Gems of Misfortune

Gems of Misfortune

There lived an old woman. She always sat by her house’s windowsill and smiled as she saw the kids

played outside. Ironically, old lady used to wear those dark glasses as she was blind. The glasses were

as dark as a moonless night. She lived all by herself in her queer little house. It had a morose look.

The house was dark and the trees around the house were all dried up, it didn’t have any flowers. The

house was black in color due to all the dirt that had accumulated along the years. Most of the

windows of the house were all covered up with wooden planks and the few that were not covered

up looked like square openings It did not have any glass nor did it have any frame. No one knew that somebody was living there.. She was like a ghost in the society. People could not believe that a person could survive in such a hostile environment. The children in the neighborhood started to cook up stories about goblins and vampires living in that house.

     Carlos was happy that school finally got over he ventured out of the class and looked for his friends; Peter and Adrian. They were the best of friends and were inseparable. They, as usual, were going to their homes home together. Carlos was with his friends and was coming back from school. He was bored of everything in his life. According to him, his routine is considered not worth paying attention to. All he wished was for some diversity in his daily routine.Curiously enough, Carlos said,"We take this route everyday let's take a new one, please?" Peter and Adrian nodded in agreement. Poor Carlos, for he did not know that this decision was the decision was the decision that was going to cause his downfall. They were talking about their day in school was and how the principle looked hilarious with her dyed brown hair. On their way they found a bag. Carlos being the curious young boy, who questioned everything at every turn, went to pick it up. Peter said,"No, don't do it. We don't know what's in it!"  Peter was rather a creature of logic, he looked at everything practically; therefore, he feared the unknown, like most people. Without heeding Peter's words he continued to pick it up. It had a strange insignia on it. The insignia looked like the letter 'V' surrounded by a border and had a line that passed through it. It looked like this:

 He looked looked inside this tiny bag and was shocked by what he saw. He saw diamonds and rubies. Every kind of luxury in the form of stones. He showed it to his friends. Adrian and Peter almost fainted. They did not say a word. But by their expression, they were controlling their happiness.

     It suddenly started raining. The boys looked for shelter to avoid the rain. They reached a house that looked abandoned. Carlos put the bag of gems in his school bag. They knocked just to polite. Then suddenly they all recollected the stories and rumors that had revolved around this house. They were scared at first. Peter in the back of his head was thinking about what would happen after he reached home, would his mother forgive him for his dilatory? Carlos didn’t care of what was going to happen next because he was too clouded by his curiosity of what would happen next. “What will we see a ghost, a goblin or a vampire?” he thought to himself. Adrian was so scared that he was scared of his own shadow. Past all of Adrian’s fear, he was hungry too. So they got to the house and put their backpacks in the side of the door. Peter knocked, just in case, on the door, expecting to see no one. No one’s come out of that house for ages. They see the knob turning. It was dead quiet. So silent that they could hear the door’s spring unwinding. An elderly woman with dark glasses came out. Her looks made them jump out of their skin. The woman had a blood-red, pale face and hair as white as paper. She smelled of lavender and had a hunched back. She had something which looked like a blanket over her. She asked politely, “Yes, my good children? What is your business here?”

“We actually thought that no one lived here.” replied Adrian awkwardly. 

“Well I suppose that it has been quite a while since I got out of my house. Would you like to come

in, it looks its raining cats and dogs.” Then the lady gestured them to come in and sit.

     As soon as they walked in, the house made their blood run cold. They saw bible verses on the wall and upside down crosses too. There was a dusty piano. The interior of the house was frightening. There were webs all over the place and the floor filthy. The object that puzzled them the most was the

hour glass in which it was inscribed ‘Stareth longeth into the abyss and the abyss stares right backeth

into thee, if this be true, this thy land of the abyss’. 

     They sat down on the sofa and the lady sat on an armchair. They started talking. The lady asked about their school life. The children made jokes that amused the lady. Eventually, the

lady asked out of the blue, “Shall I tell you a story?” with a grim smile that made everyone uncomfortable. Peter stood up and said, “Sorry, I have to go-” “Sitteth down thee hopeless child and hark to the ancient story. How thy ancient cometh down from the landeth of the creator of the seven sins to sayeth thy story to thou who art one of his kins.” The lady said in a sore voice.

The lights went out and lightning struck and her glasses shone in the dark. It started raining and all

three kids were trembling with fear. They ran to the door. Peter, being the first among the three to

run, opened the door. They quivered in fear as they saw an extremely horrific sight. They realized

that there was nowhere to walk. No land, no sky and no lakes. It was like an empty, dark vacuum. “I

told you!” the lady started to laugh hysterically, “You can’t leave unless you listen to my story you

bigoted idiots!” she starts laughing again. The children panicked.

