Nocturnes

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 begi

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.

David stayed at the sink for a time, then turned to me, as if he had decided something.

“Dad,” he said. “Mr. Harris says that something bad happened in this house. Is that true?”

“I don’t know, David,” I replied, and it was the truth. I had seen David talking to Frank Harris as he went about his work in the house. Sometimes he allowed David to help him with little tasks. He seemed like a nice man, and it was good for David to work with his hands, but now I began to have second thoughts about leaving my son alone with him.

“Mr. Harris says that you have to be careful with some places.” David continued. “He says they have long memories, that the stones hold those memories and sometimes, without meaning to, people can make them come alive again.”

I tried to keep the anger from my voice as I responded.

“Mr. Harris is employed as a handyman, David, not as a professional frightener. I’m going to have a talk with him.”

With that, David nodded unhappily, picked up his jacket and sports bag from the hallway, and walked down the garden path to wait for the bus. The local school, where David would begin studying in the autumn, was ru

I was about to join David when I saw another figure kneeling beside him, obviously talking to him, his face serious and concerned. He was an elderly man with silver hair, and there were paint stains on his blue overalls. It was Frank Harris, the handyman. He stood and patted David’s head gently, then waited with him until the bus pulled up and whisked David away.

I intercepted Harris as he opened the front door with the spare key. He looked a little confused as I began to speak.

“I’m afraid that I have to talk to you about a serious matter, Mr. Harris,” I said. “It’s these stories you’ve been telling David about the house. You know, he’s been having nightmares, and you may be the cause of them.”

Mr. Harris laid down his paint tin. He regarded me evenly.

“I’m sorry you feel that way, Mr. Markham. I never meant to give your son bad dreams.”

“He says you told him that something bad had happened here in the past.”

“All I told your son was that he should be careful.”

“Careful of what?”

“Just that, well, older houses have histories, some good, some bad. And as new people enter them, and bring new life into them, the history of the house is altered and modified. That way, bad histories can slowly, over time, become good histories. It’s the way of things. But the house where you now live hasn’t experienced that kind of change. It hasn’t had time.”