All the riches in the world
After it all happened, I could never explain just what about the little wooden jewelry box had caught my eye. It was simple and unornamented. When questioned about what was inside it, Maggie, the antique shop’s keeper, hesitated before speaking. “That’s a collection of old silver, mostly jewelry and coins.” I nodded. “So a few thousand dollars, I suppose?” I went to put the box back. “Actually, not today. Today it’s on sale. You can get it for about $700. It’s been here for quite a while and I’ve been trying to get rid of it.” That gave me pause. Maggie and I go back a little. I started visiting her shop a couple of years ago and over that time had purchased everything from a 1960s toy piano to some original Mackintosh parts from the 1980s. Occasionally, I had gotten discounts on random stuff supposedly for being a loyal customer. “Why so low?” I asked. Maggie smiled. “You’ve been coming here regularly for years. I think I can do this one small thing in return for your business.” Alarm bells would probably be ringing for some right about now. But in truth, I found it hard to be suspicious of this woman. She was very particular about the things she accepted to sell. I know that because I’ve sold her stuff before. It never crossed my mind that the jewelry could be fake. I don’t know if any of you have guessed yet, but I’m one of those people that buys things and sells them at higher prices. Typically, I like to find things in need of some restoration. If that doesn’t cost me too much, I can jack up the price pretty significantly when I’m done with it and still feel like I’m giving enough to the buyer. But there were exceptions to this, like today. Several antiques made from silver priced at a mere 700 bucks felt like the best opportunity I’d had to upsell in a while. I opened the box to give what was inside a look. Several rings, two necklaces, a cup, and some irregularly shaped pieces of metal tumbled onto the checkout counter. It looked like silver. Surely it was real. I picked up one of the larger silver chunks. The thing was trying very hard to be a circle, but failing. On its uneven surface, I could make out a design of sorts depicting a castle and next to it the image of what I now know was a lion. Encircling these was a shield, which separated the symbols into quadrants. To the left of the shield was the letter P, and to the right was the letter D. The lower part of the shield contained a couple of other symbols. Maggie came up beside me. “Those are old Spanish coins. This one you see was their largest denomination, the eight reales. These were struck by hammers, so they’re all a little uneven and some are cracked. It’s quite rare to see any silver this old that looks like it was minted yesterday.” She laughed and dropped the coin back into the box. Later, I put on both necklaces and two rings. Most of the rings were undecorated. One of them had designs on it reminiscent of the Spanish coins. And another one just had some weird-looking shapes engraved in it. The necklaces were more strange. They were simple, thin silver chains, although the links themselves were hollow pieces of metal strung through with a cord. One of the necklaces was a cross, the other was a tiny pendant representing what on closer inspection appeared to be a man holding some sort of implements in his hands. It occurred to me that it would probably be best to put each piece up individually for sale. I’d recently been in a car accident, and both my car and my body had needed repairs that I was now slowly paying off. But surely I could enjoy wearing 300-year-old jewelry for a couple of days at least. I started to get compliments at work. For once, people wanted to talk to me. One guy, who I knew to be a silver collector mainly because he took any and every opportunity to talk about it, pulled me aside to say that if I were curious about the silver’s origin, I could bring him one of the coins. In the same sentence, he told me about a nice, fancy Italian place nearby that we could grab dinner at if I wanted. I wasn’t very interested in that proposition, so I told him that I might take him up on that at some point in my life. A few days after I began wearing the jewelry, the dreams started. All I remember now are brief moments and impressions. Tunnels of some sort underground. Dark spaces illuminated by oil lamps and candles. Hammers, chisels, pickaxes, coughing. The shouting of workers. Distant sounds of earth shifting, maybe even falling. We chipped away at the rock that imprisoned us in hopes of something better. Over and over, these dreams repeated. I began to dread sleep. I found the silver cup on my counter right next to the coffee machine in the early hours of the second morning following the dreams. I must have left it there at some point, though I had no memory of doing this, nor did I have any recollection of it being there before that very moment. But what the hell? A person only lives once. One may as well take the opportunity to