The House on Waverly Street

By night, the house felt wrong.

The air had weight — not like heat or humidity, but pressure, like the kind that settles over you just before a storm or a scream. It pressed against the windows, the floorboards, Sarah’s skin. It gathered in corners like dust, clinging even when the lights were on.

She sat in the armchair again. The same one. She had never moved it — not since the funeral. Shifting it would be like giving the room permission to change, like admitting the world had gone on without her. And it hadn’t.

Not really. Not in here.

Above the cold fireplace sat the music box.

Still. Waiting. Its porcelain body bore a jagged seam from the fall months ago. She had glued it back together herself, hands trembling, the pieces refusing to align perfectly. Now, the fracture snaked through the painted roses like a wound that refused to close.

When she wound it, it no longer played the way it used to. The tune, once delicate and sweet, limped through warped notes and sharp skips, like a memory half-remembered.

Worse, sometimes — in the hours after midnight, when the house exhaled and shadows turned cruel — she thought she heard something breathing beneath it. Not wind. Not gears. Breathing.

Milo paced the edge of the rug, silent as ever. He didn’t purr anymore. Not since that night. Now he only watched — eyes wide and black, as if reflecting something just out of reach. Something behind her. Something coming.

“Stop that,” she whispered. She wasn’t sure if she was talking to him. Or to herself.

Or to the silence.

She rose to refill her glass. As she passed the mantel, Milo jumped up suddenly, landing beside the music box. His tail lashed once.

His eyes fixed on something just above the box, something Sarah couldn’t see.

“Milo, no,” she warned.

But it was too late.

With a swift motion, Milo swatted at the box. It wobbled once. A slow, deliberate tremble. Then it tipped.

Fell.

The crash shouldn’t have been that loud. It sounded like a door slamming shut. Final.

Sealed.

Porcelain exploded across the floor, sharp and white like bone. The dancer’s body split cleanly this time. Her head rolled into the shadows near Milo, who sniffed it once and then hissed — a low, violent sound that vibrated in Sarah’s teeth.

“Don’t,” Sarah croaked. Her voice cracked halfway out, like something had caught it mid-air. She dropped to her knees, gathering the broken pieces with unsteady hands.

A sharp edge slid into her thumb — clean and fast. She didn’t flinch. Just stared.

Blood welled up, rich and dark, pooling on the porcelain like ink on old paper. A single crimson note in the middle of all that white silence.

Then it started again.

Not a song. Not anymore.

From the box’s broken guts came a low hum — distorted, wet, scraping against the tune it used to know. The melody unraveled, bending in on itself, reshaping into something else. A sound that almost had words, like someone gasping through water, trying to sing and drown at once.

Milo backed away. His tail puffed to twice its size. He turned and bolted down the hall, claws skidding on the floor. Sarah didn’t follow.

The hum deepened.

Sarah pressed her hand over the box’s remains, trying to stop the sound, but it vibrated through her skin — not just against her, but inside her. A tick. A pulse. Something with rhythm.

“It’s just broken,” she said aloud.

But her voice didn’t sound like her own. It echoed, flat and distant, like someone mimicking her from the other side of a wall. A thin wall. Paper-thin.

The floor around her shimmered with shards. The lamplight danced through them, throwing strange reflections. Her face, split into pieces. Her grandmother’s eyes — clear as a mirror — staring from one sliver where hers should have been. In another, Milo’s shadow stretched longer than any cat’s body could, dragging along the wall like it had too many limbs.

She blinked. The light changed. The images disappeared.

Silence.

She looked down. The music box had gone still. No sound. No movement. But her thumb still bled, the rhythm steady — a soft, wet ticking. A beat.

And there — under her hand — she felt it again.

A movement. Tiny. Deliberate.

Something inside the porcelain was still alive.

She didn't move. Didn't breathe.

Then she carefully, reverently, picked up the dancer’s shattered face — the porcelain cheeks smeared with blood now — and placed it gently back on the stand, as if that could undo anything.

Her whisper barely stirred the air- “You can have everything else. Just leave me this.”

For a heartbeat, there was no response.

Then- a click.

Soft. Mechanical.

The winding key turned. On its own.

One slow rotation.

Then another.

The music box began to play again.

The tune limped to life, warped and bent like bones grown wrong, and beneath it, so faint it barely touched the air — a whisper.

Not a voice she knew. Not quite a voice at all. But something trying.

And this time, it sang along.

The next morning, Sarah didn’t remember falling asleep.

The house was too quiet. Morning light slanted through the curtains, but it didn’t feel like day. The shadows were too long. The air too still. The music box sat exactly where she had left it, as if nothing had happened.

Except for the blood.

It had dried in a dark smear on the dancer’s face. She wiped it clean with her sleeve, but the red stain clung to the cracks.

The hum was gone.

So was Milo.

She searched for him, calling softly down the halls, under the bed, behind the curtains.

Nothing. No fur on the furniture. No warmth in his favorite sun-spot. Just the scent of dust and something faintly metallic.

The music box stayed silent all day. But she couldn’t stop glancing at it. Couldn’t stop listening.

That night, the whispering returned.

It came from the walls first. Then the corners. Then from inside the box again.

This time, Sarah didn’t flinch.

She sat in the armchair, waiting. The room felt heavier than ever, as if the darkness had thickened into something physical. The music box began to wind itself again, the key turning in slow, steady ticks. She watched it, unblinking.

The melody stumbled to life, and the whisper sang with it — closer now, clearer.

Still wrong. Still broken. But familiar in a way that made her heart ache.

“Is it you?” she whispered. “Gran?”

The whisper paused. The tune faltered.

Then, slowly, impossibly, the dancer lifted her head.

Porcelain eyes turned toward Sarah.

And the voice that spoke wasn’t her grandmother's.

"You said I could have everything else."

Sarah's breath caught. The room grew colder. The box creaked open wider, revealing darkness far too deep for its size.

"Then take it," she whispered. Her voice was calm now. Empty.

She stood, walked to the mantel, and pressed her bleeding thumb to the winding key.

The box shuddered.

And the house began to change.

By the next week, no one answered the door.

Neighbors noticed the mail piling up. A deliveryman tried knocking for twenty minutes. The lights flickered on at odd hours.

A tune, thin and broken, drifted from inside late at night, barely audible above the wind.

Sometimes, if you got close enough to the front door, you could hear someone whispering along.

The house was never sold.

And the music box kept playing.