The Phantom Music

I have decided to chronicle, in this notebook, the events that landed me here in this cold dripping attic for two straight nights without food. I haven't the slightest idea of how much longer I shall be up here. I know my parents shouldn't be arriving for another two weeks. I wonder if I shall be dead by then....1

This unfortunate tale began at the downhill of my parent's marriage. They decided to leave me at my grandfather's obscure mansion during the summer to keep me from seeing the viciousness of their perpetual arguing. What a poor decision leaving me here was on my parent's part considering in all likelihood they shall divorce and I shall die in this wretched attic.  It worried me that I would be staying with a man who seemed to have at least a mild psychosis and who looked as if he could die of old age at any moment. 2

~3

My grandfather takes on the reserved man roll all too well. He keeps to himself and resents any acts of compassion. I never expected this visit to be a pleasant one, but in terms of unpleasantness this experience surpasses any of the things I expected. I merely anticipated extreme boredom and an augmentation of the phobia I harbor of my grandfather.4

I was staring at the clock, twelve-o'clock it read, when I first began to notice that damnable melody. I believe I may have subconsciously ignored it for about an hour, as it seemed to have no actual start, but once I noticed it, it seemed it couldn't have died at the will of a thousand men. While soothing as it may seem to the normal ear, it seemed to gnaw at mine. It just seemed to magnify the whole horrifying aura of the mansion. I tried to sleep, closing my bloodshot eyes but it just seemed to dwell over me and stare at me....it was challenging me. It was winning too, and then flaunting the fact that it was winning. The worst part of this horrid phantom was that even when I did sleep I only dreamt of it. I saw its face many times and it had an ugly face, so dark and lurid. It grinned at me and made sure I knew what it was. It even sang in that nauseating melody.5

The first night this happened I solaced myself with the pseudo fact that the nights would get easier and I would either get used to it or it would leave. Of course neither happened, the nights just got worse and my antipathy towards the melody just grew. I asked my grandfather on numerous occasions where the music was coming from. "It's coming from a radio in a room of which I shall keep to myself. It lulls me to sleep." I told him of how irritating it had been to me during the past nights and he replied with a spiteful laugh and told me the radio was not to be touched lest his nights become too sleepless. I hated him for obviously trying to show his callousness of how well I slept. I told my parents of this over the phone and begged them to bring me home. They excused my fear as an infantile way of trying to get back in my own bed. I felt tears welling in my eyes each time they told me that I need to quit my silly little games and realize I would be home soon enough. 6

I woke up one night with nausea churning in my stomach. I heard the melody as usual and it quickened the churning and worsened the nausea. I was surprised to make it to the bathroom where I released the little dinner I had eaten that night.  Sitting there on my knees with my hair tussled and my stomach calming, my woe became this angry monster. It was a worse monster than the one haunting me nightly....it was the angriest I had ever been.7

I walked around the mansion for a while searching for this diabolic radio. For about ten minutes the melody never seemed to soften or become louder and this worried be as there was no way to find the source of a noise if the noise level never changed. I began to wonder if I was completely making it up and I was in fact as desperately infantile as my parents claimed. However, the noise did become louder as I walked up the steps to the third story. I had avoided this story my whole visit because I knew it was where my grandfather slept. I crept quietly down the wide hall as the noise got louder with each step. I was half scared and half anxious when I found the room I thought I heard the music coming from. I placed my ear up to the closed door and I could hear it. It was so clear now I could see the phantom's lurid face that had haunted my rare slumbers.8

I opened the door and feared walking in on my grandfather sleeping, but instead found a room that was almost completely empty. A table with a radio on it lying in the center of the room was all that occupied it. It was a small radio I couldn't completely see because I had no candle with me. I could hear the dreadful music emanating from that death box. It seemed so evil and I knew it had to die. I grabbed it and thrust it at the hard wood floor and I could hear its insides break and the music began to reach strange tones until it faded away. I kicked it and didn't even realize until later I had cut my bare foot on a sharp edge. I had somehow completely forgotten my grandfather was sleeping somewhere near and that the noise I was making was far too immense. But each throw seemed more harsh than the last and I went on until their wasn't an actual main piece and the parts were scattered around the room. Slowly I began to regain my sanity when I realized my grandfather was standing at the door staring at me with eyes that engulfed me in the purest form of fear. A fear for my actual life that I had never felt before.9

My grandfather grabbed my wrist and I put up no fight or form of resistance. His hand was so tight I could feel it bruising my wrist. He took me down the hall and up a wooden staircase, unlike the other two carpeted ones. He opened a wooden door and shoved me right through the door frame. I stood there in pitch-black for about an hour, utterly confused. I thought about what had just happened but the memories seemed too surreal to even think about. Eventually the coldness made it easy to fall asleep but the next morning it rained on the unsealed roof and I found myself soaked. I pounded on the door several times but I wonder if my grandfather even heard it. Though I believe he did hear it and I believe he enjoyed all the panic behind each pound. I believe he so sick that he can actually enjoy the torture of his own grandchild.10

~11

And that is why I am here, contemplating eating the rats that are as soaked and pathetic as I. Writing, in this notebook I found, what may be the only way my parents know of how I died. I hope they weep with guilt. Guilt for letting me die up here, guilt for deeming me infantile when their infantile arguments landed me here, and guilt for scolding me each time I questioned my grandfather's sanity aloud.12