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The Enchanted Typewriter Shaina Tranquilino September 23, 2024

It was an unassuming afternoon when Ryan Kane found the typewriter. The air in the old shop was thick with dust, cobwebs clinging to the edges of forgotten shelves, but the antique store had always been his retreat from the world. It was tucked away at the end of Willow Street, one of the last places in town where time seemed to stand still.

Ryan was a writer. Or, at least, he was trying to be. His ideas had dried up months ago, and the blank pages of his manuscript taunted him daily. He was supposed to be working on a novel, but inspiration had evaded him like a distant echo. That's why he was here, searching for something—anything—to spark his creativity.

The typewriter sat near the back of the shop, nestled between an old brass lamp and a set of dusty novels. It was a faded Remington, the kind that would have been the pinnacle of modern technology in the 1920s. The keys were tarnished, but the machine had an odd gleam to it, as though it had been waiting for someone to notice it.

"How much for the typewriter?" Ryan asked the shopkeeper, an elderly man named Amos with a penchant for tall tales.

Amos raised a bushy eyebrow. "That old thing? Found it in a basement after a flood. Not sure it even works."

Ryan felt a strange pull toward it, though he couldn't explain why. "I'll take it."

Amos chuckled. "If you're looking for stories, maybe that old typewriter will give you one. Just be careful. It has a mind of its own, they say."

Ryan smiled politely at the odd remark and left the shop with the typewriter under his arm, feeling a glimmer of excitement for the first time in weeks. He placed it on the worn desk in his study, the keys gleaming under the soft lamp light. Something about it felt... alive, almost.

That evening, Ryan decided to test it out. He slid a piece of paper into the machine and began to type. The keys were stiff under his fingers, but as he pressed each one, a satisfying clack echoed through the room. However, no words came to mind. Frustrated, he stepped away to make himself a cup of tea, hoping a break might stir his imagination.

When he returned, the typewriter had typed a full line.

"They buried him in the woods, where no one would find him."

Ryan froze, staring at the sentence. He hadn’t typed that. The room was empty, and the door to the study was closed. He glanced at the window. It was shut too, not a breath of wind stirring inside.

Tentatively, he touched the keys again. Nothing happened. He sat back down and tried typing the words, but as soon as his fingers rested on the keys, the machine seemed to resist his touch.

And then it typed on its own.

"The truth lies beneath the willow tree, hidden by those who fear it."

His heart pounded as he read the words. It was as though the typewriter had a story to tell—a story it was determined to share with him. Ryan, both unnerved and intrigued, grabbed his notebook and jotted down the lines.

That night, the typewriter continued to reveal more cryptic sentences, each more puzzling than the last.

"They called it an accident, but the town knows better."

"The storm washed away the evidence, but not the guilt."

As the words unfolded, Ryan realized the typewriter was revealing something dark, something the town had long buried. He had grown up in Bramblewood, a sleepy place where nothing much happened. But this... this was a secret history, one that no one had ever spoken of.

He returned to the shop the next morning, the unease gnawing at him. Amos was behind the counter, polishing a glass with a rag. "Back already?" the old man asked, eyeing Ryan with curiosity.

"The typewriter..." Ryan hesitated. "It’s... it’s writing things on its own."

Amos chuckled. "Told you it had a mind of its own. Figured you’d like that, being a writer and all."

"But these are not just random words. It’s... it’s telling a story. A story about this town. About something hidden." Ryan leaned forward, lowering his voice. "About a murder."

Amos’ face darkened, and he set the glass down slowly. "What did it say?"

Ryan recounted the sentences, watching as the shopkeeper’s expression grew more guarded with each line.

"I don’t know about any of that," Amos said quietly, though his tone lacked conviction. "Old towns like this, they have their share of ghost stories. You’d do well to leave them be."

"Amos, I need to know if this is real. Is there something you’re not telling me?"

The old man sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. "There’s an old story, from way back before the flood. A man named Charles Mason went missing. Some folks said he left town, others said he drowned in the river. But there were whispers... rumors that he’d been killed. Buried somewhere out in the woods."

Ryan felt a chill crawl up his spine. The typewriter had mentioned a burial in the woods.

"And no one ever looked into it?"

Amos shook his head. "Back then, folks didn’t ask too many questions. They preferred things to stay quiet."

Ryan returned home, the weight of the mystery pressing down on him. That night, as the wind howled outside, he sat at the typewriter again, staring at the blank page. He didn’t even touch the keys before the machine began to type.

"He waits beneath the willow tree, his bones washed clean by the rain. The truth is there, but so is the danger. Some secrets are meant to stay buried."

Ryan's hands trembled. The willow tree. There was only one place in town with a tree like that—Willow Grove, an overgrown patch of land just outside town. No one went there anymore, not since the flood had turned it into a swampy ruin.

The next morning, Ryan made his way to the grove. The ground was soft beneath his feet, the smell of damp earth filling the air. He found the willow tree easily, its branches hanging low, brushing the ground like a shroud. His heart raced as he began to dig, his hands sinking into the wet soil.

