The Key in the Piano

The first time I saw the house, I knew it was wrong. The furniture was too heavy, the wallpaper too dark, and the piano in the corner seemed to hum even when no one played it. But my aunt had died, and my father had inherited the place in the Kentish marshes, a lonely stone cottage surrounded by reeds and mist. We moved in when I was seventeen, and my boyfriend, Julian, came with us. He was the only one who believed me when I said something was off.

The cottage had two floors, four rooms in total, and a cellar that no one wanted to go into. The previous owner had been a musician, they said, a recluse who drowned in the creek. Aunt Margaret had bought it cheap and never stayed more than a week at a time. We had no choice but to live there while our London flat was being renovated. The piano was the only thing of value, a black Bechstein grand, its keys yellowed but smooth. Julian found a rusty key taped under the music rest, small and old, shaped like a skeleton key. He joked that it probably fit the cellar, but we were too scared to try it.

The first night, I woke to the sound of a single note, repeated three times. It came from the piano, faint but clear. Julian was asleep beside me, his chest rising and falling in the moonlight. I lay there, heart pounding, until the sound stopped. The next morning, I checked the piano. The key was still there, but the note that had played was a low A, and the piano was slightly sharp. Julian said it was just the house settling.

A week later, we had a dinner party for my family. The rooms were filled with laughter, but as I passed the piano, I felt a cold draft, and the key under the music rest caught my eye. It seemed to glint in the lamplight. My cousin’s baby started crying, and she asked me to play a lullaby. I sat down, placed my fingers on the keys, and the piano played a chord that was not the one I had struck. It was a dissonant cluster, and the sound echoed off the walls. Everyone froze. Julian looked at me, his face pale. I lifted my hands, and the piano played again, a slow, mournful melody, all by itself. Then the keys stopped, and the room was silent except for the baby’s sobs.

After that, things escalated. We would find the piano lid open in the morning, though we always closed it. Julian swore he saw a figure in the reflection of the polished wood, a man with hollow eyes. I started hearing whispers in the reeds outside, and the cellar door, which was always locked, would occasionally creak as if someone was pushing against it. We tried to ignore it, told ourselves it was imagination, but then the weather turned. A storm rolled in from the sea, and the creek rose, flooding the garden.

On the third night of the storm, I couldn’t sleep. I went downstairs to make tea, and as I passed the piano, I saw the key was missing. I searched the floor, under the sofa, but it had vanished. The wind howled, and the lights flickered. I heard a step behind me, and Julian’s voice came from the dark: ‘I didn’t take it.’ He was standing in the doorway, shivering. Then the piano began to play, a pounding, chaotic piece that rattled the windows. We both stared. The keys were moving on their own, as if someone was playing with fury. We grabbed each other, backed against the wall, and watched. The music stopped as suddenly as it had started, and a single note rang out. It was the same low A. The key fell from the air and landed on the floor with a soft clink.

I bent to pick it up, and that’s when I saw the cellar door was wide open. A black, wet darkness swallowed the bottom step. The smell of mud and rot rose up. Julian and I exchanged a look. We knew the key was meant for that door. ‘Let’s open it,’ he said. I shook my head, but he took the key from my hand and walked to the cellar. I followed, my legs heavy. The key slid into the lock as if it had always been there. He turned it, and the door swung inward with a groan. There was no cellar floor. Instead, a flooded shaft led down, water black as ink, and in the faint light, I saw something rise. A hand, pale and bloated, broke the surface. Then a face, the musician’s face, his mouth open as if to sing. He was not dead; he was waiting. He reached for the key, and Julian pulled me back, slamming the door shut. We locked it, but we dropped the key down a drain outside.

We left the next morning. We could not take the piano, so we left it, its keys still dusty, its music silent. When we returned to London, we tried to forget, but sometimes, at night, I feel a hand brushing my neck, and I hear the faint sound of a low A, as if the piano is playing from miles away. I tell myself it’s nothing, but then I remember the key, and I wonder if someone, someday, will find it and go to the cottage, and open that door again. Not us. Never us.