Gospel
A shimmering, ghostly sound stopped Joseph in his tracks as he trudged through the labyrinth of his office building. Step back, louder… is that… music? Here, closer to the wall, he could hear it slightly louder. It seemed to float there, in the stagnant bureaucratic air, and he closed his eyes, tilting his head, straining to make it out.
Barely-audible piano — or perhaps a guitar — laced chords below a chorus. The song seemed familiar, yet from another place. Another time. Maybe it was a gospel choir, he thought, standing there in the hallway, wrinkled brow, hands shoved into pockets. The sun lit dust over that sort of carpet that can hide dirt and depression, the sort that makes your eye drift away to anything else, the walls, the ceilings, no — too white, so all he could do is stare out the window and listen. It was too quiet to make out any words, but the joy of the voices was clear.
In some places, music is not strange at all. In some buildings, music paints the air with sound all the time. But Joseph’s office was not that sort of building. If this hallway, these walls, this carpet had ever heard music, it was only from a cell phone ringtone as someone hustled to find privacy in the maze, or trebly radio leaking from a janitor’s headphones. Yet here, standing in this one spot, an ethereal concert came down to him. He moved briskly down the hallway, in various directions, cupping hand to the wall to make out any source, but it was only there in that one corner of the twisting hallway, and then only barely, forcing him to strain to make it out. When he moved out of the range of the music, a strange pang hit him. Worry, perhaps, that the inaudible gospel would be gone if he moved too far or breathed too much, because the music was indescribably beautiful when he could piece together the barely-echoing shards, and it lifted him out of his tangled day. It was an unexpected cleansing, and he couldn’t help but smile.
Joseph could not even recall why he had come through this hallway in the first place. He closed his eyes, and then opened them to stare out the window, thinking that a choir may have set up on a street corner for some holiday he hadn’t heard of. But that was ridiculous — and this music sounded old, fuzzy, as if from a radio broadcast many years ago.
His curiosity began to war with his contentment to just listen, and when he pinched his eyes closed tightly, he realized that he simply had to know where this beautiful sound leaked from. Suddenly, with purpose, he strode down the hall towards the server room entrance, the room that would be on the other side of the wall. Stepping in, he heard nothing but the whirr of endless fans. Joseph whipped around, headed for the staircase, determined to find something. On his way, he stopped briefly at the spot, where the chorus of indistinguishable voices sang on, but he tore himself away and ran down a flight of stairs.
Below the hallway was another hallway which weaved exactly the same path at the edge of the building, with the same windows and the same street. He heard only his shoes shuffle as he tried to locate the sound, kicking up dust motes from the same carpet. There was nothing. The room on the other side was a conference room, locked and dark. So he doubled back again and hustled up two flights.
Above the hallway, there was an empty lunchroom. A locked door to an unused office. Silence, and a hallway that led to the place that would be precisely on top of the sound. He headed that direction, straining his ears and hearing nothing at all. He passed more deserted offices. He looked in a darkened room where a microfiche reader sat, lonely, collecting dust. And then he came to a double door in the wall, leading to the room above the server room, above the sound, where the answers might be.
He pulled the door open, surprised to find it unlocked, and found only darkness. As he stepped in, the motion detecting lights switched on, and Joseph found himself standing in a very large room. The only sound was the clacking noise from his shoes, for the ubiquitous carpet had given way in this room to a floor of marble tiles. He knelt and touched the cool stone, which seemed almost as strange as his search, as he cast around the room for any possible cause of the sound. Maybe a stereo had been left on by a worker. Maybe he was hearing things. He said aloud, “Maybe I’m cracking up?” and he chuckled to himself, shaking his head.
There was no piano or choir in the room, only boxes; but they were wooden, not cardboard, as one would expect to find in an office building. It was a large space, and there were quite a few stacks these inexplicable crates. They looked ready to be moved out, to be replaced by whatever office was going to use this room next. So he walked over to a box, and lifted the top. Inside, on a bed of straw, completely incongruous in his experience of the building, was a polished bronze tuba, glowing in the feeble fluorescent light.
Joseph decided that he had to tell someone. He rushed back through the deserted floor, back down the stairs, back through the hallway, and stopped to bask in the music, still gloriously just out of range of comprehension, still beautiful. Then he hurried to the office proper, gathered a few nearby friends, and started babbling about a ghostly choir sound that he could hear in the back hallway. Curious and amused, they followed him.
When they all reached the hallway, all Joseph heard was their faint breathing. He moved this way and that, trying to find the spot, and chuckled nervously. “Well, that’s too bad, but you have to come check out what I found upstairs!” They all looked at each other, grinning a bit, wondering if he was playing a joke; worried that he might be losing it, chuckling and muttering as they climbed the stairs.
They stepped into the marble-floored room. It stood empty of everything, without a box or crate or tuba in sight. Sighing and shaking his head, Joseph examined the floor, not believing. The coworkers chuckled and dispersed, glad for a brief break from the monotony of the afternoon, but left him standing there, turning about, holding a piece of straw in his hand.
There was nothing he could do, so he left the room, closing the door on the cold marble expanse. As soon as the door clicked shut, he heard distant, vague music calling to him. He rushed back to the stairs… but it was only a woman humming to herself as she ate her lunch. He slowly trudged back down the stairs, and stood by the window in silence until his phone alerted him that he was about to be late for a meeting. So Joseph returned to his office.
Each day, he goes to the hallway, stands in that now-worn spot on the carpet, and looks out the window. He hears nothing, only the vague distant whirr of the heating or air conditioning. He looks out the window, and a smile flickers on his face, because he remembers the gospel. That is enough.
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