Northern Downpour

The Open Gates (XXX)

XXX

The door was brown, looked squeaky, and quite torn away by termites, but still it stood. "What's with the door, Jack?" he incessantly asked upon reaching Jack's whereabouts. "This door, Micael, will lead us to EIGHTEEN, its relevance and the truth behind the open gates. The SHROUD of our wildest dreams and the past beyond our past," he replied, while slowly twisting the knob. Jack heard the littlest of click from the knob and from there, he pushed the door open. At first, Micael could not see an inch, but he continued walking inside.

He wondered how could Jack actually see. He thought of it for a moment. Was the purple glow a sign of having infrared vision? Or does he basically had great eyes? "Continue walking, my child, while I open the light," said Jack, which made Micael aware of his position. Micael could not really see. It was pitch black, and even the light from the moon was not really enough to reach the inside of the building. Soon after, he bumped against something quite familiar, at least on his hands. He felt it. His hands had grabbed dust and grime, mostly on his very fingertips.

It was like they were inside something that was long been forgotten. He could smell that there were rats, probably dead. The smell was so foul which seemed like it had been there for ages, much older than his age. "Do you smell that, Jack?" he asked bitterly, while guessing what he bumped upon with his bare hands and with a cautious mind. "I do. It smells like our fragrance, Aleck. Not because we are rats but because we are dead. We were dead," Jack weirdly replied, and he smiled though he knew Micael would not notice it. Then suddenly, Micael touched something which felt like keys. Piano keys. He pressed one, and it sure did sound like a piano, but was twangy and sounded very old. Jack also got himself a catch, for he flicked the room switch on, and the light gradually illuminated. Some lights were white while were yellow, while went the room alight. The room was dingy, but it used to be nice. There were portraits on the wall, cobwebs on the ceiling and what caught his attention was a portrait. He looked into it with ferocious eyes, he was near-sighted but could see enough to enlighten the image for himself. There, he could see his face, Jack's, and the child's, painted with contemporary techniques which his grandfather had used on the painting back his time.

"Where the hell are we?"
"Somewhere irrelevant, my child. Find yourself comfortable."

"What's with the painting?" Micael asked, now with his ferocious voice, and soon after, Jack replied with a seemingly calm voice: "Heat not, my child. A dead man tells no tales, and a dead man is not able to exhibit anger, both inside and outside." Micael suddenly remembered the symbol eitghteen and he immediately stopped himself, and looked once more on the painting. They were wearing the very same clothes and they were wearing at that very moment.

Micael with a silver necklace, a gray shirt and dingy white shorts which had only reached 3 inches above his knee. The child, on the other, was wearing a jumper and a torn white shirt underneath, and walking gracefully around the hall with bare foot. Jack, lastly, was wearing the same cape, the same mask, the same eyes, same holster and the same attitude, like he was in the picture. They were happy, on the picture at least. Micael's smiling, child's smiling, Jack's smiling. Micael could tell that jack was smiling because of the color of his eyes beneath his mask. It was red in color, which gave Micael both the shivers and the happiness, and then he continued. He then realized that the table he had bumped awhile was on old piano. One of its legs was replaced by two, or maybe three planks, its keys were dust-adorned and he could see the dead rats on the floor beside it.

"What's with the piano?"

"Irrelevance, my child. IRRELEVANCE," said Jack, while he was grabbing for something behind the closet. He was rummaging carelessly, and Micael could hear the clanging of some metals and some thumping on the wooden floor, and it stopped a little, and it really did.

Micael got himself a seat afront the piano. The piano's keys were covered with dust and webs, but he did not bother at all. He checked what was under the piano, and he found the pedals, of which he was very happy about finding. Cloud Nine at the open gates? Why not? and then he looked at his back, where he found Jack with a violin on his grasp on a bow on the other.
"You see, Aleck, being irrelevant doesn't mean being a shitshow to others. It is basically knowing what to know and not to know. NOCTURNE is the key to eighteen. Have you known not?"
"Nocturne?" Micael asked with conjuring inside his head, then he remembered Chopin's piece: "Ah! You want me to accompany you? Okay, then," he followed after the quite realization.

Micael quickly transformed one of his body into a mechanical metronome, his foot specifically. He was using his foot to tap on the rotting wooden floor in periods, and started to play after the eighth step. He then played the first note. He could feel the resistance of the keys into his hands, which was a sign of being a very old piano which had lost the quite care and attention from its previous owner, if it sure had one. After the first four bars of the composition, Micael had started to hear the voice from the violin of Jack's and his playing, which was so much for a dead-looking man to play. Though the violin did not sound good, either. He could hear the smallest screech coming from the bow and the strings, which he assumed they were forgotten to be taken care of, and the absence of rosin in the bow and the point of contacts on the strings.

It was quite harsh and hurting on his ears, but music was music. Though the piano and violin were sure old, Micael could still pull some dynamics out of the piano. The transition from pianissimo to fortissimo was something out of the question, too. The sounds coming from both their instruments were resonating around the dingy wooden hall and onto their ears, of which had passed on the child's body. The child had started roaming and dancing around the hall, and went towards the closed cabinet to see if there was anything to dance with. His dance was graceful and elegant, like Micael's struggled playing and Jack's unwinding movement of his bow, for it was not smooth but no one cared for the only thing that would matter was the memory.

...