Chapter 27: The Final Moonlight Sonata (1/2)
There was one more thing I needed to do, which was to burn a few sheets of ghost money as a sign of respect to the deceased. This was a rule that had been passed down in the Song family, and it had to be followed.
Dali didn’t like the sound of that at all. He kept pestering us to leave.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said. “What if that ghost comes back to haunt us?”
“You know,” said Huang Xiaotao, intent on teasing Dali, “ghosts love people like you the most. Miss Xia Mo used to be a very pretty girl when she was alive. I guess you and her would be the perfect match!”
Huang Xiaotao and I walked into the building while Dali was a few steps behind us. He stopped and hesitated for a while, but quickly shouted for us to wait for him and followed us in.
Once we reached the third floor, we all heard a sound that creeped us all out. Dali gripped my arms instantly. Even Huang Xiaotao looked a bit pale.
“What is that, dude?”
“You know,” I said, “I think ghosts aren’t half as scary as humans are.”
“That’s deep, dude,” said Dali. “But I’m still scared…”
“There’s a Jay Chou song that perfectly describes a man like you, Dali,” said Huang Xiaotao.
“What song?” asked Dali.
“What Kind of Man!” answered Huang Xiaotao, who then chortled.
We soon reached the music room. The white curtains at the windows fluttered in the wind, casting shadows on the piano that was a witness to both passionate love and intense hate. The atmosphere was extremely gloomy. The sound that we heard just now was probably the wind blowing at the piano lid, causing it to fall.
I was about to go inside, but Dali held on to my arms tightly and refused to let me go.
“Dude, let’s just leave,” he said. “If the piano suddenly starts playing, we’re doomed.”
“It’s all just a rumor,” I reassured him.
“But that night the two girls saw it with their own eyes…”
I pointed at the four ceiling fans above our heads. Although I didn’t climb up there to examine them closely, I had a pretty good idea as to how Deng Chao made the piano wires fly around the room.
“Deng Chao just bought some piano wires, cut them into various lengths, and tied them to the fan blades. He then turned on the fan and bingo! You’ve got flying piano wires that fill the whole room!”
“Shit, now that you explained it to me, it sounds so simple I can’t I believe I hadn’t thought of it!”
I told both of them they could wait at the door if they were too scared to come inside. I then walked to the front of the piano, and soon after, the two followed me there too.
I lit up the ghost money in my hand and recited the Reincarnation Mantra, hoping that it would soothe Miss Xia Mo’s miserable soul. The ghost money slowly burned and turned to ashes, then a cold breeze carried the ashes away.
Suddenly, I heard Huang Xiaotao gasp. I turned around and saw Dali collapsed onto the ground, foaming at the mouth and convulsing. I was taken aback but quickly went down on my knees to help him. After pressing on his chest for a while, Dali suddenly opened his eyes and sat straight up.
“Dali,” I said. “Is everything all right?”
I suddenly found his expressions strange, and Huang Xiaotao probably did too, because we both simultaneously backed away from Dali.
“Why would he do that to me?” asked Dali, but his voice sounded more like a woman than a man. “I loved him so much, he was everything to me! I gave him all I had! Why did he kill me? I’ve been waiting for him here for so long!”
Both Huang Xiaotao and I were stupefied. We hadn’t expected anything like this to happen.
“Miss Xia Mo,” I said, “that’s not how love works. Just because you gave him everything you had doesn’t mean that he can give you back just as much.”
Wang Dali suddenly tripped on his own feet and fell to the ground.
“But I love him!” he cried. “I love him with all my heart! Yet he told me that he was stressed and unhappy, and that he felt miserable when he was with me! He even killed me and dismembered my body and stuffed me into the piano! All I wanted was true love! Why can’t I have it? Why is this world so unfair?”