When the house next door went up for sale, it didn’t take long before the “For Sale” sign came down. But weeks passed, and no moving truck ever arrived. The place stayed dark, its windows shuttered, its garden overgrown.
To Sarah, it looked abandoned.
Until one evening.
She was washing dishes when she froze. Faint but clear, drifting through the night air, was the sound of a piano.
Slow, haunting notes. Coming from the empty house next door.
Her first thought was that someone had broken in. But the music wasn’t random banging — it was deliberate. The melody was beautiful but sad, the kind of tune that clung to your chest.
Curiosity got the better of her. Sarah slipped on a coat and walked across the lawn. The closer she got, the louder the music became. The front door was locked, the windows dark. But from inside, the piano played on.
Her heart thudded as she circled to the back, finding a side door slightly ajar. She pushed it open, the hinges groaning.
The music stopped.
Her breath caught.
Inside, the air smelled of dust and wood. A single room was lit faintly by the glow of streetlight through broken blinds. And in the corner stood an upright piano, its keys yellowed with age.
No one was there.
Sarah’s skin prickled. She stepped closer, her eyes darting across the empty room. Then she saw it — an open notebook on the piano’s stand. Pages filled with handwritten sheet music. And on the very first page, scrawled in looping letters, was her grandmother’s name.
Her grandmother had died years ago.
Sarah stumbled back, pulse racing. She remembered stories of how her grandmother had played piano in this very neighborhood when she was young. But she had never known this house, never known the music had survived.
A soft breeze from the open door stirred the pages of the notebook. For a brief second, a chord hummed faintly, as though the piano had played itself.
Sarah left quickly, clutching the memory. She never heard the music again.
But sometimes, at night, when the wind was just right, she swore she caught the faintest echo of that melody drifting through her window.
