Short Story: 'The Cursed Guitar'

 This story, by Haohan Lu (Year 8) won the Annual Library Competition. This year, pupils were asked to write in response to a range of objects which were exhibited in the Library.  Judges were impressed by the maturity of style shown in Haohan's story which was inspired by a guitar and the way he built suspense and tension into his tale of horror.

 

The old guitar had been sitting in the corner of the music store for years. It had been played by countless musicians and yet, no one seemed to take it. The strings were rusty, the fret was battered and the bridge plate had broken off. It was no longer playable and its only use was to be recycled for its materials.

But one day, a teenage girl strolled into the store and her eyes laid on the antique guitar. She felt drawn to it and couldn’t resist the urge to take it home with her. She saw the potential of the guitar and the stories it could tell.

When she arrived home with the guitar, she spent what felt like years, sanding down the rough edges and polishing the wood until it shone like new. She replaced the broken bridge plate with a piece of driftwood she had found on the beach. She strung it with new strings and tuned it until it sang smoothly.

The old guitar was no longer broken, it was transformed into a whole new man. The young girl played it every day, filling the air with music that told the story of the old guitar’s past and the hope of its future. But as the days went by, strange things began to happen. The guitar would play on its own, even when the young girl wasn’t touching it. The strings would vibrate and hum, creating an eerie melody that filled the room. The young girl tried to ignore it, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.

One night, as she was playing the guitar, she heard a voice whispering in her ear. It was a voice she didn’t recognize, and it was speaking in a language she didn’t understand. She tried to ignore it, but the voice grew louder and more insistent.

The next day, the young girl took the guitar to a music shop to have it checked out. The technician examined it carefully and found nothing wrong. But as the young girl was leaving the shop, she heard the voice again. It was coming from the guitar, and it was getting louder.

The young girl ran out of the shop and back to her house, she locked the guitar in a closet and tried to forget about it. But the voice continued to haunt her, even in her dreams.

 At midnight, she woke up to the sound of a whisper but this time, she recognized this voice. This voice was so familiar that she felt the answer on the tip of her tongue  and then it clicked, this voice belonged to her. She tried to scream but no sound came out. The closet door was rustling and jumping and then BOOM…  it opened but there was no guitar inside. Just when the clueless girl thought she was hallucinating and tried going back to sleep, the guitar appeared dangling over her with sinister intent.

 The next morning, the young girl was found dead, tied up by wires on her bed. The guitar was gone, and no one knows what happened to it. Some say that it was cursed and that the young girl had unleashed an evil spirit when she restored it. Others say that the guitar was possessed by the ghost of a musician who had died long ago.

And so, the old guitar remains a mystery to this day.