The Velvet Box

When Clara moved into her grandmother’s Victorian home in Dorset, she wasn't searching for history. She was seeking quiet—an escape from the noise of city life, from grief, from everything. The house, untouched since her grandmother's passing, was filled with antiques, faded portraits, and dust so thick it muffled every step.

She discovered the velvet box in the attic on a rainy afternoon. It was tucked beneath a rotting trunk, wrapped in a yellowing lace handkerchief. Its deep burgundy hue caught the faint light like dried blood, and a tarnished silver clasp held it shut. There was no lock, no inscription, just an overwhelming urge to open it.

Inside was a delicate brooch—an oval-cut black opal set in bronze filigree, shimmering with an oily sheen. From the moment Clara touched it, she felt a warmth bloom in her chest, like a memory she had never lived. The brooch felt familiar, comforting. She pinned it to her sweater.

That night, she dreamt of fire. Flames danced through the corridors of the house, consuming curtains, portraits, floorboards. Her grandmother stood at the base of the stairs, eyes hollow, mouth sewn shut.

The next morning, she found a scorch mark on the hallway wall—identical to the pattern in her dream.

Days passed, and Clara began to change. She forgot to eat, stopped calling her sister, avoided the sunlight. The brooch never left her chest. Even when she tried to remove it, her hands trembled and refused to follow through.

She found an old journal tucked behind a false wall in the library. The entries were her grandmother’s, dated decades ago. “The opal returns every generation,” one entry read. “It feeds on sorrow. It lies, it seduces, and it kills. I thought I’d buried it deep enough.”

The next entry was stained with blood, illegible beyond the words: It wants me to forget.

Clara tried to destroy the brooch. She hurled it into the fireplace, struck it with a hammer, submerged it in holy water stolen from the church in town. But it always returned—on her pillow, in her pocket, once even beneath her skin. She carved it out with a shard of mirror, only to find it pinned back on her sweater the next day, pristine.

One by one, those close to her began to die—her sister in a car crash, her neighbor falling down the stairs, a delivery boy who dropped dead on her porch. Each incident eerily foretold in her dreams.

Clara's world grew smaller, consumed by the object she now both feared and worshipped. She couldn’t remember a time before the brooch. Couldn’t remember what she had come to the house to escape. The opal whispered her name now, even when she was awake.

The townspeople say the house is cursed. That no one stays long. That sometimes, at dusk, a woman stands in the attic window, holding something that glows faintly against her chest.

The brooch waits for its next host. And Clara is no longer Clara at all.

Thank you for reading. May your treasures always be just possessions—and never your master