The Crying Jukebox

I started renting the old roadhouse in early autumn, hoping to fix it up and run a quiet little diner. The previous owner, a gruff widower named Hank, had died of a heart attack behind the bar, and the place had sat empty for nearly a year. The locals warned me it was haunted, but I laughed it off. I figured they just didn’t like strangers.

The trouble began on my second night, when I was closing up. The jukebox, which I’d unplugged the moment I moved in because it was broken and made a low hum, started playing on its own. A scratchy old country song crackled through the speakers. I spun around, and through the dusty light I saw a small shape sitting on the bar, swinging its legs. A boy, maybe eight, with pale blond hair and eyes that looked like wet stones. He was singing along, his voice too sweet, too clear.

I told myself it was a trick of the moonlight, or leftover whiskey fumes. But the next night, he was there again, pointing at the jukebox. ‘Play my song,’ he said. ‘You know which one.’ I didn’t. I turned off the lights and locked the door, but I could hear the music starting up again from the parking lot.

A few nights later, I was in the back storeroom, counting inventory. The door to the main room creaked open, and I heard giggles. Two girls this time, twins maybe, with long dark braids and too-wide smiles. They were playing hide and seek. ‘Come find us, Sammy!’ they called. But I wasn’t Sammy. I was Max. They ducked behind a stack of beer cases, and I felt a cold draft follow them.

That’s when I started seeing the man. Not Hank, but someone else. Tall, with a weathered face and a torn flannel shirt, he stood in the doorway of the kitchen, just watching. He’d mouth something I couldn’t understand. Once, I found the word ‘sorry’ scratched into the wood of the bar with a key.

I called the previous owner’s niece, a woman named Margie who’d inherited the place. She said, ‘Oh, you’ve met them. Hank’s kids. He was driving drunk, took the curve too fast. They say he was singing to them to keep them calm. The girls were in the back, the boy up front. He survived, but he never forgave himself. He came back here, waited for them to join him. They say on stormy nights, you can hear the three of them singing together.’

I didn’t want to believe it. But that night, a storm rolled in, and the jukebox lit up on its own. The boy appeared beside me, tugging at my sleeve. ‘Daddy’s coming,’ he whispered. ‘He’s been waiting for us to finish the song.’ The two girls materialized on the stairs leading to the attic, their heads tilted at unnatural angles. The man stood at the bottom, holding out his hands. He began to hum the same tune from the jukebox.

I ran. I grabbed my coat, my keys, and drove to a motel on the highway. I told myself I’d come back in the morning, pack my things, and leave forever. But when I woke, I was standing in the roadhouse kitchen, a skillet in my hand, while the man and the children sat at a booth, staring at me with hollow eyes. The jukebox played on, and I realized with a cold certainty that I was part of their song now. There was a new verse, and I was the one singing it.