     They thought for what felt like hours and eventually formed the conclusion that the sooner they

listen to her story the sooner they get to leave. So they walked back to the sofa with a heavy heart

and a head full of regrets for coming here. Peter said, “Fine, we’ll listen to your story but get it over

with.” The lady guffawed at their conclusion. She then calmed herself down and walked across the

room and sat on the duet bench. She gave the children a grim smile and said, “Hark well and hark all

to the story as fusty as timeth:

“It was God’s own little town. They were happy and little did they frown. Time had no meaning

here, everyday just passed as the same until that one faithful day. In that town there lived a family, a

very happy one. There were four people in the family Tony(the father), Amy(the mother),

Danny(the elder brother) and Emily(the younger daughter). This family was a very happy one and

they loved each other dearly. This peculiar family had a sign and that sign was a pocket watch. What

made this watch interesting is that on the back it had a symbol that looked like this." The witch paused and she used her fingernails to scrape the floor and draw the insignia. It looked like this:

The witch continued,"Some people in the village were afraid of this insignia as they thought that it was the signature if the devil. Tony was a farmer, so they all lived in a farm. The farm was not very big, but it was big enough to keep food on their plates. Tony looked after the cattle and grew various crops while his wife looked after the house and cooked the raw materials her husband brought.

     They also had a barn which had a piano. The piano was an ancestral one and everyone in the family knew how to play it but no one really knew how to play anything else other than the ancestral tune. The entire family’s history with the piano was so big that their ancestors had composed a tune for their own family and their ancestors declared that anyone who is part of their family should know how to play the tune. Emily, the youngest, was the only one who was showing signs of interest in it. Emily actually got her talent and interest in piano from her mother but since Amy had a lot of chores to do she stopped playing the piano a long time ago. Emily always used to play the piano, it gave her a sense of family. The piano taught her so much more than just songs it gave her a just behavior and a thirst for knowledge.

     The children went to school in the morning and came back by the late afternoon. They went to

school by walk. Danny was a pretty famous idol and role model in his school. He had loads of

friends and was excellent both in academics and extracurricular activities so he was feted by his

teacher a lot. This made him arrogant and over-confident. He was a glutton for fame and did not

care about others. His reckless nature was what caused his eventual downfall.

     His sister Emily, on the other hand was nothing like him. She welcomed knowledge in her mind

and was kind-hearted. She was in the second grade, yet, she questioned her teachers in a desperate

attempt to seek knowledge but all she got was the teacher’s negligence. She was bad at her

extracurricular activities but beyond excellent in her academics. She could be defined as an era

defining genius beyond the great Albert Einstein himself, but, every genius has their own problems.

     She had no friends as no one could comprehend the fact that she was an existing entity and most

people who could even remotely understand her would ignore her because of their jealousy. She was

bullied a lot. What the family didn’t know was that there was something else trying to make its way

through that family. Emily was a rather introverted child and preferred to be in a state of solitude.

This is how that faithful day, when everything ended, had begun. It was a normal school day

everything was the same. On her way back home from school she took a new road because she was

bored of how every day passed with no change and this new road seemed to appear like a shortcut.

On her new route, she found a pouch full of precious stones. Gems, rubies and diamonds,

everything that was a millionaire’s fantasy, was in that pouch. At first, her happiness knew no

bounds. She started was wondering whether or not to take it. It must been some else’s who must be

worried sick by now because they lost it. She thought:

“Oh! doth I very much des'rve this,

Such wonderful stones with god’s kiss.

Someone might not but be worried sick!

Ha ha! Too bad that person was just a hick.

I too am a leaf in the stream of creation,

I too derserve some luxury and fascination"

     After this intense debate, she took the pouch and observed it. It had her family's insignia.She took the pouch home and showed it to her mother. Her mother said,“It was wrong of thee to taketh it! Listen to me, young mistress. Tomorrow thou art going to keepeth where thee hath found it.” Emily reluctantly agreed. She felt like she had a lump of guilt in her throat and she broke down. Her mother on the other hand was extremely furious and thought that she had done the right thing.

     The next day, she went to keep the sack of gems but she never reached home. The parents

panicked. The wife told her husband about everything. They informed the neighbors and asked

Danny about her but he said that he did not know where she was.

      Two weeks later, they still couldn’t find her. They checked the streets, the school and the house.

