The Glass Eye

In the autumn of 2009, my wife Lena and I had just settled into a small flat in the old harbor district of Gdynia, Poland—a city whose salt-scoured buildings seemed to lean against the wind. Our windows faced a narrow canal, and across the water stood an abandoned fish cannery, its blackened bricks and shattered windows like a mouthful of broken teeth. We’d taken the place because it was cheap, and because Lena loved the idea of living by the sea, even if the sea here was more industrial than romantic.

Our honeymoon had been postponed from May to September, and we spent a week in a wooden cabin on the Hel Peninsula, a skinny strip of land that reaches into the Baltic. On our last night there, we sat on the porch after dinner, watching the gray water swallow the sun. Lena was quiet, which wasn’t unusual, but she was quieter than I’d ever seen her. I went inside to shower, and when I came back, she was still sitting in the same spot, her hands folded in her lap, staring at the horizon as if she were listening to something. I asked her if she was okay. She blinked, turned to me, and smiled—a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. ‘It’s nothing,’ she said. ‘Just the sound of the sea. It sounds like voices.’ I laughed, kissed her forehead, and we went to bed.

A week later, we moved into the flat. The first night, as we unpacked boxes, I noticed a small object on the windowsill in the living room: a round, milky glass paperweight, about the size of a fist, with a dark swirl inside that looked like a pupil. I picked it up; it was cold and heavy. ‘Where did this come from?’ I asked. Lena shrugged. ‘Maybe the previous tenant left it.’ I set it back on the sill and didn’t think much of it.

But within a few days, odd things began to happen. I’d wake in the middle of the night to find Lena standing by the living room window, not looking out, but looking at the paperweight she’d placed on the coffee table. Her face was blank, her arms slack. When I called her name, she startled and said she’d been sleepwalking. It happened three times in one week. The fourth time, I found her whispering—a low, guttural murmur that wasn’t her voice. I could have sworn she said, ‘The tide is rising.’ I shook her awake, but she remembered nothing.

Then the dreams came. I dreamed of the cannery across the canal—except in the dream, it was alive. Steam hissed from its chimneys, and through the broken windows, I saw rows of conveyor belts carrying silver fish, all gutted and glistening. At the end of the line, a machine with a single eye—a great, glassy lens—sorted the fish into piles. But the eye was real, and it swiveled to look at me. I woke drenched in sweat.

I told Lena about the dream. She looked at me with an expression I didn’t like—like she was seeing me from very far away. ‘The cannery was shut down thirty years ago,’ she said. ‘There was a fire. Several workers burned alive.’ I asked how she knew. She frowned. ‘The neighbor told me. He says the place is cursed.’ I laughed, but she didn’t. ‘I’ve seen the eye too,’ she whispered. ‘In the paperweight. When I look at it, I see the cannery—and the fire, and the people—but they’re not screaming. They’re singing.’

I stopped sleeping. Every night, I watched the paperweight from the bedroom doorway. In the dark, its swirl seemed to shift, the pupil dilating and contracting like a breathing thing. Lena slept beside me, but her sleep was restless. She’d mumble, toss, and sometimes her fingers would curl and uncurl as if she were grasping at something.

On a Thursday night in late October, I decided to get rid of the thing. I waited until Lena was in the bath, then I grabbed the paperweight and drove to the end of the canal, where the water met the sea. I threw it as far as I could. It splashed and sank. I felt a brief relief, but on the drive back, I heard a whisper in my ear—not a voice I knew, but a wet, rasping sound that said, ‘You can’t throw the eye away. It’s already seen you.’

When I got home, the paperweight was on the coffee table, wet and dripping, with a small strand of seaweed wrapped around it. Lena was sitting on the couch, her hair dark and slick, her clothes wet. ‘It came back,’ she said calmly. ‘It always comes back.’ I stood there, my own breath loud in my ears.

The next morning, I tried to smash it with a hammer. The glass didn’t break—the hammer shattered instead, leaving my hand numb. I wrapped it in cloth and buried it in a potted plant on the balcony. By noon, the plant was dead, its leaves black and brittle. By nightfall, the paperweight was back on the sill, and Lena was standing before it, her reflection in the glass not her own but a blurry shape with too many arms.

I called a priest. He came, but as soon as he entered the flat, he turned pale. ‘There’s a presence here,’ he said. ‘It’s not evil. It’s hungry. It’s always been hungry.’ He performed a blessing, but as he finished, the paperweight rolled off the sill and landed at his feet. He looked at it, then at me. ‘This is not of God,’ he said, and left without looking back.

December came. The canal froze over. The cannery looked even more skeletal in the snow. Lena had stopped speaking during the day, but at night, in her sleep, she sang—a low, mournful melody that made the windows rattle. Sometimes, when she sang, I saw movement in the cannery, a flicker of light bobbing between the broken pillars.

On the solstice, I woke to find the bed empty. I rushed to the living room. Lena was kneeling by the balcony door, her forehead against the glass, staring at the paperweight on the floor. It was cracked now, and from the crack, a thin black liquid oozed, staining the floorboards. ‘Lena, what are you doing?’ I shouted. She turned her head slowly. Her eyes were not her own—they were milky white, like the paperweight, with a tiny dark pupil. ‘I’m listening,’ she said. ‘The sea is telling me to come home.’

I grabbed her shoulders, but she was cold, so cold. I pulled her away, but she resisted, her strength impossible. I saw the paperweight crack further, and a tendril of ink-black substance reached up and touched her ankle. She convulsed and went limp.

The next day, she was herself again, but changed. She never spoke of that night. She threw the paperweight into the canal herself, and this time, it didn’t return. But I know it’s out there, at the bottom, waiting. And Lena still has dreams. In them, she walks through the cannery, past rows of silent fish, toward the eye machine. But when she reaches it, she turns to me—and this time, it’s not her reflection I see in the lens. It’s mine.

I’ve thought about moving away, but every time we pack, Lena gets this look in her eye—a cold, knowing look—and the water in the canal rises. The cannery lights flicker. And I hear the song again, just beneath the wind. The eye has seen us. And it’s patient.