Harry opened the door to the music room.
The grand piano was where, and as, he'd left it. He tried to extract the key from the lock to no avail. His fingers slid away from the lanyard that bore identical resemblance to the one his long ago love carried with pride, and a memento unfortunately lost in moves. Perhaps it was fitting that he wouldn't be wandering home with it, since it wasn't the original, and likely didn't even exist. Yes, like most things known and dear in this town, it was simply another pawn conjured for his torment. Harry made peace with it, and approached the instrument.
James didn't feel right being in this room. It was small and inhabited by invisible, unblinking eyes that crowded every inch of space and stared at him as though he were a bug in a jar. The malice was thick, and if he hadn't been so used to Silent Hill's spirited personality, it would've sent him running right out of the school.
He slid his hand into his pocket and hung back by the door to observe.
The piano keys were yellowed from exposure, age, and puddles of blood - of which was still fresh after seventeen years - that had oddly expanded. It stretched nearly from the lowest A to the highest C, and even glistened on the black eharmonics. Harry reached out for the middle C, then retracted his hand. He clenched his fingers to a fist, mustered his courage, and pressed the ivory.
It was stuck.
He dipped his fingertips in crimson as they crawled an eastbound scale across the keyboard of unplayable notes. Not one key gave way until a high A. It was an unexpectedly powerful ting, as though he'd pulled the rope in a bell tower. Harry, refusing to let the pipe out of his left hand, awkwardly stepped his fingers over the keys on the western side. Whimsy decided to include the raised black ones, and found a working string in a C flat as well as a low, white D.
A second test of the right eharmonics gave him an F flat, and that was all.
His arm returned to his side, and didn't bother to wipe his fingers off.
Together they stared at the piano. The four playable notes were chilling. They acted as ghosts antiquated and forgotten, and whose disembodied voices cried when they sang.
Harry studied the piano more intently. A blind and deaf man could tell this was a riddle. It was supposed to be played, but how was its mystery; what was it missing? He leaned in to look for a hint, scanning all the nothing there was to see from the front. So he began to canvass it more thoroughly, walking around and looking into the open, displayed interior, but there wasn't anything out of the ordinary there either. Uttering a pensive hum, he backtracked to the front, and thanks to the flashlight clipped to his jacket, spotted something glinting on the seat of the chair.
Upon the cushion lay a couple plastic tokens. He retrieved and thumbed them in his palm. They were yellow and red, and transparent under his light. Harry deflated his lungs and turned to James.
"Wonder what these are for."
James drew his lips into a line. There was nothing to say that came to mind; he couldn't even take the time to shrug. The veteran jumbled the tokens in his palm, then put them in his pocket for safekeeping. "So there's something we're going to have to look for to spend.."
A theoretical lightbulb popped on over his head. He fetched the fortune teller out of his jacket and reread until he tapped his thumb over a passage. James noticed his bloody fingerprints tainting the paper. Harry didn't. "Treat box. You can open the treat box at one o'clock. Hey, James, you got the time?"
Harry stuffed the paper back in its home and threw his guardian a smile as he passed. James tracked him with his eyes, aloof as can be, and followed the leader.
The courtyard was quaint. From their lookout on the second floor, it'd managed to sell itself as a bigger space. On the ground, in the fog and snow, it strangely felt liminal. No matter what it was, the clock tower was their target, and it was easily found.
Standing at the base of the stone colossus, they gazed into the grey heavens at the round clock face. The fog was conveniently thin and the snow light, providing them with easy viewing of the suspended time.
That said, there was a small problem with the reading. The riddle had two specific hours: 11:30 and 1:00. The hands high above told 2:25.
Harry rapped his faithful steel on his leg, as he was wont to do when he was thinking, or, as James had come to learn, when he was nervous. In this instance, it was done in contemplation. He rubbed the plastic coins against each other in his pocket, and lowered his head to eye the doors. Then, he discovered a discrepancy.
"The medallions are gone."
James watched him brush an empty stone pocket. "Hm." Harry's eyes darted back and forth between the bare settings. "Did I write about this? Did I put down the solution? I remember there were these big medallions I had to hunt down and put in here."
The wrinkles on his brow were hard. "Uh.. you didn't say much at all. Remember?"
Harry tossed a tired look back at him. "Could you double check it, please?"
Off the backpack went, and James knelt to get out the sacred text and flip through. Harry inspected the plaques to fill the time.
"The only thing about the clocktower is this. Like I'd said."
Harry leaned in at the page bearing 'CLOCKTOWER' underlined twice. Huffing impatiently at his past self, he clicked his tongue and went back to pondering. "Fuck. Whoever wrote that was an idiot not to elaborate."
James answered by simply zipping up their storage and oriented it over his shoulders whilst getting to his feet. The veteran picked at the center of one of the pockets, tickling his companion's interest.
