She'd purchased it from a soon-to-be shut down school for a tenner.
It was an absolute bargain and the staff seemed glad to be rid of it - all the better for her.
Still, the plucking sounds were unnerving.
She never managed to gather the courage to open the lid and see what was going on inside.
It could have been a spider or the old strings tensing and untensing in the room's warmth.
Sometimes out of the corner of her eyes she saw the lid open a fraction, heard tiny footsteps.
They always stopped outside her room and thudded back to the piano loudly.
It was like this every night - first the plucking then the lid and finally the footsteps.
After a few weeks of this, selling it sounded like a decent idea.
There was no shortage of interest online and a few who offered thrice what she paid for it.
A local police officer offered her the highest at eighty pounds which she gladly took.
The woman arrived the next day to collect it, she never mentioned the plucking or lid movements.
The house felt quieter without it, safer too.
Unbeknownst to her, the officer had opened the piano up, suspecting mice and finding worse.
The skeletal remains of a child, their tiny hands tangled in the strings and claw marks on the lid.
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