Billy nodded to Rebecca, the key poised in the lock; they couldn't hear anything beyond the door, which either meant there was nothing there, or something. At this rate, they'd never know. Rebecca raised her gun to chest height and Billy turned the key pushing the door open in one fluid motion. Stillness greeted them past the threshold, and the smell of old must, mildew. A single, bright bulb illuminated a primarily cherry wood room, the furniture and centerpiece—a baby grand piano—edged in deep stained mahogany. Her eyes narrowing, Rebecca could see that a rectangle section of the wall flush to the floor appeared different, partially sunken in.
"Another puzzle. Something in this room has to be the key," Billy said, the observation coming from the fact that there was nothing in the room that matched the artifacts they had thus far found. A quick search of the room revealed the only item of note to be sheet music, which Billy propped up against the piano, as if to play.
"Do you?..."
Billy smiled. "Took lessons all through high school, ran track, debated on student senate…even back then I was a jack of all trades." Rebecca smiled at the mental image of a younger Billy in runner's shorts and track shoes, but repressed the bubbling giggle in light of the challenge in front of them.
"Won't know until you try," said Billy, shrugging. The sight of Billy at the piano, his fingers calling forth the song from still, old air stirred Rebecca in a way unknown to her, a mixing of allure and pure awe. The man could have been a concert pianist. His heavy fingers seemed to regain a lost grace as they worked over the keys, the sound strong and assured, soft and uncertain when he needed it to be. 'For not having touched a piano in well over a decade,' she thought, 'he's not too bad.' As the air tapered off into stillness once more, there was a soft click and the section of wall behind them slid up on an invisible track.
"Bingo-bango,"
A narrow, short corridor revealed itself to the right of an unlit, rusted oil lamp. At the end of the corridor was a desk, scared and gouged with violent, frequent use and on the desk was an amber-golden colored leech key, the last Rebecca hoped, of the set they'd collected so far. As she jogged forward to collect their prize, Billy waited until Rebecca was out of the room before hitting a few scales, closing the hidden entrance again. For a moment, his hands hovered over the keys, dusty but wiped clean where his fingers had brushed them. A look of incredible longing fled across his eyes.
"You know anything else?"
The question was so contradictory to their purposes, for a moment, Billy just stared at her part of him knowing she had seen and was now trying to understand that brief moment of painful reflection.
"A few things, yeah, you have anything in mind?"
Rebecca smiled and began to hum something, a song she'd heard what felt like worlds ago, before her life was a bad, albeit very real, horror movie. Catching on, Billy started to play, and started, visibly when she began to sing, her voice clear and bright.
"Been a long road to follow, been there and gone tomorrow
without saying good-bye to yesterday. Are the memories I hold
still valid, or have the tears deluded them? Maybe this time tomorrow,
the rain will cease to follow, and the mist will fade into one more today
something somewhere out there keeps calling…
Am I going home? Will I hear someone, singing solace to the silent moon?
Zero gravity, what's it like?
Am I alone? Or is there somebody there beyond these heavy aching feet?
Still the road keeps on telling me to go on.
Something is pulling me…I feel the gravity of it all."
Rebecca let out a deep, cleansing breath, surprised at the calm the song had bought to her, grounding her back in reality.
"Wow," Billy said, standing, "That was…just, wow."
The song seemed to have wrenched something free in Billy, a memory perhaps, or a stray but painful thought. He shook his head. "And you never considered singing as a career?"
Rebecca shook her head.
"Science was always my thing, but my parents insisted that I have an appreciation for the arts. I can play too, just not that good." She gave a nod towards the door, "What do you say we blow this Popsicle stand?"
It took a moment for Billy to leave the piano behind, whatever haunted memory that surfaced, fed by Rebecca's melodic voice, lingering like the silence between notes in the air, Expectant, waiting. Half way over the threshold of the door, he grinned at her.
"When we're out of here, how about you leave S.T.A.R.S, I'll change my name, and we can be a duet: The Ecliptic Escapees. Start at a few coffee houses, you know, work our way up…it'll be great."
Rebecca giggled. "I can see the E! headlines now…Ecliptic Duo Sweeps Indie Scene. Is there a Tony in the future for this surprise sensation? Interviews at seven,"
Laughing, the two stepped back into the nightmare, made somehow manageable by the simple fact that they could still laugh, fantasizing about an impossible future; as impossible as the nightmare itself.