16. The Ghost
The Ghost
My family decided for me, before I began any other schooling, that music would be my contribution to the legacy of our name.
Grandfathers and cousins were investors, politicians, businessmen. Inventors, travelers, patrons of the arts. My own father was simply an heir, sitting on too much money and not enough inspiration. I couldn’t be allowed to do the same.
My lessons began early. Before I could even string a sentence together, they had me seated at the bench.
I was lucky: something just seemed to click, and it came easy.
There was no need to wrangle me, even as a young boy, to their will.
I liked sitting at the instrument and coaxing melodies from it, even before I could understand what a melody, or a music staff, or a chord progression was.
I figured out the pedals on my own, once I could reach them.
The playing came first, the tutoring second.
I had an ear for it, and my parents capitalized on this quickly.
The keys became my pencil, my paintbrush, my voice when I didn’t have the words. And even when I did finally have a voice, I learned, quickly, that I was safer in silence. They didn’t seem to understand me much, anyway.
My earliest memory is at the piano. A clap against my ear hard enough the room spun.
I was later punished for talking back. Reprimanded by my mother and father—if only I’d listened, if only I’d played the run right, the tutor wouldn’t have disciplined me. For the next few years, I was expected to practice to perfection.
And if I didn’t, I knew the consequences.
I was responsible for every slap. Evidence that I didn’t care enough. That I was too lazy.
I didn’t hold it against the piano. Not it’s fault it became an instrument of torture. I still hummed myself to sleep. The music was still my only companion.
I still remember her face when I stood up from the bench. She wouldn’t shut up that day. I had gotten pretty good at tuning out the vitriol.
And then I realized how much bigger than her I was.
The fear that widened her eyes—I remember the exact whitish shade of her sclera, the small blood vessels spider webbing across the white. I remember the sting of her scratching and the red marks it left behind on my arms. I remember the sound of her last wheezed breath.
And I remember how, when I was done killing her, my only thought was that finally it was quiet.
In the early hours of the morning, when no one is awake save the few guards patrolling the perimeter of our estate, I chase away the deafening silence at the Steinway.
The staff says creepy music comes from this room between midnight and sunrise, waking them before their alarms. They suspect a member of the family is the source. They fear it is me.
The Ghost.
Before Mallary arrived, and before Henri and his string of tutors, this was my room. Part of my domain.
And every day, every year it seems the Beauchenes want to move on without me, encroaching on my space and pretending that I’m no longer real. No longer a problem.
They forget this is my house, too.
It was my house before it was Henri’s. It was mine before Mallary.
Waking the entire house is the least of my concerns. I can’t sit in the quiet. Can’t and won’t. It is still dark when I sit at the bench. I am more comfortable here than even behind my walls.
The song has been eating at me from the inside. Like a poison, hot in my arteries, eager to spill out of me. If I were pierced through the heart, it wouldn’t be blood spilling out of me, but this melody, viscous and staining like rotten ink.
And it’s all because of her. I’ve spent years alone, my only company these instruments and the harmonies swirling around in my head.
Yet the moment she arrives, the moment I hear her play, something is stirred inside of me, a painful squeezing in my chest, like a rusted machine covered in cobwebs finally starting up again.
Other tutors have come and gone, each and every one with a mechanical approach to the music, almost afraid of the instrument. Too timid. Too unfamiliar, even if they could memorize difficult runs and make them sound effortless to an untrained ear.
Mallary commands the music. She’s got it in her veins.
This song is not just for me. It’s hers, too.
The boy gets her undivided attention in the morning. Maybe foolishly, I hope she will spend the afternoon filling the house with music, but she curls up in a window to read instead—a book borrowed from the family’s library, likely the first time it’s been read.
I can be patient.
She’s there for over an hour, almost two, her nose buried between the pages, and only when the dreary winter sun begins to set does she stand to resume her duties. Then she glances about the hall.
She must feel me.