"What is it?"
"A little cut. Like a slot." Pouting thoughtfully, the older of the two entertained the conundrum to himself as he re-homed his hand in his jacket. He looked up, then down, and back up where his eyes stuck, fiddling still with the tokens.
"A Golden Sun and A Silver Moon," he mused aloud. "There were two medallions: gold and silver. Obviously. So without those, I wonder how fucked—"
His hand froze. Snapping his head down, he withdrew the pieces and studied them in his palm.
"Hey. Is there another slot on that side?"
James looked. "No."
Harry scrunched his face for a long moment. He moved the chips around, stacking and separating them under his thumb. "Red and yellow make orange," he murmured to himself. James observed his charge going from plaque, to trying the doors, to the other plaque.
This was taking up a lot of time, and there was jack all he could do about it. James sneered to himself. Well, he supposed, it was as good a time as any, then, to practice his patience. He waited. And waited.
James hated waiting.
"A Golden Sun and A Silver Moon," Harry announced, absently pointing at each as they were named. "And A Golden Sun has the slot. So. I'm gonna gamble, and I don't do it often because I'm pretty bad at it, and put this one.." He approached the placement for the sun, and slid the yellow token in. ".. here."
It clinked mechanically just as a coin does in a slot machine. He took a few steps back and looked skyward with James. For a good beat he worried he'd wasted their clue. Harry inhaled in preparation for a sigh, then held it in his lungs as the hands jerked into motion.
They went backwards. 2:25 became 2:45, 2:57, and came to rest at 1:00.
The survivors were rightfully perplexed.
"Oh."
".. hm."
"Well. Alright, then."
Harry exaggerated a shrug at James, who returned one much more sedate, and they exited the courtyard together to locate the so-called treat box.
They visited every open room, from reception to bathrooms, classrooms and library. The one small corridor beside the library was shut off to them; Harry wagered the science room was there, if memory served. Alas, they'd been to all those places before and again and turned up without a treasure chest to plunder.
Unfortunately, an alas oftentimes came with an alack: the duo returned to the music room stumped and empty-handed.
James thought the air had gotten heavier in there, and the hostile attitude of the room felt like it appreciated him even less the second time around. To say it was distracting was a light way of putting it, for its repressive assault on him doused his head in soured milk. It claimed a small victory in his choice to hover by the door as he'd done prior, but it wasn't going to shove him out like it seemed to truly want.
Or perhaps he was simply projecting; it wasn't as though he exactly wanted to be in there.
In being too busy dissecting the indoor weather, James lost his awareness to the immediate world around him until Harry spoke.
"Hey. This isn't the same piano."
He forced his eyes to settle on the instrument planted in the middle of the room. No, it most certainly was not the same piano at all. The grand had been swapped out to a much smaller, vertical, and compact type known as a console, treated by a weathered grey finish instead of shiny black. It was a polar opposite to the elegant instrument that had been there before - and kind of dingy, in James's opinion.
Yet despite that blasé first impression, there was a rotten underlining to it, too: it reminded him of her.
When Harry found the lanyard and revealed that crucial tidbit about his wife, James had been excited to fish in the lake of possibilities. It hadn't occurred to him at the time, however, what her career as a music teacher really entailed. A grand piano meant nothing to him, and although this smaller piano was not the same model he'd found at the estate sale and eagerly lugged home to fulfill his wife's fantasies as a concert pianist, it was an unwelcome shove into a freezing cave of bygone days.
This instrument didn't belong to him or Mary, but that little detail didn't throw away the hammer of guilt and regret that struck his laughable excuse for a heart.
The air spoiled further.
Of course, it wasn't just James that was experiencing a visceral reaction to the substitute piano. Harry lingered a few steps away from it like it was poison. His shoulders rose and fell with the deep breaths he used to soothe himself, and the steel in his hand beat a nervous frenzy on his leg. Like James, it reminded him of a woman he loved and her talented hands filling a house with beauty and joy. Unlike James, this piano eviscerated him from head to toe for the main reason that it was identical to the one Jodi had worshipped every day.
Harry's feet took him closer. His eyes naturally searched the top of the keybed and forced the sticky gunk down his throat. Yes, it was the very same piano plucked straight from his memories, as confirmed by the faded marker letters that titled the white keys where the blood didn't reach.
The Escobar family heirloom didn't belong here. Harry was upset that his memories had been looted to recreate a thing so sacred to him, and yet, this didn't breach a hill of anger he was surely capable of. This brilliant replica piano was, of course, just that: a fake. Although knowing the original was safe at home and this one was being used as a means of harm, just like the lanyard, the aged widower felt some unexpected comfort in seeing it. A passing thought had to wonder if Silent Hill was peeved any that the trick hadn't brought him crumpling to the floor.
