The Phantom Music Box

by Suzanne Weyn

  With startling strength, the ballerina hauled Emma off the bed. “I see what’s happening,” she snarled. “You’re its new master. It only wants to serve you now. Well, we’ll see about that.”

  Emma rubbed her mouth, which ached from the pressure the ballerina had put on it. “Take the music box,” she said. “It’s yours. I don’t want it.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you want,” the ballerina replied. “It’s what the music box wants that counts.”

  “All I did was touch it.”

  The ballerina studied Emma, and her eyes narrowed. “I see. You’re coming with me, then.” She smeared a dark, gooey substance on Emma’s arm.

  “The Blue Danube” was playing faster now. Lit by the moon’s rays, the little dancers were keeping pace, twirling madly as the music grew louder.

  The ballerina reached into the box, touching the oval mirror with her finger, and a misty fog swirled around her. The grip on Emma’s arm was released as the woman dissolved into the spinning vapor.

  Emma sighed with relief, sure she was free. But before she had the chance to even move, she, too, dissolved into a vapor and was pulled, as if by a powerful tide, into the oval mirror.

  EMMA STOOD on a large stage in an old-fashioned theater. Her ankle didn’t hurt anymore; it was as though the injury had never even happened.

  The ghostly ballerina was beside her, clutching the music box with one hand. She’d lost her misty appearance and now seemed fully real. Onstage, ballet dancers, male and female, were dressed as if for a fairy-tale ball.

  A man in tights and a flowing white shirt instructed a line of six pairs of dancers on how to do a waltz. The couples were dressed as if they were attending a royal ball. From the costumes and the music playing, Emma realized they were performing The Sleeping Beauty by the composer Tchaikovsky.

  The director noticed the ballerina and Emma standing there. “Hurry, Alexa!” he called. “You’re late! Change for Act Two!”

  “I’ll be right there,” Alexa the ballerina responded as she began to drag Emma away from the stage.

  “Hey, somebody help me!” Emma shouted toward the stage. “Stop her!”

  But the man had gone back to his dancers and didn’t appear to even hear Emma. None of the dancers paid any attention.

  “Let me go!” Emma demanded, struggling.

  “Be quiet,” the ballerina barked.

  Emma wondered if she could scream loud enough to be heard over the music that had started playing, but Alexa was already tugging her away and it was too late.

  Alexa pulled her to a dressing room with the ballerina’s name on the door and shoved Emma inside, onto the floor. “If you utter a sound, it will be the last one you ever make,” Alexa threatened.

  Emma sprang up and ran for the door, but Alexa slammed it shut, throwing her body in front of it. “I need you near me until I can figure out a way to get the music box to serve me once again. What do you mean you touched it? It was here with me.”

  “I was in the Haunted Museum.”

  “The what?” Alexa snapped.

  “It’s a museum with strange stuff in it. I don’t know how it could be in two places at once. It’s haunted, I guess.”

  Alexa stared at the music box. “Maybe it wasn’t in two places at once. I haven’t been able to find it for the last two days. Then I saw you through my ballet dance mirror and discovered where it had gone to.”

  “I didn’t ask for it to come to me. It just appeared,” Emma told Alexa.

  “It does have strange powers.” As Alexa spoke, the music box disappeared and reappeared in Emma’s hand — as if it had jumped invisibly between them. “How did you do that?” Alexa cried.

  “I didn’t do anything!” Emma answered. “The music box is acting on its own.”

  “Don’t try to get away. Until I can make the music box mine once more, I’m keeping you close. There’s no sense fighting. The music box used to serve me. And I have to find a way to make it serve me again.”

  Alexa shoved Emma down into a chair and the music box jumped into her lap, its lid opening on its own. Forcing herself to peer inside, Emma saw that the little dancing couple stood calmly on their springs.

  Alexa turned a knob on a gas lamp that raised the flame inside its glass globe. Emma watched, fascinated, even though she was terrified. Why were they using such an old-fashioned way of lighting the room? Where was she?

