13 - Piano Lessons Can Be Murder (9 page)

“No!” I cried, and tried to climb to my feet.

But Dr. Shreek bent over me, grabbed my left ankle, and held on. “You can’t
get away, Jerry,” he said calmly, not even out of breath.

“Let me go! Let me go!” I tried to twist out of his grip. But he was
surprisingly strong. I couldn’t free myself.

“Help me! Somebody—help me!” I cried, screaming over the roar of the
pianos.

“I need your hands, Jerry,” Dr. Shreek said. “Such beautiful hands.”

“You can’t! You
can’t
!” I shrieked.

The double doors burst open.

Mr. Toggle ran in, his expression confused. His eyes darted quickly around
the enormous room.

“Mr. Toggle!” I cried happily. “Mr. Toggle—help me! He’s
crazy
! Help
me!”

Mr. Toggle’s mouth dropped open in surprise. “Don’t worry, Jerry!” he called.

“Help me! Hurry!” I screamed.

“Don’t worry!” he repeated.

“Jerry, you can’t get away!” Dr. Shreek cried, holding me down on the floor.

Struggling to free myself, I watched Mr. Toggle run to the far wall. He
pulled open a gray metal door, revealing some kind of control panel.

“Don’t worry!” he called to me.

I saw him pull a switch on the control panel.

Instantly, Dr. Shreek’s hand loosened.

I pulled my leg free and scrambled to my feet, panting hard.

Dr. Shreek slumped into a heap. His hands drooped lifelessly to his sides.
His eyes closed. His head sank, his chin lowering to his chest.

He didn’t move.

He’s some kind of robot,
I saw to my amazement.

“Are you okay, Jerry?” Mr. Toggle had hurried to my side.

I suddenly realized my entire body was trembling. The piano music roared
inside my head. The room began to spin.

I held my hands over my ears, trying to shut out the pounding noise. “Make
them stop! Tell them to stop!” I cried.

Mr. Toggle jogged back to the control panel and threw another switch.

The music stopped. The hands froze in place over their keyboards. The instructors stopped bobbing their heads.

“Robots. All robots,” I murmured, still shaking.

Mr. Toggle hurried back, his dark eyes studying me. “You’re okay?”

“Dr. Shreek—he’s a robot,” I uttered in a trembling whisper. If only I
could get my knees to stop shaking!

“Yes, he’s my best creation,” Mr. Toggle declared, smiling. He placed a hand
on Dr. Shreek’s still shoulder. “He’s really lifelike, isn’t he?”

“They—they’re
all
robots,” I whispered, motioning to the
instructors, frozen beside their pianos.

Mr. Toggle nodded. “Primitive ones,” he said, still leaning on Dr. Shreek.
“They’re not as advanced as my buddy Dr. Shreek here.”

“You—made them all?” I asked.

Mr. Toggle nodded, smiling. “Every one of them.”

I couldn’t stop shaking. I was starting to feel really sick. “Thanks for
stopping him. I guess Dr. Shreek was out of control or something. I—I’ve got
to go now,” I said weakly. I started walking toward the double doors, forcing my
trembling knees to cooperate.

“Not just yet,” Mr. Toggle said, placing a gentle hand on my shoulder.

“Huh?” I turned to face him.

“You can’t leave just yet,” he said, his smile fading. “I need your hands,
see.”

“What?”

He pointed to a piano against the wall. A gray-suited instructor stood
lifelessly beside it, a smile frozen on his face. There were no hands suspended
over the keyboard.

“That will be
your
piano, Jerry,” Mr. Toggle said.

I started backing toward the double doors one step at a time. “Wh-why?” I
stammered. “Why do you need my hands?”

“Human hands are too hard to build, too complicated, too many parts,” Mr.
Toggle replied. He scratched his black, stubbly beard with one hand as he moved
toward me.

“But—” I started, taking another step back.

“I can make the hands play beautifully,” Mr. Toggle explained, his eyes
locked on mine. “I’ve designed computer programs to make them play more
beautifully than any live human can play. But I can’t build hands. The students
must supply the hands.”

