Chapter One: The Whispering Notes
The first time I heard the melody, I was twelve years old and hiding under the ancient oak behind our house, the one whose roots clawed the earth like petrified snakes. Dusk was painting the sky in streaks of copper and violet. I clutched my knees to my chest as the notes drifted through the air, delicate yet persistent, as if someone was composing a lullaby for lost souls. I told my mother later about the tune no one else seemed to hear. She only sighed, her eyes heavy with secrets she never shared, and told me to forget it—just a trick of the wind.
Years later, I would remember that melody in a far uglier context, as a crime scene photograph stared up at me from my desk—an old woman, her gray hair splayed across a stained pillow, eyes open and glassy, one hand clutching a faded music box. The box itself was small, wooden, and decorated with chipped blue paint and a design of flowers that looked almost Eastern European. It played a tune—those same drifting, yearning notes I’d heard as a child. The case was labeled: Victim #27, Marya Solovyov, age 78. No immediate signs of struggle. But it was never that simple.
Now, as Detective Lena Hart, I was supposed to unweave the tangled patterns of other people’s dreams and nightmares, and the melody had returned to haunt me. The press called it “The Song of Forgotten Dreams,” and with every new victim, it grew harder to pretend I didn’t know the tune by heart.
Chapter Two: Threads of Darkness
Late October. The city wore its usual mask of indifference, gray and damp, neon lights flickering over rain-slicked streets. I leaned my forehead against the window of the precinct break room, staring past my reflection at the city’s skeleton skyline. My partner, Theo Raines, sipped burnt coffee and read through the case file, his brow furrowed in a familiar pattern of worry.
They didn’t take anything, Lena. No valuables, no sign of a break-in. Just the music box, always left behind, wound up and playing. And there’s no pattern to the victims. Young, old, rich, poor. All we get is that damned tune.
I nodded, remembering the way Marya’s hands had curled protectively around the music box, as if even in death she feared someone would take it from her. In every case, the same object, the same melody. It was only the faces that changed.
I spent my nights listening to the recording we’d made of the box, trying to pick apart the melody, searching for a clue in the unresolved chords. I let it seep into my dreams—the same dreams that, lately, felt less like sleep and more like a rehearsal for something I couldn’t name.
On a hunch, I started researching the origin of the melody. It wasn’t online, or in any of the city’s music libraries. I took the recording to Dr. Ewa Zielinska, a musicologist at the university. She listened, transfixed, head cocked like a bird hearing a distant echo.
It’s an old folk song, she said finally. From the borderlands—somewhere between Poland, Ukraine, maybe even Russia. The translation is something like ‘Song of Forgotten Dreams.’ It’s nearly extinct. Where did you find this?
I told her about the music box, the victims, the pattern. She paled, fingers tightening over her cup. I asked if she knew what the song meant. She shook her head, but I saw something flicker in her eyes—a memory she did not want to share.
Chapter Three: The Collector
Theo and I pored through all the files again, hoping for a connection between the victims. The only tenuous thread was that each had, at some point, lived in the old part of the city near the river, a neighborhood now mostly abandoned and crumbling, where the only sounds at night came from the sleepwalkers and the rats.
One evening, as I walked through those silent streets, I found myself drawn to a boarded-up shop: G. Solovyov & Sons—Antique Pianos and Musical Curios. The windows were clouded with dust and grime, but I could make out a faint glimmer of blue on the far wall. The same chipped paint, the same flowery pattern.
I circled the block, found a rusted fire escape, and climbed to the roof, dropping down onto a narrow balcony. The doors yielded to a hard shove. Inside, the air was thick with mildew and the scent of old wood. I played my flashlight over the shelves—dozens of music boxes, each slightly different, but all sharing that same haunted design.
Behind the counter, a faded photograph showed a young woman with solemn eyes, her hair pinned back in a severe style, holding a music box in her hands. The name on the back: Marya Solovyov, 1961.
I pocketed the photo and called Theo. We had a lead—finally. The shop belonged to Marya’s late husband, Gregor, who’d died decades ago. Their only daughter, Katya, had disappeared in 1978, presumed dead. But there was no body, no trace—just rumors and whispers about the family’s strange obsession with music and memory.
The next morning, I stood in front of Dr. Zielinska, showing her the photograph. Her face went ash-gray.
That’s Katya, she whispered. That’s the girl who played the song for me, once, when I was a child in Lviv. She said it kept the nightmares away.
But the nightmares never left.
Chapter Four: Echoes in Dust
I started dreaming of music boxes—rows and rows of them, each one containing a tiny, fluttering bird made of shadow. In my dreams, I reached out to open them, but the lids snapped shut, cutting off the music and leaving only silence.
I woke each morning exhausted, the melody worming into my thoughts. At the precinct, the forensics team finally got a partial fingerprint off the last music box. It didn’t match any known criminals, but it did match a 1970s city birth registry: Katya Solovyov.
But Katya was dead. Or so everyone thought.
Theo and I visited the city archives, poring through yellowed newspapers. In the autumn of 1978, three children vanished in the old neighborhood. No bodies, no suspects. The last to disappear was Katya. In the weeks before, neighbors reported hearing music at odd hours—always the same tune. I wondered if the song kept the nightmares away, or called them in.
There was a single survivor, a woman named Ilona Markovic, who now lived in a care home across town. She was seventy-five, her memory patchy, but when I played the song for her, her eyes filled with terror.
