The Blueberry Jam Incident

When I moved into the crooked house on Pickerel Road, I didn’t expect company. The previous owner had died in the kitchen, and the real estate agent had that tight smile people get when they’re hiding something. But the rent was cheap, and the wallpaper was peeling like sunburned skin, so I took it.

My first night, I woke to the sound of a jar being unscrewed. Slow, deliberate, the pop of a rubber seal releasing. I stumbled to the kitchen, the floorboards creaking under my feet like old bones, and found the pantry door ajar. Inside, a blueberry jam jar sat on the shelf, lid off, a spoon sticking out as if someone had been about to taste it. The jam was untouched. That was the first thing.

Two weeks later, my brother Leo, who visits on weekends, started talking to the air. I thought it was his imaginary friend, but he described a lady with tin-gray hair and watercolor hands, who sat in the rocking chair and hummed off-key. He said she liked to watch us eat. I laughed, but that same night, I felt a cold spot at the foot of my bed, like standing on a glacier’s breath.

Then the dead flies began. I’d find them in clusters on the windowsill, their little legs curled like tiny fists, but each one had a single, perfect drop of red on its back, like someone had pricked it with a needle. The jams started to spoil faster. Strawberry, raspberry, even the sealed ones from the store, would grow a thin film of green fuzz within days. I threw them out, but the smell of fermented fruit lingered.

I told my sister, Clara, who came to help me clean the gutters. ‘It’s just the old lady you’re disturbing,’ she said, wiping a smear of spider web from her cheek. ‘She’s protective of her preserves.’ I thought she was joking. But as the sun dipped low, I caught a reflection in the windowpane of the pantry. A woman with tin-gray hair, her hands moving in a jarring, jerky rhythm, like a puppet whose strings were tangled. She was stirring something. When I turned, she was gone, but the new jar of blueberry jam on the counter was open, and it looked fresh.

That night, I found a bruise on my forearm, shaped like a handprint, but the fingers were too long and the thumb was on the wrong side. It was cold to the touch, as if someone had pressed a chunk of ice against my skin. The house grew colder after that, especially the kitchen. The cold seeped through the cracks under the cabinets, and the jam jars would frost over on the inside, the jelly turning to slush.

I moved out three months later, leaving the jars behind. But last week, I opened a new jar of store-bought jam, and it had a fingerprint frozen into the surface. The print was too long. And last night, I found a note under my pillow, written in shaky handwriting: ‘You forgot your spoon.’ I have no spoon. I never bought a silver spoon. I still check every jar before I open it.