The Musicbox Monster

The **Musicbox Monster** is a mysterious and malevolent entity that dwells in the mysterious Township that traps all those who enter. The monster delights in tormenting the Town’s inhabitants, often plaguing them with haunting visions before killing them. The monster is linked to an aged music box containing a spinning ballerina and a mirrored backing. It is sometimes referred to in fandom as The Ballerina or The Nightmare Monster or The Cicada Monster due to its association with these things. While this monster has no physical form that has been seen thus far, its base of power is a Dungeon within the forests of the Township. The monster is incredibly powerful, able to plague its victims with visions, render them catatonic or harm invade their dreams and kill them in their sleep.

## History

### Season Two

After traveling through a Farway Tree, Boyd Stevens is transported to the Dungeon, the lair of the Monster. There, he finds Martin, an emaciated old man shackled to the wall who requests that Boyd kill him. Boyd refuses and works to free him before the two hear the melody from the music box. Martin cryptically warns him that they are coming, that there are nightmares in the forest and that Boyd has to escape before the music stops. Boyd finds the music box nearby. Boyd is able to break one of Martin’s chains as the music box keeps playing. Martin then asks Boyd if he ever thinks Abby was right about it all being a dream. A shocked Boyd asks how he knows about that but Martin collapses to the ground. Boyd then notices the worms crawling beneath his skin. The music stops, and Martin says they are out of time. Martin cuts Boyd’s arm and holds his arm to the wound, saying that his blood is now Boyd’s and dies. The dungeon then disappears, with only ruins and the torch in Boyd’s hand left behind.

Boyd Stevens experiences the worms crawling beneath his skin, which causes him to collapse in pain at times and he frequently experiences hallucinations, some featuring his deceased friend Father Khatri. As he is leaving the Diner, he hears the music box melody and sees a ballerina dancing in front of him. The Ballerina has Boyd twirl her, smiles at him, but then opens her mouth in a blood-curdling shriek as worms fall out of her mouth, and in real life Boyd falls and hits his head on the Diner floor. As Kenny and Boyd walk, the latter remarks how he’s never seen the leaves change here before. Kenny, seeing that Boyd is walking ok now, decides to leave him, but returns when he hears Boyd cry out in pain and clutch his arm. Boyd tries to explain how there are worms crawling underneath his skin. Boyd then hears the music box again and sees it on a nearby rock. The Ballerina then emerges from the Root Cellar, and smiles at Boyd as she begins dancing. Kenny snaps him out of the vision, but Kenny is disturbed by Boyd’s state of mind.

In the Clinic, Boyd has another vision of the music box and the Ballerina. The Ballerina comes up behind him, pushes him onto the bed and begins strangling him. This causes Boyd to panic, and when Mari walks in to check on him, he draws his gun on her. Boyd apologizes and puts the gun down. Mari asks if he is ok, and he promises he is. Boyd later has a long conversation with a vision of Father Khatri which is overheard by Kenny, who demands an explanation. However, Fatima Hassan soon arrives with Ellis Stevens, who was accidentally stabbed. With a blood transfusion being the only way to save him, Boyd refuses, trying to explain that he does not want to pass on whatever infected him. Kenny proposes transferring the worms to him so Boyd can do the transfusion, but Boyd adamantly refuses. Instead, Boyd goes outside and calls out to the Creatures, and is approached by the Smiley Creature. Boyd cuts his palm and then the Creature's throat, pressing his wound to Smiley's. The worms leave Boyd's body and go to Smiley's, and kill the Creature.

While Marielle is in the throes of withdrawal, she has a dream where she looks for Kristi but finds that Smiley's dead body has gone missing. In a panic, she finds Boyd, however, they then see Smiley alive and walking towards them. Boyd tells Marielle to run as he begins firing at Smiley. Mari is frozen by fear, and begins to hear a familiar tune and notices a music box nearby. Right as Smiley is upon her, she wakes up in her bed, gasping for breath. That night, Elgin tries to take a bath to relax, but hears the music box and is pushed underwater by a terrifying, corpse-like figure.

