Piper

There is a ghost in the opera house.

Or something like one, at least.

The staff have attempted everything: paranormal investigators, doctors, psychologists, inspectors to check for gas leaks. Carbon monoxide and infrasound have been searched for, in vain. When that failed, the manager summoned in the ghosthunters with their funny hi-tech machines and solemn manner, driven by conviction. But even they found nothing. No hauntings at all.

The staff of the opera house know better. They are cleaners, lighting technicians, the PR team, those responsible for finding and booking the acts, and so on, everyone required to keep the cogs and wheels of the opera house turning, united in terror and place.

“A bunch of bloody charlatans!” grumbles the owner after the retreating ghosthunters leave; he used to be a sceptic, before.

His staff numbly agree, thinking of how they will have to come into work tomorrow, and the day after that, and the week after that, knowing that there is something here.

They had used to love the opera house. It is vast and sprawling. A gloomy labyrinth of poorly lit, curling corridors which twist like aged arthritic fingers. Once it was a beguiling labyrinth to them; now it is the labyrinth of Minos, and there is a monster at its heart. Nobody among them knows how large it is, or how many dressing-rooms and rehearsal rooms and store cupboards there are, and none of them wants to count. After all, what if they tried to measure its dimensions, and found them to be impossible? What if they went off to count all of the rooms and map them, and never came back?

The staff are many, young and old, skilled and unskilled, those devoted to the opera house and those who couldn’t get another job. Many of them could not be more different, and yet they all stay close. You can see them, creeping through the opera house in little packs as they do their many jobs, looking like a search party, trawling a forest for bodies, trying not to make any sound.

None of them, not even the most convinced, can point to a single definable item of proof for the haunting. All there is, is… a presence. A sense of prickling dread. The knowledge that someone else is in the room with them, whether they are seen or unseen. Throughout the poorly lit, brown-walled and wooden-floored corridors of the elderly, maze-like opera house, it stalks them. Watches them ceaselessly. Conversations die off too fast: words die in the mouth: eyes drop their gaze to the floor. It is listening.

And it stealspeople.

It targets musicians. The Ukrainian singer. The Russian cellist. The French guitarist and the Scottish conductor. In their minds, the staff recite their names in a sort of dreadful litany, day in, day out. Four world-famous musicians, all sparkling talents, all geniuses in their primes, thrumming with passion; all performed here; all vanished, you see, here is your proof, this place isn’t right -

Who were they? I’ve never heard of them, someone says, some trusted friend or relative, some new performer or accosted audience member.

The staff insist. You have – if you know anything about classical music you have heard of them I swear – Olena Karakazova? Ivan Pobedostenov? Nicole Le Pen? Stewart Douglass?

For a moment, the questioner’s eyes glaze over. I don’t know them.

Nobody seems to know them, any more. Their vanishings are complete. But the denizens of the opera house still know them, and forever fear becoming another name on the dreadful list, the terrible fame of being the first of their own people to vanish.

Maybe the opera house is loyal to them, even as they are to it.

Maybe it will not touch them.

They hope.

One day, one of the cleaning staff, Madeleine, is in one of the opera house’s many dark corridors, sweeping. The other staff are busy, a major performance of Handel, and they cannot all go in groups. She is alone. As she sweeps she sings to herself, a quiet rambling tune. It is good, although she does not know that.

Once she has finished sweeping, she intends to go to the canteen for lunch, although she has also not yet realised that she is lost. The corridors, in their tricksy way, have bent and curled and twisted backwards in on themselves, obscuring the route back, like vines weaving themselves across the path that leads out of the forest… The dark, deep forest.

Not that this matters, much.

It is already far too late, you see.

As she is sweeping thick clumps of dust into the grey plastic pan, Madeleine thinks she hears a sound. A creak, perhaps, or a footstep. Or she supposes that it might have been a breath or a cut-off fragment of speech. She looks around; there is no-one there. The draft, perhaps? She goes back to her sweeping and singing.

A hand lightly brushes her shoulder. For a moment, there is the slightest pressure on her skin, and against her back the fabric of her blouse shifts under the touch, and then it is gone.

She stills. Making herself perfectly still. She does not turn around.

It is already far too late.

It – he? She? They? It? – is still there, she can feel it, and her heart-beat accelerates, pointlessly pushing more and more blood around her chilling veins, pointlessly, because how can she hope to run?

She asks, “Why are you here?” and is proud that her voice doesn’t shake.

It answers. Not in words, she doesn’t think, but it is hard to tell. There is a buzzing in her ears, and she is afraid that the walls of her mind are caving in. This is real. This can’t be real.

You can make music, it says. For want of a better word.

“And?” she asks back. “Many people can.”

Perhaps. But we cannot.

The final words – voiced or not voiced – are tinged with something like the last few bitter dregs of good wine. Envy? Melancholy, perhaps? She knows that it does not matter, though her mind still stretches for answers. The minds of humans will do that, against all reason.

The thing behind her reaches for her hand. Somewhere, far off, very far off, yet coming closer, gaining ground, she hears music, a siren’s voice wailing and trembling over the high notes. Maybe a flute. Not that that matters.

The thing behind her takes her hand, and then everything, but for the siren’s call of the music, and the too-cold not-soft pressure on her clammy little hand, is gone. Sucked away. The broom falls to the floor with a clatter, bouncing against the hard floor, then lies still like a body. More dust falls.

The opera house is silent, but for, far off, the opening notes of Handel, carried on the draft. They wind and sing through the opera house like breath through a body.