12. The pianist

The piano room.

That room so overwhelmingly flooded with daylight. Now, too, flooded with sound. Music. A deliciously sharp melody. Delicious and terrifying. That daylight he had to escape. The daylight that he could already see, turning like a coin in John's eyes.

He was already awake. Already waiting without even realizing it.

Peter Lake needed to escape. Needed to get out. To hell with the safe. The dance. The white horse. To hell with himself for ever listening to a horse to begin with. He was mad, truly mad. And for his madness he was here now. Trapped.

The house was not abandoned. There was someone at the piano. A bombastic someone. Someone who wanted Peter Lake to hear them.

He carried no weapon with which to protect himself. No knife. He had left those in the satchel, with the white horse.

He had the hook, still clawed in the balcony. On the rooftop. Near the tent. That stupid tent.

He had nothing. Nothing.

The grandfather clock boomed on in the hallway. Peter became nervous. Panic overtook him. He was going to ride away on the white horse and say goodbye to John and get the hell out.

He scanned the desk. He only now took notice of the fact that whoever lived here was most likely a journalist. Nothing but pens and newspapers. Quills and ink.

He went back to the safe, opened the door at long last.

There was no money there. No luck. Nothing. They had taken it all. Again, they weren't taking any chances.

They weren't careless. Not all of them, at least.

It all made sense to him now. The roof door. The music. That person at the piano, that blabbermouth, that scoundrel. The rest of them, the rest of the people who lived here, had secured everything. The windows, the doors, the safes. They took care of their own things.

But the pianist. The little mouse hiding in the walls. Leaving slippers around.

They knew where he was. And how. And they wanted to mock him. Mock his fruitless attempts at a final robbery. They truly did have a death wish.

In his fear, in his panic, in his sheer frustration, Peter detected one thing in the safe, so dark it was almost molten into the shadows within. He reached inside. The fingers curled around the barrel of the gun. He could have burst out laughing.

Peter was too tired and too hungry to throw shots. He had no desire to use that weapon. And yet he took it along, out of sheer pettiness. He needed to get something out of these ridiculous circumstances. Out of his stupidity. With all that had happened, he couldn't allow himself the embarrassment of leaving empty-handed.

And with the gun in his hand, he went into the piano room. Into the music, which had thickened into a frantic melody.

He moved quietly. The pianist had her back turned to him. He had his chance. He had to move. Had to leave.

And yet.

And yet…

He was transfixed by the sight. The sound of this.

Given the early hours, the place he found himself in, the fact that he had not slept that night, and his rising hunger, Peter initially thought that he was imagining things. The girl at the piano moved her head in sharp nods as she leaned into the keys. Her hands, two white spiders, moving in an almost hysterical fashion. Her hair was wet and frenzied, dark red. She was barefoot, wearing only a white nightgown.

The sight of her was so outlandish to Peter, it almost scared him. She was a ghost. A dead girl playing piano in an abandoned house. Finding macabre amusement in haunting the thief that had interrupted her slumber.

She was a fine player, however. The sound of her was intoxicating. Peter was still. The gun subconsciously hanging from his hand. His eyes set on the piano and the woman before it.

I need to get to John.

He was smiling without even realizing it. His lips were parting and he had not let them. He thought about speaking, saying something. Anything.

Pearly Soames will kill me.

His mouth closed. His eyes deviating from their subject. The music was only growing in intensity. And somehow, still, Peter Lake could hear her breathing. Sharp gasps. Little whimpers of excitement. The tendrils of red hair glittered in the daylight.

Pearly Soames is coming for me.

He moved a foot. That's all it took.

The floor creaked under the weight of him. Protesting. Screaming.

And the pianist spun on her seat. The music collapsed into silence, in only the blink of an eye.

And Peter Lake looked at her. And she at him.

Author's Note: So... you may be asking (I hope)... why didn't Peter just bring a gun to the house?

In the movie, Peter just brings a gun. He doesn't even open the Penn safe. He is interrupted by Beverly and immediately grabs the pistol and goes to investigate.

As you can see, I changed that here. I made Peter come into the Penn house wielding no weapons (because he would obviously find no use for them), find a gun in the safe and only bring it along out of pettiness. Because he was convinced to go into that house by a flying horse and ended up cornered in a room with a ghost-looking woman playing the piano and found nothing else in the safe. He would realistically take the gun purely out of spite and a weak attempt to not feel as awkward. It just seems more in-character for him, in my opinion.

Because, on the other hand, I personally find it out-of-character for movie-Peter to bring a gun to his midnight robbing spree, and I find the fact that he even has a gun hard to believe. For many reasons. Here, I'll list them.

1) Peter didn't have a gun when Pearly and his gang were chasing him earlier in the movie. If he had actually owned one, he would 100% never let go of it. That would have come in real handy for fighting off a band of demons. The gun was obviously added in later on for his meeting with Beverly to be more intense.

2) Peter could have never afforded a gun, come on. He was living in an attic above Grand Central Station and he spent his only money on maintaining the white horse for one night.

3) Peter just doesn't seem like the type of guy who would bring a gun to a robbery. A knife, maybe, but a gun? In the movie they keep bragging about how merciful Peter is, only being violent when he has no other option. That's why Pearly dislikes him in the first place. Peter Lake would not rob a house and bring a gun along. He just wouldn't.

So there. My explanation.

Anyways, Beverly and Peter have officially locked eyes. I repeat, they have LOCKED EYES! See you next time ;)