Dark Ballerina

Christabel kept to the third floor.

The room they gave her had once belonged to a cousin who had died young—no one said the name, but it was still faintly scratched into the back of the wardrobe door. The wallpaper was pale blue, faded in streaks where water had leaked down in years past. A single ballerina slipper, child-sized and grey with dust, sat tucked behind the radiator. No one seemed to notice it but her.

The house had grown quieter since her arrival. Not calmer—just quiet, in the way a forest goes silent when something unseen is watching.

She spent her days walking through rooms that hadn't been opened in years. She passed oil portraits with cracked varnish, found a music theory book with a child's handwriting in the margins. The name written over and over was Annabel.

When she asked Fedrica who Annabel was, the girl only said, "She didn't die here. But she never left."

That night, Christabel heard it.

Soft at first. The unmistakable sound of a music box being wound. Hesitant, like a hand unsure of itself. Then a click—and the melody began, slow and stammering, as though remembering its own shape.

Christabel rose and followed the sound barefoot, the floorboards groaning under each step. It led her past the old nursery and down a corridor that hadn't been lit in years.

The music stopped before she found the source.

In the silence that followed, she realized she was standing in front of a narrow door she'd never seen before—flushed with the wall, its handle rusted almost flat. She tried it.

Locked.

She stepped back. The hair along her arms stood up. A breath passed near her ear—not air, but something colder. A sensation more than a sound.

Behind the door, something shifted. Not loudly, not suddenly. Just enough to suggest it had heard her.