
A month after her mother passed away, Kimberley Jeanette Hobson died of a brain aneurism. Discovered in the music room of her old family home, the broad smile on her features was put down to the effect of rigor mortis acting on the muscles of the face.
Her funeral was a quiet affair, with only a half dozen souls in attendance — her ex-husband unable to make it due to work commitments. Among those few was an old school friend of the deceased: one Mandy Gibson.
Mandy had no real idea why she was there, except that she'd always regretted the loss of Kim's friendship and felt compelled to attend, perhaps to say goodbye, and perhaps to say 'sorry' with a sincerity she'd never managed while Kim was alive.
The sparseness of mourners saddened her; Kim deserved better.
At the funeral, as the coffin disappeared towards its fiery end, a rather lovely piece of music played over the sound system: a simple piano tune, haunting and melancholic, yet beautiful. It seemed entirely appropriate somehow, both for the occasion and for Kim. Mandy had never heard the tune before and determined to ask someone what it was.
Of course, she never did, though the tune stayed with her.
She decided to think of it simply as The Piano Song.
Previous Publications
'The Blind Man' copyright Carole Johnstone, first published in Dead Souls, 2009. Reprinted by permission of the author
'Out' copyright Mike Stone, first published as 'Cutting the Cord' in Everyday Weirdness, 2009. Reprinted by permission of the author
ABOUT THE AUTHORs
Miles Deacon
Miles hasn't provided a bio, so we've asked his mum to provide details: "He's a very nice boy. He wet the bed until he was thirty-two, but he's controlled that now with a little cork. He's not my favourite son. He reminds me of a potato I once loved. Miles, if you're reading this, why don't you call me more often? I don't see enough of my grandsons, you know. Dad wants to know if you've seen his glasses."
KV Taylor
KV Taylor hails from the foothills of West Virginia, but currently lives in the DC Metro area with her husband and mutant cat. Her short fiction can be found at kvtaylor.com, and her first novel, Scripped, is forthcoming from Belfire Press in 2011. She collects The Red Penny Papers in her dining room.
Carole Johnstone
Carole's first published story appeared in Black Static #3 in early 2008. Since then she has contributed stories to many publishers, including PS Publishing, Night Shade Books, Gray Friar Press, Morrigan Books, Apex Book Company and TTA Press.
Dead Loss (Black Static #13) was reprinted in Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year, Vol. 2, and her first novella, Frenzy, was published by Eternal Press/Damnation Books in 2009. She is presently at work on her second novel while seeking fame and fortune with the first.
More information on the author can be found at carolejohnstone.com
Gary McMahon
Gary McMahon's short fiction has been reprinted in both The Mammoth Book
of Best New Horror and The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror. He is the British-Fantasy-Award-nominated author of the novels Hungry Hearts from Abaddon Books, Pretty Little Dead Things and Dead Bad Things from Angry Robot/Osprey and The Concrete Grove trilogy from Solaris.
Website: www.garymcmahon.com
Adrienne Jones
Adrienne Jones is author of the books Brine, The Hoax, Gypsies Stole my Tequila, Seeded and Backbite.
She lives in New England and is working on her next novel.
Website: http://www.adriennejones.net/
Shannon Page
Shannon Page was born on Halloween night and spent her early years on a commune in northern California's backwoods. A childhood without television gave her a great love of books and the worlds she found in them. She wrote her first book, an adventure story starring her cat, at the age of seven. Sadly, that tale is currently out of print, but her work has appeared in Clarkesworld, Interzone, Fantasy, Black Static, Tor.com, and a number of anthologies, including Love and Rockets from DAW and the Australian Shadows Award-winning Grants Pass. Shannon is a longtime practitioner of Ashtanga yoga, has no tattoos, and lives in Portland, Oregon, with seventeen orchids and an awful lot of books. Visit her at www.shannonpage.net.
