Joe Knight & the 88 Keys

The Birthday Present

I walked home on that Friday afternoon relieved to have put another week at Greenfields behind me. But I had no idea of the horror about to unfold.

Mum was in the kitchen baking when I walked in, and the smell conjured up the magic and excitement of all the best birthdays. In three days I would be thirteen, and I was looking forward to some good, thick icing to support all of those candles.

“Good day at school, Joe?”

I looked at her, despairingly. Mum had never attended that school, and if she had done perhaps she wouldn’t ask that question, let alone ask it five days a week. Dad had attended though, and he was still recovering from the experience. He claimed to have fought in the trenches at Greenfields High School, and to this day only ever referred to the place as Insanity High.

I preferred to call it Bullies’ Delight. It probably amounted to the same thing.

It was time for the truth. “Mum,” I said, “That … place is haunted, cursed and riddled with the darkest evil that ever walked the earth. There are no good days there.”

Mum laughed, though she hadn’t a single cruel bone in her body. “That imagination of yours,” she said. “It will land you in hot water one of these days, you mark my words.”

I dumped my school bag and went through to the living room.

For three days short of thirteen years I had lived in that house on Hope Street, and in all that time our living room had been dominated by a hideous wooden cabinet filled with even more hideous ornaments. It had been in our family for generations, apparently. But on that Friday afternoon, it was missing.

I wasn’t complaining. I’d never liked it. I couldn’t see the point of it. But it had always been there. And now it wasn’t.

Something funny was going on.

I went out into the hallway and found the thing parked outside the door to our rarely used front room.

I felt and then saw the shadow creeping.

Someone was standing behind me.

I turned around. “You don’t want to go in there,” said Dad, grinning like a graveyard lunatic.

“Oh,” I said. “And why’s that?”

He tapped his nose and winked at me. “Now that would be telling, Joe. That would be telling.”

***

The weekend was dismal and the rain relentless enough to keep me indoors. Dad spent most of the time talking to the cat, and even the cat was sick of it.

“What’s that?” he said, cupping his ear towards our long-suffering pet. “Joe’s birthday?” A glance in my direction was followed by a stage whisper into the cat’s ear. “Can you keep a secret?” Then a low whisper followed by laughter.

But the cat wasn’t laughing. And neither was I.

Enough was enough. “Dad, can I go out, please?”

I wished I’d gone shopping with Mum. It couldn’t have been any worse than watching my Dad holding a conversation with a cat.