67. Playing the Melody

She was playing. Her fingers slid over the worn keys, feeling their smooth ivory surface and the hitch in the D where the hammer didn't hit the snares quite right, or maybe the spring was stretched beyond its normal wear. She didn't hesitate once, she never missed a key, and if she hadn't been playing the same song for almost half an hour straight she might even have enjoyed it.

The piano was reasonably well tuned, and the overly familiar tune echoed in the empty auditorium of the school, bouncing off the wall. When the hall was filled with people, the sound would have been muffled and have sounded more natural, as the acoustics of the room had been designed for that. But now, it sounded hollow. You could feel the emptiness of the room by just listening to the tune coming out of the piano. Not a living soul was there.

Yet she did have an audience.

About a hundred ghosts floated in the room, some vague and translucent, some obviously corporeal and dripping green ectoplasm. They were all quiet, listening to the music. Those who had discernible heads bobbed them slowly in the rhythm of the tune, others seemingly randomly moved up and down. They all had one common denominator though.

They were quiet. Peaceful. Transfixed. All conveniently together in one room, creating a cold, surreal atmosphere. It was like part of the ghost zone had moved here, into the auditorium, taking with it the dead feel of the place. The cold in the room wasn't real cold in the sense that the temperature was really low – although it wasn't exactly warm –, it was more the sense of finality, of lost hope, the feel of an open grave. A hundred fold.

It even smelled like an open grave. Besides the tell-tale ozone, she could smell the earth of a freshly dug grave, mixed with a slight smell of decay – although the latter might have been caused by the dead mouse she had found earlier. It didn't help her concentration at all, and even though she started to really, really despise the song, she didn't want to make a mistake.

The creepy cold intensified, and she chanced a brief look into the room to see what the ghosts were up to, and immediately wished she hadn't. The ghosts were steadily moving closer, almost blocking her view on the high windows. The curtains, closed when the room was in use, were open, allowing sunlight to stream in, lighting up part of the green seats so brightly the other ones might just have well been black. She couldn't see the entrance to the auditorium, as she was blinded by the light and it too was in the shade.

Quickly, she looked back at the brown piano, at the empty music stand, the thin, hardly visible lines in the wood, the gold letters of the brand. She shouldn't look, she should just play, but the proximity of the ghosts brought a foul taste in her mouth. It was as if she could taste death.

Vowing to brush her teeth as soon as this was over, Sam's scowl deepened when she started 'Fűr Elise', the only tune she knew by heart, for the fiftieth time. Danny had better hurry up with that thermos.