  Alexa gathered up a blue dance costume that was draped on a velvet couch and disappeared behind a changing screen.

  Turning slowly, Emma studied the room. Besides a table, the couch, and the changing screen, there was a mirrored vanity with a purple-cushioned bench in the far corner. It was strewn with an assortment of makeup pots, brushes, combs, and some tools Emma had never seen before. The walls were covered in theater posters for various ballets in a number of cities. One poster in particular caught Emma’s eye.

  ALEXA OPENSKAYA IN HER EXCITING DEBUT DANCES THE ROLE OF THE SLEEPING BEAUTY. DON’T MISS THE BALLET EXPERIENCE OF A LIFETIME.

  The performance was dated August 4, 1892.

  Eighteen ninety-two! They’d gone back in time more than one hundred years!?

  Emma saw another poster on the floor, though it was torn and crumpled. It was identical to the one on the wall except that it listed a different ballerina in the lead role. SONIA RU — Emma couldn’t make out the name that had been ripped away.

  What had happened to this ballerina named Sonia?

  Alexa emerged from behind the screen in her costume. The blue tulle skirt, the jeweled top with its puffed sleeves, and the glittering diamond tiara made her look a perfect Sleeping Beauty at the ball. Her satin toe shoes glittered. Emma couldn’t believe how such an evil being could appear so beautiful.

  “Why does my music box suddenly favor you?” Alexa demanded. “How did you get it to come to you?”

  “I’ve told you! I didn’t take it — it just arrived. I don’t even want it.”

  Alexa’s face reddened with fury. “Don’t lie! You summoned it!”

  “Maybe the Haunted Museum stole it, but I didn’t.”

  “The Haunted Museum!” Alexa gasped. “Why do you keeping talking about that?”

  “Everyone knows the —”

  “Miss Openskaya, they’re waiting,” a male voice called from the other side of the door.

  “I’ll be back to deal with you in a little while,” Alexa said in a threatening snarl. She glared at Emma as she opened the door and swept out. Emma heard a key lock the door.

  A sudden thud sounded from inside a closet. What could have caused it? What else could be in the room that Alexa shared with a creepy music box?

  The door of the closet swung open slowly.

  “Hello!? Who’s there?” Emma called.

  SHHHH!” a female voice hissed.

  Emma looked up at the person standing in front of her.

  A young woman had emerged from the closet. Her blond hair was swept into a simple bun, and she wore a long, high-collared dress with lace around the neck. “Please be quiet. I don’t mean any harm, and we don’t want Alexa to come back!”

  “Who are you?” Emma asked.

  “Lucy Smith.”

  The girl’s voice was friendly, and Emma breathed a little easier. “Where are we?” she asked.

  “We’re in Boston, of course,” Lucy replied. “Why aren’t you wearing proper clothing?”

  Emma was self-consciously aware that she was wearing a huge old T-shirt that had been her dad’s. Her hair was disheveled, and she had no shoes on. “I was asleep when Alexa brought me here.”

  “Is that all you sleep in?” Lucy asked. “A man’s shirt?”

  Emma nodded, recalling old pictures she’d seen of women sleeping in long, white, ruffled nightgowns.

  “You poor girl,” Lucy said. “I’m sure you have enough problems without Alexa in your life.”

  “Not a fan?” Emma asked.

  “A what?”

  “You don�
�t like her much,” Emma clarified.

  “I should say not!” Lucy replied.

  “Why were you hiding in her closet?” Emma asked.

  Lucy blushed and stepped closer to Emma, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I’m not supposed to be in this room.”

  “Then why were you?”

  “I was searching for —”

  The color drained from Lucy’s cheeks when she noticed the music box, which had slipped onto the floor. One hand flew over her mouth as she pointed at the music box with the other.

  “The music box?” Emma asked.

  Nodding, wide-eyed, Lucy wilted onto the couch as though the sight of the box had made her feel faint with fear.

  Without either Emma or Lucy touching the music box, it slowly opened.

  “How is it even doing that?” Emma asked in a small, frightened voice.

