It was a dark, cold winters night. The pale, ghostly moon grinned eerily from its perch in the sky as it shed its meagre light onto the street below. A single street lamp stood outside No.47 Finch Street, in a puddle of golden light, casting everything around it into a deeper, more stifling darkness while trees, no more than shadowy silhouettes, loomed against the grim facades of the small villas that lined the road. Not even the wind dared whisper and not a single soul tramped through the bitter cold of the night. One sound, and one sound alone, cut through the air- an uncanny, evil sound- like the screaming of a thousand anguished souls. The rest of the world was silent and still, as if holding its breath.
Inside No. 47, though the thermostat was turned up, the three people sitting on the couch felt shivers run up and down their spines, their hairs raised on end – for them there could be no escaping the hideous noise that cloyed at their ears. In front of them, Ben Williams stood tall and proud, back straight as a washing board, as he drew a bow across the strings of his new violin. The violin seemed to be shrieking in sadistic delight at the pain those pour souls were in.
His roommates had almost given up on their will to survive, when, miraculously, it stopped. Ben turned to them and bowed, grinning when he heard the applause, not realizing that they applauded not because it was a good performance but because it was the end to a catastrophic one.
Over the next few days, Ben would happily whip out his violin and fiddle a few lively tunes on his violin - ' tunes' that would have won first prize at a wailing competition for banshees, and life became increasingly insufferable for his roommates. When they were warmly ensconced in a bundle of blankets, reading happily by the fire, the gates of hell would open and Bens playing would rip the air to shreds. They had only to switch on the TV to watch their favorite shows when they would hear the haunting sounds of Ben's violin echoing about the house. They came to fear the snapping noise that heralded the release of the beast from its case, the twiddling sounds that, in the name of tuning, only made it worse and finally, the little harrumph that Ben would let out before starting this, his instrument of torture.
A week or so later, when Ben was fast asleep, his roommates convened a clandestine meeting in the living room. The leader and brains of this nefarious trio was Peter. John was the man of stealth and the gigantic Michael was the muscle. "This has gone on for long enough" hissed John. "We must put an end to it, and I believe Peter has the perfect solution.
"Yeah. Right.So... so listen very carefully. Our troubles started the day that violin entered this house. To solve our problem, therefore, the violin must be taken care of." John and Michael listened with open mouths to this feat of deduction, worthy of Sherlock Holmes himself. "We must make the violin disappear."
"What, a magic trick?" replied the Michal who wasn't particularly bright on the best of his days and was, in the wake of violin induced trauma at an even greater mental disadvantage.
"No you fool !" Peter exclaimed, rather more loudly than he had wished. He looked towards Ben's door, and once he was sure all was quiet, he continued, this time in a lower whisper. "We steal the violin and make it look like someone broke in. Then we leave the violin, smashed, outside the door to make it look like the thief dropped it. Ben will be heartbroken, but we will finally be rid of that insidious evil."
"Won't he just go and buy another one?" asked John.
"No. Compared to him, Scrooge was a squanderer. He won't dish out the money required to buy a violin. He didn't even buy this one. Some poor, unassuming fool, who belongs in a lunatic asylum, gifted it to him for Christmas. So we're safe on that count."
