The Forgotten Masterpiece

Very late in the night, the old mansion was making those weird noises again. Roy had already been stationed outside, beginning to investigate such strange occurrence. He climbed up the cold iron gate. Once he reached the top, he leaped and made a soft landing in the mansion's compound. Roy chose such a difficult way as the gates were locked and fastened with numerous rusty chains. Roy did not intend to make unnecessary noise with a saw. He had to tread past numerous tombstones before he could reach the building. Instead of entering through the main door, Roy decided to sneak into the mansion through a broken window. Once inside, it was pitch black. Normally, a person in such circumstances would bring along a flashlight. But Roy had something better - the state-of-the-art night vision goggles. As careful as he was, Roy could not avoid making a few creaking noises even though he was tiptoeing through those moth-eaten wooden stairs. When he felt that someone was watching him, he turned around and saw almost all the portraits seemed to be looking at him. Roy thought to himself, could they be ...... surveillance cameras? He began taking a much closer look at each and every one of those portraits, to the extent that his nose was almost touching them. He even used a magnifying glass. When he found that there was not a single pinhole found in the pupils of those portraits, Roy finally concluded that it was all a mere figment of his crazy imagination; that the portraits looking in the same direction was a mere coincidence.

When Roy entered a particular room, the twin doors slammed behind him without warning. He could not feel a gust of wind that would exert such an impact on those doors. He was so sure that no one was following him as his scanner did not detect any human heat signature within his 30-meter radius. He held his hands onto the handles, only to find that the doors were locked. Roy made a few steps back, then sprinted towards the door and gave it his ferrous karate kick.

BANG!

The door was finally forced open.

That was nothing. Roy had broken into a couple of houses in this manner as part of his job. He then made a close inspection of the door and was surprised to find that there was no lock or anything that would fasten the door then. That was strange. An automatic door perhaps. No. Roy shook his head. A mansion of this sort could not have such an installation. He must have been reading too much sci-fi. The electric company would never connect any cable to a place that had been abandoned for more than a century. Roy knew a bit of history about this mansion. It used to be a mini-opera house. A fire broke out a century ago due to a strike of lightning. More than a few did not make it out alive; most of them were musicians. Although repairs had been made to the mansion, no one for some reason had ever dared to visit the mansion since that incident.

Noise was getting louder as Roy approached the auditorium. He made a sneak peek. Indeed, there were people in there meddling with musical instruments. Suddenly, Roy felt the room temperature had gotten freezingly cold. Had someone turned on the air-conditioner? But the mansion had been abandoned for more than a century. Unless ... of course! Roy slapped his head for being so dumb. That corresponded with his deduction. He looked around and did not fail to notice that there were firearms scattered on the floor. Once he was sure that there were no traps or anything that would threaten his safety, Roy gave a few taps to his earpiece and immediately came out of hiding.

"Freeze!" Chief Inspector Roy aimed his gun at his suspects. In an instant, white glaring lights from all directions shone at them and the SWAT team had already slid down from the helicopters under Roy's signal and stormed into the scene.

"Freeze!" Inspector Roy cried out, "Put your hands over your heads!"

This was Operation Ghost Hunt. Chief Inspector Roy saw the abandoned mansion making weird noises every night as a part of an ingenious ploy. Making it haunted was the criminals' disguise for their secret base of operation. He had never believed in ghosts or any supernatural phenomenon by the way. Indeed, there weren't many residents remaining in this town as many of them had fled due to the mansion's reputation. The plan would have worked if it had not been for a highly trained police dog on patrol that managed to pick up a suspicious scent. After conducting various sample sniffing, experts found out that what the dog sniffed was in fact Heroin X, the latest variant of Heroin that was known only to be manufactured and distributed by the notorious crime syndicate known as the Hellzingers. They were extremely dangerous. Every chance of encountering them would definitely lead to severe casualties and bloodshed. Which was why Operation Ghost Hunt had to be a big one. The police did send a secret agent into the mansion but they soon lost contact with him. The secret agent was later found lying pathetically among the trash cans with rats and cockroaches as his companions. He was questioned the moment he woke up but he had no recollection of what had happened or even what his mission was. The doctors did not find any sign of head trauma or any traces of drugs in his bloodstream that could result in his memory loss. Some suggested the cause of his amnesia could be psychological but there were no experts around to back it up.

