The Painted Jar

The November air carried the scent of damp earth and woodsmoke as I, at age seven, crouched on the cracked concrete of our apartment’s backyard in the outskirts of Millbrook. My grandmother, a wiry woman with eyes like chips of flint, had forbidden me from digging near the old elm tree, but the soil there was dark and soft, and I imagined buried pirate treasure. The day was overcast, the sun a pale smear behind clouds, and the only sound was the distant hum of the highway. I remember the cold seeping through my jeans as I knelt, scraping away loose dirt with a rusted spoon, when my hand struck something hard. I unearthed a small clay jar, painted with a swirling pattern of red and black, sealed with a crust of brown wax. It felt weighty, as if filled with something more than air. I shook it, and a faint rattle answered. A thrill ran through me—maybe coins. I pried at the wax with my fingernails, and it cracked with a sound like a snapped twig. The lid popped off, releasing a puff of dust that smelled of old tobacco and rot. Inside, nestled in a bed of dried leaves, lay a single fingernail—yellowed, curved, and impossibly long. I screamed and dropped the jar, but it didn’t break. It just rolled, mouth open, and I saw the nail twitch as if alive. My grandmother burst through the back door, her face ashen. ‘You found it,’ she whispered, crossing herself. ‘The curse is now yours.’ She took the jar, but not before I saw her lips move silently, as if reciting something. That night, I couldn’t sleep; I kept hearing a faint scratching at my window, like fingernails on glass. Over the next weeks, small misfortunes befell me: a bike tire punctured, a school report lost, a mysterious rash on my hands that smelled of burnt herbs. But the true horror began when I started dreaming of a woman with hollow eyes, standing at the foot of my bed, pointing at my chest. In the dream, she spoke in a language I didn’t understand, and when I woke, the scratch on my nightstand would be deeper, as if something had been digging. One afternoon, my grandmother sat me down, her face lined with regret. ‘I tried to bury it before you were born,’ she said, ‘but the soil here is not sacred, and it was not meant to be hidden. That jar belongs to your great-aunt Marguerite, who passed before you were born. She was a practitioner, and she put a piece of herself in that jar so that she could watch over us. But she was not benevolent. She cursed our line for an old betrayal, and now that you have touched her relic, she will come to you.’ I asked why she didn’t destroy it. She shook her head. ‘You cannot destroy a witch’s anchor; you can only give it away or die with its secret. I am too old to pass it on, so I have kept it in the earth, but the earth here is too shallow.’ That night, I heard her sobbing in her room, and when I peeked, I saw her holding the jar, her hands stained with red. She looked up and caught my gaze, and her eyes were not her own—they were black, like polished obsidian. She smiled, but it was not her smile. ‘Come, child,’ she said, in a voice that was a choir of whispers. ‘Your inheritance awaits.’ I fled to my room, locked the door, and prayed to every saint I knew. But the scratching continued, now in my closet, then under my bed. I pulled the covers over my head, and when the scratching stopped, I felt a cold breath on my neck. A voice said, ‘I see you.’ When my parents returned from their trip, they found me huddled in the corner of my room, muttering, my hands covered in scratches. My grandmother was slumped in her chair, dead, the jar clutched to her chest, its wax seal broken. They tried to take the jar from her, but it was as if it had fused to her skin. In the end, they buried her with it, in the family plot at St. Mary’s. But I know she is not at rest. Sometimes, at night, I hear the jar rattling in my closet, even though I buried it in the woods a mile away. And in my dreams, the woman with the hollow eyes no longer points; she beckons. She knows that soon, I will have to pass the curse on, or become a part of her collection. I have no children, but I have a nephew who loves to dig in the yard. I have decided to let him find it. It is the only way I can be free.