Amy and Tony went down every rabbit hole where Emily could have been. Amy felt like she was

falling into a deep chasm of depression and stress which had no bottom. Amy eventually got so

stressed that her husband said, “Stareth longeth into the abyss and the abyss stares right backeth at

thee, mine own love. Taketh a break I can’t hast to worry both about thee and Emily at the same

time.” Amy resisted at first but had to give in later. She made up her mind and decided to go the

barn and play the piano to take her mind of this bleak situation. She sat down on the duet bench and

then played the ancestral tune. It was such a familiar feeling and it was like sunshine that was

decreasing. The feeling was like a dark creature of misfeature had gotten awakened. She suddenly

had a vision that popped up in her mind.

     In which, there was a dark angel sitting on a large hour glass, the angel had a black veil. Above him there was an eye that just opened as if waking up from an eternal sleep. The angel had a dark ring above his head and was covered, only his lower body, with a white cloth. The angel was folding his arms. The angel had majestic wings with alternating colors of black and white.

     Above the angel there were cogs like in a clock. But there was a crack in the vision, like a crack in

the mirror, of one of the cogs causing one part of the cog to go down. On the left side of the hour

glass, on which the angel was sitting, was a man dressed in a cloth holding an hour glass that was just

beginning to flow the sand. On the right side of the gigantic hour glass, there was a skeleton holding

a scythe and an hour glass in which the sand that had reached to the bottom of the glass. There were

stopwatches everywhere. One of them showed their family insignia. There was one broken clock

and below there were clocks with random numbers on them. She observed the angel once again

since the picture was not very cordial. She deduced the angel was an angel of death. There was a dog

or some sort of a pet on the angel’s lap. She was left utterly confused of what the picture meant or

what she was supposed to do with this newly gained information. She looked more closely. The

creature on the angel’s lap looked so familiar. It was her daughter!

Her daughter was dressed in gray clothing and had buttons for eyes. The child began to speak,

“Mother, hark well to me,

Thou art playing on mine own bones,

Somebody hath killed me,

And stoleth mine own precious stones.

Mother, mother,

Doth me a favor,

Maketh mine own murderer playeth this tune,

And I shall torture that gent till thy reacheth death’s dune. ”

The angel removed its hood. Amy realized that it was such a familiar face. It was her grandmother,

the owner of this piano. Then the vision got over. Amy came back to reality. The barn was as dark

as ever. She finally said to herself, “We art the family of the Devil.”

     Amy panicked. She was as tensed as ever. She continued to ruminate on these thoughts for three days.Eventually she called her husband and son and asked them both to play the ancestral tune. When

the husband played it, there was no change that occurred. The husband saw the same thing as the

wife did but the wife did not pay much attention to her husband’s state of shock as she was more

focused on finding out the truth behind her daughter’s death. When the boy played it the girl had

fire in her eyes and she got down from the angel’s lap and this time everyone could see the vision.

The girl said,

“Danny, Danny,

Thou art playing on mine own bones,

Wherefore did thou killeth me

And stealeth mine own precious stones?

For whatever the reason, I doth not care,

For thou art going to be paying the fare

For what thou did to me,

Thou art going to be tortured for millennia, three and three!”

    Hands came out of the piano and took the boy in it. The girl’s dead body came out of the piano and

was lying on the ground. The parents checked the pulse of the body but there was none. They cried and cried. They were so disappointed. They grieved. The next day they had a funeral for the girl. After the funeral both of them were arrested for the suspected murder of their children. When they tried to explain no one believed them and thought they were crazy. Amy and Tony were taken to a mental asylum. They tried telling everyone what they saw but no one listened. After three years of trying, they gave up.The parents killed themselves because they thought that they were going mad because of the people’s dishonesty. Suddenly the girl then climbed up from her grave. She had buttons for eyes, like a doll made of cloth. The girl laughed so much that night. That was the night that a dark witch was born. She was laughing.”

      The old lady paused and asked, “Well, how was it?” At first the children were petrified.

“How was what?” asked Peter with a look of horror.

“The story of course, you half-wit!”

“The story was fine” said Adrian.

“Thank you”

“But may I ask one question?”

“Sure, go on.”

“How do you fit into all of this?” asked Adrian. The lady smiled at the question and took of her

glasses. The children were petrified. What they saw was buttons instead of eyes! Their blood ran

colder than ever. The kids panicked and ran out of the house. "I am the child of the devil!" said the dark witch. She laughed like she had never in her life before.

     It was funny though… because even though the witch did nothing to them the children were never

to be heard of again.

-By Varun Dass