The cursed stone

The Cursed Stone
By Madison Nef

A long time ago, in 1692, (the year of the Salem Witch Trials) there was a witch named Betty Sawson. Betty had 2 daughters who were the loves of her life: Judy and Kelly. Judy and Kelly knew of their mother’s witchcraft, but were not witches themselves. Betty had seen many of her friends hanged from the gallows, and knew it was only a matter of time before she herself hung too.  

The day came- she was caught. But instead of just taking her, the court ALSO took her daughters. They insisted that being related, her daughters also must be witches. They were all thrown in a jail cell together. Betty was distraught- she didn’t want her daughters to hang for her own sins! But try as she would, she couldn’t get the court to release her daughters… and 5 days after their capture, her daughters went to the gallows without her.

Betty was distraught- she HATED the court! How could they just hang her daughters!?! THEY WERE INNOCENT! She slowly drove herself insane- the court must pay for their mistake! As she sat in her barren cell, she noticed a small rock was loose from the wall. She pulled it out and turned it in her hand a few times, and as she did, a plan came to her. She would curse the stone- that anyone who had wrongly accused a witch or killed an innocent would suffer deeply for his mistake.

She started with that basic curse, but as the days went on, she added more and more black magic to it, so the small pebble grew to be the size of her fist. A month after her capture, the day came for her to be hung. Slipping the rock into her hand, she slowly walked towards the gallows. Before the noose was slipped over her neck, she stopped short, took the rock- and launched it into the nearby lake. She then laughed an insane laugh, and was hung.

The rock stayed in the lake for centuries before it was touched again, but its magic was still present in the town. People who had wrongly accused others fell ill with an incurable disease- and died shortly after. Nobody remembered old Betty Sawson’s hanging- or the object she threw into the lake. Now, in the late 1900’s, a little boy was swimming in the lake and found the VERY SAME ROCK- it had been washed in closer to shore. He was collecting rocks with his little sister, and saw that it was very nicely sized. It was the largest rock he had collected all day, so he took it and dropped all the others.

The little boy happened to be visiting his grandmother a few weeks after he found the rock. She lived in a house in Rindge, NH. The boy very rarely got to see her, and so he was very excited. He took the rock with him to show her. He arrived at her farmhouse, and after eating a healthy lunch, was asked to go pick corn in one of the farm fields. The boy had forgotten about his rock, and took it with him to the field- and lost it while in the corn. The boy was distraught, but forgot when his grandmother gave him a nice dinner with corn muffins that he had helped to make by collecting the corn. Years later, that very field had a house upon it- and the rock was still there, deep in the soil, waiting for someone else to find it.

And soon, someone did- a 12 year old girl looking to do a school project for her Dad. She picked up the stone, looked at it and sighed, and then turned to go back to her house. She then wrote this story... not knowing that she had actually just written the true history of the stone.