Elena didn't mean to play it.
She told herself that over and over later, as if intent could undo consequence. But curiosity has its own gravity—especially when grief sharpens it into a blade.
After the crows fell silent, she carried the wooden box downstairs, unable to leave it in the attic like a sleeping thing. She set it on Maya's kitchen table, the oilcloth whispering as she unfolded it. The wax cylinder sat cold and heavy in her palm, its grooves fine as spider veins. She'd handled artifacts like this before—Civil War diaries, Prohibition-era ledgers—but never something that felt alive with warning.
She remembered the phonograph in the parlor: an antique Edison machine Maya had restored for a gallery show years ago. "Functional," she'd bragged. "Plays ghosts better than most."
Elena carried the cylinder to it.
Just a look, she thought. Not a listen.
But the machine's horn gleamed under the weak light, inviting. And Maya's note—DO NOT PLAY—itched at her like a dare.
Hands trembling, she placed the cylinder on the mandrel. Turned the crank three slow times. Lowered the needle.
A hiss filled the room—white noise, ancient and dry.
Then… a voice.
Not static. Not distortion.
Maya's voice.
Clear. Close. As if she stood behind Elena, lips brushing her ear.
"Ellie… you came back."
Elena gasped, stumbling back. The needle skipped.
"I knew you would. You always come back… after it's too late."
Tears burned her eyes. "Maya?" she whispered, foolishly, desperately.
The recording continued, but the tone shifted—softer, slower, like sinking into tar.
"Don't trust the quiet. It's not empty. It's… waiting. It learns fast. It already knows how you cry. How you sigh when you're tired. It's practiced your laugh in the walls."
A beat of silence. Then, barely audible:
"It's practicing your name right now."
The hiss returned—and within it, something else. A wet clicking. A breath that wasn't Maya's. Then a whisper, layered beneath her sister's voice, speaking the same words a fraction of a second later:
"Ellie… you came back…"
But lower. Guttural. Wrong.
Elena lunged for the machine, yanking the needle up. The cylinder spun free, clattering to the floor, a hairline crack splitting its surface.
Silence crashed down.
She stood there, chest heaving, sweat cold on her neck. The house felt different—watchful. The air thicker, charged, like before a storm.
Then the lights flickered.
Once. Twice.
On the third pulse, they died.
In the sudden dark, her phone buzzed on the table—screen flaring to life with no call, no message. Just static. Black-and-white snow crawling across the display, and beneath it… a voice.
Not Maya's.
Hers.
Her own voice, flat and hollow, whispered from the phone's speaker:
"…too late…"
Elena snatched it up, smashed the power button. The screen went black.
But in the silence that followed, she heard it again—not from the phone, but from the hallway.
From the walls.
Her voice. Repeating. Fading.
"…too late… too late… too late…"
She ran to the front door, threw the deadbolt, pressed her back against it like a child hiding from monsters. Her breath came in ragged bursts. It's grief. Sleep deprivation. Auditory hallucination. Stress.
But deep down, she knew.
Maya hadn't left a message.
She'd left a trap.
And Elena had just sprung it.
Outside, the wind rose—a low moan through the trees. Or maybe it wasn't the wind at all.
Maybe it was something learning how to sound like it.
End of Chapter 3