Music Box

The bus rumbled to a halt, a final sigh of its air brakes echoing the vast silence of the forest. Stepping off, the chill bit at your skin, a stark contrast to the stuffy classroom you'd left behind. Before you, a narrow, dark path snaked into the woods, swallowed by a canopy of tall, bare trees that seemed to reach for a sky you couldn't see.

You checked the location on your phone one last time. Nick hadn't been kidding; the sheer isolation of this place, with its promise of a creepy, abandoned prison, was unnerving. You took a deep breath, the air thin and cold, and pushed forward, the city now a distant memory. The quiet was absolute – no birdsong, no distant traffic, not even the rustle of leaves. It made the hair on your arms stand on end.

After what felt like an eternity, but was probably only ten minutes, you saw them: old, rusted fences, broken and torn, leading to a sprawling landscape of debris. Broken appliances, discarded beds, and an assortment of unspeakable trash littered the ground. Your foot scuffed something small, and a faint, tinkling melody arose. You looked down to see an old music box, two tiny dancers frozen in an eternal waltz, half-buried in the mud.

Ignoring the ominous 'DON'T COME IN! OWN RISK!' signs plastered everywhere, you pressed on, drawn by an unsettling curiosity. The immense, abandoned iron gate, rusted and foreboding, loomed ahead.