Page 30 of Petrify

I’m going to ruin this before it even starts.

“I will find you when it’s time.” He recovers quickly, a new air of caution. “Tomorrow night.”

I think he wants to say more, the silence hanging thick, but he moves away, giving me a single nod as he fades into the shadows like a true specter.

The words are soft, muffled by his mask. “Goodnight, Mallary.”

Chapter 16

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 fortalking 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’tshut upthat 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 sayscreepymusic 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, everyyearit 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 Ihear 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.