The next morning, Kenny Liu finds his mother in the kitchen cooking and asks where the Matthews are. She says they are still asleep and tells him that she is cooking his favorite dish. The phone in their kitchen then begins answering, and Tian-Chen tells him to answer it. Kenny picks up the phone and a voice says “they touch, they break they steal, no one here is free, here they come, they come for three, unless you stop the melody.” Kenny is shocked, and the voice does not answer his questions. Kenny then hears a noise coming from the pot, but Tian-Chen tells him it’s not ready yet. When he looks inside, it is filled with cicadas. The music box then appears and begins playing. One cicada jumps out of the pot and lands on Kenny’s arm. Kenny swats at it as his mother begins shaking him and he wakes up in his bed to Tian-Chen shaking him awake, informing him that he was screaming. Kenny says he had a bad dream but is ok, however he notices a burn on his arm in the spot where the cicada landed in his dream. Later that day, a noise is heard from the Clinic's boiler room, where Smiley's body is being kept. When they open the door, they find hundreds of cicadas crawling all over the body. Kenny explains that in his dream, he heard the exact same buzzing and saw a pot full of them. Kristi then recalls that Elgin dreamt about drowning and awoke spitting up water. Kenny adds that when the music box started playing, one jumped out and burned his arm. Marielle is frightened by the idea that their dreams can harm them now.

After Reggie runs out of his house screaming and covered in blood, Boyd and Kenny rush inside and find Paula's broken and shattered body. Reggie explains that she was resting while he was downstairs and heard her screaming. He tried to wake her, but she was talking in her sleep before it was if her entire body cracked. As Reggie begins to sob, Boyd asks what Paula was saying in her sleep. Boyd tells him that he needs to tell him what Paula says, and Reggie says she kept on repeating “they touch, they break, they steal, no one here is free” before dying. Boyd asks if she was still asleep, and Reggie angrily answers yes as he continues to break down. Boyd then goes outside and tells Julie Matthews to warn everyone not to fall asleep.

While Boyd, Donna Raines, Jim Matthews and Randall wait out the night in the RV, they are surrounded by Creatures who are repelled by the Talisman, but they begin to hear the music box over the unpowered radio. Boyd prepares to leave to test the bullets coated in Smiley's bile. Donna tries to restrain him, but Boyd says he has heard this music and every time he does, bad things happen, so they have to leave. As he prepares to exit, something thumps the bottom of the RV, scaring them all. Jim says this is impossible because there is no space underneath them. The lights then begin flickering, and Randall breaks a window and runs away on his own. Donna and Jim head for the van, while Boyd fires his gun at the Creatures. A vision of Abby then says his name, telling him to come back to her. However, she disappears, and Boyd continues to fire at the Creatures, but the bullets have no effect. Boyd then runs to the van, which Jim successfully starts and they drive off. Meanwhile, Randall runs through the Forest, and is surrounded by a swarm of cicadas, which knock him down and crawl all over him and into his mouth.

In Colony House, Mari goes catatonic while her eyes glaze over. Kristi begins to break down but Boyd calms her and tells her that Mari needs a doctor, not a fiancee. Kristi points out that there is nothing medically that she can do, but Boyd tells her to help by holding on. Donna chases away onlookers while Ellis tries to tell Boyd something. Donna tells him to go, and Ellis brings his father to Elgin. Elgin explains that Fatima saying she was pregnant made him remember the missing portion of his dream. Boyd is shocked by the news, but tells him to continue. Elgin says there was a Boy in White who kept repeating the same phrase: here they come, they come for three, unless you stop the melody. Bakta says it’s an old nursery rhyme that she remembers from her grandmother, and recites in its entirety: *They touch, they break, they steal, no one here is free. Here they come, they come for three, unless you stop the melody.* Boyd then realizes that he has heard portions of the rhyme before. Meanwhile in Town, Julie Matthews suffers the same fate as Mari and Randall.

