| abstract
| - There prevails a melody that whispers within the frigid breeze of a town that disappeared long ago. Since almost all the people there didn't have much of a story to begin with, I'm going to describe the story that led to the end of the people in that town. Present in the absence of light, there was a beautiful woman. Although she never left the darkness of her house, people claimed that she was the most beautiful woman in town. Her pink colored lips would always curve to form a pretty smile, while her chocolate eyes stared at the birds that sang in the forest near her house. At times, she would go up the stairs to a crystal room, where she could see everything that surrounded her house. There lied a piano with ivory keys and a leather bench where she would sit and play for hours. Her delicate and skinny hands would always play a melody in that piano. Curious as it may sound, she always played accompaniments, but nobody ever played with her. At intervals, she would stop playing to lift her hand and turn the pages of the score she was playing. After that, she would smile and return to play like she was trying to memorize the entire score. She only did this six days a week, never on Sunday. When it was Sunday, before playing the piano, she would put on a beautiful scarlet dress. She combed her black jet hair which fell delicately on her back like a silk cascade. Finally, she wore a silver necklace with a pure white pearl hanging in the middle. After getting ready, she would go upstairs to the crystal room at 8:00 PM and would sit on the bench to play the piano until midnight. Whenever the clock struck 12:00, she would always make one simple and silly mistake in her melody. When this happened, she would automatically stop playing and freeze as if she had done something so horrible, so unbelievable, that she couldn't afford to understand at that time. So she stood unmoving, with that scared expression in her eyes and a twisted smile that said, “It's going to be ok, it's going to be OK, it's going to be OK, it's going to be OK, it's going to be OK…” At the dawn of the new day, she would no longer be in the crystal room; instead, she would be in her bathtub taking a shower. A man, who started observing her, noticed that after she froze and remained unmoving, when the light of the sunrise slightly struck her house, at the touch of the light, her unmoving body would vanish like mist. The man went to the townspeople and told of what he saw. Doubtful, some people began to look for her, curious if what the man saw was real or was merely a lie. Since it was the most interesting thing in the town at that time, a large number of people took interest in the matter. However, no matter how much the people looked for her, she did not step outside her house for even a second, nor allowed anyone in. Everybody was curious about the mysterious dame that played in the crystal room, but nobody had even a clue of who or what she really was. As the rumor spread through the entire town, she kept on gently touching the ivory keys in her piano, playing the only song she had played for so long. A 14 year old boy named James Cardigan, who kept immersed on his own little world, heard the rumor almost by coincidence, and directly as he heard, he went almost running to investigate the mysterious matter. First, he mounted on his bicycle and searched the whole town for the house with the crystal room, but as expected, he found nothing. Tired of all the exercise he had done (and because he was “a little” overweight) he tried what he had never done before—to ask someone. Since his social skills didn't really work, he spent two hours trying to ask a simple question. And when he finally succeeded to ask, the answer was “among the woods”. James went into the old woods and found a white fence that led to the woman's house. To his surprise, the house looked kind of new. In fact, it didn't look “strange” which was what he expected it to be. He heard the melody that the woman was playing. Somewhat sad; beautiful, combined with a dreadful wind and the smell of the dry roses of her dead garden. He knew she wouldn't let him in, so he, instead of knocking on the door, tried to figure out how to keep an eye on her. The next day, he brought with him a camera and a laptop. He climbed onto a tree and tied the camera to a branch in the direction of the crystal room. After that, he connected his laptop to the camera and went home. Since the camera required sunlight to charge, the batteries would not be a problem, because he left the camera in a place where the sunlight reached perfectly, and he could watch every move she made from the safety of his room. He watched every move she made in the crystal room, watching carefully as she struck gently the ivory keys of her beloved piano. From Monday to Saturday, she wore her usual clothes, studied very calmly and secure about what she was doing. Then, when she flipped the pages of the score, James noticed something that made him feel chills on his back—the score was completely blank. James immersed himself more in the woman, curious to death to know her. He found out that what the man saw was completely true, that she vanished into thin air the moment the sunlight stokes her on the Monday's dawn, and that she froze after making a mistake on Sunday at midnight, even though when she studied she never made a single mistake at all. Listening to the song she was playing, he recognized it from somewhere, and suddenly remembered that his childhood friend, Ally, had learned a song a few days ago, and that what the woman was playing was the accompaniment for that song. He went to Ally's house and told her about the dame in the