Nightingale Songs by Simon Strantzas Read Free Book Online Page A

stool pushed beneath and keys covered. But where, Claire worried, was Eloise?
    Yet something drew Claire into the room despite her alarm. Perhaps it was the faint sensation that a warm presence had recently departed, something that reminded her of home, of her father. Or perhaps it was the paintings that surrounded her, each with its crudely placed brushstrokes that nonetheless achieved a whole that bristled with energy and life. Or perhaps it was merely the arrangement of the room, the paintings and shelves designed to emphasize the importance of the piano and possibly she who played it. Those shelves spanned a range of topics from sciences to art, fiction and non-, all intermingled in a fashion that should have set Claire's teeth on edge but beneath that light only served to further lull her. Claire took a volume down and flipped through its pages. The smell of old paper immediately sent her mind receding to her childhood, sitting upon her father's knee, listening as he read to her while her mother sang in the kitchen beyond. She put the book down, still smiling, and noticed a pair of ill-defined eyes staring at her from behind a pair of glasses. On that thickly bearded face, those eyes danced through imperfect strokes of paint, as though the painting of the man seated between his two happy daughters were somehow alive. There was a strange quality to the artwork however, one that Claire did not recognize immediately -- Eloise's face was actually an inchoate smear of paint.
    Claire pulled the dusty bench out from beneath the piano and sat, hopeful she could make sense of the evening. Had she simply imagined the music, like some sort of echo in her memory? Why did the walls around the piano seem to lean inward as though being pulled by something unseen? The thoughts continued, amplified by her exhaustion, and with them followed an unplaceable rumbling. She stood from the bench and went to the window behind her. Something was out there in the dark.
    At first, nothing appeared amiss. The view was nearly opaque save for what the moonlight edged, lending the world the appearance of being behind dark glass. The sound seemed to emanate from below the window, but when Claire looked down she was stricken with a vertiginous sensation; the ground crumbled away before her eyes, revealing the wreck of an old large automobile -- its driver’s side crushed, its hood crumpled like tissue paper. The creaking mass hissed with steam, and Claire experienced a wave of nausea that upended the flickering world and forced her eyelids closed before she fainted. When her breathing finally steadied she opened them and saw Eloise standing at the door, cane in one hand and an inscrutable look on her long face as she massaged her leg with the other. Claire looked out the window but the world had returned to normal.
    "I'm sorry," Claire stammered. "I was... I thought I heard you playing the piano." Even in her dissipating stupor Claire knew she sounded like a fool. Eloise, to her surprise, did not comment upon it.
    "How do you feel?"
    "A little faint," Claire admitted. "But this is a lovely room. Very inviting."
    Eloise's nod was curt.
    "This was our father's study," she said, hobbling slowly into the room. "We used to spend quite an amount of time here, Doreen and I. As you can see, he was quite well read -- an artist's heart -- and after our mother died he was all we had." She reached the bookshelf and picked up the volume Claire had held earlier. "He read every book in here at least twice -- it was something he prided himself on. He used to encourage us to do the same. I didn't have the patience. Always too busy playing, running around..." She looked down at her leg and seemed shocked to see her fingers gripping it. "I don't do that much any longer. Do you see these paintings? Doreen did them. She did all of them. She's apparently quite gifted in her way. Our father did his best to encourage it. I never understood what the fuss was about myself.