The Eraser’s Touch

After my divorce, my daughter Lily and I moved to a quiet coastal town, renting a small cottage called Sea Glass Cottage. It was a fresh start, away from the memories of the old house where I had been a caretaker and where strange things had happened. Lily loved her new room with its view of the ocean, and we had no incidents for months. But six nights ago, I was jolted from sleep by a scream that tore through the quiet like a knife.

I rushed down the hall, my heart pounding. Lily had night terrors, and she sometimes fell out of bed, but this scream was different. I burst into her room to find her sitting bolt upright in her bed, staring at the door, trembling, her arms outstretched for me. I scoop her into my arms, whispering soothing words. ‘What happened, baby?’ I asked. She sobbed, ‘The eraser from my pencil set—the one I got for Christmas—it hit me in the head.’ I looked around, half-expecting to see a toy on the floor. But then she added, ‘And someone was tickling my feet.’ Lily hates her feet being touched, that much I knew.

I turned on the lamp and scanned the room. Nothing was out of place. Her pencil set was on her desk, all the erasers in pristine condition. I checked under the bed, in the closet, nothing. I chalked it up to a vivid nightmare, perhaps triggered by her excitement about the new pencils. I stayed with her until she fell asleep, the incident weighing on my mind.

The next morning, I dismissed it as a one-off, but Lily seemed uneasy. She asked me not to leave her alone in her room. I humored her, but as days passed, more strange things happened. One night, I heard a soft thump from her room and found a small toy on the floor that had been on her shelf. Lily said it just fell. I suspected a draft or a loose shelf, but the following night, I saw her pencil case slide off her desk by itself. I watched it for a good ten seconds, expecting it to be a trick of the light, but it moved as if pushed.

I started to feel a presence in the cottage, a faint smell of saltwater and something metallic. I began to notice odd patterns in the sand near the front porch, like small footprints that ended abruptly. I tried rationalizing it: the wind, the neighbor’s cat. But one evening, I was alone in the kitchen and heard a faint giggle from Lily’s room, a sound that was not hers. I ran up the stairs, but the room was empty, the windows sealed shut.

I decided to investigate the history of the cottage. I found out that it was built on the site of an old fishing shack, which had been abandoned after a fisherman lost his son to the sea. The story was that the father, grief-stricken, drowned himself in the bay, and some said his spirit still searched for his child, playing tricks on the living. I felt a chill run down my spine.

Then came the night I will never forget. I went to check on Lily and found her sitting up in bed, pointing at the corner of the room. ‘Daddy, he has a hook for a hand,’ she said, her voice eerily calm. I turned to see nothing, but I felt a sudden coldness. Then I heard a scratching sound, like fingernails on the wall. I grabbed Lily and ran out of the cottage, my own fear overcoming my disbelief. We stayed at a motel that night.

In the morning, I called a paranormal investigator. As he was setting up his equipment, he found an old, cracked pencil eraser wedged between the floorboards, in a shade of blue that matched the sea. Lily gasped. ‘That’s the one that hit me,’ she said. The investigator told us that sometimes objects linked to tragedy can become vessels for restless spirits. But what unsettled me most was his next question: ‘Did your daughter ever say what the spirit wanted?’ I shook my head, but later that day, Lily whispered to me, ‘He said he wanted me to find him a friend.’ We moved out that week. To this day, I still check the floorboards of our new apartment, half-expecting to find an eraser, and fear that the sea will somehow find its way to us.