The song is a promise, she said, her voice shaking. If you remember, she finds you. If you forget, you’re safe.
Who?
Katya. The girl who never grew old.
She pressed her hands to her ears, rocking back and forth, refusing to say more. Theo squeezed my shoulder as I pocketed the recorder. Outside, the wind carried the faintest echo of the melody—the city itself seemed to remember.
Chapter Five: The Silent Witness
I went back to the shop that night, alone. The neighborhood was deserted, the streetlights flickering in and out like the dying breath of old ghosts. I let myself in the way I had before, flashlight in hand. The music boxes seemed to watch me, their glossy eyes reflecting my own unease.
In the back room, I found a ledger—pages and pages of names, dates, and notations in Russian. I photographed every page, sending copies to a friend in the translation department. One name caught my attention: Anna Zielinska. Dr. Ewa Zielinska’s mother.
I called Ewa immediately. She listened as I read the entry aloud. She was silent for a long time. My mother and Marya were friends, she said finally. During the war, they hid together in the countryside. My mother said Marya’s family had a gift—a way of pulling nightmares from people’s minds and locking them away in objects. Music boxes. She said it was dangerous, but that it saved her life once.
But what happened to Katya?
No one knows. Some said she died. Others said she became something else.
I closed the ledger, heart pounding. The tune was not just a lullaby—it was a ritual, a way to bind pain and memory. But what happened when the music stopped playing?
Chapter Six: The Melody’s Price
I traced the last known location of each victim. All had visited the old shop in the weeks before their deaths, sometimes at odd hours. A neighbor remembered seeing a pale woman with dark hair slipping through the alleyways at night, always humming to herself.
I asked for a composite sketch. The result was chilling—a face both young and old, familiar and strange. It was Katya, unchanged since her disappearance.
Forensics called with another update. The music boxes were coated in a thin layer of dust from a specific region—an abandoned tile factory on the river’s edge. Theo and I drove out there at dawn, the city receding behind us like a memory best forgotten.
The factory was a ruin, its windows broken, walls laced with graffiti and rot. We picked our way through the darkness, flashlights illuminating piles of shattered tiles and rusted machinery. In the far corner, a makeshift bedroom—cot, blanket, a table covered in music boxes, some finished, some in pieces.
And sitting quietly in the center, winding a blue music box, was a woman with dark hair, her eyes too old for her face.
Katya, I said, my voice barely more than a whisper.
She looked up, eyes glassy. She smiled, and the effect was chilling—a smile learned long ago and never quite forgotten.
You remember the song, she said softly. That means you remember the dreams.
Theo moved to cuff her, but she didn’t resist. She only watched me, as if measuring my soul against the weight of forgotten nightmares.
Chapter Seven: Dreams Unearthed
At the station, Katya sat quietly, hands folded in her lap. She spoke only to me, her voice a low, even monotone.
They all asked me to take their dreams, she said. The ones they could not bear. My mother taught me how—the song, the music box, the ritual. But the dreams grow heavy inside me. I must pass them on, or I will drown.
But why kill?
She looked at me with pity. I do not kill. I only take what they cannot keep. If they forget, they live. If they remember, it destroys them.
We booked her for the murders, but the DA was skeptical. No evidence tied her to the death directly—no fingerprints, no DNA, just a trail of haunted people and a song that lingered in the air long after she left.
Theo shook his head at his desk, worry lines etched deeper than ever. I don’t believe in curses, Lena. But something about her makes my skin crawl.
I didn’t tell him that the song had followed me home, that I heard it now even in the hum of the refrigerator, the rush of water from the tap. I tried to forget, but memory is a stubborn thing.
The next day, Katya was found dead in her cell—no marks, no sign of struggle, just her hands folded over a music box, lips parted as if she died singing.
The coroner said it was heart failure. But I knew better. She had carried the dreams too long, and finally, they had drowned her.
Chapter Eight: The Last Note
The city breathed easier after Katya’s death. The murders stopped, the music boxes vanished from the evidence room, stolen or misplaced. I visited Marya’s grave, the old oak tree’s roots twisted above her head, as if clutching her secrets even in death.
I brought the last music box with me—the one found in Katya’s hands. I knelt, wound it gently, and let the melody drift through the cemetery. The notes sounded different now—less like a lullaby, more like a farewell.
I thought of all the people who’d tried to forget their pain, only to find it returned in another form. The song was a promise, yes, but also a warning: what we bury is never truly gone.
As the last note faded, I felt something shift inside me—a loosening, a release. I stood, brushing dirt from my knees. The oak’s branches swayed in the wind, and for once, the city seemed quiet.
I left the music box at the grave, its song finished, its purpose served.
Chapter Nine: The Song Remains
Months passed. The case faded from headlines, reduced to a cautionary tale whispered by rookie detectives. Theo moved on to another precinct. Dr. Zielinska sent me a letter—her mother had died peacefully, her memories finally at rest.
But sometimes, late at night, I hear the faintest strains of the melody, drifting on the breeze from the old neighborhood. I catch glimpses of faces in the shadows, eyes full of dreams and regrets.
I keep a new music box on my mantle now, one I bought from an ordinary shop, its tune cheerful and forgettable. But I never wind it. I’ve learned that some songs are best left unsung.
In the end, the song of forgotten dreams is not about memory, or nightmares, or even death. It’s about the things we carry, and the things we choose to leave behind.
But still, sometimes, when the city is quiet, I find myself humming the tune. And for a moment, I remember.
And then, mercifully, I forget.