I sat on the floor with that bizarre device in my hands, feeling the weight of it and of every story my imagination could invent. It didn’t look like some random tool someone had forgotten. It looked designed for control, for force, for keeping something open that didn’t want to be. The worn material on the curved piece made it worse, as if it had pressed against living flesh many times before.

I couldn’t shake the unease, so I started digging online, searching every combination of words I could think of. Slowly, photos began to match: antique instruments, rusted steel, clinical cruelty. When I finally found the exact shape, my stomach dropped. It was an old veterinary mouth gag, a speculum used to pry and hold animals’ jaws open during treatment. The mystery was solved, but the feeling didn’t fade. That night, I slept knowing my new home still carried someone else’s ghosts.