The Self-Winding Lullaby

At nineteen, I became a mother, though I was barely more than a child myself. My daughter, Alice, was a colicky baby, and our nights were a blur of feedings, diaper changes, and endless rocking. Our apartment on the third floor of a pre-war building in the city had thin walls, and I often wondered if the neighbors could hear her cries through the plaster.

Alice had a favorite toy, a vintage music box that my grandmother had given me. It was a clumsy thing, painted with faded fairies and chipped in places. To make it play, you had to turn a brass crank on its side, grinding through a series of clicks until the mechanism caught and a tinny, haunting melody emerged. It would play for about a minute, then wind down with a final click. Alice loved it; whenever I wound it up, her crying would cease, and she’d listen with wide, fascinated eyes.

One night, around three in the morning, I woke to Alice’s crying. I groaned, swung my legs out of bed, and padded to her crib. But before I could reach her, I heard a sound that froze me: the slow, deliberate cranking of the music box. The clicks came one after another, as if an invisible hand were turning the handle. I stood in the doorway, my heart hammering, as the melody began to play, and Alice’s cries tapered off into coos. I told myself I must have wound it before bed and it was just a slow wind-down, but I knew that wasn’t true. The box had to be cranked fully to play, and it had been silent for hours.

The next night, it happened again. And the night after. Every time Alice cried, the cranking would begin, and the music would soothe her. I never saw anything, but I felt a presence, a cold spot near the corner of the room, and sometimes I thought I saw a flicker of movement in my peripheral vision. My mother, who visited often, had always claimed the building was haunted, telling me stories of shadows and whispers, but I had dismissed them as old-wives’ tales. Now, I wasn’t so sure.

I tried to rationalize it. Maybe it was the old pipes, or the neighbor above. But the music box was mine, and I had never heard it wind itself. I grew paranoid, checking the box each night, making sure the mechanism was wound down. But it didn’t matter. As soon as Alice fussed, the cranking would start, and the melody would fill the room.

After a week of this, I decided we had to leave. I couldn’t bear the thought of some unseen force in my baby’s room, even if it seemed benign. I told my boyfriend, and we found a new apartment across town. We packed in a day, and the night before we moved, I went into Alice’s room to pack the music box. As I picked it up, it felt cold, and for a moment, I thought I saw a faint indentation on the crib mattress, as if someone had been sitting there. I shoved the box into a box and sealed it.

We moved, and the music box was placed on a shelf in Alice’s new room. That night, when Alice cried, I braced myself for the sound of cranking. But there was only silence. She cried, and I went to her, and I rocked her, and it felt normal. The music box never played again, and we never heard the cranking in the new place.

But sometimes, late at night, when the apartment is quiet, I catch myself listening. I listen for that cranking, that familiar click. And I wonder if we left something behind, or if something followed us, waiting. And I think of my grandmother, who gave me that music box, and who died when I was pregnant. She used to say, “Every lullaby has a mother, even the ones you don’t hear.” I never knew what she meant, but now, when I look at Alice sleeping, I feel a chill, and I whisper, “Thank you,” to no one at all.