Cornfield melody
The music came through my open bedroom window from amid the foggy night, whispering some haunted tune that echoed off the slate gray walls and reverberated into my bones. I was sleeping when it must have first started playing, though I wasn’t sure how I knew that other than to presume that I had awoken in the middle of the piano song. For a moment, I thought I was still sleeping, finding myself in a nightmare of quiet solitude, wind whistling through the cornfields and between the gaps in the windowpanes. But as I sat up in bed, shoulders pressing against the wooden slats of my headboard and compressing my pillow into some squashed sort of shape, it struck me that the noise wasn’t in my imagination.
I quickly found myself rising from bed, crossing the cool floor toward the closed door before I realized that I didn’t know what I was heading toward. The music was coming from outside--that was for certain--but who would be playing a song on the piano at this time in the morning? On top of it all, my neighbors weren’t close enough for me to be able to hear the sounds from their home, even if they did happen to be practicing in the wee hours. The cornfields separated us, vast, with the light of the shimmering full moon on their tops, making a sea of waving grain stalks reminisced in gold.
Either way, before I had the chance to reconsider my actions, I found myself outside, walking down the porch steps under the night. The sky was a blank canvas -- no stars to be seen -- except for that big, round celestial orb that hung low in the sky and peeked over the edges of the farmers’ fields.
The music called to me again, a little farther away, from behind the house where the corn met the rundown fence of my backyard. A soft wind blew over my bare arms then, as I walked toward the field with the fog enveloping my brain as well as my body. I think I probably disappeared then, if someone was to look out the window of the farmhouse for me, just eaten whole by the gray, gray night and the grand expanse of nothing.
Prickles covered my skin as the music grew louder, nestling in my mind and dragging me into the corn like a siren’s song. I had no idea where I was going, but I was going nonetheless.
I sank into the corn, completely absorbed by their height, following the noise from the invisible piano. It sent shockwaves of electricity up my arms and into my brain, bringing me forward, to put one foot ahead of the other until I was completely engulfed by gilded stalks and milky moonlight.
The music grew louder as I walked on, straight through the dense field like I was being pulled through a hook in my stomach toward an absolute destiny.
I didn’t think about how long I had been ambling on for, brushing the leaves of the corn stalks between my fingertips as I ventured farther and farther. The late season had them feeling dry in my hands, crinkling and crunching under my feet as well with their fallen bits as my heart pounded hard. It could have been minutes, hours, days (or nights, I supposed) -- but finally, the piano music grew so loud it was uncomfortable to listen to, and I drew on a few feet more until I finally had to plug my ears. I couldn’t stop now. Something was amiss.
Then, an opening appeared in the cornstalks, and a small, open music box sat in the middle of the ground, a ballerina twirling in the middle, around and around and around. I had never heard a box like this play music so loud -- loud enough that it was able to be heard from my house which was, I predict now, far away. Still, with my fingers in my ears, I approached the box close enough to delicately toe the top of it closed with a snap. The music stopped.
There was silence, and the sound of a crow flapping its wings overhead. The corn was still, the fog was drifting along the ground, the moon still was hanging low enough to just peek over the field. But it felt empty.
Too empty.
Like the music had been filling the night with the careful tune of a distant lullaby. And, in my heart, I knew that something was now missing.
I sat in the middle of the field, nursing my sore bare feet next to the music box, for a moment until I was able to feel the silence more deeply. The hook feeling from behind my stomach disappeared all at once, rather than slowly, but then, my hands were twitching toward the little container in the middle of the field, next to my knee. I allowed myself to pick it up, turning it over and over in my hands, looking for some sort of marking or notation as to the song that it was playing. Sometimes, I knew, music boxes had those things. This one, though, was clearly handcrafted, careful etchings in the sides that showed pictures of things that I could not discern. I slid my finger over the wood, feeling for a dial to turn the music back on, finding a small twist on the bottom.
There was no helping myself when I turned it. Once, twice, three times.
No music would play until I opened the lid, and though I hesitated for a moment to put that much noise out into the early morning in case I was to wake the neighbors, a little voice in my head in a tone I didn’t recognize as my own, spoke to me.
‘Open it.’
Before I had the chance to question the voice, the lid of the music box popped open in my fingers, the ballerina starting to dance. I was entranced by her movement, her arms seemingly graceful with the song, and the music not playing nearly as loud as it did when it felt as if it was calling to me. In fact, then it was more like a whisper. So quiet, I leaned my ear toward the device. But the more I leaned and the closer I got, the quieter the sound until I leaned, leaned, leaned, so my ear was touching the ballerina.
And then, I heard the voice again.
‘Come inside.’
I didn’t have much time to consider where inside was because then there was a grip of fingers on my ear, pulling me hard. My face smashed against the walls of the box, the movement so sudden I didn’t have time to pull away. Pain radiated down my cheeks but only for a moment as my body contorted and shrunk and got sucked into the music. The sounds grew loud again, loud enough for me to hear them, at least, until I realized that I was unwillingly dancing, spinning, twirling, around and around and around.
A sick feeling rose in my throat like I was going to vomit from the movement, but I couldn’t. It was stuck. I was stuck too. Around and around and around I went.
When the spinning finally slowed, easing to a stop, I found myself unable to move except for my eyes. Frantically, I peered around me -- still corn, still the moon, still the fog. However, standing above me was the ballerina from the box, hair tied in a bun, hands on the lid of the container, smiling down into the silence.
“Goodnight.”
She shut the lid, and everything went dark. Not the usual kind of darkness like the night sky, but an eternal dark. No stars, no moon, no corn, no fog. And I screamed.
The scream came out like music.
Stories grow best when shared.
If this piece resonated with you, join my newsletter for more snippets, behind‑the‑scenes thoughts, and updates on future books. You might also enjoy my published novels, which can be found at the bookstores and online shops listed here.
