Spectre

“Lit Up — April’s Prompt: Transition”

I woke again today to the sound of him playing the piano. Usually the music disappears once I’m fully awake, but this time it didn’t. I crept downstairs and was astounded to see him sitting at the Bechstein as he had in life.

Dark curly hair, straight back, grey shirt.

I skulked forwards and tried to touch him. My hand went right through. I swiped my hand through him again and this time felt a warmth and energy there. This was exhilarating and I had an urge to devour some of that heat, a kind of vampirism brought on perhaps by missing and wanting him, and always being cold. I’ve been cold for a long time.

He surprised me then by suddenly saying my name and turning to look at me.

“What do you think?” he asked. “I composed this for you.”

At first I couldn’t answer. I looked behind to see if he was looking at someone else, but there was nothing behind me except last year’s poinsettia in a gold pot, dropping leaves. A slightly sad survivor.

I turned back and said, “I can’t think about your composition because I’m too busy wondering how you’re here.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Don’t you know?”

“Know what?”

“That you’re dead — .”

I saw him struggle with the idea, before appearing to come to terms with it.

After that I said sorry; it’s not every day that you hear about being dead.

He started playing again.

“Listen this time,” he said.

I watched as his fingers rippled across the piano. Only now the keys looked like a kind of undulating celestial ladder, all lit up. The music climbed and I was rooted. Some sort of magnification was futzing with my senses; the music was gyrating colour and growing louder, like something fiendish was turning my hearing up. I watched the rise and fall of his shoulders and tried to ignore the pain. I put my hands to my ears but it made no difference; the music was inside me.

“Stop playing,” I cried. “I can’t bear it.”

He turned to look at me.

“I’m glad you’ve joined me at last. It was so lonely,” he said. “Don’t you like the music? I thought of this song at your funeral. It was raining and I was composing this in my mind. It helped me.”

“My funeral?” I said, puzzled.

His hands slid off the piano and he turned to me.

“It was beautiful,” he said slowly. “I wondered if you were there.”