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Description
Prepare yourself, for you are about to read a
story, one that will make you wish you had never heard of it before. I tried to
forget it, but I just couldn’t. Do not try and figure whether this story is
real or not, don’t search for the truth; actually, it is best if you put down
this little book and forget about its existence. I cannot deny, however, that I
hope that you continue reading, else I wouldn’t have written this. I want you
to know about me and the ring, about what happened to me and to so many before
me, and about what is going to happen to so many other people. It is
unavoidable. So if you do decide to read, let me warn you: you will not find
immortality nor fortune within these words. You will not find safety, nor
peace. The words will haunt you to your grave and beyond. Do not blame me; I
have warned you.

This story begins in England, Uppingham, 1784. I
was a little girl back then, about 8 years old, daughter of Charles Manners,
4th Duke of Rutland and Lady Mary Isabelle Somerset. My name is Elizabeth, just
like my mother’s sister. Aunt Lisa I used to call her, but her full name was
Lady Elizabeth Somerset. I was named after her.
I was born 1776, I married my husband Richard
Norman in 1798, and died the 5th of October 1853. I was 77 years old. I know
this sounds crazy to you. How could I know the date of my own decease? I have
to admit; it really is crazy. It is the ring. The ring has done this, and I’m
not it’s only victim. It cannot be stopped.

On the day of march 3rd I was playing in the
gardens looking at the birds and pretending I was one of them, I used to be
fairly dreamy and remote you see, when I suddenly saw my mother watching me.
Impudent as I was, I continued flattering around until my mother came closer to
tell me to sit down. She was always calm and governed, her hair and make-up
done properly as a Lady ought to do; she was a celebrated beauty, which was the
reason why so many men wanted to marry her in her early age. She spoke quietly
but there was no peace in her voice, so unlike herself. She was not herself at
that moment. ‘Elizabeth’ she said. ‘You know Aunt Lisa is going to come to
spent the weekend with us, right?’ I nodded my head enthusiastically. I loved
it when she came by. Aunt Lisa was my favourite aunt, even though she was a
little bit odd; she always kept her diary close with her. Nobody was allowed to
read it, but I knew it was a little red coloured one, with a little black
string wrapped around it. ‘Well, dear, I’m afraid she won’t be able to come
anymore. You see love...’ She paused to think, and then said: ‘Aunt Lisa wanted
to go to heaven along with all the other angels, so she took her own life. But
Aunt Lisa is in a better place now love.’ I was too young to really understand
what was going on. Sure I was upset about her death, but mother was wrong; she
is not in heaven, and she is definitely not in a better place. I’m not sure my
mother knew that at the time. If only I knew.

My mother’s voice became even more unsettled.
‘Aunt Lisa did want you to have something though, dear.’ And she took out a
ring from her pockets. A golden ring with a dark red ruby in the shape of a
tear. Her eyes became sad and terrified at the same time. Especially terrified.
God damn this day, I took the ring and put it on my finger. My mother then
looked at me with a disappointed look. She walked away, leaving me wondering
why.

I kept the ring for a long time appreciating it as
a gift of great emotional value. That is until my father died in 1787, leaving
my mother, me and my brothers and sisters. Of course there were the rumours
about my father being the lover of one Elizabeth Billington, who was an opera
singer, not even a Lady. I do not consider this rumour to be true, but that is
beside the point. The state of my mother got worse, emotionally and physically.
There were days when she would just lie down and eat, drink and say nothing. I
couldn’t blame her; life really did became an empty existence. However I was
the one that had to look after my little brothers and sisters, especially
little William who was sick all the time. He died too, at the age of ten, in
1793. I was 17 years old. After his death things got too much for my mother.
She told me to come to the garden and leave my brothers and sisters in the
house. I did. As I walked into the garden I saw myself sitting there as an
8-year old little girl, with a golden ring around her finger. I remembered the
day she told me Aunt Lisa died. Mother sat in the same garden chair as that
day. Even from behind you could see that she was getting older. Her back was a
little bit crooked and her hair was done a little bit less careful as she used
to do it. I cautiously approached her, and when she finally noticed me she
turned around. ‘Ah, dear. Sit down love. I... I need to talk to you.’ Somehow I
knew that the ring was going to be the subject. I still had it on my finger; I
loved it. It reminded me of how things used to be. But the moment mother saw it
she began to cry. I thought she was sad and I tried to comfort her.
‘Get your hands off me!’ she yelled. It was a
shock to see her like this. ‘Get that ring away now!’ With tears in her wild
eyes she looked at me, waiting for me to take the ring off. When I didn’t she
got even more mad. ‘Take it off, I say you, take it off!’ Her voice cracked, she
pinched her eyes and her face got red as a cherry. I knew this could not be
avoided so I quickly took off the ring and threw it on the garden table.
Ox-eyed she looked at the ring for a moment, but then grasped the ring and
threw it into the garden. ‘Mother?’ I said thunderstruck. Then she turned to me
again, with the same big eyes. She looked at me seriously and said with the
gravest voice I had ever heard: ‘that ring... that thing is nothing less than
trouble. It has been a burden for Aunt Elizabeth ever since she got it from
grandma. I say it one more time: You need
to get rid of it.’ I was
speechless. I was paralysed by her words. Mother sat down, tired and weary as
she was, her face in her hands. I continued looking at her, and after a while I
sat down too. It stayed quiet for a another minute.

‘It is an heirloom.’ Mother had calm down and had
regained her calmness a bit. As she spoke she kept looking at one spot on the
table, as if she couldn’t look at me anymore. ‘It has been in the family for
ages. It’s not just a ring anymore. It used to be, long before I was born.
Legend was that my great-great-great-grandmother inherited the ring from her
mother, Elizabeth Morrison. After some time she found out about a dark history
of this ring. Every woman who wears the ring dies exactly at the same age, 77
years old, and dies from the exact same cause of death; a disease. A terrible
disease, of which no one knows the origin. A disease your Aunt Lisa should have
died of.’ Tears began to appear in her eyes. She then turned to me, looked me
in my eyes again. ‘It is the disease you are going to die from. You can’t stop
it. It’s the ring.’
I’m afraid those were the last words she ever said
to me. It still makes me sad. She walked back to her bed and spend there for
the rest of her life. At the end she got mad, I believe. She stayed there for
38 years until the day she died. She was 75 years when she did. That is a long
time.

I believed her though, about the ring. I knew that
something was going on, although I don’t exactly know what. So I decided to
bury it and not speak of it ever again. As long as it’s out of sight it’s out
of the mind, I always used to say. I searched for the ring in the garden, and
for a moment I thought I wasn’t going to find it anymore, that it was gone. But
then I saw something shining in the grass. It was waiting there. I picked it up
and examined it. It was a ring. A golden ring with a dark-red ruby in the shape
of a tear. The tears it had caused in red. It was a curse, I knew it just by
looking at it. I went out of city to somewhere near Oakham in an open field. In
the field there stood nothing more than one old little shack with a tree next
to it. Nobody lived there, I knew, because I used to play there as a child. I
thought it was appropriate to bury it under the tree, as a metaphor; bury the
past. I was going to start again, that was the idea. Leave the house, leave
mother and go out.
I did leave Uppingham. Very soon I was to be married, in 1798, 5 years later. With Richard Norman that is. It wasn’t an exceptional marriage. Just an arranged one, purely about the money. However I did love him. I had the money, obviously. Times were going well and I forgot about the ring as well as about Aunt Lisa.

