The Thistlewood Requiem

The house in Thistlewood was a monument to old money and bad decisions, its brick facade crumbling like stale gingerbread. My grandfather, Elias, had bought it in the autumn of ’84, a steal from a widow who couldn’t bear to look at it anymore. We’d come from the flatlands of Saskatchewan, where the sky was a bully and the land was mean, so this place—with its weeping willows and the river that sounded like a low, continual moan—seemed like a green paradise. I was five, with grubby knees and a head full of static, and I loved the house because it had a turret, which I called the princess tower, though I was a boy.

Nana Ruth died in August of ’95, when the heat made the air thick as soup. Her lung cancer was a spiteful thing, quick and sharp. I spent those last weeks with her on the screened-in porch, where she’d watch the river and hum a tune I never recognized. It was a minor key, all creep and crawl, and she’d smile with her eyes closed, her fingers tapping the armrest like she was playing piano. On the last day, she took my hand—her skin was translucent, blue veins like rivers on a map—and said, “Don’t let the music stop, Thomas. Promise me.” I promised, though I had no idea what she meant.

After she was gone, Grandpa Elias turned the ground floor into a separate suite for our family, so he wouldn’t be alone in the big house. We moved in when I was eight. The house had a smell then—old wood, dust, and something else, something like old pennies and burnt sugar. Mom said it was just the plumbing. Dad said it was the wallpaper. I knew it was the house itself, breathing through its pores.

The first odd thing happened on a Tuesday. I was watching afternoon cartoons, the remote lying on the cushion next to me, when the channel clicked over to static. The static was loud, a harsh buzzing, and behind it I could hear something else—a faint melody, plucked like a harp, off-key. I switched it back, but it happened again. And again. Dad blamed the cable, even when we unplugged the remote and the set, only to have the channel flip again, to a dead frequency where the static seemed to form shapes, like faces pressing against glass. After that, I started watching with the sound off, and I’d swear the static sometimes whispered my name.

Thanksgiving came, and Dad invited his old buddy, Roy, a big man with a laugh like thunder. We were having dinner in the formal dining room, the one with the mahogany table that could seat twelve. Grandpa Elias told stories about the old days, and Roy was telling one about a practical joke he’d pulled on his brother, when a wine glass on the sideboard—untouched, empty—suddenly tipped over and shattered on the hardwood floor. We all froze. Roy’s face went pale. “Did you see that?” he asked. No one answered. Later, Roy confided to Dad that he felt a cold breath on his neck, right before the glass broke, and that he heard a woman’s laugh, low and close. He never stayed overnight again.

I didn’t tell anyone about grandma’s piano music. But I started to hear it more often—at night, from the parlor where Nana Ruth used to play the old upright that Grandpa kept closed and lid-locked. The lid was locked, but I’d hear notes inside, like someone testing keys. One night, I crept downstairs, barefoot, my heart slamming. The parlor door was ajar, and the moonlight cut a swath across the room, illuminating the piano. The keys were moving on their own—slowly, deliberately—playing a tune that matched Nana’s humming. I stood in the doorway, and the music stopped. A voice, like a wire brushing silk, said, “Thomas.” It was Nana’s voice, but deeper, like it had been dragged through gravel.

I ran. I told Mom, but she said I was missing Grandma, and that grief does strange things. But the things didn’t stop. They escalated. Doors in the hallway would click open and shut, one after another, like a mocking applause. A framed photograph of Nana Ruth on the mantel turned its face to the wall, but when I flipped it back, the glass was fogged with a single word written in the moisture: “MINE.” The smell of old pennies got stronger, and the static on the TV became a constant hum, even when it was off. I started hearing footsteps upstairs at night, in the turret—heavy, dragging steps, followed by a child’s giggle, which turned into a sob.

One night, I found Aunt Carol, who’d been staying with us after her divorce, sitting in the dark parlor, her eyes wide, her lips moving. She was whispering the tune—the one Nana hummed—over and over. I asked if she was okay. She grabbed my arm with a grip like iron and said, “She’s not in the ground, Thomas. She’s in the walls. She’s in the music. And she’s getting hungry.” I pulled away, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching from the corners, something with my grandmother’s eyes, but not my grandmother’s heart.

Then, in November, it came to a head. My little sister, Lucy, who was four, started talking to “the lady in the red dress.” She said the lady would tuck her in at night and sing a lullaby. I asked Lucy what the lullaby was. She hummed it—the same tune. I was terrified. I confronted Grandpa Elias. He went pale, and then he told me the truth. The house, he said, was not just a house. It had been built in 1955 by a man named Thistlewood, a reclusive composer who found his wife, Margaret, dead in the river out back, drowned. He was never the same. He sealed himself in the turret, playing the piano, composing a requiem for her. He died in 1960, but the music, Grandpa said, never stopped. The rumor was that he’d made a pact—that his music would keep Margaret’s soul tied to the house, but that the price was a new companion every few decades. Nana Ruth had known—she’d heard the music when they moved in, and she’d made her own pact, so that the house would have her instead of anyone else. That was the promise she made me keep. She’d been playing the requiem for seven years, and now she was the lady in red.

I didn’t want to believe it. But that night, I heard the piano again, loud this time, filling the house. I went to the parlor. The lid was open, and the keys were playing a furious, beautiful, terrible melody. And there, at the piano bench, sat a figure—a woman in a red dress, her back to me. She turned her head. It was Nana, but her face was white as bone, her eyes black as river stones. She smiled, bloodless lips parting. “You promised,” she said, and her voice was a chorus, layered with other voices—Margaret’s, Thistlewood’s, and others I didn’t know. “It’s your turn now.”

I backed away, but my feet were like lead. The music swelled, and the house itself seemed to close in, the walls bleeding moisture, the floorboards warping. I heard Lucy scream from upstairs. I broke free and ran, but not away from the house—I ran up the stairs, to the turret. The door was locked, but I threw my weight against it, and it burst open. Inside, the room was empty, save for a music box on the window sill, slowly turning, playing the same requiem. In the corner was a old photograph, face down. I turned it over. It was a picture of me, taken just last week, at my birthday party. Across my face, in fading ink, someone had written: “Soon.”

I grabbed Lucy, and I told my parents we had to leave. We did—we fled that night, to a motel, leaving Grandpa Elias behind. He called us the next day, his voice strange, calm. He said, “The music is beautiful, Thomas. Your grandmother is here. She wants to meet you.” I hung up. We never went back. The house still stands, I’ve heard, and people say that on quiet nights, you can hear piano music coming from within, a requiem that never ends. And sometimes, if you listen closely, you hear a young boy’s voice among the notes, pleading to be let out. But that boy isn’t me. Not yet. But I feel the pull, even now, far away. The music is in my head, humming a tune I can’t unhear. And I know, someday, I’ll go back. Because I promised.