Here’s another short excerpt from my piece of fiction “Wandelaar van de Duisternis”, that I wrote about when describing the catharsis of creative writing. This is just a minor scene, with no real significance to the main storyline, but I do like the images that it invokes.

I wouldn’t normally visit Amstel Station during the day, especially in the morning during the rush hour. With so many passengers heading to work, there was a good chance that there would be sensitives among them, and in the living realm, I would likely be noticed. But being in the Veil made it possible.

Amstel was one of only two stations in Amsterdam that I knew had a piano. There was one at Sloterdijk as well, but that was tucked away in a corner where few people even noticed it. And I did sometimes enjoy just sitting and listening to some of the talented people, living and dead, that played. Sometimes even both at the same time.
Perhaps there is a natural empathy between musicians living and dead. Seeing the Veil as a series of overlaid images can be distracting, hearing noise from both the Quick and the Veil can be jarring. Yet music never seems discordant. A musician playing in the living world will somehow harmonise with the sounds of music being played in the Veil.

Today though, there was nobody at the piano in the Quick. There was the expected buzz and bustle of activity: people checking times on the departure boards; buying tickets; rushing for their trains. The usual happy and sad chatter of friends meeting, or going their separate ways. Others were sitting with a coffee, and eating sandwiches, a muffin or patatjes, while the ever-present pigeons scrambled underfoot for crumbs.
But in the Veil, there was one solitary ghost playing to an otherwise empty station. An elderly woman, in a hooded cardigan and a red scarf. Yet despite the ravages of arthritis, her fingers still moved over the keys with wonderful fluidity and grace.

The pianist was playing one of my favourite songs, Billy Taylor’s “I Wish I Knew”; and she played from her heart. I could hear the words in Nina Simone’s voice in my mind. It was such a haunting tune, and the lyrics were so powerful, I found myself singing along. I don’t have a good singing voice, but she looked up and smiled at me as she played, perhaps pleased to have somebody listening to her performance.
When she finished, I clapped enthusiastically.
“Thank you ‘Living’. It’s nice to have some appreciation,” she stood and made a little curtsy. “I can’t fill the Concertgebouw as I used to, but I had hoped that I might find some small audience here.”
“There will have been a few sensitives there among the living that heard your music and were touched by it. You’ve eased the stresses of their day as they hurried for their train home, so they walk with a lighter step. You’ve stirred a few hearts, raised a smile or two, and perhaps inspired a child to take up music.”
“You’ve got a slick tongue ‘Living’, and know how to make an old ghost happy. I wish I’d known someone like you when I was still alive. I made some bad choices with my men. But I’ve no regrets: there were good times enough to outweigh the bad.”

For just a brief moment, as she arranged herself on the seat once more, I could see the elegant young woman that she must have been when she performed to packed audiences at the Concertgebouw. The passion and emotion still flowed through her fingertips. I excused myself.
“I’ll be back in a moment, ma’am.”
As I walked across to the forecourt of the station’s ‘AH[ AH, Albert Heijn, a large supermarket chain across the Netherlands and Belgium.] to go’, the express grocery store, I heard the opening notes of ‘To Love Somebody’.
There were always buckets holding bunches of flowers standing just inside the door in the Quick, nobody would miss a single stem plucked from each from within the Veil. When I returned her eyes were closed, too rapt in the music to notice. I stayed for a few more tunes, applauding after every number, before I thanked her and bade her farewell. I’d have liked to stay and listen for longer, but Sanne had arranged a surprise day out. I was due to meet her at the Weesper café for breakfast at 10:00. I didn’t have any idea what she had planned after that, but I didn’t want to be late. She’d been avoiding me recently: after the aspect of me that she’d witnessed at ADM, I couldn’t blame her.
The elderly concert pianist was still playing as I walked out of the station and made my way to the riverbank.

When finally she did finish and look up, it was to find a small bouquet of roses on top of the piano.