The first time I saw the operculum necklace, it made me cry. Such a thing was scarcely unlikely: I was only six years old and had never seen such a thing before. Strung on a silver chain and adorned here and there with filigree, the necklace consisted of six discs that some might consider decorative. The discs formed little gleaming domes of creamy white, with ochre and reddish hues bleeding in from the edges. At the centre of each was a darker circle of greenish-brown, deepening almost to black at its heart.
My grandmother had informed me, with a rare trace of humour in her voice, that her necklace was made of eyes. She hadn’t needed to say any such thing: I could see it for myself. Of course, when I was older I learned, with scarcely less distaste, that it was made of shells belonging to a type of tropical sea-snail. The operculum, or opercula in plural—being the Latin for lid or cover—was a little disc used to close the opening in the shell, protecting the creature inside from anything that might mean it harm.
Some thought they would keep the wearer safe from harm too, though I never could have imagined them to be so benign in purpose. The names sometimes given to such things made more sense to me: cat’s eye. Shiva’s eye. Evil eye.
I had sometimes wished that I possessed some kind of lid or cover myself back then, and that I could crawl beneath it, but I had none. I could only stare and cry while my grandmother looked back at me, her pursed lips twitching, barely keeping her amusement at my young fears inside.
If I had been told of sea-snails and shells at the time, it would not have changed matters in the slightest. I can still remember trying to sleep in a strange bed, in a strange house, and seeing those sclera, pupils and irises hanging in front of me in the dark. Young as I was, I would have known any such explanation to be nonsense. It was my grandmother’s words that were true: the necklace was made of eyes, and it was watching me.
Duty is the foremost purpose of any female’s existence, as anyone will tell you. My grandmother certainly did, many times, but then she would; the chief duty of my life was owed to her. But she probably felt that my spiritual education depended on her constant vigilance. My life had not begun well. It started with my mother turning her back on my grandmother’s principles and parental counsel and, with the headstrong impulsiveness of the morally defective, marrying a soldier. He turned out to have a surprising sense of God-fearing obligation; he died soon after, leaving my mother and I penniless. My mother crept back into the family fold, professed her wrongdoing and, with all credit to my grandmother’s Christian forbearance, was forgiven, if forgiveness meant being held in contempt and quietly punished in a myriad tiny ways until she too died. And so I alone was left, the outward sign of her disgrace.
My grandmother was formidable, yet very small and slight. She was stern of expression, silver of hair, straight of spine. Her eyes were sharp; much sharper than the slightly smudged yet larger versions she wore about her neck.
I knew, from sneaking into her room, that she possessed other jewellery. I did not know how often she had worn the operculum necklace before I arrived in her household; after I did, she wore it every single day.
The will was read in precisely the manner my grandmother had instructed. The notary made certain to tell us so, before he began. His office was crowded, the ladies’ skirts crushed against one another, and the notary was the only male in the room. I assumed those present to be the entirety of my grandmother’s acquaintances, though I shall do them the courtesy of not calling them her friends. Most possessed a faintly confused air, as if surprised at any possibility of receiving her beneficence; I doubt they had imagined themselves so close as to find themselves in her will.
I squeezed my hands into fists and wondered, not for the first time, if the old witch had really done it; if she had cut me out, her only living relative, and called me here to watch her fortune fall into the hands of these dull old women.
“Let us begin,” the notary said, his voice as dry and old as they, and I heard the scrape of skin on paper as he reached for the will. He began to drone, his voice as dull as a priest’s, and one by one, gazes stabbed at me as hopes were crushed. My grandmother had issued many gifts, small and insignificant: a sampler to one she thought would benefit from its verse, Hold fast to that which is good. A whole Bible full of instruction to another. An inkwell to a neighbour who had moved several miles away, one she had chided for not writing often enough. A footstool, to someone she perhaps felt should have been brought lower. Small memories all, and ones that, if the recipients’ crestfallen expressions were anything to go by, might have been better consigned to the fire.
At last, there were no more such disappointments to give out, and the fellow reached the point of the money. I could do nothing but stare down at the table, heat suffusing my cheeks, as I waited for the beneficiary’s name. He gave it, and for a moment I could not breathe.
