In Which They Hear A Sound

The boys fetched the guitars after dessert and they all retired to the library. The library was Charlotte’s personal favorite room, but she found it kind of weird that out of all of the rooms in the house, they always came back to this one. If she had been a stranger in a huge house, she would want to explore. The house was full of crazy baroque salons and grandmotherish parlours. Come to think of it, she hadn’t been all around the house lately. She hadn’t even seen the affects of thick snow against the windows of the rooms on the second floor, except in her own bedroom.

Before they began playing, she suggested they relocate.

“Jackson should play piano,” she said simply, as they followed her down one hall and up a smaller staircase than the grand one they used to get to their bedrooms.

“What the hell? How many secret rooms and secret instruments do you have in this place?” Tanner asked.

“Um, I think that’s it for instruments,” she decided after careful thought. “I don’t use all the rooms, so I tend to forget about them.”

“You need to rent out or something,” Thisbe declared. “You could make a lot of money that way.”

Charlotte stopped walking. Could she rent rooms? Why hadn’t she thought of that before? She could have a freaking boardinghouse!

“Um, Charlotte?” Alice asked tentatively. They were all jammed behind her in the hall in front of the piano room.

“Oh, sorry."

With all the grace of a feline, Jackson dropped onto the piano bench. He played a long scale, and declared the instrument to be in tune. His fingers were long and thin; perfect pianist fingers.

“Well, since I’m playing this you’ll have to play the other guitar,” Jackson finally spoke.

“Hey, no fair! I want to try the good guitar!”

“Yeah, Tanner can play the ‘good guitar’,” Charlotte quickly said, and he snatched it from Jackson.

“How sweet of you, Charlotte,” Thisbe said. “But if you can play you’ll just have to play the other one. No holding out, here.”

Considering protests not worth the trouble, Charlotte meekly took the other acoustic and they played several timeless Christmas classics before Jackson stopped playing, mid-carol. It took a moment for Tanner and Charlotte to also stop playing, but when they did, a hush fell over the room. It’s the kind of hush you haven’t experienced, unless you’ve been silent in a large house completely encased in thick snow, having been used, for days, to hearing a raging storm above everything else.

They all strained to hear anything other than their own quiet breathing, but they couldn’t.

“What is it?” asked Dr. Phil, finally.

“Sh,” Jackson said, sternly, and then—faintly, they could hear it. Soft thuds and great muffled machine noises. As a body, they flew downstairs and stood considering the front entryway.

Charlotte took the trembling initiative to venture all the way to the door, with Jackson close on her heels, and Hank on his, and Tanner and Dr. Phil and Alice and Thisbe close behind.

“Sorry,” Charlotte murmured, apologizing in advance for the blast of icy air to follow, and she opened the door.