Until one day. Richard and I were living in
London, a long way from Uppingham, the wretched place where my mother lived.
Richard had been away several times to ‘fight for his country’. At those times
I was always worried and I missed him, but he always came back alive and well
for as far that was possible. The day he came back we were sitting in the
garden like we used to do, talking and eating. We drank some wine and enjoyed
ourselves. For some reason, however, this time I couldn’t stop thinking about
the garden. It looked a lot like my old garden in Uppingham. I never noticed
except for this time. It was as if I was supposed to notice. As if things were
meant to be like this. At the time I didn´t believe in fate, so I tried to cast
away the thought of sitting there with my mother, her eyes wet and red as the
ruby in the ring. Her skin pale as a corpse. I could see it, the ring and it’s
dark red, almost black ruby. The shape of a tear. I was suddenly not feeling
well anymore. I told Richard and he brought me back to the house, into our
bedroom. I felt it coming. I felt the cold touch around my finger, the feeling that
it was so close made me breath very heavily, gasp for air. I had no idea what
it was, but it felt horrible. As if I knew someone was coming I stared at the
door. Richard was still with me, and was looking at me, wondering what was
happening to me, I knew. He kept staring at me and I kept staring at the
doorway while the horrible feeling was getting stronger. When I thought it was
at its strongest someone suddenly appeared through the doorway. A man in a
fancy red suit, one of our servants. He bowed down, gave me a package and said:
‘My Lady, this was found on the doorstep a few minutes ago. It says it’s for
you, my Lady.’ He then took off again. My gaze went from the servant to the
package. Factually, there it stood; my name written in handwriting I recognized.
‘Are you alright love?’ Richard noticed the way I trembled, and he put his arm
around my shoulders and then stroke my hair; he really was comforting, but the
feeling remained. We sat down on our bed and with shaking hands I carefully
pulled the package open to see what was in it. It was a diary. It was coloured
red and had a black string wrapped around it. Red with black string. Red.

I stayed in my bedroom for a long time, just
staring at the cover of the diary. Richard had gone to do some business while I
remained all alone in our bedroom. Servants had occasionally come by to ask if
I wanted to eat something. Frankly I wasn’t hungry. I had calm down a little
bit and I felt ready to open the diary. I opened it at the last page.

‘Dear diary,
It came back. It came back, again. There is
nothing I can do to get rid of it. I threw it in the water and it came back,
with no signs of ever being gone. I melt it down, saw it melt away in a
shapeless form of golden liquid, while the ruby flickered in the bright flames.
I saw it happen with my own eyes and yet it came back stainless. I buried it
deeper than the Abyssal of Hell, and still it came back bringing even more
painful feelings with it. It is the ring. It torments me, it drives me mad.
Mary can see it, and my other sister and brother Henrietta and Henry can see
it. I have no hope of ever escaping my fate. It cannot be stopped. Meanwhile
the curse is burning away my soul, eating away my body from the inside.
Pleasures have become martyrdom and martyrdom has become nothing compared to
the way I feel. There is no escape. There is no way to get out of this. There
is only a delay; survive long enough. Death is one thing, but what lays beyond,
I believe, is a lot worse. It cannot be stopped.
Still, I can’t go on anymore. It is too much; why
let the demons torment me in this life, and let my family suffer this much, if
I can end it all right now. For my family, for Mary anyway.
I will end this.
May God have mercy on my soul.
March 2nd 1784’

I paused for a second, looking at the words in the
diary. There is no way to fully describe what I felt like. Sick, at least. I
could throw up every second. It was strange; I always liked Aunt Lisa, and now I
felt like she disgusted me, as if I always hated her and all of her actions.
Especially her last actions. But still, somehow I recognised myself in her
words and her deeds. I slowly closed the diary and put in the table next to the
bed. Then I noticed a small envelope on the ground. It must have fallen out of
the diary, but I missed it. Suddenly the strange feeling came back. On the
envelope stood the words ‘It cannot be stopped.’ I knew it was in there. I knew
it had returned. When I picked up the envelope I noticed I was trembling again.
I opened the envelope and emptied the content into my hand. It was a ring. A
golden ring with a dark-red ruby in the shape of a tear. It was darker than
ever. It was grinning at me, depreciating me. It knew what it was doing.

In the years that came I felt what Aunt Lisa wrote
about. I felt what she was talking about. It has been tormenting me. Aunt Lisa
took her life, but I tried to find out what it was that caused the curse. I
travelled. I left Richard en led my life as an outcast, only to search for the
truth. I have been to every corner of the Kingdom, to lords and clergy to pray
for aid. I have even entered catacombs.
I did not succeed. I did not find the truth, only
lies and misfortune. Trust me reader, so will you. It’s the ring. I warned you.
You cannot stop it.

