Izzy's Jar

She knew she was being watched.
She knew because she could feel the goosebumps up and down her arm. She knew because the hairs on the back of her neck were standing on end. She knew because just two seconds previously she had shuddered involuntarily. It could have been the weather; she remembered the weather lady saying it was only one degree Celsius on the news this morning. She wondered if the temperature had now dropped into minuses

***

The shelf near the stairs was where all their family's most important objects stood. A photo of all three of them; her father's first ski medal; her mother's first pair of heels, the shell from her parents honeymoon in Hawaii, her grandad's Mattock, a special tool used by archeologists to break up hard ground, Izzy's first fossil that she found at the beach and, of course, the family jar.

The jar had been there forever as far as Izzy knew; if there was one thing Izzy knew from reading all of her grandad's archeology books it was that this jar was at least two thousand years old, possibly more and the delicate patterns around its perimeter suggested it was Greek.

What else could it be?