The suspects did not comply. They just stopped moving. While some from SWAT were busy restraining them, the rest began their search. And soon enough, packets of heroin X were found hidden under the floorboards. Chief Inspector Roy smiled. It seemed that the case was finally brought to a close.

"You are under arrest!" said Roy, "For the possession of illicit drugs and violation of Civil Behavioral Act Chapter 25 for causing public nuisance that deprive innocent civilians of their sleep."

"But sir," said one of the suspects, "this must be some kind of mistake. We are just trying to play..."

"You have the right to remain silent," Roy interrupted, " anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of law!"

Then one of the suspects who was so skinny that one could see the bones beneath his flesh broke the handcuffs. It took more than five men to subdue him.

Back at the police station in the morning, the interrogators began questioning the suspects. They suddenly could not remember what they were doing in the abandoned mansion last night. They all claimed that they were extremely sleepy and went to bed. The police had all of their backgrounds reviewed. One of them was a milkman, a kindergarten teacher, a newspaper boy, a gardener, an old couple who were retired civil servants and had no children, a florist, etc. The police could not find a single criminal record on those people. That was quite the conundrum. Chief Inspector Roy did not think it was his mistake. Actually, he thought that the Hellzingers must have employed more professional hackers and even sent spies to infiltrate the police force.

Then, there was a report saying that the abandoned mansion was making weird noises again. Inspector Roy and the others rushed towards the auditorium. They were surprised to find that the ones holding the musical instruments turned out to be members of the police force. And there was even a patrol dog standing on two legs, playing the trumpet and the sight of it was extraordinary to Roy, not that it was good at it.

"Dear officers!" Roy cried out loud, "Are you mad? You seemed as if you were all possessed!"

"That's what we were trying to tell you!" One of them finally spoke, "We were the band of musicians from the dead and we need to borrow physical bodies from the living as our spiritual ones had the difficulty of even lifting our instruments!"

"But what about the packets of Heroin X we found in this very mansion?"

"Those white substance? We thought they were flour, the one you use to make bread with. As for the fellows you are looking for, they were gone. We drove them away as we thought they were going to turn the whole place into a bakery or something!"

Chief Inspector Roy finally accepted the fact that this mansion was haunted. "If our law were to include ghosts and supernatural beings," he said, "I hope you would all get arrested for possessing innocent civilians without their consent. And holding our fellow police officers hostage to me is already a serious offense!"

"We couldn't help it, sir. When we were still alive, one of us came up with a musical piece far greater than anything Bach, Mozart, and even Beethoven had ever created and it gave us hope that we would one day become world famous. But on the very day of our performance, while we were in backstage waiting for our turn, the whole ceiling collapsed upon our heads and then we were engulfed by the flames, slowly burning us alive while we were trapped by the debris. Our biggest regret of not being able to bring such a masterpiece to light and get recorded in history forced us to stay behind and play it over and over again until our music can finally be recognized!"

Chief Inspector Roy took a closer look at those instruments. They were all covered in dust and their conditions were obviously far from perfect. The violins had one or two strings broken. The trumpets had dents over them.

"It will take an eternity to play anything nice," said Roy.

"Alas! We are forever bound to the place. We could not go any further to get the instruments we wanted!"

Roy let out a sigh and made a call. He wanted to end this kind of negotiation as soon as possible. Not long after, a truck arrived and unloaded its cargo full of musical instruments. With brand new instruments in hand, the ghost began to play once more. It was an amazing performance, a million times better than what they used to play for years after their deaths. When it was over, they received a great round of applause.

"Finally!" said one of the ghosts, "We did it! We are finally able to bring our best performance and our masterpiece will never be forgotten!"

Having said so, the spirits left, and their host fell into a deep slumber.

"Hmm..." Roy spoke at length, "Did anyone here by chance record the whole thing?"

There was silence. The mansion was cordoned off from the public. In other words, no one else besides the policemen had heard of the performance.

"Yes, sir." said one of the policemen who was holding an audio recorder.

But when he replayed the thing, the sound became too fuzzy to hear.