“The music box,” Adam began again, “is bad luck. I think whenever it plays…someone dies.”
Ms. Ginger dismissed this. “Now, Adam, as a professionally licensed counselor, with two darling sons of my own, I know exactly how children think,” she said. “Kids make up these superstitions and let their imagination carry them into the wild. That is why I personally don’t allow my own children to read fiction books. Fills up their heads with nonsense. If it were up to me, I’d fire the idiotic school librarian and replace the fiction stacks with good old textbooks.”
Adam had heard this same tirade before. Ms. Ginger cleared her throat and patted her bun to make sure it was securely in place.
“Now, Adam,” she said again. She leaned forward in her seat and clasped her hands together. “I am going to recommend you let go of anything silly that’s floating about in your head. There is no room in this life for ridiculous whims.”
Normally, Adam would nod and mumble, “Yes, ma’am.” But over the past two months, something had changed in the twelve-year-old. He looked up at the stern grown-up and said firmly, surprising even himself, “There are many possibilities in life, Ms. Ginger.”
Ms. Ginger was taken aback as well. “I beg your pardon?”
“We don’t know the answer to everything,” said Adam, growing more courageous. “There could be magic hidden in places we didn’t think of before.”
The guidance counselor scrunched her eyebrows and studied Adam as if trying to figure out whether the boy was making fun of her.
“Adam, magic is not real,” Ms. Ginger said slowly, each syllable drawn out as if she were speaking to a toddler.
“You don’t know that!” argued Adam. “It’s real. I know it is. And I know someone’s going to die!”
Two things happened later that day. The first was Ms. Ginger’s happy reassurance that Adam was fine. “It was the first time I’ve seen Adam speak up,” she reported to Uncle Henry. “You’re very welcome! I’d say it was the proudest moment of my career—aside from the time I met the governor’s pet poodle; did you know I was featured in the newspaper with that pooch? My name was in there, right in the caption. Anyhoo, you’re welcome again, and please do call with anything you need in the future!”
The second thing that happened was a bit darker. The music box predicted correctly—there was indeed a death that night.
After school, Adam ran straight for the shelter. He didn’t stop running until he hurried inside the building and panted, “Victor!”
Victor and two women were chopping up cabbages in the kitchen for that night’s dinner. When the old man saw Adam, he waved and gave his usual toothless grin.
“Hello, fellow!” he replied. “Good to see—”
“Victor, I have to talk to you in private,” interrupted Adam. “It’s urgent.”
The two women exchanged curious glances. Victor nodded and scooted across the room in his wheelchair. “I’ll be right back, ladies,” he told them before escorting Adam down the hallway to his room in the back.
“What is it, sonny?” asked Victor after he shut the door.
“Remember the music box? The one I found in Candlewick with Jack’s letter? The one that predicts death.”
“Ah yes, I remember.”
“It played last night, Victor. Someone is going to die.”
Victor wrinkled his nose. “Not necessarily,” he began, but Adam shook his head.
“I’m positive,” insisted Adam. “Jack told me.” He recounted how the music box had played for Jack before his dog, grandmother, and father died. He mentioned how his own initials mysteriously replaced JCW’s on the bottom of the box. “It’s magic. I don’t know when, or how, but someone I know is going to die.” His lip trembled.
Adam didn’t say aloud who it might be, but he didn’t need to. Victor understood.
“Your uncle is in good health, last I saw,” the old man reassured him. “The chances of something happening to him are slim. The music box might simply be telling you that all humans are mortal, and that eventually, everyone’s time comes.”
Adam bit his lip.
“Go on home, sonny,” Victor said, placing a hand on Adam’s shoulder. “Make sure the door at home is locked if you’re worried.”
Adam nodded miserably, then left the room.
Victor sat by himself for several long moments. The old man gazed out the foggy window, deep in thought.
He had guessed correctly that the music box was trouble. Over the last fifty years, he’d told his share of extraordinary tales, some scarier than others. Yet it was not ghosts, or dragons, or three-headed monsters with the ability to swallow people in one gulp that were the most frightening. Those paled in comparison to the one simple fear that had plagued humans since the dawn of time. He’d seen powerful adults crumble and handsome young men morph into deranged lunatics, tortured into insanity, as they tried in vain to avoid the one thing that all flowers, squirrels, and pigeons—and people—must face eventually.
The old man wheeled back down the hallway to the kitchen. When the others asked him what the twelve-year-old had wanted, he refused to say, and merely answered, “Only time will tell.”
Footnotes
[1] There were only eleven people in that particular book club
[2] Ms. Ginger liked to show people this particular letter as proof she had a knack for writing unique stories.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONEM IS FOR MURDER
Adam stayed awake past his bedtime. Two hours and three minutes past his bedtime, to be exact.
It was after midnight, the quiet time when all is still, and every action becomes suspicious tenfold. If your doorbell rings in the morning, that is as ordinary as puddles after a rainstorm, but if your doorbell rings in the dead of night, you’ll think twice before answering. If you’re digging
