Morning doesn't feel real anymore. It arrives, pale and unfinished, like a song still missing its last line.
I haven't slept properly since the file appeared. It sits on my desktop like a living thing, whispering temptation every time I look at it. A_KEENE_RECORD_001.wav. I should delete it, I know that. But every time I try, my hand freezes. The idea of erasing him feels like killing him all over again.
So I keep it.
The studio smells of metal and coffee grounds. My equipment hums faintly — the kind of low-frequency noise that makes the air vibrate in your chest. I switch on the main monitor, half-expecting the file to be gone, but it's still there, patient, pulsing with static energy.
When I press play, his voice fills the room again.
"I never left."
The same words, the same impossible tone. Smooth, precise. Adrian's diction was always deliberate — he spoke as though his sentences had rhythm, as though language itself obeyed his time signature.
But there's something off about this. A faint delay, an echo layered behind the words, like two Adrians speaking almost in sync.
I isolate the frequencies. There's a secondary pattern, buried deep under the main vocal line — a kind of pulse wave. It looks almost like Morse code.
Three short beats.Three long.Three short again.
S. O. S.
The rational part of my brain latches onto that, grateful for something logical. Maybe the file was corrupted. Maybe it's just random digital noise. But then the pulse repeats. The same rhythm. The same spacing.
I lean forward. "Adrian, what are you trying to say?"
The waveform quivers, like it's listening.
And then, faintly — three notes.
E. F. G.
The same as before. Our motif.
My throat tightens. I record again, whispering into the mic. "If you can hear me… play it again."
A pause. Then: E. F. G.
Not playback — response.
Something hot and wild unfurls in my chest. Fear, maybe. Or hope. They feel the same now.
I pull open my old notebooks, the ones I swore I'd stopped writing in after he disappeared. The pages are a graveyard of phrases and sketches — bits of music, pieces of dialogue, things Adrian said that I was terrified of forgetting.
In one of them, I find a line written in his handwriting:
"If the world ever forgets us, I'll hum until it remembers."
The paper smells faintly of smoke and rain. My hands start shaking.
I set the notebook down beside the computer and start composing.
The base track is a simple oscillation — heartbeats translated into sound waves. I layer the E-F-G motif across it, looping it at irregular intervals, like a voice trying to find its way back home. The melody starts fragile, trembling, then builds — a slow crescendo of longing.
When I listen back, it doesn't sound like something I made. It sounds alive.
And under the layers, a whisper:
"Closer."
I nearly drop my headphones. The voice is faint but there.
I spin around, scanning the room. The shadows stretch and ripple across the walls, the rain outside turning every window into a mirror.
No one's there. But the smell of him — cedar, graphite, a trace of iron — fills the air.
I whisper, "Adrian?"
The room exhales. The lamp flickers once.
The file continues to play, looping endlessly. The melody shifts subtly each time, as though reacting to my heartbeat.
"Closer," he says again, and this time, I swear I feel his breath on my neck.
I don't scream. I don't move. Instead, I close my eyes and let the sound crawl under my skin.
For a moment, I'm back there — three years ago, the night he vanished.
The memory comes like a dream submerged in fog: Adrian sitting at the piano, his hands trembling over the keys. He'd been working on something new, something he said could "make silence sing." I remember the way he looked at me before he played — terrified, almost reverent.
Then the sound — high, pure, shattering — and then nothing.
When I opened my eyes, the bench was empty. The air still vibrated. But he was gone.
The police found nothing. No body, no struggle, no explanation. Only a single note on the piano: E.
I never played again after that. Until now.
I open the lid of the upright piano in the corner. Its keys are yellowed, dust sleeping in the cracks. My hands hover, trembling. I press E.
The note rings out — and from somewhere deep inside the instrument, something answers.
Not an echo. Not reverb. A chord — faint, but deliberate.
It's impossible. The piano is mechanical, it can't respond. But it does.
I play E again. It responds with F.
My breath catches. I play F. It answers with G.
My eyes sting. My throat burns.
"Adrian…"
The lights flicker once more.
For a heartbeat, I see him — reflected in the glass of the window. Standing behind me, blurred, luminous, smiling like he used to when he caught me in the act of creation.
Then he's gone.
The piano falls silent. The city hums again, patient and indifferent.
I sink to the floor, laughing through the tears.
Maybe I've finally lost my mind. Maybe that's what love does — rewires you until your delusions sound like prayers.
But somewhere deep inside, I know this isn't just madness.
The sounds I'm recording aren't hallucinations. They're a bridge. A language built from grief.
A ghost note that only I can hear.
I look at the screen again. A new file has appeared beside the first.
A_KEENE_RECORD_002.wav
No timestamp this time. Just a message embedded in the file name metadata:
"Finish the song."
My heart stutters.
I whisper, "I will."
Because I've already begun.
To be continued…