After what felt like hours, his fingers brushed something hard. He pulled it out—an old, rusted box. Inside, wrapped in rotting cloth, was a skeleton, fragile bones stained by time and mud.

And there, at the bottom of the box, was a small, weathered notebook. Flipping through its brittle pages, Ryan found the final piece of the puzzle.

It was a confession, written by the town’s former mayor, detailing how Charles Mason had been killed to cover up a land deal that had gone wrong. The town had known. They had all known, and they had all stayed silent.

The typewriter had told him the truth. But as he stood there, staring down at the uncovered grave, Ryan knew one thing for certain—some secrets were not meant to be unearthed.

And as if in agreement, the wind whispered through the branches of the willow tree, carrying with it the faint echo of a typewriter's clacking keys.

The Silent Choir Shaina Tranquilino October 4, 2024

The school hallways hummed with their usual humdrum as Ms. Daniella Goldsmith, the music teacher, made her way to her classroom. The distant chatter of students, lockers slamming shut, and footsteps clicking across the polished floors filled the air, a comforting, familiar noise.

But something had changed. It was subtle at first—a faint, almost imperceptible sound that fluttered at the edge of Daniella's hearing. As she stepped into her classroom, her fingers brushing the keys of the grand piano, the sound grew louder. A whispering chorus, so soft it could have been mistaken for the wind rustling through the leaves outside.

No one else seemed to notice.

Daniella paused, glancing around the empty room. Her students wouldn’t arrive for another ten minutes, and the silence should have been absolute. Yet the choir lingered, hovering just beyond her reach. A chorus of voices—soft, eerie, and dissonant—humming a melody she couldn’t place.

Her breath caught in her throat.

Was it her imagination? She strained her ears, her pulse quickening. The voices wove together, rising and falling in a chilling harmony. Children’s voices. Ethereal, disembodied, but unmistakably real.

The choir sounded like it was coming from the walls.

Daniella shook her head, dismissing it as fatigue. She’d been staying late at the school to prepare for the winter recital, and perhaps it was wearing on her nerves. Still, the uneasy feeling lingered, clinging to her like a shadow.

The following days, the whispers grew louder.

Each time Daniella sat at her piano, the ghostly choir swelled, as if it responded to her presence. She tried asking her students, her colleagues, even the janitor if they had heard anything unusual, but no one had. They all looked at her with puzzled expressions, their replies coated in awkward politeness.

"Maybe it's stress," one of her fellow teachers had said, offering a sympathetic smile.

But Daniella knew it wasn’t stress. The choir was real.

One evening, long after the students had gone home and the school was dark and still, Daniella sat in her classroom, determined to trace the source of the voices. She followed the whispers, her feet moving as if guided by an unseen hand. The air grew colder as she moved down the hall, the song growing louder with each step.

The choir’s melody pulled her to the basement—a part of the school rarely used, its dimly lit corridors filled with dust and forgotten relics. She hesitated at the top of the stairs, the chill in the air biting at her skin.

But the choir urged her on.

Daniella descended the steps, the soft murmur of the choir rising until it became almost deafening. The basement was damp, the walls lined with old music stands, broken instruments, and forgotten school supplies. At the far end of the room, she noticed something peculiar—a section of the floor where the tiles didn’t quite match.

Her breath hitched.

A sinking feeling washed over her as she knelt to examine the tiles. The mismatched section was loose, the edges crumbling as if it had been disturbed before. Her hands shook as she pried the tiles free, revealing the earth beneath.

And then, she saw it.

Beneath the tiles, buried shallowly in the dirt, were small bones—too small to be anything but human. A wave of nausea hit her as she realized what she was seeing. Tiny skeletal remains, barely larger than a child’s arm, laid in a haphazard grave beneath the school. A grave that had been hidden for decades.

The voices surged around her, the choir now a cacophony of pain and sorrow. Their song was no longer a whisper but a wail, each note filled with agony. The children’s voices—their ethereal lament—finally made sense.

Daniella stumbled backward, her heart pounding in her chest. Her mind raced as pieces of a forgotten story began to fall into place. Decades ago, before the school had been rebuilt, a fire had ravaged the old building. It was a tragedy that had been quietly erased from the school’s history. Children had died in that fire, their bodies never found.

Until now.

The Silent Choir wasn’t just a strange phenomenon. It was a plea for justice, a desperate cry from the forgotten children whose bones had been buried and forgotten beneath the school.

Daniella could barely breathe as the voices crescendoed, the weight of their suffering crashing down on her. She had uncovered the school’s dark secret, and now the ghosts of the past demanded to be heard.

The next morning, Daniella stood outside the principal’s office, clutching the school’s old records in her trembling hands. The weight of the truth pressed down on her, but she knew what she had to do.

The Silent Choir had been silenced for too long.

As she opened the door, the whispers followed her, lingering in the air like an unfinished song.