The Piping on the Twelfth Floor

It had been two years since I last posted anything, and I was grateful for the quiet. Nothing had happened to us, not really. But then came the trip to Wellington, and the hotel on the twelfth floor, and that name I still cannot say without my skin crawling.

My husband, Leo, had recently found faith, and he’d taken to asking me questions about the Bible, God, and the devil. We were tired from walking the city all day, so we ordered room service and watched an old action movie. When it ended, Leo turned to me, his brow furrowed. ‘Where did sin come from?’ he asked, his voice soft. I gave him the usual answer, about the fall of Lucifer, the pride, the rebellion. He nodded, satisfied, and held my hand as I drifted off.

I don’t know how long I slept. The room was dim, lit only by the city glow through the sheer curtains. A sound woke me—a faint, rhythmic piping, like a small flute or a recorder, coming from the balcony. We were on the twelfth floor. There was no one out there. I turned my head slowly, careful not to wake Leo, and looked through the gap in the curtains.

At first, I saw nothing but the dark shapes of the city. But then, on the narrow railing, I noticed a small figure—no larger than a child, but impossibly thin, with limbs that bent at odd angles. It was playing a tiny pipe, and as it played, the glass of the balcony door began to fog from the inside, as if something cold was pressing against it. My breath caught. I blinked, and the figure was gone.

I told myself it was a seagull, a trick of the light. But I couldn’t go back to sleep. I lay there, listening, but the piping had stopped. Leo slept on, oblivious. The next morning, I mentioned nothing. But when I opened the balcony door to step out, the railing was covered in a fine, sooty dust, and the glass had a strange, frosty pattern etched into it, like a child’s drawing of a spiral.

The second night was worse. I woke again to the same piping, but this time it was accompanied by a scratching, like something with claws was dragging across the balcony floor. I squeezed my eyes shut, willing Leo to wake, but he wouldn’t. When I finally dared to look, the thing was there again, but now it had a face—a pale, smooth mask with no eyes, just a small, vertical mouth that moved as it played. And it was swaying, almost dancing, and I realized it was humming a tune I recognized from my childhood, a nursery rhyme my grandmother used to sing.

On the third night, I decided to confront it. I crept out of bed, my heart pounding, and slid open the balcony door. The cold hit me like a slap. The thing didn’t stop playing. It turned its featureless face toward me, and I saw that it held not a pipe but a human finger bone, with holes drilled into it. I managed to whisper, ‘Who are you?’ It stopped playing, and a voice—soft, almost kind—came from the mouth. ‘I am the last note of the song that was never sung.’ It pointed the bone at me, and I felt a sudden, terrible chill.

I slammed the door shut and locked it. Leo stirred and mumbled, ‘What’s wrong?’ I couldn’t speak. I just pointed at the balcony. He looked, saw nothing, and went back to sleep. But I knew. I knew it had marked me.

The next day, we checked out. I never told Leo the full story. But as we drove away, I looked back at the hotel, and there, on the twelfth-floor balcony, I saw it again. It raised the bone to its lips and played a single, high note. And in that moment, I felt something shift inside me—a coolness, a wrongness. I haven’t been able to listen to music since. Every note sounds like fingers scraping a wall, and behind every melody, I hear that piping, waiting for me to follow.