The Hollow Harp

Six years ago, when I was thirteen, my mother, my older brother Joel, and I packed our lives into a rusty station wagon and drove three hundred miles north to claim my late grandmother’s house. Gran had passed the previous winter, and the old Victorian, with its peeling paint and overgrown garden, was the only place we could afford after Dad’s gambling debts ate our savings. The town was a pinprick on the map, Pine Hollow, population 214, and the house sat at the end of a gravel lane, backed by a tangle of pines that seemed to absorb sound.

We spent that first spring cleaning, and Mom threw herself into her grief by painting walls and pulling weeds. Joel, just sixteen, found a box of Gran’s old records in the attic, including a scratched vinyl of a folk singer named Marcus Wray. The album’s cover showed a man with a wild beard, eyes half-closed, cradling a strange, angular harp. There was a small photo tucked inside, a faded polaroid of Gran and Marcus, both young, standing outside a barn. On the back, in Gran’s looping script, it read: ‘Hollow Hollow, 1967.’

One muggy August night, Joel’s friend Lena came over with a plan. She’d found a Ouija board in her grandmother’s basement, and she wanted to ‘talk to the spirits.’ I was thirteen, eager to be included, and Joel, always up for a thrill, agreed. We set up in the dusty parlor, lit a single candle, and placed the planchette on the board. We started with silly questions—’Who’s here?’—and the planchette drifted to ‘NO.’ We asked about Gran. It spelled ‘G-R-A-C-E.’ We asked if she was happy. The planchette moved slowly, then spelled out ‘W-A-I-T.’

Then the candle flickered, and the air in the room dropped ten degrees. The planchette began to slide on its own, skimming across the letters with violent purpose. It spelled out a word: ‘H-A-R-P.’ We all stared, skin prickling. Lena whispered, ‘Who are you?’ The planchette shot to ‘M-A-R-C-U-S.’

I’d heard the record, that eerie, reedy voice, and now I felt a cold draft coil around my ankles. The planchette stopped, and the candle died. We scrambled to turn on the lights, and the board was clean. But Luis, my friend who’d tagged along, swore he heard a string snap somewhere upstairs.

After that, the house changed. The record player would click on by itself, spinning Marcus’s album only when Joel was gone. I’d hear a soft, discordant twang in the dead of night, like someone plucking a harp in the attic. Mom blamed the pipes, the wind, grief. But I knew better. I started leaving treats out, small things: a cookie, a glass of milk. And once, I left my small silver bracelet on the kitchen table. The next morning, it was gone. Instead, on my pillow, I found a tiny wooden harp, no bigger than my palm, carved from a dark, oily wood.

Joel laughed it off, but he stopped sleeping in his room. He said the music was too loud. I didn’t complain—I’d take a harp over screams. But then, one night, I woke to a low humming coming from the attic. It wasn’t a human tune; it was mechanical, almost, but with a plaintive, hungry quality. I crept up the attic stairs and found the door ajar. Inside, the dust motes danced in the moonlight from a single window. In the center, sitting on an old trunk, was a harp—not the small one, but a full-sized instrument, its frame black like obsidian, strings glinting like silver thread. It hadn’t been there before. And standing beside it, translucent but visible, was the shape of a man, his hand hovering over the strings, not quite touching.

I didn’t move. The man’s head turned to me, and though I couldn’t see eyes, I felt them. He gestured with his chin to the harp. Then he spoke—not aloud, but in my head, in a voice like gravel and wind. ‘Play me,’ he said. ‘I am your grandmother’s memory. I am Marcus’s song. But I am incomplete. Play me, and you’ll know what she lost.’

I was paralyzed with fear, but also a strange, magnetic pull. I stepped forward, and my hand reached out to the harp. The moment my fingers brushed the strings, a jolt went through me, and I saw a flash: Gran’s young face, crying, in a barn, and Marcus, his fingers bleeding, playing the harp as if possessed. I heard her whisper: ‘Don’t let it finish. It eats the soul.’ I yanked my hand back, and the man’s form flickered, his mouth twisted in anger. ‘Then I’ll take the boy.’

I woke the next morning on the attic floor. I ran to Joel’s room, but his bed was empty. A note on the pillow was written in Joel’s shaky hand: ‘Had to leave. The music follows. Don’t trust the harp. I’ll call.’ He never did. The police searched for months, but it was as if he’d vanished. Mom turned to medication, barely speaking. I stayed, because I couldn’t leave Gran’s spirit, or the angry, unfinished soul of Marcus Wray.

I threw the record away. I tried to burn the small harp, but it only sizzled and blackened. The big harp I saw in the attic disappeared the next night, but I knew it was there, waiting, hungry. I started playing music myself, on an old guitar I found in the garage. I thought maybe I could appease him. But one evening, as I played, the strings of my guitar tightened on their own, and a new string appeared on the frame of the harp, glowing faintly. It was then I understood: Marcus Wray was still alive somewhere, kept young by the harp, and each soul he captured added a string. The harp was a prison, and I had almost become its next song.

Now I live in that house, alone after Mom passed last fall of a quiet heart attack. I have a plan. In the barn behind Pine Hollow, the one in Gran’s photo, I found a map. I’ve been gathering the things I need: a rusty key, a spool of silver thread, and the ashes of the record. Tonight is the new moon. I’m going to the barn, to face Marcus Wray, to find Joel’s string among the others, and to smash the harp into a thousand pieces, no matter what it costs me. The air is still. The house hums with that low, waiting note. And I’m starting to hear music from the attic again, a sweet, plaintive song that sounds almost like Joel’s voice. But I can’t listen. I won’t.