Description
Prepare yourself, for you are about to read a
story, one that will make you wish you had never heard of it before. I tried to
forget it, but I just couldn’t. Do not try and figure whether this story is
real or not, don’t search for the truth; actually, it is best if you put down
this little book and forget about its existence. I cannot deny, however, that I
hope that you continue reading, else I wouldn’t have written this. I want you
to know about me and the ring, about what happened to me and to so many before
me, and about what is going to happen to so many other people. It is
unavoidable. So if you do decide to read, let me warn you: you will not find
immortality nor fortune within these words. You will not find safety, nor
peace. The words will haunt you to your grave and beyond. Do not blame me; I
have warned you.

This story begins in England, Uppingham, 1784. I
was a little girl back then, about 8 years old, daughter of Charles Manners,
4th Duke of Rutland and Lady Mary Isabelle Somerset. My name is Elizabeth, just
like my mother’s sister. Aunt Lisa I used to call her, but her full name was
Lady Elizabeth Somerset. I was named after her.
I was born 1776, I married my husband Richard
Norman in 1798, and died the 5th of October 1853. I was 77 years old. I know
this sounds crazy to you. How could I know the date of my own decease? I have
to admit; it really is crazy. It is the ring. The ring has done this, and I’m
not it’s only victim. It cannot be stopped.

On the day of march 3rd I was playing in the
gardens looking at the birds and pretending I was one of them, I used to be
fairly dreamy and remote you see, when I suddenly saw my mother watching me.
Impudent as I was, I continued flattering around until my mother came closer to
tell me to sit down. She was always calm and governed, her hair and make-up
done properly as a Lady ought to do; she was a celebrated beauty, which was the
reason why so many men wanted to marry her in her early age. She spoke quietly
but there was no peace in her voice, so unlike herself. She was not herself at
that moment. ‘Elizabeth’ she said. ‘You know Aunt Lisa is going to come to
spent the weekend with us, right?’ I nodded my head enthusiastically. I loved
it when she came by. Aunt Lisa was my favourite aunt, even though she was a
little bit odd; she always kept her diary close with her. Nobody was allowed to
read it, but I knew it was a little red coloured one, with a little black
string wrapped around it. ‘Well, dear, I’m afraid she won’t be able to come
anymore. You see love...’ She paused to think, and then said: ‘Aunt Lisa wanted
to go to heaven along with all the other angels, so she took her own life. But
Aunt Lisa is in a better place now love.’ I was too young to really understand
what was going on. Sure I was upset about her death, but mother was wrong; she
is not in heaven, and she is definitely not in a better place. I’m not sure my
mother knew that at the time. If only I knew.

My mother’s voice became even more unsettled.
‘Aunt Lisa did want you to have something though, dear.’ And she took out a
ring from her pockets. A golden ring with a dark red ruby in the shape of a
tear. Her eyes became sad and terrified at the same time. Especially terrified.
God damn this day, I took the ring and put it on my finger. My mother then
looked at me with a disappointed look. She walked away, leaving me wondering
why.

