December 27, 2025

The box was wrapped in red velvet, tied with gold ribbon that shimmered like frost beneath candlelight. No one at the table knew who had brought it. It simply appeared beneath the tree, nestled between the presents they’d all agreed not to exchange this year.

But Grandma Louise, ever the matriarch, had insisted:
“Well, if it’s here, it’s meant for someone. Go on, open it, Jamie.”

The boy hesitated. Eleven, too old to believe in Santa, but too young to argue with Grandma. He peeled back the ribbon. Inside was a hand-carved wooden music box shaped like a house—an alpine cottage, the sort you’d see nestled on a mountainside in a snow globe. The crank on the side gleamed as if freshly polished.

He turned it.

The melody was unlike anything they’d ever heard: not festive, not familiar, but slow and strange—almost backwards. Jamie’s eyes glazed.

That night, he didn’t sleep. He sat upright in bed, humming the tune, scratching strange patterns onto the walls with his fingernails.

By the next morning, his sister was sick. By the third day, their mother was talking to shadows that no one else could see. By the fourth, Grandpa hung himself in the attic rafters, muttering in German—a language no one knew he spoke.

The gift sat on the mantel. Untouched. Unmoving. But always, always humming.

By New Year’s, only Grandma Louise remained. She lit a fire, wrapped the box in burlap, and tried to burn it. The flames hissed and spat, but the box did not blacken. It did not even warm.

In the end, she left it on the doorstep of a local church with a note:

“This gift is cursed. Never open it. Never let it sing.”

By Epiphany, a new family had taken it in. The cycle began again.