The Copper Locket

My father’s last words were not for my mother. They were for me, a ten-year-old boy standing in a pool of his blood, the landing light flickering above us. ‘Elena,’ he gasped, blood bubbling at his lips. ‘I loved Elena. Not your mother. Not ever.’ He died before I could ask who Elena was. The name burned into my memory like a brand.

We lived in a small, damp house on the edge of the Ravenwood Forest, a place where the trees grew so thick they swallowed the sun. My mother worked nights at the canning factory, her hands always smelling of brine and metal. That night, I woke to a sound that wasn’t a scream but a wet, gurgling choke. I crept out of my room and saw him there, crumpled on the landing, a knife glinting on the carpet. He managed to whisper, ‘She’s come back, Leo. Elena is here.’ Then his eyes went still.

The police found no sign of forced entry. They said it was a robbery gone wrong, but I knew better. My mother never spoke of Elena, and I was too young to understand. The story faded, as it does, until a year later.

We had returned from a week at the coast, a rare holiday. My mother was exhausted, and I was eager to see my room. But when I opened the door, my heart stopped. My posters were torn, my books scattered, my clothes thrown across the bed. It looked like a whirlwind had passed through. But the rest of the house was immaculate, just as we’d left it. My mother called it a prank gone wrong, but the air in that room felt wrong, heavy with a smell of lavender and old copper.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in my dark room, listening. At first, there was only the wind. Then, a soft creak from my wardrobe. I froze. The creak came again, then a gentle thump, like something shifting inside. I swung my legs out of bed, my heart hammering. I crept to the wardrobe, my hand shaking as I touched the handle. I pulled it open. Inside, amidst my hanging clothes, sat an old copper locket on a tarnished chain. It hadn’t been there before. I picked it up, and it felt warm in my palm. A tiny clasp opened to reveal a lock of dark hair.

Suddenly, the wardrobe door slammed shut, nearly catching my fingers. I jumped back. The door handle rattled, as if someone was shaking it from the inside. I stumbled backward, my legs giving way. I landed on my bed, and the rattling stopped. But in the silence, I heard a faint whisper, like rustling leaves, saying, ‘Leo.’

I didn’t sleep that night. The next morning, I told my mother, but she dismissed it. ‘Honey, you’re still tired from the trip. Get some breakfast.’ I tried to show her the locket, but it was gone from my nightstand. A cold dread settled in my stomach.

Weeks passed. The noises grew louder. At night, I’d hear footsteps on the stairs, the creak of the landing, the soft hum of a woman’s voice singing a lullaby I didn’t know. I started sleeping with a knife under my pillow. My mother grew worried, but she took sleeping pills and slept through it all.

One night, I woke to see a shadow standing at the foot of my bed. It was tall, draped in black, and it held out a hand, palm up. In the faint moonlight, I saw the copper locket in its palm. ‘Take it,’ a voice whispered, like the sigh of the wind. ‘It is yours.’

I reached out, fingers trembling. As soon as I touched it, the shadow was gone. But in my hand, the locket was cold, and I could hear my father’s dying breath, ‘Elena.’ A sudden clarity flooded me. My father had loved a woman named Elena, and she had died in childbirth, along with my half-sibling. But that was years before I was born, or so I thought.

I wore the locket each night. And every night, the noises grew more frantic. The wardrobe door would bang open, my books would fly off the shelves, and the lights would flicker. My mother took me to a doctor, who said I was grieving. I knew better.

Then, one evening, I found a photograph hidden behind my wardrobe, a picture of my father with a woman I didn’t recognize. She was beautiful, with dark hair and deep, sorrowful eyes. She was holding a baby wrapped in a white blanket. On the back, in my father’s handwriting, were the words, ‘Elena & Joseph, 1995.’ But Joseph was my name. I was born in 1995. I staggered backward, the world tilting.

The next night, I screamed as a cold hand wrapped around my ankle. I yanked it free, but the touch left a mark that wouldn’t fade. In the mirror, I saw a woman’s face behind me, pale as death, with black eyes. ‘You have my locket,’ she said, her voice a thousand needles. ‘Return it to me.’ I clutched it, terrified. ‘No,’ I gasped. ‘It’s mine.’ She smiled, and her lips split open like a wound. ‘Then you shall be mine.

I ran out of the house into the rain, clutching the locket. The forest loomed ahead, its branches like grasping fingers. I stumbled through the undergrowth, the locket burning hotter. A voice screamed in my ear, ‘You are his son, but you are also mine.’ And then I understood. My father had lied. I was not my mother’s child. I was the dead child. It had been a stillbirth, but I had somehow lived, saved by a mother who was already dead. Elena had returned to take what was hers.

I stopped running. The rain soaked me to the bone. I looked down at the locket, and it opened by itself. Inside, instead of hair, there was a tiny, withered finger. I screamed and hurled it into the dark. As it vanished into the undergrowth, I heard a woman’s sobbing, growing fainter. The cold left me, and I collapsed to the ground, breathless.

When I woke, I was back in my bed, my mother’s face above me, worried. ‘You had a nightmare, honey,’ she said. ‘You’re safe.’ I looked at my nightstand. The locket was there. I have never worn it again, but I still hear the lullaby in the walls, and sometimes, at the window, I see a woman’s face, watching me. She is waiting for me to come back to her, to the family she never had. And part of me, a dark, selfish part, wants to go to her, to finally belong.