Memere Spaulding’s House

October 2000

My cousin may recount this story differently, but this is how I remember it.

It had been a stormy fall day in Lewiston, Maine, a rarity for October. By then, the summer storms had usually settled into cool breezes, fallen leaves, and ripe apples. It was my first few weeks of kindergarten, my cousin the first grade. We had established the routine of our Memere bringing us to her house after school to watch Rugrats and eat soup with crackers until our moms came to pick us up.

But on this day, Memere had a doctor’s appointment, so our great-grandmother, Memere Spaulding, would be watching us for the afternoon.

We dreaded going to her house. It didn’t have nearly as many toys as Memere had for us, if any. What’s more, her husband had died early, and at that age, we didn’t quite understand why our grandfather had grown up without a dad. We only knew that Memere Spaulding lived alone in a house that always seemed too quiet, especially during a storm.

We had only been there for a few minutes when the power went out, so we resorted to playing in her dark basement. To this day, my cousin still swears there was a sarcophagus down there, but I remember it was a bubble hockey table. We only had the Barbies we could stuff into our backpacks, and after exhausting our designated storylines, we resorted to bickering.

I was too young to tell time, but smart enough to know we would be there a while before my mom picked me up. Apparently, crotchety old Memere Spaulding knew it, too. Instead of listening to us shout about who had the shiniest hair, she called us upstairs and gathered us around the wood fire she had started. 

Being five and six at the time, we groaned our complaints.

“Fine, then.” She clicked her tongue. “I thought you might like to hear a story about magic.”

It didn’t take much more to capture our interest. We sat criss-cross applesauce with our backs to the fire, while she lowered herself into her rocking chair and pulled a crocheted blanket over her lap.

Creak.

Creak.

Creeeeeaaaaaak.

Then she pulled out a necklace laden with white beads that looked like bones and nine gemstones.

Naturally, I gravitated toward the jewels. My cousin, to the bones. We both reached for it, ready to voice our arguments for why we deserved to wear it.

“Now, now,” Memere Spaulding tutted. “It is not wise to tempt fate.”

We sat up straighter and stopped grabbing for it. Then we settled in for her story.

—

She had acquired the necklace during her travels just after my grandfather was born, in a Midwestern town no one had heard of and that would never be consequential enough to put on a map. While she and her husband made an overnight stop, they stumbled upon an estate sale, where an older woman claimed the necklace was cursed.

It had belonged to her daughter. The third person to own it.

It had started long ago as a necklace of bone. That was all a husband could afford as a gift to his unhappy wife. When she received it, she lamented its barbarity and wished it had a gemstone pendant, like all of her friends’ husbands had bought for them. The next morning, she awoke to find a glimmering sapphire had replaced one of the bones, more brilliant than any stone her friends wore. She was finally happy.

That was, until she received word that her husband had suffered an accident at work and lost his eye, which many had described as sapphire in color. The woman, undeterred, wished for another sapphire. Her husband lost his other eye. And when she asked for a diamond as large as the Hope Diamond, she received one its equal. So clear and cold it seemed almost blue in the light. By morning, her husband was no longer breathing.

The first owner swore the necklace had taken him piece by piece. First his left eye, then his right. Then the rest of him. But grief makes people imaginative, and guilt makes them stranger still. Every owner thought their luck would be different. Yet for every wish, a new gemstone appeared on the necklace. No owner ever made it past three. 

The woman’s daughter believed she could break that curse.

She and her husband lived in that small, inconsequential Midwestern town. Like many around them, they lived simply and didn’t want for much. All they needed was enough money to pay off their farm. So the woman’s daughter strung the necklace around her neck and wished for $100,000. All that she needed.

Then she waited. The hours passed, and still no money arrived in her mailbox or rained from the sky. No stranger appeared at the door with a briefcase. No miracle came before dinner. She and her husband went to bed disappointed.

The next morning, she was awoken by a loud pounding at the front door.

BANG.

BANG.

BANG.

The woman’s daughter flew from her bed, startled. She peered out the window, afraid of who would be causing such a ruckus when the sun was barely peeking over the horizon. A man was in her yard, wearing a black suit and a black cap. His face was in shadow, and he stood very still. Watching.

The woman’s daughter ran back to the bedroom to wake her husband, only to find a pool of blood and his neck slit from ear to ear. She screamed.

The woman didn’t provide Memere Spaulding with many details of what happened shortly after, only that her daughter mourned and collected her husband’s life insurance. It equaled $100,000.

The woman continued the story with a frown, shaking her head. Her daughter should have been left to grieve. Instead, the police grew suspicious. So, amidst her melancholy, she was watched. Followed. Questioned. It only added to her sadness, driving her nearly mad. She should have been able to enjoy the farm being paid off. Instead, she was a suspect.

One night, when the woman’s daughter was especially lonely, she rolled the seven gemstones on her necklace between her fingers and made another wish: for her husband to come back. To prove to the police that she was innocent.

Again, she waited. And again, the knock came. Not the hard pounding from before. This time, there were three soft, slow knocks.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

Her heart leaped. He had returned! It had worked! But when she opened the door, it wasn’t her husband as he had been—he had changed.

He stood in the doorway as a man of shadow, his head lolling back, his mouth opening and closing around wet, stomach-turning sounds. Gargling was all he could manage with his ruined neck. And so, the woman’s daughter lived for days with the husband who was not her husband. A ghost, or a poltergeist, or some demon that followed her every step. It stood in the corner while she cooked. Beside the bed while she tried to sleep. Behind her reflection in the darkened window.

It slowly drove her to madness. She was seen screaming at the sky. Digging up plants in her yard. Smashing bottles in rainstorms in fits of hysteria.

Even so, when she next answered the single, swift pounding at her door—KNOCK—the police officers informed her that she was being placed under arrest for the death of her husband. She almost thanked them for saving her, for taking her from the farm that had become her personal prison to one with actual bars. She wasn’t even sad to leave her eight-gemstone necklace behind.

Which was where Memere Spaulding found it, wrapped in newspaper clippings about foxglove and kitchen knives.

—

My cousin and I sat wide-eyed as Memere Spaulding turned the necklace over in her hands. The white bones clicked softly against the gemstones.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Six.

Seven.

Eight.

Nine.

“What did Pepere Spaulding think when you purchased it?” my cousin asked.

Memere Spaulding chuckled. “He didn’t think much of it,” she said. “But he never thought too much about fate.”

My cousin and I sat listening to the creak of Memere Spaulding’s chair, afraid of our own shadows and every storm-tossed branch that knocked against the house. We nearly cried when our moms picked us up.

As I said, my cousin may recount this story differently. When I think of the cursed necklace, I am certain that it was magic. My cousin thinks it was murder.