I kept the ring for a long time appreciating it as
a gift of great emotional value. That is until my father died in 1787, leaving
my mother, me and my brothers and sisters. Of course there were the rumours
about my father being the lover of one Elizabeth Billington, who was an opera
singer, not even a Lady. I do not consider this rumour to be true, but that is
beside the point. The state of my mother got worse, emotionally and physically.
There were days when she would just lie down and eat, drink and say nothing. I
couldn’t blame her; life really did became an empty existence. However I was
the one that had to look after my little brothers and sisters, especially
little William who was sick all the time. He died too, at the age of ten, in
1793. I was 17 years old. After his death things got too much for my mother.
She told me to come to the garden and leave my brothers and sisters in the
house. I did. As I walked into the garden I saw myself sitting there as an
8-year old little girl, with a golden ring around her finger. I remembered the
day she told me Aunt Lisa died. Mother sat in the same garden chair as that
day. Even from behind you could see that she was getting older. Her back was a
little bit crooked and her hair was done a little bit less careful as she used
to do it. I cautiously approached her, and when she finally noticed me she
turned around. ‘Ah, dear. Sit down love. I... I need to talk to you.’ Somehow I
knew that the ring was going to be the subject. I still had it on my finger; I
loved it. It reminded me of how things used to be. But the moment mother saw it
she began to cry. I thought she was sad and I tried to comfort her.
‘Get your hands off me!’ she yelled. It was a
shock to see her like this. ‘Get that ring away now!’ With tears in her wild
eyes she looked at me, waiting for me to take the ring off. When I didn’t she
got even more mad. ‘Take it off, I say you, take it off!’ Her voice cracked, she
pinched her eyes and her face got red as a cherry. I knew this could not be
avoided so I quickly took off the ring and threw it on the garden table.
Ox-eyed she looked at the ring for a moment, but then grasped the ring and
threw it into the garden. ‘Mother?’ I said thunderstruck. Then she turned to me
again, with the same big eyes. She looked at me seriously and said with the
gravest voice I had ever heard: ‘that ring... that thing is nothing less than
trouble. It has been a burden for Aunt Elizabeth ever since she got it from
grandma. I say it one more time: You need
to get rid of it.’ I was
speechless. I was paralysed by her words. Mother sat down, tired and weary as
she was, her face in her hands. I continued looking at her, and after a while I
sat down too. It stayed quiet for a another minute.

‘It is an heirloom.’ Mother had calm down and had
regained her calmness a bit. As she spoke she kept looking at one spot on the
table, as if she couldn’t look at me anymore. ‘It has been in the family for
ages. It’s not just a ring anymore. It used to be, long before I was born.
Legend was that my great-great-great-grandmother inherited the ring from her
mother, Elizabeth Morrison. After some time she found out about a dark history
of this ring. Every woman who wears the ring dies exactly at the same age, 77
years old, and dies from the exact same cause of death; a disease. A terrible
disease, of which no one knows the origin. A disease your Aunt Lisa should have
died of.’ Tears began to appear in her eyes. She then turned to me, looked me
in my eyes again. ‘It is the disease you are going to die from. You can’t stop
it. It’s the ring.’
I’m afraid those were the last words she ever said
to me. It still makes me sad. She walked back to her bed and spend there for
the rest of her life. At the end she got mad, I believe. She stayed there for
38 years until the day she died. She was 75 years when she did. That is a long
time.

I believed her though, about the ring. I knew that
something was going on, although I don’t exactly know what. So I decided to
bury it and not speak of it ever again. As long as it’s out of sight it’s out
of the mind, I always used to say. I searched for the ring in the garden, and
for a moment I thought I wasn’t going to find it anymore, that it was gone. But
then I saw something shining in the grass. It was waiting there. I picked it up
and examined it. It was a ring. A golden ring with a dark-red ruby in the shape
of a tear. The tears it had caused in red. It was a curse, I knew it just by
looking at it. I went out of city to somewhere near Oakham in an open field. In
the field there stood nothing more than one old little shack with a tree next
to it. Nobody lived there, I knew, because I used to play there as a child. I
thought it was appropriate to bury it under the tree, as a metaphor; bury the
past. I was going to start again, that was the idea. Leave the house, leave
mother and go out.
I did leave Uppingham. Very soon I was to be married, in 1798, 5 years later. With Richard Norman that is. It wasn’t an exceptional marriage. Just an arranged one, purely about the money. However I did love him. I had the money, obviously. Times were going well and I forgot about the ring as well as about Aunt Lisa.

