I woke up in darkness. The clock at the side of the bed glowed green: 11:41. I rolled out of bed, pulled on some warm clothes sleepily, and tiptoed down the hall.
Four times already this week I’d woken like this in the middle of the night, not being able to go back to sleep until I’d taken a long walk. I’d read once about how humans used to wake up all the time, just like this, before the industrial age. Benjamin Franklin had written about it—the odd hours between first and second sleep where people would wake up and read, pray, or make love.
Me? I took walks. Most of the time I would walk to campus, just a few blocks from our apartment. At night the sidewalks were empty and the buildings loomed like ghosts over my head. Everything seemed older then, bigger. I would walk, think about math, and then I would be back in my bed, ready to slumber at two or three in the morning.
I tugged on my boots and slid my keys into my pocket, closing the door behind me as quietly as I could. Shannon had agreed to cover for me, and I didn’t want to wake her up the night before she worked my shift. Hurrying down the stairs, I greeted the night as a friend, not even minding the rush of cold air and the soft sprinkling of snow. Perhaps it was my sleepiness, but I didn’t feel as cold during my night walks as I did during the day, even though the temperature dropped ten degrees or so.
Passing briskly through the stone archways onto the campus, I let my mind wander to the internship test I would be taking tomorrow. Tomorrow, or today? I didn’t know the time. Six hours of the hardest math problems, or so I’d heard. I wondered if I would be up to the task.
From somewhere in the distance I heard a bell ring out, and my mind jolted back to the present. I halted in my tracks, not sure where on campus my feet had taken me. The snow had stopped falling, and everything seemed unnaturally hushed. No whisper of cars on the neighboring streets, no rustle of night birds in the eaves of the buildings. Silence wrapped the world in a cradling hold.
I blinked hard and looked up to see the music building in front of me. My body had brought me here unconsciously and now something urged me to go inside, to get out of the night. I looked around, my heart beating quickly as though expecting some predator to jump out of the shadows toward me, but nothing moved. I climbed the stone steps of the building slowly, careful not to slip on the icy granite.
Security always locked the doors for the night, but as I reached for the brass handle I knew that this one would be open. Indeed, the oak door swung outward, a gust of warm air escaping like smoke into the chilly night. I turned back to survey the deserted campus, and again felt a thrill of fear, as though some monster watched me as I moved. A wolf, maybe, though I knew there were no wolves here. Still, I pulled the door closed behind me and locked the bolt myself, shutting out the night.
One of the oldest on campus, the music building boasted an ornate interior, deep carvings in every square inch of the oak walls and thick red carpet lining the floors. My boots sank into the newly-vacuumed carpeting, leaving dark prints behind. The yellow lights above shone dimly through the hallway as I walked on, pushing through a high swinging oak door into the practice halls. Here the lights were dimmed, almost entirely off, and I moved through the darkness, letting one hand trail along the wall to guide me forward.
Then I heard something that stopped me in my steps. Soft music drifted down the hall, muted by the carpet. A piano.
For a moment, I thought someone might just be practicing late at night, an overzealous music major anxious to impress or a chemistry student embarrassed by her amateur playing. But as I moved tentatively down the hall, I could tell that it wasn’t an amateur at the keys. All of the normal practice rooms stood open, their doorways black and empty. The only closed door lay at the very back of the practice hall, and light shone brightly from the insulated glass panel above the door. The piano behind that door was the Bosendorfer.#p#分页标题#e#
The midnight piano.
Moving closer, I could hear the notes more distinctly. I recognized the song as a piece by Erik Satie, one of the Gymnopedies. The melody tiptoed along the higher register, a lonely, slow song full of simple repetition. The quarter notes came hesitantly, carefully, building louder as the song continued, but still restrained. The walls, designed to muffle the sound of studious beauty, made the music sound as distant as though it came from another country, far, far away.
Was someone playing a prank on me? Perhaps it was a recording. I pressed my ear to the door and listened.
The music eased into the final chords, the pause between them lingering a moment too long, and then only silence remained. I still had my ear pressed to the door when it opened, sending me tumbling forward into the arms of the midnight piano ghost.