The Music Box in the Attic

My family’s house stood at the end of a gravel lane, a lonely Victorian with a turret that seemed to lean into the wind. They called it the Old Merriweather Place, and while it looked grand from the outside, the inside was a labyrinth of creaking floorboards and drafts that smelled of damp earth. We moved there when I was eight, my mother and I, fleeing the city for the quiet countryside, though quiet was the last thing that place was.

It started the night of our arrival. I’d chosen a room at the top of the turret, a circular chamber with windows on every side, feeling like a princess in a tower. My mother had bought me a small music box for the move, a silver trinket that played a lullaby when you wound its crank. I placed it on the windowsill and fell asleep to the wind rattling the glass.

I woke to a sound that was not the wind. It was the music box, playing, though I was certain I hadn’t wound it. The melody was the same lullaby, but slower, as if the mechanism was struggling. I sat up, heart pounding, and watched the box on the sill. The lid was open, and the tiny dancer twirled, but something was wrong. The tune was warped, dragging, and beneath it there was a faint voice, like a whisper, saying my name. I called for my mother, and she came running, but by then the music had stopped. She said I must have been dreaming, but I saw the lid was still open, and the crank had been turned halfway.

The next night, I wound the music box myself and placed it under my pillow. At 3:00 AM, I heard it again, muffled but clear, playing the lullaby, but this time it ended on a discordant note that hung in the air like a question. I pulled it out, and the lid flew open on its own, and the dancer’s head was twisted completely around. I threw the box across the room, and it landed with a crash, but the music continued, now sounding like a child humming off-key.

I told my mother, but she dismissed it, saying that old houses had drafts and that my imagination was getting the better of me. But I knew what I heard. And I knew that the music box had been in my family for generations, passed down from my great-grandmother, who had used it to soothe her children during the long winters. What I didn’t know was that she had a daughter who died in this house, a girl named Eleanor, who my great-grandmother had locked in the attic for ‘hysterics’.

It wasn’t until I started hearing footsteps in the attic at night, and the scratching like fingernails on wood, that I dared to go up there. I found a trapdoor that I had never noticed, hidden behind a dusty wardrobe. When I pulled it open, I found a small room with a window that looked out onto the garden. On the floor was a child’s handprint and a single shoe. And in the corner, at the exact spot where the music box would have been placed, there was a circular stain, as if something had been left there for a very long time.

I took the music box up to that room and set it in the stain. It began to play on its own, but this time the melody was different. It was a song I had never heard before, a haunting tune that seemed to be accompanied by a soft voice singing lyrics that I could almost make out. And then, in the window, I saw a reflection. Not my own, but a young girl with dark hair and hollow eyes, standing beside me. She reached out a hand and touched the music box, and I felt a cold breeze pass through me.

Now I understood. The music box wasn’t just a toy. It was a prison. And the girl, Eleanor, was trying to get out. She had been using the box to reach the living world, and I had opened the door. The music continues every night, growing louder, and sometimes I see her standing at the foot of my bed, her mouth open in a silent scream. My mother finally heard it too, and we tried to throw the music box away, but it always finds its way back, sitting on my pillow like a patient predator.

The last straw was yesterday, when I saw Eleanor’s reflection in the mirror, and she was pointing at me, and her lips moved, forming the words, ‘Your turn in the attic.’ I knew then that the music box was not done. It wanted a new soul to play with. And I was the only one who could hear it call.

Now, I write this as the music swells from the attic, the lullaby twisted into a dirge. I have burned the music box, but the melody persists. And last night, I felt a cold hand stroke my hair as I lay in bed, and a voice whispered, ‘Thank you for letting me out.’ I am not safe. No one is. For now I hear the music everywhere: in the walls, in the floorboards, in the whisper of the wind. And I know that the music box was only the beginning.