4. Charlie #2
I’d played loads in my teens, and my twenties. Before I’d decided music was a waste of time, that I needed to be practical, needed to earn money instead of chasing dreams that would never materialise.
My fingers found the strings, brushing against them without pressure.
Dad.
My downhill slope had started the moment the cancer took him.
I’d been seventeen. Emily thirteen. Mum had crumbled inward like a dying star, and I’d had to hold everything together while my world fractured.
Music had been the first casualty. Hard to practise guitar when you’re working two jobs to help with the bills.
Hard to care about chord progressions when you’re watching your family fall apart.
Before that, though. Before the hospital visits and the funeral and the heavy weight of being a breadwinner at seventeen—before all that, there’d been music.
Dad had played old rock constantly. Pink Floyd drifting through the kitchen whilst he cooked Sunday roasts. The Beatles whilst he drove me to football practice. He’d air-guitar his way through entire albums, completely unselfconscious, grinning like an idiot when I’d cringe with embarrassment.
Then came the concerts. Cover bands with ridiculous names—Mentallica, Floyd’s Void, Nearvana.
Cheap tickets. Pubs and small venues with sticky floors and mediocre sound systems. Dad would hoist me onto his shoulders so I could see over the crowd, his hands steady on my ankles whilst the music crashed over us.
I’d loved it. Not just the music itself—though that had wormed its way into my blood—but the atmosphere.
The way hundreds of strangers became one organism, swaying and singing in unison.
The electricity in the air before the first chord struck.
The togetherness. The shared joy of something bigger than any individual person.
Music had been in my blood from those moments. Dad’s gift.
He’d brag about my talent to his mates at the pub. “Charlie’s got real skill. Natural ear for it. He’ll be playing stadiums one day, you watch.” I’d wanted to believe him. For a while, I had.
Then he died, and I’d packed it all away. Practical Charlie. Responsible Charlie. Charlie who needed to earn money, not waste time on fantasies. I still attempted university for a few years, at my mum’s insistence. But it was too late by that point. I’d lost my spark.
My throat tightened.
I adjusted my grip on the guitar, fingers finding familiar positions on the fretboard. The strings bit into my fingertips—soft now, no calluses. Years of disuse had erased the evidence of hours spent practising.
I plucked a string experimentally. The sound died instantly, swallowed by the attic’s strange stillness.
The temperature plummeted.
A shiver shot through me. The guitar’s body suddenly froze against my chest, ice seeping through my shirt.
Every hair on my arms stood up.
Oh, bollocks.
I tried again. This time the note rang out, sour and sharp. Completely out of tune. Obviously. Probably hadn’t been touched in decades.
My fingers moved automatically, adjusting the tuning pegs. E string first, then A, working my way through each one. The familiar ritual calmed the jagged thing trying to burrow into my chest. Made the locked door feel less immediate. Less terrifying.
I plucked the strings. Close enough. Not perfect, but playable.
I positioned my fingers on the fretboard. They fumbled for the right placement, thick and useless.
A simple chord progression. G, D, Em, C. Basic. The sort of thing I could play in my sleep once.
The first notes came out hesitant. Awkward. Rusty didn’t begin to cover it.
I tried again. Slower this time. Letting the muscle memory surface through years of neglect.
The melody took shape. Something melancholic I’d written at sixteen, in that tiny bedroom at my parents’ house.
Back when I’d believed I might actually be good at this.
When Dad would listen to everything I wrote, beaming with pride.
Before I’d measured myself against every other musician and found myself lacking.
Before Dad died and everything else seemed frivolous.
The notes flowed easier now. My fingers remembered the patterns, even if my brain had tried to forget. The song unfolded, achingly familiar. A ghost of who I’d been.
The attic faded. The locked door, the impossible situation, Brad’s inevitable mockery—all of it dissolved into the music.
I played through to the end. Let the final chord ring out, resonating in the dusty air.
Silence rushed back.
Then—a sigh.
Deep. Appreciative. Longing.
My hands froze on the strings.
That hadn’t been wind. Hadn’t been the house settling or my imagination. That had been a breath. Human. Close enough that I should be able to see who’d made it.
The attic stood empty.
“Hello?” The word barely made it past my lips.
The dust motes shifted. Not drifting. Not random. They moved with purpose, swirling in patterns that spelled out—
Nothing. They spelled nothing. Just moved. Responding.
“Who are you?”
The motes spiralled even faster, concentrated into a vague shape near the window. Almost person-shaped. Almost.
The EMF meter sat heavy in my pocket. I could check it. Confirm what was happening with actual data instead of dust and feelings and impossible atmospheric pressure.
But my hand didn’t move towards it.
Some part of me—the stubborn, contrary part that got me fired from jobs—refused. Didn’t want to reduce this to numbers and readings and colours. Didn’t want to break whatever this was with cold scientific confirmation.
Later. I’d check later. Right now…
My hand lifted. Reached towards them.
Don’t touch it. Don’t be an idiot. This was how people died in horror films.
My fingers passed through the swirling dust.
And I felt something.
Not physical. Not a hand or face or anything solid. But something deeper. An emotion that wasn’t mine, flooding through the point of contact. Nostalgia so sharp it ached. Longing for something lost. The way music could crack you open and expose every soft, vulnerable part you’d tried to bury.
My breath caught.
Something brushed my cheek. Gentle. Reverent. The whisper of a touch that sent warmth spreading through my chest instead of terror.
I should be terrified. Should be screaming, throwing myself at the door, tearing my fingernails off trying to escape.
Yet… I wasn’t scared. Not exactly.
I swallowed hard.
The dust swirled once more, almost seeming to pulse.
The attic door exploded inward with a shriek of splintering wood.
I lurched backwards, the guitar nearly slipping from my grip. The dust scattered like startled birds, dissolving into nothing.
“No!” The word tore out of me. I reached towards where they’d been, fingers grasping at empty air.
“Charlie?!” Brad’s bulk filled the doorway, his face flushed from exertion.
“Brad!” Relief flooded through me.
He stared at the door, then at me. “Why did you lock it?”
“I obviously didn’t mean to! It must be… dodgy. Old mechanism or something. I’ve been stuck up here.”
Brad grunted, examining the latch. The metal looked ancient, corroded. Perfectly innocent. Just a faulty lock in a decrepit house.
Not supernatural. Couldn’t be supernatural, because I didn’t believe in that rubbish.