The Jade Comb

When Eleanor met Marcus, she thought she had found her forever. They dated for four years, and on their second anniversary, he surprised her with a trip to the summit of the Skyline Spire, the tallest observation tower in the city. They dined in the rotating restaurant, the city lights sprawling below like a glittering web. As the room turned, he slid a velvet box across the table. Inside lay a pair of earrings, each a delicate silver chain strung with seven tiny teardrop pearls. They were exquisite, and Eleanor wore them only once, on that very night, before tucking them safely into her jewelry box. She never wore them again.

Marcus died in a car accident that October. Eleanor was devastated, but she couldn’t bear to leave his family, so she continued to live in the basement of his childhood home with his mother and his younger brother, Leo. She shared the room she had once shared with Marcus, and every corner echoed with his memory. To cope, she took a solo trip to the mountains the following spring, hoping the crisp air and solitude would clear her mind. When she returned, Leo greeted her at the door with a strange look on his face.

‘El, something weird happened while you were gone,’ he said, rubbing his neck. ‘A couple of nights ago, I was in my room, and I heard sounds coming from yours. It was like someone was going through your closet, moving hangers and boxes. I thought you’d come back early, but when I knocked, there was no answer. The door was locked, but I could still hear the noise. It stopped when I called your name.’

Eleanor’s blood chilled. She thanked Leo and tried to brush it off, but that night, she found her closet slightly ajar, the light spilling into the dark room. She opened it fully, but nothing seemed out of place. Her jewelry box sat on the top shelf, untouched, the pearls gleaming softly under the light. She shook her head and went to bed.

The next morning, she found her grandmother’s jade comb, a family heirloom she kept in a locked drawer, lying on her pillow. Her heart raced. She had never brought that comb to this house; it was still in a safety deposit box at the bank. She called the bank, but they confirmed it was still there. When she checked the drawer, it was empty.

Over the next week, things escalated. She would wake to find her clothes rearranged in the exact order Marcus liked them hung. Leo reported hearing whispers, a woman’s voice, coming from her room. Then one night, she dreamed of a woman with long black hair, standing in the corner of her room, holding the jade comb. The woman smiled, and Eleanor saw that her eyes were missing, just empty sockets. The woman raised the comb and began to brush her hair, which fell out in clumps, leaving bare patches of scalp.

Eleanor woke with a scream, but the room was empty. She tried to tell herself it was grief, but she knew something was wrong. She decided to stay at a friend’s house for a few days. When she returned, the earrings were missing from her jewelry box. In their place was the jade comb, now stained with something dark. She felt a cold presence behind her and turned to see a figure in the doorway—a woman, her head tilted, her face obscured by shadow. The woman reached out, and Eleanor saw her hand was translucent, skeletal.

‘I gave them to you,’ the woman whispered, her voice like dry leaves. ‘They were mine. You must return them.’

Eleanor backed away, but the figure advanced. She felt a icy hand on her throat, and the room spun. When she blinked, she was on the floor, the comb in her hand, and the woman gone. She ran to Leo’s room, but he wasn’t there. The house was silent, too silent. She called his phone; it rang from the closet in the hallway. She opened it and found Leo’s body, cold and still, a trickle of blood from his nose. Clutched in his hand was one of her pearl earrings.

With a sob, Eleanor fled the house. She checked into a motel, but the woman followed her in her dreams. She saw the woman’s reflection in the mirror, slowly brushing her hair, the pearls wrapped around her wrist. She awoke to find the jade comb on the nightstand, and the second earring beside it. She knew she had to find the meaning of the earrings, the pearls, the woman.

She searched through Marcus’s old journal, discovered in his closet. In its pages, she found a photograph of a woman, a young actress from the 1920s, wearing a pair of earrings exactly like hers. The caption read: ‘My beloved, Constance, who wore these on the night she was murdered.’ Marcus was descended from her. The woman’s ghost had been attached to the earrings, and when Eleanor wore them, she had awakened her. Now, the ghost wanted them back, and she would take everything Eleanor loved.

Desperate, Eleanor went to a medium, who told her to return the earrings to the woman’s grave, to apologize, and to break the antique gold chain. She found the grave in an overgrown cemetery, and placing the earrings on the headstone, she whispered, ‘I’m sorry.’ The air grew still, and she felt a release of pressure, like a sigh. The figure appeared, but now softer, more tragic. The woman nodded, and faded.

Eleanor returned to the house, where she found Leo in his room, alive, unharmed. He had no memory of anything. She destroyed the earrings, melted them down, and scattered the ashes in a river. She finally moved out, leaving the past behind. But sometimes, at night, she catches a whiff of jasmine, and sees a woman’s reflection in her bedroom mirror, holding a jade comb, waiting for the day Eleanor forgets the promise she made to keep the earrings buried forever.

The pearl earrings are gone, but the jade comb remains, a reminder that some gifts are never truly given.