The Carved Initials

It was the autumn of my second year at the Northern Institute of Technology, and the midterms were looming like a storm cloud over the campus. My friends, Marcus and Lena, and I had a ritual: we’d cram together in the weeks before exams, fueled by cheap coffee and desperation. That particular Friday, we’d just survived a brutal thermodynamics paper, and our brains were fried. The last thing we wanted was to open a textbook again, but Monday’s exam on fluid dynamics was not going to take pity on us.

My mom had sent a care package with a hearty beef stew, and after a hot meal, I felt a flicker of energy. I called Marcus and Lena. Marcus’s apartment was our usual haunt, but he’d just started renovating his study, and it was a mess of plaster dust and paint cans. Lena’s place was a decent walk away, but it was quiet, and she had a big oak table that was perfect for spreading out our notes. So we decided on Lena’s.

It was around seven when I trudged through the drizzle to Lena’s building, an old converted warehouse on the edge of campus. The elevator was out of order, as usual, so I took the stairs. The corridor on her floor was dimly lit, with a flickering fluorescent tube that buzzed like an angry insect. I knocked, and Lena opened the door, her hair pulled back in a frazzled bun. Marcus was already there, hunched over a textbook, looking like he hadn’t slept in days.

We ordered pizza and set up our station. For the first hour, we were actually productive, solving equations and quizzing each other with flashcards. But as the night wore on, fatigue crept in. Our eyes grew heavy, and the words blurred. To keep ourselves awake, we started walking around the apartment, stretching, and talking about anything but engineering. That’s when I noticed it—a door in the hallway that I’d always assumed was a closet. But tonight, it was slightly ajar, and a sliver of darkness showed from within.

‘Hey, Lena, what’s in there?’ I asked, pointing.

Lena glanced over, a look of confusion on her face. ‘That’s the storage unit. I never open it; it’s full of junk from the landlord. Why?’

‘It’s open,’ Marcus said, his voice tinged with curiosity.

We approached the door, and I pushed it open fully, revealing a small, dusty room cluttered with cardboard boxes, old furniture, and a thick layer of dust. In the corner, half-buried under a mildewed blanket, was an old wooden chest. It was intricately carved with strange symbols and, in the center, a large, ornate letter ‘V.’

‘This is creepy,’ Lena whispered. ‘I’ve been here for two years and never noticed this.’

‘Maybe we should leave it,’ Marcus suggested, but his eyes were fixed on the chest.

But something drew me to it. I knelt down and brushed the dust off the top. The wood was dark and polished, despite its age, and the carvings felt warm to the touch. I tried to lift the lid, but it was locked. ‘Do you have a key?’ I asked Lena.

She shook her head. ‘I’ve never seen one.’

‘Let me try something,’ Marcus said, and he pulled out a small Swiss Army knife. He worked at the lock for a minute, and with a satisfying click, the lid sprang open.

Inside, instead of treasures or documents, we found a single object: a wooden music box, about the size of a shoebox. It was beautifully crafted, with a little brass handle on the side. The top was engraved with a name: ‘Vivian.’

‘We shouldn’t touch it,’ I said, a chill running down my spine. But the others were already lifting it out. They placed it on Lena’s table, and the silence in the room was thick as we stared at it.

‘Let’s wind it,’ Marcus said eagerly.

‘Are you insane?’ Lena protested. ‘That’s from who knows when. It could be cursed.’

‘There’s no such thing as curses,’ Marcus scoffed, and before we could stop him, he turned the handle. The music box tinkled to life, playing a hauntingly beautiful lullaby, the kind you’d hear in a ghost story. The melody was simple, but it seemed to burrow into our minds, making us feel drowsy. We listened, entranced, for what felt like an eternity, but when the music stopped, we snapped back to reality, feeling a strange languor.

‘That was… weird,’ Lena said, rubbing her arms. ‘I feel like I just woke from a dream.’

‘We should study,’ Marcus said, but his voice lacked conviction. We tried to focus, but the music box lingered in our thoughts. I couldn’t shake the feeling that we had done something wrong.

As the night went on, strange things began to happen. We’d hear faint whispers, like a woman’s voice, just at the edge of hearing, but when we turned to listen, there was nothing. The lights would flicker, and the temperature in the room dropped, making us shiver despite the heater blasting. At one point, I looked at the music box, and I swear I saw the lid move, just a fraction, but when I blinked, it was shut.

By midnight, we were all on edge, jumping at every small sound. Lena insisted we put the music box back in the trunk and close the door. But as we approached the storage room, we noticed that the door was now shut tightly. And when Marcus tried to open it, it wouldn’t budge. It was as if the door had been locked from the inside.

‘This is not funny,’ Lena said, her voice rising with panic. ‘We’re trapped.’

‘Calm down,’ I said, though my heart was racing. ‘We’ll just call the landlord.’ But my phone had no signal. Neither did theirs. And the building’s intercom was dead.

We searched the apartment for another way out, but the windows were sealed shut, and there was no fire escape. We were effectively prisoners in Lena’s home.

The incidents escalated. The music box began playing by itself at random intervals, its melody now discordant and wrong, like a broken record. Shadows danced in the corners of our vision, but when we looked directly, they vanished. And then, the whispers grew clearer. They were saying a name over and over. ‘Vivian… Vivian…’

I felt a presence, a coldness that wasn’t physical, but somehow deeper. The air seemed to thicken around us. ‘We have to apologize,’ Lena suddenly said, her eyes wide. ‘We opened her things. We have to put it back and apologize.’

She approached the music box, which now sat on the floor in the middle of the room, as if it had moved on its own. Her hands trembled as she picked it up. ‘I’m sorry, Vivian,’ she said. ‘We didn’t mean to disturb you.’

But when she tried to place it back into the chest, the chest was gone. In its place was a dark stain on the floor, spreading like a pool of ink. And from that stain, a cold wind blew, extinguishing the candles we had lit for some reason.

The music box fell from Lena’s hands, smashing into pieces on the floor. The shards arranged themselves into a pattern, and we recognized it as a name: ‘Vivian.’ And then, from the shattered box, a wisp of white smoke rose and formed into the faint outline of a woman. Her face was obscured, but her voice, when she spoke, was clear and full of sorrow.

‘You opened the box, and set me free,’ she said. ‘But now, you must take my place.’

We screamed, but no sound came out. The last thing we saw was the woman reaching out her hands, and then everything went black.

The next morning, the landlord found the three of us sitting in Lena’s living room, staring blankly at the wall. We were alive, but not ourselves. Our eyes were vacant, and our movements were robotic. We didn’t speak, but when the landlord asked what happened, we all pointed to the floor, where a small hand-carved wooden music box lay, intact, with a new name engraved on the top: ‘Marcus.’

I know this because I was the one who found them. And I know that the curse of the music box has not ended. It waits, dormant, until someone else winds it and unleashes its terrible lullaby. I am writing this as a warning. If you ever find a music box with a woman’s name on it, do not touch it. Do not wind it. For it may be the last thing you ever do.