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Klavier was told, when he was younger, that he looked like his mother. His eyes: wide and wandering, some inextinguishable ignition sparkling within the darkness at every little thing. His smile, which people so adored to see, bright and beaming all the way to stretch the shape of his cheeks. Even that misbehaving mop of his hair, topped with a small spike that stuck out no matter how desperately Kristoph tried to tame it down; though, he never said a word as to why, and Klavier raised no complaints to be fussed over, as his big brother often did more than anyone in the world. He would have such a funny look on his face sometimes, as he did it. Maybe because when neighbors and family friends cooed that Klavier looked just like his mother, their eyes would turn to Kristoph dutifully at his side, and twitch. Their smiles faltered as they stumbled to comment on his recent growth, his academic accomplishments, and the hefty book of case law tucked beneath his arm.
Klavier never remembered his mother much. Even among the chimes that he looked just like her, yes, just remarkable, he only tilted his head and tugged on his brother’s sleeve. He couldn’t see the resemblance, as he stole hesitant glances at the woman called their mother. She lived in the largest room on the top floor that he wasn’t allowed to play on: the one that Kristoph only entered when it was time for breakfast and dinner, hands full of food that would return empty. Some evenings, he would sit quietly at the bottom of the staircase, straining to catch a conversation in hushed, hesitant whispers between his brother and the woman. He knew the woman in that room was their mother because Kristoph said so, but only within those walls where Klavier was not supposed to hear. So he stole hesitant glances on the few occasions that she emerged, looking to see what everyone else saw of hers in him. No matter how hard he tried, he could not see it.
What he saw was a ghost: a woman stumbling through the halls in silky swathes of fabric that hung limply from her limbs and trailed to the floor behind her, slow and set on her path. There was no light in her dark eyes, matched only by the darkness that sat beneath them; her face hung with the weight of a frown sunken deep into the long, hollow cheeks. At least their hair, they got right. A thick, spiked mess of knots and flyaways that Klavier would have too from sleeping, were it not for his brother; though, hers seemed stringy, untouched by the care of a comb. Long strands fell before her clouded eyes, a dark curtain about to close. Sometimes, in her hands, she held the plates that Kristoph carried, or sometimes papers, all important-looking and illegible save for the scribbles of Kristoph’s handwriting that Klavier knew from anywhere. She gave Klavier no returning glances, no acknowledgement of his existence; sometimes he considered running up and standing before her. Daring to ask, to acknowledge: they tell me I am yours. Am I? But he knew better than that; ghosts could walk right through walls, and people too. And they would. She would. And Kristoph said not to bother.
So he let her go in silence, each time, curious eyes tracking the trail of her nightgown where his footsteps would never dare to follow. Passing over him idly, and he grew to allow these remarks of her to pass over the same: granting nothing but a distant smile and wandering eyes, as if watching the trail of their mother turn the corner and vanish, again.
The comments ceased years ago. For how much their town—their former neighbors, friends, and coworkers— loved to whisper behind the Gavin family’s back, they were clever enough to fall silent when one turned around. Mercifully, Kristoph could not remember the last time someone remarked that he looked just like his father, nor did he care to try. Really, nobody had ever fawned over his father’s face beneath his as much as they did Klavier’s, and so the disappearance was hardly unsubtle, and even less so unwelcome. But comments were not equal to thoughts, which spoke as clearly as ever and louder still, in the small grimace that fluttered in their faces. Or even worse, the pity.
It didn’t matter that they would never dare speak it again. A refusal to see the truth did not bar it from being true, Kristoph knew as he gripped the marble sink until the tendons stretched taut against his skin. Evidence was everything, and there it was. In his eyes, narrow and pale as winter skies with all the same chill, glistening with the silvery sharpness of wit that rested on his tongue; he was told that this, too, was a gift of his father’s. In the crooked clumsiness of his smile, faltering and fragile in comparison to his brother clinging beside him at every turn. And the hair: those dark curls that spilled over his shoulders as waves spilled across the shoreline, tickling the bridge of his father’s nose, his father’s long cheeks. He hated the sensation. So he had taken, recently, to tying up the troublesome thing in ponytails and braids.
