Silence

My toes, sockless, freeze as soon as they touch the bedroom floor. I can feel the air from the vents, reaching me from under my bed. I check the time. It’s 2:08. The dead of night, and it is silent. There is no wind blowing. There is no crackle of the house settling. The bed doesn’t creak when I stand. I wrap a blanket around me and shudder. It’s so quiet that I can hear my heart beating. 

I knew living alone would mean being alone. However, I didn’t realize I could get lonely so quickly. I was not used to being the only source of noise. The only doors that were opened were closed by me. The only pots to clang on the stove were used by me. It was only me. 

The sound of the home alarm system breaks through the silence in the night, like a tree crashing through a glass window. My ears pound against my skull, begging the alarm to stop. I shiver as I cross the room, sticking my head out to see what has disturbed the silence of my home. I make my way to the staircase, tracing my fingers along the edge of the piano, wiping the dust off the top. I haven't had enough time lately to practice the instrument. It feels cold and unwanted, sitting in the hallway, quiet for too long. I move my gaze to the stairs and continue to the alarm system. 

My hand grips the banister so tight it was almost stuck to it, like lips to an ice cube. I wish it were summer again. The cold freezes my movements. It makes everything feel malevolent at this time of the night. The kitchen stove seems sinister, while the front door appears devious, and the home alarm is planning something mischievous. 

Though my brain doesn't track my actions, my fingers press the override password to quiet the incessant warning alarm. 7-6-3-0. It’s the random code that came with the system. I press my eye to the window by the door and peer outside. The porch light is off. The wind isn’t moving the trees. My hand loses feeling, resting against the cold doorknob.

I freeze. It is not the cold that makes me tense. It is not loneliness. It is not fear. 

It is the piano music, coming from upstairs. 

My brain is no longer asleep. It is alert. It is thinking. The music continues. My ears perk up. They work to trace the sound, taught to do this exact thing from the age of four. It is Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. A beautiful, extraordinary piece that deserves its place among the greats. 

It is not beautiful, however, when you hear it at 2:08 in the morning, when you live alone.

My breath catches against my throat. Now it is the fear that makes me tense. Who is playing my piano? How are they, considering I have been at the door this entire time? The breath now freezes inside my mouth. My teeth are dry, like wooden sticks slowly disintegrating inside my mouth. I look to the stairs. They have grown longer, shrouded in brooding darkness. I cannot see the piano from down here. I do not know how my piano is playing. My head tells me that my ears are playing tricks, but my heart cannot listen over its wild beating.

I try to tell myself to move forward. I tell myself that there is nothing up there. It is my phone. It is anything but my piano. It is a practical joke. But my feet, my cold, cold feet, that sensed something was wrong as soon as the vents reached them from under the bed, will not move. 

“Move, Briana,” I whisper to myself. My whisper disappears underneath the beautiful playing of the Moonlight Sonata. I wonder if whoever is playing my piano heard me. They must know I am here. How could they not? 

My instincts tell me not to go up the stairs. I am afraid of what is up the stairs. But I am also afraid of the outside. My phone is upstairs. I need to call someone. Anyone. All I want to hear is another person’s voice. A voice. Not a piano piece. 

My foot takes a step forward. My flannel pajama pants cling to my clammy skin as I force the other to move. I am a grown adult. I am not afraid of music. I will say something. If it is truly someone, they will answer. If not, it is my phone. 

My vocal chords are frozen. The word comes out as a hoarse call. It echoes off the walls of my house. “Hello?” The walls that used to protect me. Hello, hello, hello. But now, they do not protect me. Hellooooo. They are trapping me in here with the piano. Hello.

The word that comes back is not hello. It is not close to me. It is far away, from upstairs. The piano halts when it reaches my ears. There is no music. Only the word. 

“Yes?” 

The voice is a breath creeping down the nape of your neck. The speaker draws it out far too long, longer than the word yes should ever be said. Its breathiness curls around my ears, like the voice is trying to replace the beautiful music with their frightening voice. They could never. My heart is rarely beating, too afraid to even make a sound. 

I am afraid of a face connected to the voice. I am afraid of a figure. I am afraid of a person, a person who could not have come in through the door, because I was there. That person must have been there before I ever came down the stairs. They were here before 2:08 in the morning. 

“You’re not here.” I say this firmly. Warmth spreads into my lungs, like fire to snow. My feet creep forward. My hand is resting on the banister. There is no way that the piano player is real. They will not answer back, because they are a figment of my imagination. 

“What makes you…” the pause in between the sentence is filled by an ear piercing silence, like nails on a chalkboard that somehow never existed, “so sure of that?” 

My body fills with an inescapable urge to charge the stairs. I could catch them by surprise. That breathy creature whose voice is like a needle stuck in your pillow will not be there, and the piano playing cannot be real. I push myself, my toes that are frozen and stuck to the wooden boards prying themselves off like bandages off a wound, to go. I pound up the stairs, creating louder noise than the nonexistent wind or the piano that stopped playing. I expect to see the piano, the top of the stairs, and the door to my bedroom. 

Instead, I see silence. 

I don’t know how. It is all I can see, all around me. I can see it and feel it and taste it and smell it. It smells like fog on a late evening. It feels like ugliness; like a close friend giving you the cold shoulder. It tastes like water that is so hot that it is cold. I want nothing but to get rid of it. 

Silence is truly the scariest thing. I should never have decided to live alone. Mankind was not made to be alone. The worst things happen when you’re alone. 

There is a beat of nothing. No piano, no voice, no branches scratching against a window, no beating of my own heart. 

I hear my own screams before I feel the pain. The screams cut into my soul, my instinct kicks in to save, to protect, whoever is making those sounds. When I feel the fiery rips that break into my freezing flesh, I know that I cannot protect myself. The screams fill the silence. Perhaps that was the goal of the piano player. The screams, when I am gone, will always be there to pervade the silence. 

I bolt awake. My pajamas stick to my skin, cold and sweaty at the same time. My heart pounds against my chest with the never-ending fear of an attacker. I take deep breaths, never so relieved in my entire life. It was only a dream. A nightmare. Nothing a good glass of water can’t fix. 

I turn to the other side of my bed, comforted by the weight and warmth of my blanket. I check the time on my clock. It’s 2:07 AM. I lay there, eyes wide even though I just woke up. I watch, and I wait. 

The seven slowly slides away. It is replaced by the eight. I do not blink. Time cannot be stopped. The cold air, from the vents, somehow reaches my hidden toes. Shivers run down my spine like mice down a hallway. The silence is unmovable, until the alarm goes off.

I pull the blanket over my face, believing that a thin piece of fabric will protect me. The beeps move through my brain. I convince myself that is fine. It is only the alarm. It was a coincidence. My lips are frozen together, too cold to cry out or make a sound. 

The Moonlight Sonata begins to play, sounding disconnected from my room, but I know. I know there is a voice. I know there is something that can and will hurt me. I pray that maybe it will not hear me this time. I do not know what will happen in real life. 

What I do know is that the piano fills the silence I have made.