drink their morning brew from a silver cup if it is presented to them. The cup was one item that I hadn’t paid much attention to. My fingers traced the floral designs on its rounded surface. It was cool to the touch as I lifted it from the counter, but began to warm almost immediately in my hand. The cup’s design was like a goblet’s, although it was not particularly tall. It was wide at the top, but tapered down to a stem for holding. Below that, the base flared out a bit to offer it more support. I could feel something engraved on the bottom. Upon closer inspection, it was a set of initials. I could see my reflection inside the cup, although the edges of my face were curved somewhat. A minute later, I had a steaming cup of coffee in front of me. A splash of milk went in, then some sweetener. As I brought the cup to my mouth, I had a strange flashback to that one gruesome scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where what’s his name? Wallis? Donald? Whoever he is, he drinks from a cup which he presumes to be the Holy Grail only to end up in a pile of bone dust because the cup he had chosen was in fact not the Holy Grail. The warm, sweet liquid passed my lips. There are some psychopaths out there who slurp their coffee. I am not one of them. After a moment, I took another sip. This time, there was a little grit. Usually, this only made an appearance at the very bottom of the cup. Strange. I brought the cup to my lips for more. It was too late by the time I realized that the grit I was tasting couldn’t be from coffee. It seemed somehow both earthy and metallic. I spat out what was left of it in my mouth and began to retch over the trash can. But there was nothing to be done. The grit clung to the insides of my throat. I grabbed the cup. The coffee inside was now clouded by flecks of what seemed to be a fine gray dust. As I took deep, heaving breaths, I could feel the smallest of particles from it enter my lungs. It would seem I chose — poorly. That night, I decided that maybe I could use some blackened chicken Alfredo after all. Silver Bro took one look at the coins I had brought and whistled. He called them cobs. “That’s Spanish silver.” “So it’s real?” I asked. I trusted Maggie completely, but it was good to hear this from someone else. “Oh, I’m pretty certain this is real.” The guy launched into an explanation of exactly why that was, but I stopped paying attention after the first five minutes. Usually, I like to learn about the things that I’m reselling. But with this silver, I just couldn’t make myself care where it had come from and what its history was. Silver Bro kept making offers to exchange me something for a single piece of jewelry, or even one of the smaller cobs. I said no of course. His offers pissed me off for some reason, a lot. And I didn’t know why. Then he showed me some cobs of his own. But where mine were perfectly preserved, his had turned almost black. He noticed this too, and remarked that it was very strange that in all this time there didn’t seem to be any sign of corrosion on my silver. “I must be lucky,” I replied. But he wasn’t. Although the guy certainly knew his way around silver, he didn’t seem to know his way around much of anything else, so there was no second date. When I got home, I saw 2 missed calls from Maggie. She had left a voicemail. I’ll just paste the transcription here. “Olivia?” Let’s pretend that’s my name. “It’s Maggie. That silver I sold to you. I was wondering if I might have it back? I’ll pay you ten times what you gave me for it. I shouldn’t have sold it. It’s real and all, but it wasn’t mine to give. If you could call me back or come in tomorrow, I’m sure we can come to some sort of agreement. I’m very sorry about this.” Just please call me back when you can. It’s important. Thanks.” No. Absolutely not. It was my silver now. I bought it at the price she had asked. It was mine, not hers. Did Maggie only just now see the value of what she had given me? I trusted her. Now here she was trying to take my good fortune away. Such betrayal. Another call came in the next day. Betrayal! And then another. I blocked her number. That night I had a new dream. I was flying far above snow-capped mountains. The air up here was clean. I could breathe. Spreading out below me was everything and everyone I’d ever known and would ever know. This is what the silver could do for me. I could have everything I’d ever wanted. I just had to let go of the tiniest fraction of it. But should I? This treasure was too perfect to let go. Maybe I’d just sell one item and keep the rest for myself. I knew that I would never have such magnificent pieces in my hands ever again if I let them go now. The following day was a Saturday, so I could look forward to doing nothing but snacking and binge-watching another season of Charmed. And that’s exactly what I did for about three hours before I was interrupted by a knock on my front door. “I’m not interested!” I called. The knock came again. “There is no Jesus Christ in this house! I roll with Satan!” Surely that would make them go away. But nope. The knock came a third time, and I could hear a familiar voice calling out my name over it. What the fuck? It was Maggie. I jabbed at the pause button on my remote, forced myself out of the recliner, and marched to the front door. “Do you know what no means?” I demanded after wrenching it open. “Olivia,” Maggie began. “I’m just here to talk.” If I hadn’t been sleeping well lately, Maggie hadn’t been sleeping at all. I could swear that there were more streaks of white through her hair than I’d seen a few days ago. “I just need to warn you. The silver is dangerous. You should get rid of it as soon as possible.” “Dangerous?” I asked incredulously. “It’s a bunch of random silver that’s older than you are. It won’t bite.” She was still trying to get it back from me. Maggie frowned. “You need to understand! The person who sold the silver to me. I looked into his story. Something happened to him. And he wasn’t the only one.” I stifled a laugh. “Like what? He wanted money? Yeah, that happens sometimes. And then you gave him money. So where’s the issue?” Maggie stiffened. “Can I see it?” she asked timidly. “Sure,” I replied after a moment. I turned around and went back inside. The thought of fetching that box for her didn’t even cross my mind. My silver necklaces jingled as I stocked into the kitchen. I searched through the silverware drawer. But it wasn’t there. Of course it wasn’t. I wheeled around and found the drawer with larger cutting utensils. There it was. A meat cleaver. I grabbed it and walked back. Without hesitating, I pulled open the door and brandished the cleaver at Maggie. “Go,” was all I said. “Olivia.” Maggie was whispering now. “The silver is driving you mad!” A hint of desperation had entered her voice. “Yeah I’m mad,” I started. “Can’t a girl watch Charmed in peace?” Maggie’s shoulders slumped. “Death follows that silver wherever it goes. For your own sake Olivia, destroy it.” With that, Maggie turned and left me standing alone on my porch, waving a meat cleaver at no one. She could have stayed. Maybe I’d have realized the truth sooner if she had. Then again, maybe not. She had to protect herself too, and looking back, I’m glad that she left. The dreams alternated over the next couple of days. In them, I both saw and felt two different worlds. Two different possibilities. I was destined to fly. And the other people, well, it really wasn’t my problem what they were destined for was it? Nights were no longer quite so unpleasant. Yet I still found myself waking early in the morning. The days blurred past. From work to home, from home to work, and from work to home I went. Interspersed through all of that were long stretches of time when I found myself staring into the bed of silver at the bottom of that little box. A hundred little distorted reflections of myself looked back. Then, all at once, they coalesced into one. Those irregularly shaped coins had arranged themselves into a mosaic which reflected a strange and terrible image of myself at me. Although the coins were still uneven and the reflection was distorted in parts, I could see my gaunt face clear as day. There were dark circles beneath my eyes. It was those dreams. All those things I didn’t care to think about or understand. They only made me restless. I really needed to see if there was a way to suppress them. No matter. I could surely pay for any help I would need. This realization put my mind at ease. I continued to ponder my newfound wealth as my reflection stared back at me. That is, the reflection of my face along with that of a man standing behind me. My chair fell back as I leaped to my feet and whirled around. There was nothing aside from the wall of my office and the bed where I slept. Then my eyes slid to a clock mounted on the wall. It was well past midnight. But my memories were vague from the time I’d finished dinner and come in here to make a couple of listings on eBay. My computer wasn’t even open. Clearly, I needed rest. The man must have realized that time was running short. Because he spoke to me that night. He told me about the mountain that ate men. A place whose original name had long since been forgotten. It had been a place of worship once. Then the hungry ones came, one Diego Huallpa who served them discovered silver, and his masters in their disease and hunger sought to take the mountain’s riches instead. Now its only name was Rich Mountain. Over the centuries, men toiled in its belly, and even as they sought to eat the mountain, just to carve a little piece of it out for themselves and their masters, the mountain ate them too. Untold numbers of boys and men were consumed even as the fruits of their labor were carted off on ships to a distant land and the mountain that once stood tall slowly bent under the weight of a thousand hammers and chisels. But the silver was cursed. Everywhere it went, misfortune followed. The hungry ones who condemned their slaves and