The Votive

In the autumn of 2019, my wife, Elena, brought home a faded canvas bag from a flea market in the outskirts of Tucson. It was stuffed with an assortment of costume jewelry and old religious tokens—tiny brass crosses, tarnished medals of saints, and a few curious amulets that looked older than the rest. She had a habit of collecting such oddities, and our cramped apartment was already cluttered with her finds.

I dumped the contents onto the dresser in our bedroom, which stood next to the small desk where I worked from home. The pile glittered dully under the lamp. Most of it was junk—bent earrings, broken chains, a few pendants with faded enamel. But one object caught my eye: a small, crude silver medallion, perhaps two inches across, with a strange symbol etched into it—an eye within a triangle, surrounded by concentric circles. It felt cool to the touch, and I slipped it onto the dresser’s top, intending to examine it later.

Within a day, I began to notice movement at the edge of my vision. From my left, always, a dark shape would flit just out of focus. It would vanish the moment I turned my head. At first, I blamed it on fatigue or the late nights I’d been pulling, but it persisted. Every time I sat at the computer, I’d see that flicker, that hint of presence. It made me uneasy, but I told myself it was just a trick of the light.

Soon, I felt a tingling sensation on my arms and shoulders. It was like a faint electric current passing over my skin, making the hairs stand on end. It would come in waves, especially when I was near the dresser. I checked every outlet, every cord, sure there was a wiring problem, but the apartment’s wiring was sound. The sensation grew stronger when I handled the jewelry, and I began to feel a faint warmth emanating from the medallion.

I decided to get rid of the whole bag. I tied it up and tossed it in the dumpster behind the building. But that night, as I tried to sleep, I dreamt of the symbol on the medallion—the eye in the triangle. I saw it spinning in darkness, and a voice, deep and resonant, whispered my name. I woke with a start, and in the dim light, I saw the medallion sitting on the dresser, as if it had never left.

The next day, I took it to a local antique dealer. The dealer, an older man named Mr. Alvarez, examined it with a magnifying glass, his face turning pale. ‘Where did you get this?’ he asked, his voice trembling. When I told him, he shook his head. ‘This is a votive of the Old Religion,’ he said. ‘It’s a focus for a curse. It draws attention. You’ve woken something.’ He refused to buy it and told me to destroy it.

I tried to break the medallion with a hammer, but it wouldn’t even scratch. I threw it in a fire, but it came out glowing hot, unharmed. I buried it in the desert, but the next morning it was back on my dresser. Elena grew frightened and moved into the guest bedroom. The shadows around me grew more defined, forming a silhouette that seemed to watch me from the corner of my eye.

The tingling became sharper, almost painful, and I began to see the symbol burned into the back of my hands. I realized the medallion was feeding on my attention, my fear. It had chosen me. In desperation, I drove out to a remote canyon in the Sonoran Desert, far from any road. I hiked to a dead end where a cliff face rose, and I placed the medallion in a crevice, then sealed it with stones.

On the drive back, the shadows receded, and the tingling faded. I felt a glimmer of hope. But when I got home, there it was, lying on the dresser, glowing faintly in the dark. And in the reflection of the mirror, I saw a figure behind me—tall, black, faceless, with a single glowing eye. It spoke in a voice that was both distant and intimate: ‘You cannot discard what you have become.’

I have not left the apartment since. Elena is gone, fled to her sister’s in Phoenix. I am alone with the medallion, the shadows, and the knowledge that every time I look away, something new has changed—the clock is fast, the temperature drops, and the medallion’s eye seems to blink. I am not sure if it is the object or me that is the vessel, but I know I am bound to it now. The only comfort is that at night, when I close my eyes, I see the desert, and I know the medallion is watching me back.