Some gags just didn't hit the mark, and here was one of them.
He looked down. Even the compartment bench had been manifested in place of the single chair. It was empty. Harry swiveled in place, taking a lazy survey of the floor, when the fact finally registered that the piano, being half the size than the grand it had once been, boasted a large amount of space behind it. Patting the lid, he murmured, "Hiya, honey," and leaned around to look.
James stretched his neck side to side as he watched his charge bend down to pick something up, then put that something on the piano. It was a brightly colored box whose hot pink body and neon yellow lid were only visible through the crevices where the smorgasbord of stickers didn't plaster. Children had probably once contributed more than half of those stickers to flex their artistic whims, and had adored its loud mess.
Their creative growth and youthful eccentrics aside, the thing was goddamn hideous. It strained James's eyes in their harsh white lights even from way back where he stood at the door. It made him wonder if Harry would suffer from an annoying imprint on his vision from being so close. James averted his eyes to save himself from that fate.
Meanwhile, Harry slowly spun the box in place. If he'd known what sort of professional, artistically-educated judgments James had been making, he honestly would've agreed. The prize box had been ugly in his mind before, and though still ugly now, its fond memories made it charming. He solemnly admired another familiar item his wife had cared for, and another one he had likewise lost long ago. Harry completed the circle by turning its face to him, where a vertical slit awaited currency.
"Now ain't this a treat box, indeed. Y'know, Jodi misplaced this awhile back, silly girl, and I thought it'd grown legs and wandered right off, cuz we couldn't find it anywhere. So.. one's gotta wonder who found it and put it back. What a mystery. What a total mystery."
James could imagine how the dry sarcasm reflected on Harry's face. Nice as all these passive-aggressive trinkets Silent Hill recreated for them to reflect upon, the room felt like it was closing in on him by the minute, and he wished the patriarch would hurry up so they could get out of there. This was yet another thing that was drawing on for too long, and in danger of becoming a behavior that could turn into a habit.
Not only that, but the moldy stench was piling onto his headache and tying a sickly rope from throat to stomach. His face twinged from a roll of nausea. Luckily and to his relief, the survivor had grown a backbone. He watched Harry rummage in his pocket and drop the red token into the box.
It clicked and popped itself ajar. Harry righted his stance, loosely shook out his arms, and opened it to claim the reward.
And.. papers. How anti-climatic.
James curled his lip as they were unfolded and shuffled in Harry's hands. Harry snapped the papers to get the creases temporarily flat, the pop acting like gunfire in James's skull. Whatever was on them made him shake his head.
He wanted to go over, rip the papers from his hands, and get a look for himself so they could advance. Between the room trying to blow his head open and Harry's emotional lollygagging, James was close to losing his fucking mind. One would think Harry would want to spend as little time as possible in Midwich, but it wasn't like his track record for keeping promises about taking quick trips had a gold star reputation. Harry complained an awful lot about hating Silent Hill and wanting to get out, then in the same breath, turned around and pulled drawn-out bullshit like this.
James spoke as calmly as his agitation would allow, though he was hard pressed to mask all the bite. "What is it?"
"Well, we've got our school map," responded tiredness and falsified pep. "And we've got sheet music."
"What for?"
A repeat lull separated query from reply while Harry folded up the double-sided map and stuffed it in his overpopulated inner jacket pocket with all the other important documents.
Harry tested the keyboard and found it to be in full working order. Placing the steel rod atop the piano with the treat box, he pulled out the bench and sat down. He tried to smooth the sheets out one more time, reversing the creases under the glide of his thumb, then scattered the music in order on the rack.
James was still waiting. Before he opened his mouth to ask again, Harry was ready to answer.
" Gymnopedie N o. 1 . By Erik Satie."
The name rang a bell that stung the front of his brain. "Does it mean something?"
"Oh yeah. It means a lot."
"Like what?"
Harry clenched, then stretched his hovering fingers over the keys. "Like Jodi's favorite." He tested the pedals underfoot and prepared for things he couldn't anticipate. "I played this one back at the hotel. You'll remember."
His hands sank the blood-slicked keys and brought the piano to life.
James wrinkled his forehead as the somber, delicate notes penetrated the atmosphere. Harry was right: he did remember it. When he'd played it, it had been the first time he'd heard music in as many years. The piece - the peace - back then had made the moment unforgettable. He liked it.
It also pulsated through his skull like an oversized brass bong making love to a weekend bender's Monday morning hangover. James swayed in place - and not from being pleasantly overcome by the composition. He fluttered his eyelids to keep trickles of water from blinding his eyes, then tried to wipe them clear with the back of his hand. It didn't help, because it never did, so he squeezed them shut.