subjects to death in that mine accumulated so much silver that the metal lost its value, and chaos rained. Like an accident of their own, the hungry ones’ empire crumbled to dust, leaving only remnants in its wake. But the hungry ones had left their former subjects with very little, and so it was that men and boys went back into the mine. By that point, the rich mountain had been so depleted of silver that the people turned to mining tin. Every miner signed a contract with the first strike of his hammer. The earth would allow them all to take some of its bounty, yes, but it would exact a heavy price from any who dared or was forced into such an agreement with it. The little fortune any man gained would be offset by an early end to his life. The only thing to be determined really was if a miner would be killed there and then in the depths of the underworld, or if they would only die later on the surface, when their lungs were so ravaged by those little fine particles that they could no longer breathe. Now the mountain was part of a nation populated by some twelve million people named after a certain celebrated liberator. There was no more corporation, crown or state to impose on the miners. The mountain was in the hands of the people, on paper. But despite how much the world had progressed, things didn’t improve much in the tunnels. Wealth grows with time, but only when one is lucky enough to possess it. Their wealth had been stolen. The mountain was still eating, even in its throes of death. And now foreigners came from far and wide to play pretend at understanding the life of a people born in circumstances alien to them. Through all of this, the silver never disappeared. It was still scattered all over the world, along with all of the greed and loss that had preceded it. Images flashed through my mind. Different people gazed into the box, each with the same gleam in their eye. Then, one by one, they were all killed, and the silver found its way into new hands. The circumstances under which these killings took place were always a little different. But the results were without fail the same. One person would acquire the little box, and another would grow envious. It was only a matter of time before blood was spilled, and the silver changed hands in an endless cycle of violence. The last image to appear to me was a terrified Maggie standing just out of reach of the meat cleaver I’d waved around so carelessly. I had been prepared to kill to protect something that was never mine. And there wasn’t much I could say for myself. Really, there wasn’t much any of the silver’s victims, be they murderers or the murdered, could say for themselves. All the silver had done was awaken something that was already there somewhere deep inside of us. I became aware of myself, of the burning on my neck and fingers. The box was lying still open on my desk. The silver inside it glowed red-hot. I shot to my feet and grabbed the box. I tore out of my office and into the living room. I turned on and opened the fireplace. The box went inside first and began to burn immediately. Then I ripped off my necklaces with such force that the cords cut into the back of my neck as they snapped, and blood flowed down my back. The rings came off more easily. All of it went into the fire. The wooden box was reduced to ashes as I watched. But everything inside remained. Slowly, each piece melted down into globs of molten silver, before those fused together into an amorphous shape. The shape slowly gained more definition until it resolved into a humanoid figure. As I watched, the image of a man holding a hammer and chisel pushed its way out of the figure. It was the man who had spoken to me, and the man whose likeness I’d been wearing in miniature on my neck for days. The metal cooled, and as if knowing its job was done, the fireplace shut off on its own. The miner stepped out. He was covered head to toe in a fine gray dust. The silver no longer glowed; in fact, its entire surface had become tarnished. The miner turned to stare up at me. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to. The silver had been kept pristine by the suffering of those who extracted it. But the spirit inside had finally been released, and the silver crumbled to dust before my eyes. For the first time in a long while, I could think with clarity. My curse had been broken. I was no longer enchanted by the blood silver. But the mountain was becoming hollow. The people still worked and died within it for a pittance. Yet all these years later, the hungry ones were still hungry, and all the riches in the world wouldn’t be enough to satiate them. Credit: Excavated Terrors Reddit Please note the author of this Creepypasta does NOT give permission for it’s use or reproduction in any form of media Copyright Statement: Unless explicitly stated, all stories published on Creepypasta.com are the property of (and under copyright to) their respective authors, and may not be narrated or performed under any circumstance.