She had not done it. Now the words were safely spoken, I wondered that I could have suspected her; it would not have been proper, after all. My grandmother hadn’t cared for me in the slightest, but she would never have allowed any suggestion of familial disharmony or neglected obligation to stain her memory.
Yet that wasn’t all, for as I tried to keep my smile behind my lips, a box was passed over the table and set before me. The notary paused and every pair of eyes in the room focused on mine as they waited for me to open it. There was no need to do so. I already knew what it contained. She never had allowed a word of kindness to pass her lips without its accompanying glare.
Fixed by the presences all around, I forced myself to remove the lid.
“In closing,” the notary murmured, “she wished for you to wear it always, in memory of her. Even in your mourning.”
Those around me nodded. I realised that gathered in this room was everyone I knew; everyone who knew me.
I did not want to touch the necklace. I half expected the opercula to be warm, as if they really were eyes and had absorbed the heat of living flesh, but of course they were not; the discs were cool under my hand, like something dead. I lifted the necklace from the box, hiding my distaste, and forced a smile of fond remembrance to my lips as I fastened it about my neck. Around me were matching smiles; eyes, everywhere, looking back at me.
That evening, I examined the necklace by the light of a candle. It remained as hideous to me as ever, though surely not so very terrifying now that I was in possession of it, as I was in possession of the room in which I sat and the whole house around me. Still, I half expected my grandmother to appear, dour and commanding in the doorway, as I held it to the light. I let out a soft breath and whispered: Not any longer, old witch. You’re gone.
Then I started, almost dropping the necklace, as two of the dark circles in the opercula appeared to shift and change.
I forced myself to raise it in front of me once more, this necklace I must keep close by, wear, tolerate, so that everyone would see and know me to be dutiful still. The two largest discs were set a little distance apart and surrounded by filigree, which appeared now like greying hair escaping from its pins. I forced myself to think of sea-snails, imagining dark, coiled little creatures glimpsed through a translucent shell. Perhaps I had only sensed the history of the object I held, like some kind of medium or sensitive, and yet it hadn’t seemed like that, not really. For a moment it had appeared as if, when exposed to the flame, the pupils of two great eyes had contracted against the light.
I shook my head. The day had been long, and full of fears that despite my actions, my risk, all could still go amiss. Yet it had not, and would not. I was safe. I had a home; I had money. Most importantly of all, I was free of her.
When I went up to bed, I decided to demonstrate to any lingering trace of her that I would not be cowed. I hung the necklace as she always had—in my room, not in hers, but similarly placed, strung from the decorative carving at the top of the dressing table mirror. I smirked at it, blew out my candle, and prepared to sleep more soundly than I had for days.
I awoke in a sweat. For a moment I had been certain she was leaning over me, a narrow-shouldered form full of concentrated malice, and I batted at the air as if to scratch her face. The shadows shifted and dissolved, flitting away from me. I twisted my head to follow them, making out the familiar forms of the armoire and the chair and the dressing table by the light seeping through a gap in the curtains. Then I saw two pale discs gleaming back at me.
I told myself the opercula were naturally hanging at different angles, and that only two of them had happened to catch the moonlight, but a part of me remained as certain as my six year-old self had been: my grandmother’s words were true. The necklace was made of eyes.
I had planned to spend the next day alone, but when I awoke once more in the same room full of the same shadows, the same memories, I decided I would walk into town. That raised its own problem, however, for the town was where my grandmother’s—and my—acquaintances lived and procured whatever items they needed, and they would scarcely expect me to abandon my grandmother’s bequest so quickly.
I donned my heavy layers of mourning and, after a brief hesitation, grasped the necklace and secured it about my neck. It glared back at me from the mirror, the discs gleaming more fiercely than ever against the black crape, but I told myself that was easily remedied; I turned away, and felt the relief of knowing that at least when I wore the necklace, I did not have to look at it.
Still, as I went about my day, I had the unfortunate sensation that it was watching everything I did.
