“Dang,” Emrys said, and his voice sounded weirdly faint in his ringing ears. “What was that about?”

“These stupid things are older than my parents,” Serena said brightly. “Now we’ll get a new one. I did us a favor!”

Hazel was quiet. She peered at the space where the intercom had been. Emrys followed her gaze and saw a few small wires sticking out from a hole in the wall.

“I’ll get some candles,” Serena said, already walking across the room. Peering out a window, she said, “It looks like the neighbors still have power. Was our building struck by lightning?”

Emrys undid the dead bolt and opened the door. He could make out Serena’s welcome mat, and beyond it, the very edge of the stairwell. Past the boundary of Hazel’s light, however, all was pitch black. “The whole building’s dark,” Emrys said. He turned to Hazel, whose brows were screwed up in worry. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “It’s just … the buzzer went off after the power went out. But don’t the intercoms use electricity?”

Before Emrys had a chance to process her question, he heard something out there in the dark.

It was the sound of the door downstairs—the entrance to the building, on the ground floor. There was no jangle of keys; no grinding of the ancient, stubborn lock.

Just the click of the opening door, and the clack as it fell back into place.

And then, the sound of someone whistling.

Hazel locked eyes with Emrys. Her hand shook, and the light shook with it, making the shadows on her face twist and bend. Neither of them said anything; they both held their breath and listened.

Click, click came the sound of footfalls in the stairwell.

Click, click. The cheerful whistling continued, the notes bright and clear.

Click, click. The melody was familiar—wasn’t it? Yet Emrys couldn’t quite place it.

Click, click. Whoever it was, they had made it to the second-floor landing.

Maybe they’d stop there. Maybe—

Click, click. No. No, they were still coming.

Click, click. Pretty soon Emrys would be able to see them. Whoever was whistling, they’d be coming around the bend in the staircase in just another moment. He peered into the darkness beyond Hazel’s light, which bobbed unsteadily, casting writhing, distorted shadows beyond the threshold. He gripped her wrist to steady the light; he squinted to get a better look …

Hazel quickly but quietly closed the door.

“What was that?” Serena edged back toward them, but Hazel shushed her, and slowly slid the dead bolt into place as silently as she could. Then she turned off her light, plunging them back into darkness.

Emrys couldn’t see anything, but his hearing seemed to sharpen with fear.

He could hear his heart pounding in his chest.

He could hear Hazel, breathing raggedly beside him.

And he could hear that whistling—that pretty, melodic, cheerful whistling—as the whistler walked past Serena’s door and up, up, up the winding staircase.

The Nightingale Box

From the New Rotterdam Wiki Project

The earliest record of the Nightingale Box comes from the journal of Liu Feng Chao, a young fishing trawler whose family relocated to New Rotterdam from Santa Barbara in the 1880s. An amateur poet and meticulous diarist, Liu Feng wrote of finding a strange puzzle box amidst his catch one morning, describing it as “a sealed cell of bronze, wood, and glass.” He noted that he would occasionally hear musical trills from within, as if a songbird were trapped inside.

The next several entries of Liu Feng’s diaries catalog his frustrated attempts at opening the box. The aspiring poet was sure that cracking the lock mechanism would free the “pure inspiration” captured within. Each time he solved one of the puzzle’s components, Liu Feng claimed he was rewarded with bursts of creative insight. Indeed, of his collected poems, the ones written during this period are widely considered his best. “Drowned Nightingale,” written just a day before his death, has been described by the New Rotterdam Cultural Institute as “the poetic masterpiece of its time.”

Sadly, Liu Feng didn’t live to see his own success. The night after he wrote what would be his seminal work, the young poet’s family reported hearing excited cries of triumph from his bedroom, “which quickly turned to anguished screams.” They found Liu Feng dead in his room, his expression a gruesome mix of terror and elation.

The Nightingale Box disappeared that night, but has resurfaced many times over the years, often to famous (and famously short-lived) New Rotterdam artists, including painter Ken Gleeman, singer/songwriter Infra Red, dancer Ginger Perez, and Andy Warhol–contemporary Quoi. All died under mysterious and grisly circumstances, just as their creative outputs blossomed.