crystal room. She didn't seem as excited as he was, but she took a bit of interest because he was her friend, anyway. The next Sunday, he and Ally went to the house in the forest. She brought her violin and James brought a microphone. Before the lady began to play, Ally told this to James: “She used to be perfect, you know? My teacher's son, Michael and her were like brother and sister, even if they were not related at all. She was a perfectionist; she just couldn't afford to make a mistake. One day, she made a mistake. She just went nuts and attacked everyone she had contact with. Her mother brought her to a doctor who discovered she had multiple personality disorder. She had two different personalities, the good one, which was perfect, and the bad one, which made mistakes and attacked people. They gave her medicine, and little by little she suppressed her second personality, allowing her to have a normal life. Then, an unfortunate day, the medications were not enough to suppress her second identity and she killed her mother and father with her bare hands. After that, she began to be afraid of her other self and took really strong medication to make it disappear. When she was 24, she bought this house in the middle of the forest, with the crystal room. She thought that she had gotten over her second personality and that it would never appear again. Michael, my teacher's son, was her best friend, and to commemorate her welcome to the new house, he would give a violin concert in the crystal room, and yes of course, she would accompany him in the piano. This made her so happy; she studied for six days in a row to memorize the entire score to surprise Michael. Then Sunday night at 8 PM, she wore a white satin dress and her pearl necklace. The concert was about to begin and it would end at 1 AM. It was a beautiful winter night until the clouds covered the black skies. It was 11:59 when the hail started to fall. The hail broke the ceiling of the crystal room, and pieces of sharp crystal began falling onto the guests. It was at midnight that Eileen made the mistake, everyone was running for their lives, but she just sat frozen in fear in the leather bench. She thought that her second personality had come once again, so she was immobilized by fear while the guests were getting massacred by the falling crystal. Michael was coming to her to save her, but a piece of crystal fell onto his head and killed him instantly, covering her white satin dress in scarlet blood. When the guests were all dead, one last piece of crystal fell and killed her. The score she cherished so much flew with the wind leaving only white pages on her piano. This I know since my teacher told me everything in his son's funeral six years ago.” James stood there with a stunned expression, trying to say, “Then why didn't you tell me that earlier?!” Ally just smiled and said, “Because I was waiting for the most unexpected moment, duh!” The woman, Eileen started to play the accompaniment and Ally started to play her violin. Eileen just kept on going, like if she didn't noticed there was someone playing the violin outside her house. They kept on playing until the clock struck midnight and Eileen made the mistake. Ally kept on going even though Eileen had made the mistake. Then something happened, Eileen made a twisted and broken smile and continued playing, this time, she started to make even more mistakes until the piano's melody was totally broken into cruel shreds. When the clock struck 1 AM on Monday, the concert came to an end. The ghost of Eileen smiled at the kids and vanished with the moonlight. After she vanished, the house recovered the state in which it should have been. The crystal of the crystal room was broken, and the walls were covered in dry blood. The families of the people who died at the concert, took the bodies and gave them a proper burial. All the bodies were removed from there except one, Eileen's body, since her family was already two meters under the ground. There she sat, with her white satin blood covered dress, in the leather bench in front of the piano with ivory keys that were stained with her own blood, and who could ever forget the only white thing that was left of her, her silver necklace with the pure white pearl hanging in the middle. When James and Ally returned from the forest, they witnessed with their own eyes the river of blood passing through the town. Everyone in town, except James and Ally, had died of a variety of profound and severe cuts that looked like they were done by crystal shreds. They found out that the moment she started to play that macabre and abnormal accompaniment after making the first mistake, the people in town were brutally dying one by one until they were the only ones left. Ally and James moved from the town and went to an orphanage, since their families had died in the accident too. Luckily the ghost had disappeared, right? One day, James and Ally were in the music room of their new school, Ally was practicing with her violin, and James was drinking grape juice. When Ally finished practicing, the piano started to play a particular known melody to both of them that stopped with a mistake. Ally dropped her violin and James spit the grape juice in sign of terror. They both looked at the piano and saw a girl sitting there. She smiled at them, and they sighed of relief to see she was just a normal girl. The three of them started to laugh. It's funny! You thought the girl was the lady from the crystal room? No, she vanished, right? But you have to appreciate that the girl's silver necklace with a pure white pearl hanging on the middle, it's really pretty.
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