I stepped into a haberdashers and caught a glimpse of eyes in a mirror, looking back at me. I saw their gleam reflected in a brass light fitting in the bank. I pulled my shawl more closely about my form, making sure the necklace was covered, and shifted my attention to all the things I might buy: the bright ribbons and pretty cottons I would wear when I could at last cast off my mourning.
Yet still, I felt watched. When I next stepped outside, I paused at the side of the street and stepped into an archway beside the inn. I adjusted my shawl, reached for the necklace and twisted the opercula towards me.
“Are you quite all right?” I looked up to see one of my neighbours, a widow, one who continued to wear black from choice rather than obligation. I wasn’t sure how long she’d been standing there, or how long I had; but I saw her concern as she peered into my face.
I assured her that of course I was all right, quite so, why shouldn’t I be?
She did not look reassured. Indeed, she raised her hands and stepped away from me, and I half stumbled past her towards the road that led to my home, mine, where I could step inside and close the door behind me and not be looked at any longer.
The operculum, the first one strung on the chain, had changed. I was almost certain it had, though how could I be sure? I had thrown the necklace into a drawer, had not looked at the thing for three days. I didn’t wish to see it now, and yet I had felt its presence continually, its eyes open in that dark place, searching, searching, until I was compelled to take it out and see.
Now shapes swam in the grey-brown centre of the eye. Once I had made them out, it was difficult to tear my gaze away. One of them, I was certain, was a young woman. She was leaning over what must be a bed. She held something in her hands, the form indistinct and shadowy, but I knew what it was.
I closed my eyes and remembered the moment I had carried it to her. The water was too hot. I had neglected the copper on the stove and it had been boiling furiously. I could feel the warmth of it radiating from the ewer. I was on my way to wash her—she had no longer been able to do that for herself towards the end. No: it was me who had to wipe, brush, clean, mop, gather the soiled sheets from under her and scrub them white again. It was me who had to listen when she said, in her wasted voice: ‘Life is duty, is it not? But perseverance makes all things bearable to those with grateful hearts.’
But it did not. It had not. And the thought had come to me then that I could drop the ewer. It would be an accident, a terrible one but so simple, so believable, that no one could ever blame me. And if the burns were too much for her, in her weakened state . . .
I had stared down until her eyes popped open, revealing the whites turned creamy yellow in her sickness, ochre and reddish shades bleeding into them, and at their heart—
No. I shook my head. There was no such image in the operculum. The shell was flawed, that was all, and this had always been there, nothing but a hazy pattern into which I had projected my thoughts.
Anyway, I had not spilled the water. I couldn’t have done that. I had set it aside until it cooled enough for me to peel the nightdress from her hateful husk and do what I must do, what I should do, what I was bound by duty to do.
My dead grandmother could not be showing me this memory from beyond the grave. That was impossible, not least because she never knew the thought that had passed through my head. She couldn’t even have seen it reflected in my eyes; it was only after I’d dismissed it that she’d opened her own. There had only been the necklace, staring, staring, from its place on the mirror frame.
I peered down at it again now, more closely still. Was it only my imagination that the pupil of each dark eye had become a little sharper—as if focusing on me?
I closed my fists around the necklace and glanced at the waiting drawer. I told myself I would not be afraid, that it was nothing, and instead hung it on the mirror once more, where the pupils were of a sudden reflected and doubled. A thought came to me, something I had once heard: that long ago, people used to believe the last thing a dead person saw could ever after be seen imprinted in their eyes.
White flecks. That was all I could make out in the opercula. I had looked, many times, but the girl, the bed, the ewer, had gone; they were nothing but a cruel trick of the imagination. Now there were speckles, everywhere. There was some fault in the necklace, that was plain. I had exposed it to too much light, or spilt some caustic substance on the shells and forgotten I had done it.
Then I looked closer still and saw the speckles for what they were. Feathers; feathers, flying everywhere about a room.
But I had gathered them up. They had so wanted to fly; they had tried to drift and flutter away from me. I’d had to grip them so very tightly. I remembered them crushed and dampened from the heat in my hands.