Paul Kane
Paul Kane is an award-winning writer and editor based in Derbyshire, UK. His short story collections are Alone (In the Dark), Touching the Flame, FunnyBones, Peripheral Visions, Shadow Writer and The Adventures of Dalton Quayle, with his latest due out from the award-winning PS Publishing: The Butterfly Man and Other Stories. His novellas include Signs of Life, The Lazarus Condition and RED. He is the author of the novels Of Darkness and Light, The Gemini Factor and the bestselling Arrowhead trilogy (Arrowhead, Broken Arrow and Arrowland), a post-apocalyptic reworking of the Robin Hood myth. He is co-editor of the anthology Hellbound Hearts — stories based around the Clive Barker mythology that spawned Hellraiser — and his non-fiction books are The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy and Voices in the Dark. His work has been optioned for film and television, and his zombie story Dead Time was turned into an episode of the Lionsgate/NBC TV series Fear Itself, adapted by Steve Niles (30 Days of Night) and directed by Darren Lynn Bousman (SAW II-IV). He also scripted the The Opportunity, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, and The Weeping Woman — filmed by award-winning director Mark Steensland and starring Tony-nominated actor Stephen Geoffreys (Fright Night). You can find out more at his website www.shadow-writer.co.uk which has featured Guest Writers such as Stephen King, James Herbert and Neil Gaiman.
Pete Kempshall
Pete Kempshall has written sci-fi and horror for publishers in the US, UK and Australia. He also co-edited the Australian edition of Scenes from the Second Storey, a collection that went on to be nominated for several awards. British-born, he now lives in Western Australia and pops up to blog at www.tyrannyoftheblankpage.blogspot.com.
Mike Stone
Mike Stone was born in 1966 in Stoke-on-Trent, England. Since losing most of his eyesight he has retreated from your world to travel the dark corners of inner space — or to put it more prosaically he thinks "What if?" a lot. The signs are clear to those that know him well, for his one not-so-bad eye glazes over and he is rendered deaf to all English except for "Would you like a cup of tea, Mike?" He will then engage with reality long enough to ask if there are any biscuits before drifting off again. While agreeing that this can be very trying for those around him, he remains unrepentant.
He is represented by Nat Sobel of Sobel Weber Associates, Inc.
Gerard Brennan
Gerard Brennan lives in Northern Ireland with his wife, Michelle and their kids, Mya, Jack and Oscar. He co-edited Requiems for the Departed, a collection of crime fiction based on Irish myths which won the 2011 Spinetingler Award for best anthology. Two of his recent short stories were selected for the Mammoth Book of Best British Crime series, edited by Maxim Jakubowski. His novella, The Point, was published by Pulp Press in October 2011.
Joseph D'Lacey
According to Stephen King, 'Joseph D'Lacey rocks!'. The full quote reads 'Joseph D'Lacey rocks like a drooling lobotomy patient!'
He is also a British Fantasy Award winner and the author of MEAT, Garbage Man, The Kill Crew and Snake Eyes. Joseph lives in a padded cell in Northamptonshire where he types very safely on a rubberised keyboard.
T.A. Moore
T.A Moore is a writer, journalist and arts critic from Northern Ireland. Her first book, The Even, is a dystopian urban fairy-tale set in a city located somewhere between the real and the unreal. A sequel, Shadows Bloom, will be published in Winter 2011.
Born on the 12th July, T.A Moore was a gullible child who believed the peripatetic bands were out just for her birthday. Later she would go on to hyperventilate on Space Mountain when someone told her two other passengers had fallen out. Armed with very strong coffee, a selection of very tall boots and a shameful amount of tech-toys, T.A Moore aims to bestride the literary landscape like a colossus. That's why she doesn't wear skirts.
On reading her writing, most people say, 'but you seem so nice.'
T.A Moore also hates writing about herself in the third person. So let's keep this short.
IAN WHATES
Ian Whates is the author of some 40-odd published short stories and two novel sequences: the Noise books (space opera) via Solaris and the City of 100 Rows (urban fantasy with steampunk overtones and SF underpinning) through Angry Robot. He has edited around 20 anthologies, including two in the Mammoth Book of series for Constable and Robinson and Solaris Rising: the New Book of Solaris SF for Solaris. The majority, though, have been through his own award-winning independent publishing house NewCon Press, which he established in 2006. Ian has served a term as Overseas Regional Director for SFWA and is currently the chairman of the BSFA. He can be found online at: www.ianwhates.com and www.newconpress.co.uk.