Nightingale Songs by Simon Strantzas Read Free Book Online

beautiful."
    "Earlier?" Doreen hesitated as though she were going to say something, and then instead turned back towards the door.
    "That was Eloise," she said, not facing Claire. "She's played all her life."
    Claire was surprised. She did not seem the type.
    "Please, tell her I think she's wonderful. Perhaps that will buy me some sympathy."
    Doreen turned back and smiled, though her lips were razor thin.
    "Let's hope."
    She closed the door behind her as she left. Claire listened as footsteps receded down the stairs.
    Despite Eloise's order, Claire was not yet ready for sleep. She slipped back to the window and peered into the darkness in hopes of piercing the dark from her second story vantage point. She looked beneath the flickering moon for some sign of her car, but it was gone, consumed by the same night that erased any trace of her passing from the street.
    Hollow notes of familiar music broke the stillness, the sound of Claire's drained cellular telephone making one last attempt to live. She answered it, and beneath the fuzzy noise was a faint clicking, followed by the distant cracking voice of her father calling her name.
    "Dad, it's me! I got lost and the car was hit but I'm all right but --"
    "Slow down," he murmured. "What's happened? Where are you?"
    "I was coming home from school and the car broke down. I tried to call." A thought suddenly stuck her. "Where were you?"
    "Are you going to be okay? Do you need--" His voice was getting softer. Claire started to panic.
    "I'll be okay. I'll call you tomorrow. Dad? Dad!"
    Claire yelled into the telephone, but though she could hear him talking she couldn't hear what her father was saying. He had become too quiet, fading away like a spirit. She looked at the telephone's display and there was nothing there. No light of any kind, even after she reset it. Claire had finally drained the battery. She stood stunned, the lifeless piece of plastic in her hand. Its utter uselessness mocked her.
    But in the house's quiet, she heard muted weeping. At first she did not recognize the sound -- its volume faltered, and it appeared to originate from no fixed place, instead creeping along the walls past the many paintings in the hallway. Yet, when Claire opened the door of her borrowed room it was not crying she heard but music from a piano. The notes embraced her, raising the hairs on her skin, and slowly took shape to form the song she had earlier heard. Impossibly, it had become more beautiful. Claire imagined she could see the notes hanging in the air, and followed them like she would have a thin pebble path. Down the hallway a short distance she discovered a door, and from beneath it slipped a narrow beam of light. She placed her fingers lightly on the wood and felt tiny vibrations, as though the music were attempting to reshape the world around her.
    Claire was unsure whether she should knock or simply enter. Her father would have urged her to action, she knew, but she could not bring herself to interrupt Eloise so tactlessly. What if the woman did not react well to the disturbance? She might evict Claire, leaving her victim to the cold outside; there was no Doreen to protect her after all. Instead, Claire chose to quietly rap her knuckles on the door and whisper the older woman's name.
    "Eloise?"
    The air stilled, and Claire felt alone in the large house. Beside the door hung a painting of a younger Eloise and Doreen, sitting on their father's lap. Yet she sensed a vacuum; something was missing, but she couldn't bring herself to contemplate it any longer. Instead, she put her hand on the doorknob and carefully twisted. The door opened surprisingly easily, and when Claire's eyes adjusted to the light inside the room, the first thing that came into focus were the walls covered in more paintings, and beneath them shelves upon shelves of hardcover books. The only darkness came from the window on the opposite wall, its blind drawn up. And in the middle of the room stood a large piano, its