Page 73 of My Road Trip with a Vampire: Season One

“She visited with you,” she says without looking at me. “She never wants to see me.”

I drop down to a squat beside her.

“Do you want to go home?”

She lifts her chin, and I can see her clearly now. Her eyes are filled with sorrow.

“I can’t,” she says, a tear sliding down her cheek when she lifts her wrists. “I tried, but I’m stuck here. She wants mehere, but she doesn’t wantme.”

The music grows even louder.

“I think I can still help you, “ I say and crawl toward the sound.

“What are you doing?” Dennis asks when I reach the closet where the music rings clear as a bell.

“I think she’s actually trapped. I’ve seen something like this before.” Sometimes an object keeps a soul tethered to a spot. I have to find it to set her free.

I open the door slowly, and I'm hit with the musty scent of a forgotten place. My palms are coated in dust by the time my fingers hit the back wall. There’s a square panel built into the surface that gives when I press into it. I slide the thin piece of plywood out and feel around the space.

"Please don't let there be spiders in here," I murmur.

I make contact with something solid, and excitement shoots through me when I feel the sturdy structure of a wooden box in my hand.

“I take it you found what you were looking for?” Dennis asks.

“Yep.”

I smile as I blow the dust off the music box. It only cranks a couple of notes when I open it. A faceless ballerina in a red silk dress stands in the middle, poised to twirl with the music. I wind up the brass piece on the back, setting her in motion.

The walls around me begin to shift and distort, expanding into another room. A memory. Sunshine lights the place where a young girl sits on her bed next to an old woman.

“Tell me about the lady in red again, Granny.”

The older woman cranks up the music box she holds in her lap.

“She was a phantom who floated around campus. I was feeling ill at ease, being the first woman in my family to attend such a place, but she visited every night until I made some friends. Then she left me alone.”

“You told me she was very beautiful,” the girl says.

“Mhm. She was, but she was scary. She whispered lovely things, but they made me feel afraid.”

“I wouldn’t be afraid.”

“I know, Martha. My brave girl. But it was just my imagination.”

The older woman leaves.

“I wish she was real,” Martha whispers, and the lady in red smiles back from the mirror glued inside the box.

The room tilts again, and this time Martha watches as her grandmother talks to a man across a small table.

“I don’t know what to do with her. She dresses so scandalously in those ridiculous red gowns you buy her,” he says.

“She loves them,” her grandmother argues.

“But no one wants to be seen with her! Her fits of melancholy are bad enough, but she'll never marry at this rate!”

Her grandmother draws back.