  Lucy shook her head in bewilderment as “The Blue Danube” began its lilting melody. “I haven’t the slightest idea,” Lucy replied, her voice quaking.

  Emma clenched her fingers, fearful of what she’d see next. “Have you seen what this thing can do yet?” she asked.

  “I have,” Lucy said. “I’m fairly certain it killed Sonia Rubenya.”

  Suddenly energized, Lucy sprang from the chair and threw herself onto the music box, desperately trying to shut the lid. “Stop it! Don’t let it play!”

  Emma knelt at Lucy’s side, helping her to press down on the lid as it opened ever wider. They threw all their strength into it but they weren’t able to push it closed.

  “We have to get away from it,” Lucy said urgently as she got to her feet. “When it acts like this, anything could happen.”

  LUCY PRODUCED a ring of keys from the pocket of her long dress and unlocked the door. Suddenly the music box launched itself into Emma’s arms. “I guess I’m stuck with it for now,” she said. “But let’s get away from Alexa while we can.”

  The backstage area was a maze of hallways, but Lucy knew her way. As they ran, Emma looked down and realized she was no longer holding the music box. Where had it gone?

  They heard the sound of “The Blue Danube” and followed it through the corridors until they emerged into the theater’s wings. Da-da-da-da DUM Dee-dum dee-dum Da-da-da-da DUM Dee-dum dee-dum

  The music drew Emma’s eyes to the stage. The music box was now on the floor.

  The ballet dancers, so beautifully costumed for the ball in The Sleeping Beauty, were all onstage, spinning and leaping at top speed. Some moved so fast they were a mere blur. The music was impossibly loud, and played faster and faster as she listened.

  Emma glimpsed the director with the flowing white shirt and ballet tights jumping high into the air — over and over again — as though he were on a spring.

  Alexa stood in the middle of the stage, turning in rapid pirouettes and paying no attention to the mayhem around her. Her face radiated blissful happiness, and Emma could hardly look away from her flawless dancing. But she was moving too fast.

  Emma watched, stunned, as Lucy lifted the music box, which sat playing at an ear-shattering volume in the middle of the stage.

  “I think the music box is helping us escape,” Lucy said as she watched in amazement. “It’s working to help you. You’re its master.”

  “Come on! Let’s get out of here!” Emma shouted.

  The stunned expression left Lucy’s face, and she dropped the box as she ran with Emma down the stage’s side steps and through the center aisle.

  Emma and Lucy finally slowed their pace when they were five blocks from the theater. They were leaving the entertainment district of Boston and heading toward a more residential section where stately, multistory houses with quarter-acre yards stood in respectable rows.

  Emma panted hard. “What do you know about that music box?” she asked Lucy, bending forward to catch her breath.

  “Just what I’ve seen. My house isn’t far from here. Let’s go there and I’ll tell you everything.”

  Soon they came to a large, three-story wooden house with a fence around it. “Tell me more about the music box,” Emma requested.

  “My parents wouldn’t like it if they knew I was working at the theater,” Lucy said, heading toward a bench in her yard.

  “Why not?” Emma asked as they sat side by side.

  “Theater people,” Lucy replied. “They’re not really respectable.”

  “Even ballet dancers?” Emma asked, surprised.

  “They’re slightly better regarded than actors, I suppose. Still, it’s not a place to be. If my parents find out, they’ll be furious. They’re very strict. I’d like to be a ballet dancer myself someday, though my parents would never allow lessons. That’s why I was so happy when Sonia Rubenya agreed to let me be her assistant.”

  “I love the ballet, too,” Emma said. “For some reason, the music box made me a better dancer. Maybe it would help you to dance, too.”

  “Do you think so?” Lucy questioned.

  “I don’t know,” Emma replied. “You can have it if you want it. I don’t want it.”

  “Thank you,” Lucy said. “But it seems to have a mind of its own. Besides, we left it back at the theater. Who knows if we’ll ever see it again?”

  Emma wasn’t sure how to feel about that. It was a huge relief to be rid of the music box. But now she was stuck back in time, away from her family and friends. Did she need the music box to get home?