I held the largest pair of opercula in front of my face. Saw a shadowed figure reflected in their depths.
That night, I dreamed of travelling far away from anyone and everything I knew. I would sell the house and run. I would leave behind any memories I’d ever had of her. I imagined exotic lands where sea-snails might dwell in the crystal seas. Australia, Tahiti, Fiji, Samoa; those were the places they lived.
In my dream, I threw off the heavy black layers of mourning that constrained me and waded into the ocean. When I did, I found I could swim. The water was as warm as my blood, as my flesh. I floated and watched the sand passing below me, my shadow slipping over its whorls and ripples, as fantastically coloured fish darted about, free. Free.
Then I realised: everywhere, little spiral shells were dotted about the seabed. Little eyes were opening everywhere I looked.
I couldn’t keep the necklace. I couldn’t let it go from me. What if someone saw? What if they understood? Each time I went to the mirror and examined the thing hanging there, its eyes were more than ever like my grandmother’s: bloodshot, the pupils too dark, the orbs rheumy and gleaming. I didn’t like to look into them. The feathers had gone. Perhaps they had flown away. Perhaps they had been stuffed, one by one, back into a pillow. Perhaps the shadow-person had gathered them in; the one whose face seemed a little nearer every time I looked, as if surfacing through deep water.
The last thing the old woman ever saw.
Is it me? Is it me you see there?
I rushed from one to the next, these women who were going about their business, who were trying to ignore me, trying not to see. It was their business to look, my grandmother had made certain of that, but they could not meet my gaze. They only glanced at each other, or away, or out of the shop windows, as if to find someone to help them.
I thrust the necklace closer, into their faces, so they had to look.
“Is it me . . . ?”
But of course it was. It was always me. I was the last thing reflected in her eyes, imprinted there for ever and ever . . .
It wasn’t just the necklace any longer. I could see into their eyes too, all of them, each turned upon me, and my face was reflected in them all. I was everywhere, in each tiny orb, and the message written in each was plain: guilty. Guilty. Guilty.
Finally, someone was brought who did not look away. I realised it was the same doctor who had attended my grandmother, before it was too late for her; before she had been left to my tender care.
He peered down at me and I realised I was lying on the floor. He bent over me like a figure leaning over a bed and peered into my eyes and raised something to cover my face. I thought it was a pillow and flinched away—not that—but it was only a blanket that he tucked around my neck. He took something from a large leather bag, a bottle of dark blue glass, and pulled the stopper. He held it to my lips. I was determined not to drink, but the taste spread across my tongue anyway, sweet and bitter and heavy.
Moments afterwards, it felt as if I were sinking into deep, deep water. It was as warm as the tropics, as warm as my blood. As warm as the discs of the necklace still clutched between my fingers.
I awoke to find the doctor was there. He gave me the kind of smile one might use to indulge a child and told me that my grief had overwhelmed my senses. He said I must stay here, in this white bed in a white room, and I realised I was uncertain how long I had been there or even where I was. I could recall swimming, not in crystal waters but somewhere dark with layers in it, made of bitterness and sweetness and forgetting. There were eyes there too; I could remember them appearing one by one, set not into spiral shells but pale, stern, unsmiling faces.
I tried to open my mouth—I had to tell the doctor I must keep on swimming, or I would drown—but he only shook his head.
He told me how it would be. They would watch over me always. I should not be anxious, he said. They were going to deal with everything: my house, my possessions, my purse, to make sure my every need was provided for.
Then he brightened. ‘There is one thing you may keep,’ he said. ‘Something you will like to see, in memory of she whose loss has so affected you. It will bring you comfort.’ He held something out; then, when I did not reach for it, he hung it from the bedframe.
It was my grandmother’s operculum necklace. It was my grandmother’s eyes, but they had changed once more. Each little dome had paled, whiteness having spread across each one until they were covered over by the bloom of decay. There was nothing mirrored in them any longer, no message remaining there for me. My grandmother had seen everything, after all. She had watched me brought here, to this, and she was content now to be dead; she need never look into my face again.
Originally published in ParSec Magazine, Issue 7, Spring 2023.