Kristoph was twelve years old when his father was arrested. Not quite so young to forget, or even to be spared the knowledge worth forgetting, as Klavier had, and yet the black mark it made on their family made its way, too, into his own family memories. For Kristoph never remembered his father much anymore, either. Nothing that was his father, anyway: only the man that lingered in the looks of everyone around him in all the years after it. He only remembered watching silently from the stairs as officers knocked that man against the wall, silver handcuffs sparkling in the chandelier light. It was the early morning: he had only just gotten out of bed to answer the door. His hair was still undone. Because he wore his hair in a ponytail, too.
Now it was the early morning again, some four years later, and only some hours after his mother whispered his father’s name when her eyes fell upon his face, free of any falling strands. He let the comment pass in silence, perhaps too stunned to do much else but smile. And he was careful to cause no commotion as he slipped out of the house in the dead of night to buy a box, hands fumbling for the silver keys in moonlight. The stinking scent of bleach permeated the bathroom and soaked into his skin, into his clothes— he was rapidly outgrowing both anyway. The act had served its purpose. And the ghost of his father, trapped within the bathroom mirror in that perfect moment of his final memory, of dark curls and sharp, steely eyes as he smiled as best he could for the son at the top of the staircase, had vanished. Shooting a glare into the mirror as Kristoph slowly raised his head, small droplets still dripping against the porcelain and tile, what he saw was himself. No one would see any more of his in him— no matter how hard they tried, they could not see it. Never again.
Every photograph in Klavier’s house had been turned face down the minute he walked through the door, with a car full of unpossessed possessions and a dog tentatively treading after him. Four months later, each frame had gathered a sizable coating of dust, thick as snow piled on high overtop wooden planes and peaks. Each mirror, too, gradually covered up with spare sheets and towels; he had learned years prior how to do his makeup without a single flaw, without a single glance at his work. He didn’t need them. Now they were just…
His reflections weren’t his reflections anymore. He knew they could all see it, too, confessing their true thoughts in the stolen glances and hushed whispers as he walked solemnly down the halls. Comments he used to shrug off with a smile: with every passing year, he grew to look more and more like his big brother. Indistinguishable. Inseparable. His fingers gripped tight around the bedsheets as he lay flat on his back, tight enough that his hands trembled, and a brief flicker of fear crossed his mind that his nice, long nails would break. Perhaps that would be best. So he only continued, and stared up at the dark ceiling with a horrible sense of childishness creeping up his skin.
He was no longer six years old, covers clutched up to his nose as Kristoph wiped tears from his cheeks and whispered that there was no monster beneath the bed, no thing inside the closet. That there was certainly, absolutely, no such thing as ghosts. That was the first time his big brother had been wrong. Not just in the literal sense— the Kurain Channeling Technique was only just a funny word to them then— but in the metaphorical sense. Ghosts were always all too real, and death was no necessity. And his big brother should have known that better than anyone, for no one else could haunt these halls but him. For he stepped to the sound of Klavier’s footsteps, glared at distorted reflections in glass and metal with Klavier’s eyes. His hair was one thing: a piece that Klavier was unwilling— no, unable— to let go, as his fingers flew through the motions of their own will: perfect in their mimicry but for one minute detail, one little thing he could never match quite right. He never minded it much, before: only two people on Earth could ever tell the difference. Now only two people on Earth could ever tell the difference.
That was one thing, Klavier conceded. But there were, too, a thousand others. The frown that furrowed his brows and tugged at his lips, or sly smile that turned them as he sidestepped every meager attempt at concern with confidence: one could only learn from the best. It was Kristoph’s habit of fussing with Klavier’s hair when he felt nervous, and his German lullabies half-hummed beneath his breath as he brushed it out for bed. His recipes written in perfect and precise handwriting, should Klavier find the courage to cook something for himself— or rather, fail to find it enough to answer delivery at the door. His meticulous methods of filing folders full of trial documents in the locked cabinet of his desk, down to the colored tab stuck out from the top with the date and defendant marked. Even down to his dog that wandered Klavier’s unfamiliar house aimlessly, crying, as Klavier did, for a man that had never left, and would never return.
Now his home was haunted, as it was all those years ago. But nothing more lived on the top floor. Kristoph would no longer wander through these halls, except with Klavier’s trailing hands. So tomorrow morning, he would go to Kristoph: to the state penitentiary, with every intention of being six years old and running up to a ghost, standing in its path. Daring to acknowledge: they tell me I am yours. I am. But he was twenty-four years old, and he knew better. Kristoph would walk right through him without a glance. He couldn’t help it.
In the end, it ran in the family.