  “Tell me everything you know about the music box,” Emma said.

  “One day, the music box just appeared in Sonia’s dressing room. It was in a wooden box and the return address was in London, from some place called the Haunted Museum.”

  Emma gasped. “The Haunted Museum!?”

  “You know it?” Lucy asked, surprised.

  “There’s one by where I live.”

  “There’s more than one?”

  “Yes! It’s a chain. I think so, anyway.”

  “A what? What kind of chain?”

  “A bunch of Haunted Museums. They’re all over the country.”

  “Really?” Lucy shook her head. “Well, Sonia had just come back from London. Perhaps that was where she encountered the music box. But no one in the theater had ever heard of a Haunted Museum. I asked everyone. We advised her to send it back, but Sonia loved the music box. Before, Sonia had been in the corps de ballet. Once she had the music box, she became a principal dancer — a star! — almost overnight.”

  “Did her music box play ‘The Blue Danube’?” Emma asked.

  “Yes! It was exactly like the one Alexa had. Sonia insisted that they use ‘The Blue Danube’ in the scene of The Sleeping Beauty at the ball, even though it isn’t in the original score. She insisted that the music director use the waltz for the scene.”

  “Did she dance better all the time, or only to ‘The Blue Danube’?”

  “It was the strangest thing,” Lucy replied. “It was just as you said before — it made her a superb dancer. Sonia was a wonderful dancer to begin with, but when she danced to ‘The Blue Danube,’ she really soared. People were starting to say she had become the greatest ballerina in the world! And Sonia insisted that the music box always be hidden onstage somewhere, playing. She refused to dance without it there.”

  “She wanted the music box there even though she had a whole orchestra to play it?” Emma questioned.

  Lucy nodded. “The orchestra drowned out the music box, of course. But still, Sonia demanded that it be playing. It was my job to make sure it never wound down while she was dancing.”

  “And did you ever see it do anything weird?” Emma asked.

  Lucy trembled, and a paleness came to her face as she nodded. “You wouldn’t believe some of the things it did. I thought I was going insane at first.”

  Just like me, Emma recalled. “I know how you felt.”

  “I wonder if anyone could know how I felt. It was so terrifying. Sonia didn’t care, though. The only thing that mattered to her was the fame the music
box brought her.”

  “Something obviously went wrong since she’s not in the ballet now. What happened to Sonia?”

  “One morning, Sonia didn’t come out of her dressing room,” Lucy continued. “When they finally went in to check on her, she was slumped over her vanity table. When we tried to wake her, we made a terrible discovery. She was dead!”

  “What had happened to her?” Emma asked, horrified.

  “The official explanation was that she danced so much that it wore her out. She danced until she dropped. It killed her. She danced herself to death.”

  “What happened to the music box?” Emma asked.

  “The police said she must have used her last dying breath to hide it. That doesn’t make sense to me, though. I suspect that Alexa must have come into Sonia’s dressing room and taken it. And now, since she had it before you, I’m certain. Suddenly she became a great dancer.”

  “Well, now the music box is gone.”

  “I wish we hadn’t left it behind. Maybe I could have been a prima ballerina if we still had the music box and you were willing to give it to me.”

  “If you really wanted that music box, and it was up to me, you could have it,” Emma said. “But it’s gone now, so never mind.”

  “It would have made me a great dancer and my dream would have come true,” Lucy said unhappily.

  Emma realized Lucy was right. “I get it now,” she said. “The music box makes its owner a great dancer. When I danced to its music it was as though it took hold of my feet and made them dance in a way I never could do on my own. There was an enchantment in that music box.”

  “An evil enchantment,” Lucy added. “You saw what it was doing to the dancers at the theater.”

  “Maybe, but it would have made you a great dancer, just the same.”

  Lucy stood. “I’ll bring you out something warmer to wear. Stay here. I’ll be right back.” She seemed sad, as though she regretted leaving the music box behind now that she thought about how it might have made her ballet dreams come true.