The next morning, Randall, Mari and Julie's comatose bodies begin screaming in pain. Boyd leads Sara and Kenny into the forest, and explains how the Boy in White led Sara to the Farway Tree that transported him to the Dungeon, and also appeared in Elgin’s dream who told him the nursery rhyme that Paula kept repeating before she died. Boyd asks for more information about the Boy in White, and all Sara can say is that he wanted to help. Boyd tells Sara that this is her chance to help the people of the Town escape. They then arrive at the ruins of the Dungeon, and Sara stops and says she can hear the music box, but Boyd and Kenny cannot see it. Sara promises that she can hear it and becomes disturbed, telling Boyd that she can hear Julie, Mari and Randall screaming in pain. Sara’s nose begins to bleed as she begins screaming too, repeating the nursery rhyme and telling them that “it” needs them to stay. Sara tells them that it is laughing at Boyd for bringing it to Town and seeing it free, it wants to hurt them and was so excited when it touched Kenny’s arm. Boyd asks how they can stop it, and Sara tells him that Julie and the others are dying, and when they do it will be too late. Sara tells him he needs to make the music stop, but does not know how as the pain overwhelms her. When she recovers, they return to Town.

Boyd goes to the Clairy’s Canned Goods Truck where he fetches the torch he took from the Dungeon. However, he is confronted by a shotgun-wielding Reggie, who blames him for causing all of this after going into the Forest. Boyd tries to tell him that he thinks he can fix this but Reggie shoots him the shoulder. Reggie apologizes and says he always liked Boyd, who draws his pistol and shoots him dead. A wounded Boyd then heads to the Dungeon ruin and lights the torch, which restores the Dungeon to tis full form. Boyd notices the music box in one corner, while Julie, Marielle and Randall are chained to the wall. Boyd tries to rouse them, but they are unconscious and he promises to free them. Boyd prepares to destroy the music box, but a vision of Abby tells him that destroying it will only prolong all of their suffering. The three victims of the monster then begin screaming. Abby tells him that he believes he needs to be a hero, but none of it really matters and he no longer needs to suffer and he can join her. Boyd recoils from the vision of his wife and asks why this monster is letting her talk to him. Vision Abby responds that hope is what feeds their suffering and pain, made him abandon her when she needed him most, and is what feeds the forest, not fear. Abby tells him to leave the three prisoners, saying they will just die tomorrow if not day. Boyd then smashes the music box with the torch, and all three wake up. The Dungeon then disappears, and Boyd declares victory.

## Abilities

### Visions & Manifestations

The monster is not represented as a physical being, but rather an invisible, sinister force. However, it frequently manifests itself through frightening visions or even physical beings in order to torment its victims.

* The Music box: The main object the monster is associated with is an old music box featuring a ballerina and a small mirror whose appearance and music are a harbinger of the monster’s presence.
* The Ballerina: The Ballerina is another frequent manifestation of the monster’s presence, often appearing alongside the music box, or at the very least the music associated with it. The Ballerina often first appears, dancing serenely around the monster’s victim before turning sinister and attacking
* The Worms: The Worms are one of the few physical manifestations of the monster. These parasitic worms are used to infect the monster’s victims, prolonging their life force but driving them insane and causing immense physical pain.
* Cicadas: At the peak of the monster’s reign of terror over the Town, its presence manifests as a swarm of loudly humming cicadas.

### Other Abilities

* Telepathy: the monster is able to telepathically communicate and converse with whomever it chooses. It can use this to cause immense physical pain, as with Sara, or bend people to its will, such as with Reggie.
* Dream Invasion: As the monster’s power grew, it was able to invade the dreams of multiple people and any harm inflicted in the dreams would also happen in real life. This could range from minor injuries to horrific deaths.

## The Rhyme

The Monster is associated with a particular nursery rhyme, characters often hear it in dreams

*"They touch, they break, they steal.*

*No one here is free.*

*Here they come, they come for three,*

*unless you stop the melody."*

## Victims

* Martin †
* Boyd Stevens (possessed through the worms, saved)
* Smiley Creature † (indirectly, killed after Boyd transfers blood worms to him)
* Paula †
* Julie Matthews (saved)
* Randall (saved)
* Marielle (saved)
* Reggie † (manipulated)

## References

1. ↑ Strangers in a Strange Land
2. ↑ The Kindness of Strangers
3. ↑ This Way Gone
4. ↑ Pas de Deux
5. ↑ Belly of the Beast
6. ↑ Forest for the Trees
7. ↑ Ball of Magic Fire
8. ↑ Once Upon a Time?