Its most recent sighting was in a 1999 MTV interview of up-and-coming VJ Mason Weekly in his New Rotterdam beachfront home. In the interview, a visibly distracted Weekly frequently glances toward what appears to be an ornate container lined with metallic dials. A warbling tune can occasionally be heard in the background audio. Weekly died three days after the interview, walking fully clothed into the sea. Witnesses’ reports conflict on whether his rictus grin was gleeful or despairing.

3

The darkness was smothering. Even as his eyes adjusted, Emrys found he could barely pierce the gloom. The three of them sat quietly on Serena’s sofa, speaking only in terse whispers as they listened for signs of the mysterious whistling stranger. Emrys stayed glued to his phone the whole time. The small pane of light was a window, truer and more farseeing than any real one. It told him the world outside still existed, despite what this claustrophobic darkness might have him believe.

Emrys knew he’d need the phone’s flashlight to get back to his apartment (slow footfalls on the stairwell—click, click), but he couldn’t seem to force himself to put it away. He watched with mounting anxiety as his battery life dwindled to forty-nine percent, then thirty-five, then twenty-two, then seven.

He was only saved by the arrival of Serena’s dads.

“What. In the world. Happened?” Mr. Dubose called once he opened the door. “Serena!”

Serena winced at her father’s voice. Mr. Dubose was her bio-dad. Both were Black and had a lot in common: grace, charm, intelligence. They also—Emrys had already discovered in his brief time in the building—could rile one another up like no one else.

“I guess he noticed the intercom,” she sighed, pulling on a twist of hair. “I knew Scotch tape wouldn’t do it.”

Thankfully, Mr. Navarro, Serena’s other dad, was there to petition for calm. He entered after Mr. Dubose, with Dom, Serena’s brother, just behind him.

“Wuh-huh-ho!” Dom exclaimed with a laugh. “Serena, you’ve really outdone yourself this time. Nice work.” Dom breezed past the group and into kitchen, then poked his head out with a grin. “You sure you don’t want to take up lacrosse? Most of the new players aren’t half as sturdy as these intercoms.”

“Shut up, Dom!” Serena groaned.

“Language,” Mr. Navarro interjected patiently. He turned to Emrys and Hazel. “How about we let them burn off some steam, huh?” he said, nodding to the front door. “I’ll walk you home.”

Mr. Navarro was Dom’s bio-dad, and while the two shared his Dominican ancestry and warm brown skin, they were about as different as could be. At least Emrys thought so. Whereas Felix Navarro was kind and thoughtful and soft-spoken, Dom was … a handful. He was older than Serena by a couple years, and sometimes he even acted like it. Other times he was like a five-year-old in the body of an eighth-grade linebacker.

Emrys and Hazel nervously followed Mr. Navarro out, but there was no sign of anything strange in the hallway. No blood spatters, or dribbles of monstrous goo, or knife marks scratched into the walls. Emrys’s mind ran through all the New Rotterdam legends he could think of, trying to connect one to what he’d heard. The Laughing Man? The Nightingale Box? None of them quite fit. Still, something about the eerie whistling—a bright, cheerful melody that hovered just at the edge of familiarity—had set his already active imagination training for the Anxiety Olympics.

Whoever the mysterious whistler was, they’d somehow gotten into the building without being buzzed. And Emrys hadn’t heard them leave.

But the climb home was uneventful. The stairs were the same stairs, just darker, and Emrys could hear muted conversations from the other apartments. If anyone else in the building had noticed the whistling stranger, they didn’t seem particularly disturbed.

As Hazel arrived at her door, she turned and said goodbye with a little wave. Emrys offered to ask his parents if she could stay over during the blackout. Hazel’s mom was a nurse at Saint Azazel Hospital’s emergency room, and her shifts often took place overnight. Hazel hadn’t talked much about it during their time at camp, but since moving to New Rotterdam, Emrys couldn’t help but notice his friend was frequently home alone.

Still, Hazel demurred, saying she had some cleaning to do.