“But
why
?” I demanded. “Why are you
doing
this?”

“To make beautiful music, naturally,” Mr. Toggle replied, taking another step
closer. “I love beautiful music, Jerry. And music is so much more beautiful, so much more
perfect,
when human mistakes don’t get in the
way.”

He took another step toward me. Then another. “You understand, don’t you?”
His dark eyes burned into mine.

“No!” I screamed. “No, I
don’t
understand! You can’t have my hands!
You can’t!”

I took another step back. My legs were still trembling.

If I can just get through those doors, I thought, maybe I have a chance.
Maybe I can outrun him. Maybe I can get out of this crazy building.

It was my only hope.

Gathering my strength, ignoring the pounding of my heart, I turned.

I darted toward the doors.

“Ohh!” I cried out as the ghost woman appeared in front of me.

The woman from my house, from my piano.

She rose up, all in gray except for her eyes. Her eyes glowed red as fire.
Her mouth was twisted in an ugly snarl of rage. She floated toward me, blocking
my path to the door.

I’m trapped, I realized.

Trapped between Mr. Toggle and the ghost.

There’s no escape now.

“I warned you!”
the ghost woman wailed, her red eyes glowing with fury.
“I warned you!”

“No, please—” I managed to cry in a choked voice. I raised my hands in front
of me, trying to shield myself from her. “Please—let me go!”

To my surprise, she floated right past me.

She was glaring at Mr. Toggle, I realized.

He staggered back, his face tight with terror.

The ghost woman raised her arms.
“Awaken!”
she wailed.
“Awaken!”

And as she waved her arms, I saw a fluttering at the pianos. The fluttering
became a mist. Wisps of gray cloud rose up from each piano.

I backed up to the doors, my eyes wide with disbelief.

At each piano, the dark mist took shape.

They were ghosts, I realized.

Ghosts of boys, girls, men, and women.

I watched, frozen in horror, as they rose up and claimed their hands. They moved their fingers, testing their hands.

And then, with arms outstretched, their hands fluttering in front of them,
the ghosts floated away from their pianos, moving in rows, in single file,
toward Mr. Toggle.

“No! Get away! Get away!” Mr. Toggle shrieked.

He turned and tried to flee through the doors. But I blocked his path.

And the ghosts swarmed over him.

Their hands pulled him down. Their hands pressed him to the floor.

He kicked and struggled and screamed.

“Let me up! Get off me! Get off!”

But the hands, dozens and dozens of hands, flattened over him, held him down,
pushed him facedown on the floor.

The gray ghost woman turned to me.
“I tried to warn you!”
she called
over Mr. Toggle’s frantic screams.
“I tried to scare you away! I lived in
your house. I was a victim of this school! I tried to frighten you from becoming
a victim, too!”

“I—I—”

“Run!”
she ordered.
“Hurry—call for help!”

But I was frozen in place, too shocked by what I was seeing to move.

* * *

As I stared in disbelief, the ghostly hands swarmed over Mr. Toggle and
lifted him off the floor. He squirmed and struggled, but he couldn’t free
himself from their powerful grasp.

They carried him to the door and then out. I followed to the doorway to
watch.

Mr. Toggle appeared to be floating, floating into the deep woods beside the
school. The hands carried him away. He disappeared into the tangled trees.

I knew he’d never be seen again.

I spun around to thank the ghost woman for trying to warn me.

But she was gone, too.

I was all alone now.

The hall stretched behind me in eerie silence. Ghostly silence.

The piano music had ended… forever.

A few weeks later, my life had pretty much returned to normal.

Dad put an ad in the newspaper and sold the piano right away to a family
across town. It left a space in the family room, so Mom and Dad got a big-screen
TV!

I never saw the ghost woman again. Maybe she moved out with the piano. I
don’t know.

I made some good friends and was starting to get used to my new school. I was
thinking seriously of trying out for the baseball team.

I’m not a great hitter, but I’m good in the field.

Everyone says I have great hands.

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