I never believed in ghosts – until I became one.
The Victorian house on Cedar Street loomed over us like a crooked tombstone as Mom, Dad, and I hauled boxes inside. Its gables sagged, and the windows stared down like hollow eyes. “A fresh start,” Mom chirped, ignoring the way the floorboards groaned beneath her feet. I forced a smile. Fresh starts were her specialty. This was our third move in five years.
That night, I explored the attic, my flashlight carving shaky circles in the dust. Beneath a moth-eaten curtain, I found it: a music box, ornate and cold, carved with roses and thorns. My fingers brushed the latch, and it sprang open with a hiss. Inside, a ballerina spun lazily to a tune that made my spine prickle—a lullaby, slow and sour, like a record played backward.
The first time I wound it, I woke up at 3 a.m., standing in the attic, my pajamas caked in cobwebs. The second time, I found my sketchbook filled with frantic drawings of a girl I’d never seen—pale, with a ribbon in her hair and eyes like shattered glass. By the third night, I heard her voice.
“Emily…”
It slithered under my door, curling around my bed. I bolted upright, sweat icing my skin. The music box sat on my dresser, lid gaping. The ballerina wasn’t dancing anymore. She was staring at me.
My friend Jake, a conspiracy buff with a caffeine habit, helped me dig into the house’s history at the library. “Look,” he muttered, sliding a microfiche toward me. The headline screamed: LOCAL GIRL VANISHES, 1972. Beneath it was a photo of a girl named Clara Mayhew. My breath snagged. Ribbon in her hair. Shattered eyes.
“She lived in your house,” Jake said. “Parents said she’d play this creepy music box nonstop. Then one night—poof. Gone. They found the box in the attic, still playing.”
That night, I dreamt of Clara. She stood at the foot of my bed, humming that twisted lullaby. “You’re almost ready,” she whispered. When I woke, my hands were stained with dirt, and the music box was clutched to my chest.
We decided to perform a ritual—salt circles, candles, the whole cliché. Jake read incantations from a website while I clutched the music box, my pulse thundering. The air turned frigid. Shadows pooled like oil, and Clara materialized, her smile a sickle moon.
“Thank you,” she hissed.
The room spun. My vision fractured, and suddenly I was falling, screaming into a void. When I landed, I was inside the music box, tiny and trapped, staring out through glass as Clara—in my body—smirked down at me.
“Mom?” Fake Emily called, her voice sweet. “Can you help me with dinner?”
I pounded on the walls, but the music drowned my cries. The ballerina twirled, her painted grin mocking me. Clara’s lullaby looped, endless and cruel.
Outside, my parents laughed, oblivious.
And the music box played on.
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