The Blue Vase

My Uncle Ray and Aunt Marge rented a crumbling Victorian farmhouse outside of Pella, Iowa, near the Skunk River. My cousins, Darren (my age), and little Penny (about two), along with my brother Cole (twelve), and I spent a lot of time there that summer. I was thirteen, and the house felt ancient, probably from the late 1800s. The wallpaper peeled like sunburn, and the floorboards sagged in every room. It smelled of mothballs and rust.

About a month after they moved in, Penny started talking to someone in her crib. She would stand up, gripping the rail, babbling with tiny pauses, as if listening to a response. At first, we dismissed it as imaginary friends. But it became constant. She’d wake from naps, perfectly happy, and hold entire conversations with the empty corner of her room. Darren and I, curious and a little unsettled, tried to sneak up to see what she was seeing. But every time we got close, the floor would creak, and Penny would stop, turn, and smile at us, saying, ‘He doesn’t like you to hide.’

Then things started moving. Small objects—keys, spoons, a child’s sock—would appear on the mantelpiece, arranged in neat rows. My aunt would put them away, and they’d return in new spots. The strange thing was we never caught anyone doing it. The house would be still, and then, out of the corner of your eye, something would shift. The air would feel cold, like someone had opened a cellar door. My uncle’s friend, a skeptical guy named Pete, dismissed it as drafts. He stayed for a weekend to fish, and that changed everything.

Pete slept in the guest room downstairs. On the third night, we heard him shouting. We found him in the hallway, gripping the banister, his face white. He said he’d seen a figure at the foot of his bed—a tall, thin shape, its head tilted at an unnatural angle. It had whispered, ‘You’re not the one I want.’ He wouldn’t say anything else, only packed his truck in the middle of the night and left. My aunt tried to laugh it off, but she started sleeping with the lights on.

A few days later, Penny began pointing to a blue glass vase on the dining room table. It was ugly, with a chipped rim, and it had always been there, part of the house’s furniture. But Penny would say, ‘He’s in the vase. He’s watching.’ My uncle tried to throw it away, but every time he picked it up, he felt a sharp pain in his temples, and the house would groan. So he left it.

One afternoon, while the adults were out on the porch, Darren and Cole and I were in the kitchen. We heard a noise from the dining room—a soft tap, like fingernails on glass. Through the doorway, we saw the vase wobble, then slide across the table, stopping at the edge. Penny giggled from the doorway. ‘Don’t be scared,’ she said. ‘He’s just dancing.’ We ran outside, but my aunt dismissed it as our imagination.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I went downstairs for water and found Penny standing in the dining room, her hand on the vase. She was murmuring, ‘Blue, blue, blue.’ I stepped closer and saw that the vase had changed. It was now filled with a dark liquid, like ink, and at its center there was a faint shape—a face, pressed against the glass from the inside. I screamed. My uncle came running. When he saw it, he said nothing, but his hands shook. He took the vase outside and smashed it on the stone path. A dark, viscous liquid seeped into the cracks, and we all heard a high-pitched whistle, fading.

After that, things calmed. Penny stopped talking to the corner. The objects stopped moving. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that the vase had only been a conduit. The house was still watchful. We never mentioned it again. My uncle still lives there, and when I visit, I notice the new vase he bought—a plain white one. But Penny, now a teenager, sometimes looks at it with a smile I don’t trust.

I believe in that house. I believe in the blue vase. And I believe something else is living there, waiting. Not for one of us, but for the next child who speaks its name.