The Porcelain Jester

In the summer of 1986, when I was nine, my parents and I went to stay with Great-Aunt Helga in her old farmhouse in rural Vermont. Helga was a reclusive woman with a collection of antique trinkets she’d acquired from traveling the world. One evening, as we were unpacking, she presented me with a gift: a porcelain jester doll, about a foot tall, with a garish painted smile and a single red teardrop under its left eye. ‘He keeps the night watch,’ she said, her voice a dry whisper. ‘But heed, he doesn’t like to be ignored.’ I thought it was a strange thing to say, but I thanked her and placed the doll on the nightstand in the room I shared with my mom.

That night, before bed, Mom noticed the jester was facing the door. She turned it to face the wall, muttering, ‘No point staring at us all night.’ We lay down, talking about the next day’s plans, when we heard a faint scuttling sound, like pottery scraping against wood. I looked up to see the jester had turned back toward us, its painted eyes gleaming in the dim light. Mom laughed nervously, assuming my cousin, who was staying in the next room, was playing a prank. She went to check, but found the door locked from inside, and when she knocked, my cousin’s muffled voice answered, ‘Go away, I’m sleeping!’ We were unsettled but decided it must have been the wind or old house settling. We turned the jester to face the wall again, and I pulled the covers over my head, determined to sleep.

Hours later, I woke to a heavy weight on my chest. Blinking, I saw the jester sitting on my sternum, its painted smile now crooked, and the red teardrop seemed to be fresh, glistening. I tried to scream, but my voice was gone. The jester leaned forward, its cold ceramic face inches from mine, and I could smell damp earth and rot. It opened its mouth, and a sound like a thousand tiny bells chimed, but inside my head. ‘You left me facing the wall,’ it seemed to say. ‘No one turns their back on the jester.’ Mom stirred beside me, and the jester vanished. I was shaking, and when I told her, she dismissed it as a nightmare.

The next morning, we found my cousin’s door ajar, and she was missing. Aunt Helga had gone out, so we searched the house. In the attic, we discovered a hidden room, filled with dozens of porcelain dolls in various states of disrepair, all with red tears. In the center was a photograph of Helga as a child, holding the jester. Behind her, in the shadows, was a figure with white gloves and a mask. Scratched into the wall were the words: ‘He serves the one who forgets.’

We never found my cousin. Helga returned, her face ashen, and she confessed that the jester had been a gift from her own grandmother, who had died under mysterious circumstances. She had tried to dispose of it, but it always returned. Now it had taken someone new. When the police arrived, they found no trace of my cousin, only the jester in the front yard, its red teardrop now a dark brown, like dried blood. I was sent to live with relatives far away, but I still have nightmares. And sometimes, when I look in the mirror, I see a red teardrop under my own left eye, just for a second, and I know the jester is waiting, patient, for the day I forget to face him away.