The Toy’s Melody

The day I picked up my niece, Lila, from the Little Star Daycare, I expected the usual chaos of crying toddlers and harried staff. Instead, I was greeted by an unsettling silence. The director, a woman named Mrs. Gable, seemed distracted, her eyes darting to the corner of the playroom where a shelf of toys sat. As she signed Lila out, a mechanical lullaby began to play, but it was wrong. The two singing toys, a plush bear and a porcelain doll, were facing each other, and the bear was singing the doll’s song, and the doll was singing the bear’s. They had been switched. I laughed it off, but Mrs. Gable’s face was pale. ‘They’ve been doing that all week,’ she whispered. ‘No one touched them.’

Two weeks later, as I waited for Lila in the same spot, I heard a faint, sibilant whisper. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. I checked my phone, my pockets, even the air vents, but found nothing. The other parents were still, their faces frozen in confusion. The whispering grew louder, a chorus of voices speaking in a language I didn’t recognize, and then it stopped as abruptly as it began. The silence that followed was worse.

A few days after that, I was helping Lila put on her coat when she froze, staring up the stairs. ‘What’s the matter, sweetie?’ I asked. She pointed a tiny finger at the empty landing and said, ‘Hello.’ Then, as if in response to something I couldn’t see, she began to cry and said, ‘I want mummy.’ I scooped her up and rushed outside, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had followed us.

That night, as I tucked Lila into bed, I found a small, plastic music box on her pillow. It was from the daycare, the same one that the toys had been singing. I didn’t remember bringing it home. When I opened it, instead of the expected tune, it played a distorted, gasping melody, and I heard a child’s voice whisper, ‘Don’t close your eyes.’ I threw it in the trash, but I know it will come back. Something in that daycare has latched onto Lila, and it’s learning to sing in her voice.