Harry didn't need the sheet music to play Satie's masterpiece, for the simple fact being that he couldn't read it. In many unsuccessful times in the past, he'd tried to correlate the notes he knew to the ones printed on staves, and it just didn't ever sink in. That was fine with him. They were pretty, so they became decoration and immersion for playing pretend, and he liked it that way.
Meanwhile, what should have been bewitching and soulful seemed to putrefy as it filled the entire school from corner to wicked corner.
James could barely stand. Lead fresh from a blacksmith's furnace replaced his marrows and his turned his muscles into jagged rock. He dragged a haggard breath and, as though that had been its cue, the loudspeakers crackled like shattering bones throughout the school.
Harry jerked his head up, his hands interrupted just as he reached for the high notes. Impossibly, beyond the static, the music seamlessly picked up right from where he left off; like his fingers had never left the keyboard. His eye caught movement and he looked down to find a spirit's hands twinkling those keys in his stead like a player piano. But before he could make sense of it, an angry, amplified buzzing akin to a swarm of vindictive wasps filled the air, and he winced hard, clapping his hands over his ears.
Amidst the torture that his palms barely helped muffle, he twisted and shot his eyes back to James. A separate panic, this one dedicated to the wellbeing of a man not doing at all well, got Harry hastily to his feet. The dash overturned the bench and caused himself to trip over its leg - but he didn't go down. However useless it was to yell for James over the din he did it anyway, getting to him in the nick of time before his body collapsed to the dirty floor.
He struggled to keep the conduit's dead-weighted, rag doll body upright. Harry screamed fearfully into his companion's face, who was gaping like a fish, whose eyes were as enormous as one too, and whose hands frantically clawed for his life at his leather-clad arms. The veteran thrust James against the wall to aid his cause in keeping him vertical, but his legs were no better than jelly. James was writhing, choking for air that was actively rejected by his lungs, and from the streams of water that poured into his open mouth.
Baring his teeth, Harry manipulated him to the floor and laid him tilted downwards on his left side, holding him firmly in place. Louder and louder climbed the deafening electrical mayhem and with it, something incongruous that had snuck itself into the belligerent scramble. These noises seemed to hate each other and trapped Harry in their crossfire as they brawled. The resulting barbarous opera disoriented him, and made his head throb like a fresh, open wound.
Then it all crescendoed into the raw horn he heard in his restless dreams.
Harry was really struggling with James; his last-ditch survival instincts had kicked in and were trying to fight him off. The veteran pinned him with all his might, hiking his shoulders in vain attempt to protect eardrums close to bursting, his head ready to split open, and then—
Horror widened his tormented eyes as the floor cruelly sheared its vinyl like flesh ripped from its meat. The beginning emergence of Harry's greatest fears seemed to trigger a violent seizure in James's helpless body, catching him off guard. He straddled the town's living power source and clamped his soaked, trembling legs between his dense thighs, while derelict iron grating crawled under them as swiftly as a fire eats grass.
Harry's attention was being yanked on all sides. James convulsed and turned blue under him; the trumpet called to arms; the drab walls peeled like scorched paper to give way to slabs of corroded steel swathed in bloody oxidation. Then, because it was not over yet, the room had a change of heart, deciding to again shed sections newly exposed grate and metal like fabric torn, giving Harry a glimpse into a place he'd much rather be.
In these scattered tears, dark hardwood revealed itself on the floor, and smoky blue paint on the walls. He shot a terrorized glanced to his left. Beneath the piano spread an abstract blaze of a large patterned rug, its edges fringed by hints of hardwood, stranding it on its very own personal island. Flicking his eyes up at the wall behind the piano, he witnessed the iron shave itself from top to bottom in a wide fragment, uncovering the same paint and a halved, framed picture that his subconscious recognized.
Clangs and burring demanded him to look over his shoulder. The industrial transformation surged through the corridor, reconstructing the normal world into a malignant domain as the siren crowed. Midwich Elementary School, just moments ago a ghostly institution, gave way to a cage of nightmares that Harry had never truly left - and never would.
When all became the true personification of hell's deepest chambers, the wailing died out and took the static with it. Concurrently, beneath Harry's anchor, the conduit's seizure also waned to an end. Harry wheezed and, realizing his hearing had suddenly cleared without repercussion, raised his eyes to the metal ceiling overhead. Without the tumult, the haunted, beloved masterpiece of Gymnopedie No. 1 - which had been present all along - resurfaced alone at last.
In a place unworthy of it, the intangible memory echoed like a Lord's psalm throughout an empty cathedral. Harry's lips parted as the tender notes that had once brought him a heaven of happiness and peace became a theme of mourning and pity for the two lost souls stranded in their acrid purgatory. It tapered to a fade as it drew to its end, as it was composed to do, the last echoing chords bidding the bereaved widowers a final, and forever, farewell.