She must know I am here.
My dick jumps at the thought.
So close. I am so close.
She watches over the boy again until he’s dragged away for dinner. She doesn’t follow, doesn’t make her way to the kitchens. She just waits at the Steinway.
For me.
“You haven't eaten,” I say by way of greeting her.
She jumps, the movement almost imperceptible, whirling around.
When her gaze lands on me, my lungs constrict.
“You…”
“Have a name,” I finish for her.
She purses her lips, almost frowning. “What do you want me to call you?”
Strange girl. She’s considerate. “Whatever you want.”
She seems to think for a moment. Maybe she knows this is a test of sorts—who does she see standing before her?
“Menace?”
For the first time in years, a laugh almost bursts from me. “Not inaccurate, I suppose.”
“Bastien.”
And suddenly she’s peering behind the mask, stripping me down to the bone, with one single word.
My name.
Almost forgotten to time. Part of me believed that only I would remember my own true identity.
My throat is thick with some emotion, and I find it too uncomfortable, especially when she’s looking at me with those deep brown eyes.
“You didn’t play today,” I say.
That rosy pink color brightens her cheeks and I want so badly to feel the warmth of her blush under my hands. “I was about to begin practicing, I just…” She glances away.
“What?”
“I… feel your eyes on me, all day. While I am with Henri. When I do play. It’s… distracting.”
“Distracting?” Do I take up all her thoughts as she does for me?
“Sometimes I can’t think, because I know you’re there.” The soft pink flushes into a pretty crimson at the admission.
I affect her.
“And when I’m alone, I—” She stumbles on her words. I wonder how bright the blood under her skin is, to make her blush so prettily. “I just need to practice. I need to. It’s—it’s very important to me.”
I nod, because if there’s anyone that would understand, it’s me. Nod, to remind myself to keep my thoughts in line. “Are Mariane and Leo treating you well?”
A small crease forms between her brows. “The money is good. And I have access to this,” she says, her hand settling on top of the Steinway.
The Steinway they bought after I’d already been shunned into the dark.
The Steinway they bought for him.
Too many hands have touched this instrument. Tutor after tutor, most unworthy. I’m beginning to realize I don’t want anyone else seated at that bench but her.
“I didn’t ask about the money. Are they kind to you?”
She hesitates, and I can think only of when Leo cornered her in this room. How I wanted to gouge out his eyes, take my time slipping my thumb between his skull and blood-shot sclera while he wails, pulling taut the stringy muscle until it snaps and I can crush the orb under my heel.
“Of course.”
The muscle in my jaw clenches. I would do that for her—hurt him. And selfishly I want to. I’ve wanted to for a while, and if she’s giving me a reason to, then so be it.
“You should play every day. I want you to play every day.”
“Your music?”
“Whatever music you’d like.” I am a few paces away from her. It is suddenly too far. “I want my music to be the only music you play. The only music you want to play. Ever.”
That skeptical look narrows her eyes again. But she doesn’t cower, doesn’t say No. “Then you have to give me advice,” she says, straightening her chin. “Tell me how to play it. Your song. Guide me. You are the composer.”
“I thought you wanted no distractions?” I move closer. Slowly. I don’t want to scare her. “But if you insist on my company, I am happy to obey.”
It’s no trick of the light when her pupils widen. “In the evenings. When I am done with Henri and everything else. You’ll help me in the evenings. But during the day you have to… leave me alone.”
Her eyes are greedy, so I know this is a feigned concern that I will reveal myself to Henri or the staff—does she really care for them? She doesn’t know that they’re already very familiar with the ghost that stalks these halls.
“I won't bother you during the day. But I can’t promise not to listen.” Her music is too sweet.
“Okay.”
I stop just within reach. “And at night—you are mine.”
Her lashes flutter. “Okay.”
“Say it, Mallary.” Gratification is already tightening at my spine.
Her brief hesitation is endearing. “At night, I am yours.”