Читать книгу Handwritten Letters to the Devil - Zin - Страница 6

I did not write this. You will never know who I am. I am simply the messenger.

I wish I wouldn’t have walked in there. I wish I wouldn’t have been drawn to that side of the room. I wish I wouldn’t have seen that piano. I can almost blame my parents for pushing me so hard into music. Or the antique store for not going through their merchandise before selling it. If only someone else had seen that piano before me. If only that piano wasn’t meant for me. If only what was inside, wasn’t meant for me to find.

It was a 1920’s player piano, and in bad shape at that. All the parts were there, but it was rough. But rough in a good way. The sound was good but out of tune, and there were some dead notes. I liked it immediately. A six pack for each of my friends secured it to my house, but it was up to me and me alone to bring this monster back to life.

I started with the pedals, which only needed to be reattached. Then the shelving was removed and refinished. Next the missing keys actually replaced with some cheap vinyl. Then, while trying to find out the cause for the dead notes, I found it. It was an old stained manila envelope. It had no markings what so ever, and looked like it had never been opened. I carefully pulled it out of the cavity, and turned it over in my hands. It felt thick, like there were a hundred or so pages that had been fused all together. I opened it carefully while secretly hoping for stacks of money to fall out of it, but only loose leaf paper did. The paper had writing on it, but most of it is so faded that you couldn’t make out what it said. I spent three days reading what I could and gathered all the papers together. It was unbelievable. It seemed to be a collection of confessions to hideous crimes committed throughout the years, although I couldn’t determine if it was one person or a group of confessors.

I went back to the antique store to get more information on where this piano came from and they only said up North somewhere. No luck there considering North is a big area to be from. I then went home and went over every inch of the piano. In the same place where I found the envelope, I found burned into the wood in small printing press letters,

I submit to you

These handwritten letters to the Devil

Meant to be and meant for you

As cities burn and cities level . . .

A chill ran through me as I read those words for the first time. What the hell did I buy? I took the letters to the police next, but the inconsistency and authentication of the pages was questioned. It was clear that a crazy person wrote these, or a group of crazies, but what they didn’t seem to understand was that just because it was crazy didn’t mean that it didn’t actually happen.

I did some investigating on my own and found that some of the dates actually matched up to some of the crimes committed. It became weirder and weirder the more I got involved, but the police seemed uninterested. Finally, I guess I was just compelled to get these stories heard so maybe some public outcry can motivate the police to get off of their asses and look into this legitimate lead, so I published the pages under the title that was burned into the inside of my piano, and here you are. And here are “The Handwritten Letters to the Devil” in the exact order that I read them in. I’m not sure if they are connected, or if they are even real. I will leave that up to you to decide for yourself.