Until one day. Richard and I were living in
London, a long way from Uppingham, the wretched place where my mother lived.
Richard had been away several times to ‘fight for his country’. At those times
I was always worried and I missed him, but he always came back alive and well
for as far that was possible. The day he came back we were sitting in the
garden like we used to do, talking and eating. We drank some wine and enjoyed
ourselves. For some reason, however, this time I couldn’t stop thinking about
the garden. It looked a lot like my old garden in Uppingham. I never noticed
except for this time. It was as if I was supposed to notice. As if things were
meant to be like this. At the time I didn´t believe in fate, so I tried to cast
away the thought of sitting there with my mother, her eyes wet and red as the
ruby in the ring. Her skin pale as a corpse. I could see it, the ring and it’s
dark red, almost black ruby. The shape of a tear. I was suddenly not feeling
well anymore. I told Richard and he brought me back to the house, into our
bedroom. I felt it coming. I felt the cold touch around my finger, the feeling that
it was so close made me breath very heavily, gasp for air. I had no idea what
it was, but it felt horrible. As if I knew someone was coming I stared at the
door. Richard was still with me, and was looking at me, wondering what was
happening to me, I knew. He kept staring at me and I kept staring at the
doorway while the horrible feeling was getting stronger. When I thought it was
at its strongest someone suddenly appeared through the doorway. A man in a
fancy red suit, one of our servants. He bowed down, gave me a package and said:
‘My Lady, this was found on the doorstep a few minutes ago. It says it’s for
you, my Lady.’ He then took off again. My gaze went from the servant to the
package. Factually, there it stood; my name written in handwriting I recognized.
‘Are you alright love?’ Richard noticed the way I trembled, and he put his arm
around my shoulders and then stroke my hair; he really was comforting, but the
feeling remained. We sat down on our bed and with shaking hands I carefully
pulled the package open to see what was in it. It was a diary. It was coloured
red and had a black string wrapped around it. Red with black string. Red.

I stayed in my bedroom for a long time, just
staring at the cover of the diary. Richard had gone to do some business while I
remained all alone in our bedroom. Servants had occasionally come by to ask if
I wanted to eat something. Frankly I wasn’t hungry. I had calm down a little
bit and I felt ready to open the diary. I opened it at the last page.

‘Dear diary,
It came back. It came back, again. There is
nothing I can do to get rid of it. I threw it in the water and it came back,
with no signs of ever being gone. I melt it down, saw it melt away in a
shapeless form of golden liquid, while the ruby flickered in the bright flames.
I saw it happen with my own eyes and yet it came back stainless. I buried it
deeper than the Abyssal of Hell, and still it came back bringing even more
painful feelings with it. It is the ring. It torments me, it drives me mad.
Mary can see it, and my other sister and brother Henrietta and Henry can see
it. I have no hope of ever escaping my fate. It cannot be stopped. Meanwhile
the curse is burning away my soul, eating away my body from the inside.
Pleasures have become martyrdom and martyrdom has become nothing compared to
the way I feel. There is no escape. There is no way to get out of this. There
is only a delay; survive long enough. Death is one thing, but what lays beyond,
I believe, is a lot worse. It cannot be stopped.
Still, I can’t go on anymore. It is too much; why
let the demons torment me in this life, and let my family suffer this much, if
I can end it all right now. For my family, for Mary anyway.
I will end this.
May God have mercy on my soul.
March 2nd 1784’

I paused for a second, looking at the words in the
diary. There is no way to fully describe what I felt like. Sick, at least. I
could throw up every second. It was strange; I always liked Aunt Lisa, and now I
felt like she disgusted me, as if I always hated her and all of her actions.
Especially her last actions. But still, somehow I recognised myself in her
words and her deeds. I slowly closed the diary and put in the table next to the
bed. Then I noticed a small envelope on the ground. It must have fallen out of
the diary, but I missed it. Suddenly the strange feeling came back. On the
envelope stood the words ‘It cannot be stopped.’ I knew it was in there. I knew
it had returned. When I picked up the envelope I noticed I was trembling again.
I opened the envelope and emptied the content into my hand. It was a ring. A
golden ring with a dark-red ruby in the shape of a tear. It was darker than
ever. It was grinning at me, depreciating me. It knew what it was doing.

In the years that came I felt what Aunt Lisa wrote
about. I felt what she was talking about. It has been tormenting me. Aunt Lisa
took her life, but I tried to find out what it was that caused the curse. I
travelled. I left Richard en led my life as an outcast, only to search for the
truth. I have been to every corner of the Kingdom, to lords and clergy to pray
for aid. I have even entered catacombs.
I did not succeed. I did not find the truth, only
lies and misfortune. Trust me reader, so will you. It’s the ring. I warned you.
You cannot stop it.