My parents said moving to Serbia would be an adventure. A chance to “reconnect with our roots,” since Grandma Lina was born in a tiny village outside Belgrade. But from the moment our plane touched down, something felt… off. The sky hung low and gray, like a damp shroud, and the taxi driver who picked us up from the airport refused to take us all the way to Grandma’s old house. He stopped at the edge of the village, muttered something about “crvena vrpca”—red ribbon—and sped off, leaving our suitcases in the mud.
The house was a crumbling stone thing, half-swallowed by thorny vines. Inside, the air smelled of wet soil and burnt herbs. Upstairs, I found Grandma Lina’s bedroom frozen in time: a rusted iron bed, yellowed lace curtains, and a wooden music box carved with twisted figures—men with animal heads, women with too many eyes. When I opened it, it played a lullaby that made my teeth ache.
That night, I woke to the sound of scratching. Not mice. Fingernails on glass. My breath fogged the window as I peered out. Below, in the overgrown garden, a woman in a tattered black dress stood motionless, her face pale as moonlight. A red ribbon fluttered from her throat.
“Mama?” I whispered, stumbling into my parents’ room. But their bed was empty, sheets cold.
Panicking, I followed the glow of a candle downstairs to the cellar. The door creaked open, and the smell hit me first—rotten flowers. My parents knelt on the dirt floor, chanting in Serbian, their voices hollow and monotone. Between them sat the music box, its lid open. The ballerina inside wasn’t dancing. She was staring at me, her painted eyes following my every move.
“Stop it!” I screamed, lunging for the box.
My father caught my wrist, his grip bruising. “It’s tradition, Ana,” he said, his voice not quite his own. “For the Drekavac.”
I didn’t know what that meant until the next morning, when I found an old book in the attic: Legends of the Balkans. The Drekavac, it said, was a vengeful spirit born from a child who died unbaptized. It wails like a newborn until it possesses a living body, using a red ribbon to tether itself to our world. The only way to appease it? Offer it a new vessel…
That’s when I noticed the marks on my neck in the mirror. Three thin scratches, glowing faintly red.
The villagers avoided me after that. Old women crossed themselves when I passed; children hid behind their mothers. Only one person spoke to me—a boy named Nikola, who worked at the fog-drenched cemetery. “Your grandmother wasn’t just from here,” he said, digging a grave as rain dripped from his brow. “She fed the Drekavac. Kept it chained to this village with her rituals. Now that she’s gone, it’s hungry.” He nodded to my scratches. “And it’s chosen you.”
I didn’t believe him until the dreams started.
In them, I was trapped in a forest of blackened trees, the red ribbon around my throat tightening as a shadow slithered toward me—a thing with a baby’s cry and a mouth full of needles. Each night, I’d wake up clutching the music box, my hands smeared with grave dirt.
The final straw was finding my parents in the garden at dawn, their eyes milky, stringing red ribbons through the branches. “It’s almost time,” they said in unison.
Nikola helped me plan an escape. We’d burn the music box, salt the house, and flee to Belgrade. But when we lit the match, the box didn’t burn. It screamed. The sound tore through the village, and the Drekavac erupted from the woods—a skeletal thing with a distended belly and that awful, wailing mouth.
We ran, but the ribbon around my neck yanked me backward, dragging me toward the creature. Nikola shouted a prayer, hurling a handful of salt. The Drekavac recoiled, and I plunged my hand into its chest, grabbing for its heart. Instead, I pulled out a tiny, decaying doll… with my face stitched into its cloth.
The world blinked.
When I opened my eyes, I was back in Grandma’s house, the music box silent. My parents hugged me, sobbing. “It’s over,” Mama said. “We’re free.”
But later, alone in the bathroom, I unbuttoned my shirt and froze. The scratches were gone. In their place was a red ribbon, sewn into my skin, its ends curling like smoke.
And in the mirror behind me, Grandma Lina smiled.
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