Golden Music

10

I travelled to New York City to visit my family.

After a long flight from LA, I had checked into the old hotel a few minutes earlier and was waiting to go into my room.

I was waiting outside the door when I heard it.

A moaning sound.

Like a baby elephant trumpeting for its mother.

Like a broken sink that desperately needs to get fixed.

Like…

A harp.

From inside my room.

The person at the front desk said that the people inside left 2 days ago.

So no one would be inside.

But a harp can’t be playing by itself.

Can it?

9

People were just passing by me, hustling to get to their own rooms. 

No one seemed to have time to help me.

I just wandered around the hallway, spotting different people and noting what they looked like.

A little boy passed by.

He was wearing a bright blue shirt with a Toronto Maple Leafs baseball cap while hauling a Thomas the Tank Engine suitcase.

A girl walked up from behind him.

She was wearing a Lifeguard hoodie from Virginia Beach and wearing so short shorts that it would be unacceptable in a high school.

Then a lady appeared from behind her. 

“Are you doing okay?” she asked.

Here’s my chance.

8

“So there was this noise coming from the room and--”

“It seems quiet.”

I listened.

Nothing.

Nada.

Where did it go?

“It was there just a few seconds ago!” I protested.

“I am very busy right now, so I’m afraid you will have to talk to someone else,” the attendant said.

She strutted down the hallway.

My shoulders slumped down, and I listened again, looking for the sound of the harp.

“...”

7

The noise was gone.

For now.

I just scrolled through Instagram while waiting for it to come back.

Doesn’t everyone scroll through Instagram while waiting for a haunted harp to start playing?

Beautiful pictures of people, objects, and places zoomed by under my finger.

I saw several pictures of an egg.

Instagram can have anything and everything.

There were a lot of pictures of food too, and they were making me very hungry.

Authentic pizza.

Creamy gelato.

Glistening red wine.

Why is everything Italian?

Looking at the wine picture again, I noticed it kinda looked like blood.

Not the best comparison to make in the current situation, but who cares?

It’s not like the harp would start playing at the mention of blood.

6

I was wrong.

Again.

The sound of the harp began playing at the mere mention of blood.

I started to pay attention to the actual sound of the music.

It sounded like when you pour hot chocolate mix into hot milk and mix it around, but there are still some clumps in the hot chocolate.

Professional playing sounded more like when there weren't any clumps in the hot chocolate, when it was completely smooth.

This meant that the person (let’s hope it’s a person) is probably not a professional harp player. 

I didn’t want to think about how the harp might not be played by anyone, because that could get dark.

Darker than the situation already was.

5

The sound of the harp got louder and louder, enough to make me cringe when it hit high notes.

It almost sounds like the Illuminati Theme song.

I also might be going insane.

I was pacing back and forth in the hallway, listening to the mysteriously playing harp in a hotel in New York.

This is probably the 56273th time I’ve thought that this is not normal.

Back and Forth

Forth and Back

Back and Forth

People passed by.

Kids stared at me.

Dogs bit at my skirt.

None of it bothered me at the moment, because I was forming a plan.

4

Clickety-clack

My shoes clicked against the marble floor while I paced back and forth.

Maybe I could go investigate, I thought.

Ruled that out instantly.

Or I could ask someone to help.

I had tried that already, and it didn’t go that well, so...no.

My mind was going blank. I checked my phone for the time.

8:56 pm.

I’m gonna have to get dinner soon, because I try to go to bed by 10 pm, and I’m getting really hungry, I thought, while evaluating my options.

The only choice is to go into the room.

3

It’s the only way.

I got to eat, and see who (or what) is playing that harp.

This is probably the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my life, I thought.

Going into a room where an unknown person or thing was playing a harp at night.

Because I was hungry.

If you really think about it though, food gives you health, and health determines if you're alive or not, so if I don’t go in, I could die.

Technically I could go to a restaurant, but I was really trying to stay healthy too, AND I would die not knowing who was playing that harp.

Curiosity overtakes all of us, doesn’t it?

2

I was very scared.

Admitting that makes me sound like...a little boy that’s afraid to go outside while it’s dark (... actually, who isn’t?).

Thoughts clouded my brain.

Don’t go in.

There could be ghosts.

Do you like ghosts?

I shook my head, and thought, I’m never gonna get over this, so let’s just do it.

I slid my hand on the doorknob and opened the door.

1

cReAk

I cringed at the harsh sound.

I looked around in the almost complete darkness.

The couch on my right was made of leather, it looked like, with a thin layer of dust.

The little kitchen had a black Keurig that fit nicely with the black aesthetic going on.

A room across from the door was the bedroom, where I couldn’t really see what was there because it was further away.

I saw something unusual.

A glowing harp in the middle of the hotel room.

It seemed to be liquid, the shining colours slipping away into the darkness and coming back out again. The strings were like moonlight, woven into thin strips.

What came next almost blew my eyes out of their sockets.

Beside the harp sat a smiling ghost, playing the harp louder and louder, until it was too intense for my ears to bear.

The music swept me away, with the smile of the ghost haunting me, following me into the darkness.