White wood. Brass handle. No lock visible, though one had been installed inside the frame.

His mother’s old music room.

The door stood ajar.

Cold air seemed to slip from the darkness beyond it.

Ethan’s hand tightened around the flashlight.

“No,” he said.

Maria frowned. “Mrs. Bell said this wing was sealed.”

A soft sound came from inside the room.

A music box.

The melody was thin, trembling, familiar.

Ethan stopped breathing.

Maria whispered, “Mr. Cole?”

He walked toward the door as if pulled by a wire.

Inside, dust covered the piano. White sheets draped the furniture. The wallpaper had faded from cream to the color of old bone.

On the mantel sat a music box shaped like a carousel.

It was turning.

Playing the lullaby his mother used to hum when she still believed the house could be saved.

Ethan had not touched that music box since her funeral.

Behind him, another small voice spoke from the hallway.

“I know this room.”

Ethan turned.

Sophia stood barefoot in her pajamas, holding Noodle tight.

Maria rushed to her. “Baby, what are you doing awake?”

But Sophia was staring past them into the music room.

Her face had gone strangely calm.

Ethan knelt in front of her. “What do you mean, you know this room?”

Sophia lifted one hand and pointed at the far wall.

Ethan turned the flashlight.

The beam landed on a covered portrait.

No one moved.

Slowly, Ethan crossed the room and pulled the sheet away.

Dust rose into the air.

The portrait underneath showed his mother as a young woman in a blue dress, standing beside a garden gate painted red.

Sophia smiled faintly.

“That lady sings when the house cries,” she said.

Maria went pale. “Sophia.”

Ethan could not look away from the painting.

His mother’s eyes looked back at him, bright and unreachable.

Then Sophia added, “She said you lost the key. But Mr. Carter has it.”

Thunder cracked over the mansion.

At the same moment, every light in the house came back on.

And from somewhere upstairs, a security alarm began to scream.

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