Nocturne
I don’t know why I feel that I must confess this thing to you. Perhaps it is because I do not know you, and you do not know me. You have no preconceptions about me. We have not spoken before, and it may be that we will never speak again. For now, we have nothing in common except words and silence.
Lately, I have been thinking a lot about silence, about the spaces in my life. I am, I suppose, a contemplative man by nature. I can only write when there is quiet. Any sound, even music, is an unwelcome distraction, and I speak as one who loves music.
No, let me rephrase that. I speak as one who loved music. I cannot listen to it now, and the quiet that has taken its place brings me no peace. There is an edge to it, a constant threat of disruption. I keep waiting to hear those sounds again: the lifting of the piano lid, the notes rising from the vibration of the strings, the muffled echo of a false key being struck. I find myself waking in the darkest spell of the night just to listen, but there is only the threatening stillness.
It was not always this way.
Audrey and Jason died on August 25. It was a sunny day, so the last time I saw them alive Audrey was wearing a light yellow summer dress and Jason was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. The T-shirt was yellow too. Audrey was taking Jason to swimming class. I kissed Audrey good-bye and ruffled Jason’s hair, and she promised to bring back something for lunch. Audrey was thirty-five. Jason was eight, just one year older than his brother, David. They died because a truck driver swerved to avoid a fox while he was coming around a bend, only a mile or two from our home. It was a stupid thing to do but, looking back, almost understandable. He ran straight into their car, and they were killed instantly.
About a month ago, shortly after the second anniversary of their deaths, a job was offered to me. A council far to the north had received an unexpected boost to its arts funding, in that it had gone from having no arts funding to having a little. Fearing that even this small allowance might not materialize the following year if it were not used in this one, the wise burghers advertised for someone to teach their citizens the rudiments of creative writing, to speak at local schools, and to edit, in the course of the year, a volume of work reflecting the talents that the presence of a writer in the town would undoubtedly uncover and nurture. I applied for the post, and was duly accepted. I thought that it might help us. Every day, on his way to school, David had to pass the place where his mother and brother had died. I had to pass it too, whenever I was required to leave the house. I thought that taking a break from it all might be good for us both.
But it wasn’t, of course.
Our troubles began about two weeks after we arrived at the new house; or, rather, at the old house, for it was a little dilapidated. The cost of its rental was to be paid in addition to my salary, and a local man was engaged to take care of some basic refurbishments. It had been sourced for us by an estate agent back in the city, who assured us that it was a fine property at a price that would not exceed the council’s budget. The laborer, a man named Frank Harris, had already commenced his renovations before we arrived, but it was still a work-in-progress. It was built of gray stone on two levels, with a kitchen, living room, and small toilet downstairs, and three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. Most of the walls remained unpainted, and some of the floors were still sticky with varnish. We brought some furniture with us, but it looked lost and uncomfortable in this unfamiliar setting, like guests who had somehow wandered into the wrong party.
Yet, in the beginning, David seemed to enjoy the experience of moving to a new place. Children are so very adaptable in that way. He explored, made friends, decorated his room with paintings and posters, and climbed the great trees at the bottom of the garden. I, by contrast, was seized with a terrible loneliness, for I found that the absence of Audrey and Jason was exacerbated rather than reduced by the strangeness of my surroundings. I took to writing in the garden, in the hope that sunlight might dissipate my mood. It worked, sometimes.
I can remember clearly the first night that it occurred. I woke in darkness to hear the piano being played in the living room. It was one of only a few pieces left by the house’s previous owner, along with the great oak table in the kitchen and a pair of handsome mahogany bookshelves that occupied twin alcoves in the living room. I arose, my head fuzzy with sleep and the noise of the out-of-tune piano hammering at my nerves, and went downstairs to find David standing in the room alone. I thought that he might have been sleepwalking, but he was awake.
He was always awake when it happened.
I’d heard him talking to himself as I descended, but he stopped as I reached the room, and so too did the piano music. Still, I caught snatches of his conversation as I descended, mainly “Yes” and “No,” as if somebody were asking him questions and he were giving out reluctant answers in return. He talked the way he talked to people he didn’t know very well, or of whom he was shy, or wary.
But the one-sided conversation wasn’t the strangest part of it. It was the piano playing that was so strange. You see, David never played the piano. It was Jason, his lost brother, who had played. David didn’t have a note in his head.
“David?” I said. “What’s going on?”
He didn’t reply for a moment and, had the room not been empty apart from we two, I would have said that someone had just warned him to say no more.
“I heard music,” he said.
“I heard it too,” I said. “Was that you playing?”
“No,” he said.
“Then who was it?”
He shook his head as he pushed past me and started back up the stairs to his bedroom. His brow was deeply furrowed.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s nothing to do with me.”
The next morning I asked David, over breakfast, what he had seen when he was in the room. In the daylight, he seemed more willing to talk of what had occurred.
“A little boy,” David replied, after a time. “He has dark hair and blue eyes and he is older than me, but only a little. He talks to me.”
“You’ve seen him before?”
David nodded. “Once, at the back of the garden. He was hiding in the bushes. He asked me to join him. He said he knew a game we could play, but I wouldn’t go. Then last night I heard the piano, and I went down to see who was playing. I thought it was Jason. I forgot-”
He trailed off. I reached out to him and ruffled his hair.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Sometimes I forget too.”
But my hand was trembling as I touched his head.
David laid his spoon in his bowl of untouched cornflakes, and resumed his story.
“The boy was sitting at the piano. He asked me to come and sit with him. He wanted me to help him to finish a song. Then he said we could go away and play together. But I didn’t go to him.”
“Why, David?” I asked. “Why didn’t you go?”
“Because I’m afraid of him,” said David. “He looks like a boy, but he isn’t.”
“David,” I asked. “Does he look like Jason?”
David’s face froze as he looked at me.
“Jason’s dead,” he replied. “He died with Mum in the crash. I told you, I just forgot.”
“But you miss him?”
He nodded. “I miss him a lot, but the little boy isn’t Jason. He maybe looks like him sometimes, but he isn’t Jason. I wouldn’t be frightened of Jason.”
With that, he stood and placed his cereal bowl in the sink. I didn’t know what to say, or to think. David was not the kind of boy who made up stories, and he was a very bad liar. All I could guess was that he was enduring some kind of delayed reaction to his brother’s death. It was frightening enough, but nothing that we could not deal with. There were people we could talk to, experts who could be consulted. Everything would work out in the end.