The Glass Eye

I have always been attuned to things that should not exist. As a child, I would see figures at the edge of my vision, hear whispers in empty rooms, and feel cold drafts in sealed spaces. I never spoke of it, because the moment I did, people would look at me with pity or fear. So I learned to live with the weight of their presence, like a stone in my shoe that I could never shake loose.

Three years ago, I moved from the flatlands of Ohio to a small coastal town in Maine, hoping to escape the constant hum of the other side. For a while, it worked. The salt air seemed to cleanse the air, and I felt lighter than I had in years. Then my son, Oliver, was born. He was a quiet, wide-eyed baby, but soon after we brought him home, the disturbances began.

It started with small things: a door left ajar when I knew I had closed it, a toy moving across the floor when my back was turned. Then the touchings began. At night, I would feel a pressure on my shoulder, a gentle stroke along my arm, as if someone was trying to soothe me to sleep. But I would wake with a jolt, skin crawling, and see nothing but the dim glow of the nightlight.

Oliver would scream in the middle of the night—not the usual hungry or wet cry, but a blood-curdling shriek that would pierce through my dreams. I would rush to his crib, and he would be staring at something over my shoulder, his tiny finger pointing at the corner of the room. When I looked, there was nothing there. But I could feel it, a presence so thick it was like breathing in fog.

One night, I decided to set up a baby monitor with a camera in Oliver’s room. The next morning, I reviewed the footage. The screen showed Oliver sleeping peacefully until 2:47 AM, when his eyes snapped open. He began to scream, and I saw, in the corner of the room, a dark shape that seemed to ripple and shift. It was too blurry to make out clearly, but it was unmistakably humanoid. It stood there, watching, until Oliver’s cries brought me into the room. When I entered, the shape dissolved.

I tried to rationalize it, told myself it was a trick of the light or a faulty camera, but I knew better. I had seen it with my own eyes. And in that moment, I realized that this presence had been following me my entire life, but now that I was a mother, it had found a new target: my son.

I decided to confront it. I had never tried to communicate with the spirits before, too afraid of what they might say, but now I was desperate. I remembered an old trick my grandmother had taught me: to see the other side, you must look through ‘the glass eye’—a clear glass marble that you hold up to your eye, letting it distort your vision. It was supposed to allow you to perceive spirits more clearly, but my grandmother warned me never to use it, because once you truly see them, they can see you.

I found an antique shop in town and managed to buy a small, clear marble. That night, after putting Oliver to bed, I sat in the dim light of the living room, the marble cold in my palm. I took a deep breath, raised it to my right eye, and looked around the room.

At first, nothing. Then, slowly, the corners of the room seemed to darken, and a shape began to coalesce near the hallway leading to Oliver’s bedroom. It was a woman, gaunt and pale, with hollow eyes and a mouth that opened into a silent scream. Her hair hung in tangled ropes, and she wore a tattered, old-fashioned dress stained with something dark.

She turned her head and looked directly at me. Her lips moved, and though I couldn’t hear her, I felt the words echo in my mind: ‘Leave this place, or I will take the child.’

I dropped the marble, my heart pounding. I stumbled to Oliver’s room, but he was fine, sleeping with his little fist curled under his chin. I knew then that I had to leave, but I also knew that this thing, this spirit, had attached itself to me, and it would follow me wherever I went.

The next day, I started packing. I didn’t tell my husband where we were going; I just said we needed a change. We moved to a small town in Montana, far from any ocean, hoping the distance would break the connection. But the presence followed. It was subtle at first—a cold spot in the corner of the kitchen, a faint odor of decay in the bathroom—but it grew stronger each day.

One evening, I was reading Oliver a bedtime story, and he pointed to the window and said, ‘The lady is outside.’ I looked, but the yard was empty. He said, ‘She wants me to come with her.’ I held him tighter and whispered, ‘No, sweetheart, she’s not real.’ But I knew she was. And she was waiting.

I decided to fight back. I researched old rituals, cleansing ceremonies, anything that might drive her away. I learned that spirits like her are often tied to a place or an object, and if you can find that anchor, you can destroy it. I searched my old house in Maine, but the new owners had remodeled, and I found nothing. I searched my memories, trying to recall where I might have first encountered this spirit. It came to me in a dream: a small, glass eye, not the marble, but an actual glass eyeball, that had belonged to my great-grandmother, who was rumored to be a witch. She had kept it in a velvet box, and I had played with it as a child, not understanding what it was.

I realized then that the spirit was bound to that glass eye, and that eye was somewhere in my family’s belongings. I called my mother, asked about it. She said she had no idea where it was, but that it might have been buried with my great-grandmother.

That’s when I knew what I had to do. I had to go back to Ohio, to the old family cemetery, and dig up her grave, find the glass eye, and smash it to release the spirit. I knew it was crazy, but I had no other choice.

I left Oliver with my husband and flew to Ohio. I found the cemetery, overgrown and forgotten, and waited until nightfall. I dug through the cold earth, my hands raw and shaking, until I hit the rotted wood of the coffin. I pried it open, and there, resting on the skeletal chest, was a small, leather pouch. I opened it, and inside was the glass eye, milky with age, but still intact.

As I held it, the ground seemed to tremble, and a wind whipped through the graveyard, though there was no storm. The glass eye grew cold, so cold it burned my palm, and I saw her, the gaunt woman, standing at the edge of the grave, her mouth opening into a wide, black void. She reached out a bony hand, and her fingers touched my cheek, and I felt a deep, bone-chilling fear, as if she was trying to pull my soul out of my body.

I threw the eye to the ground and smashed it with a rock. The shards scattered, and the woman let out a silent scream that shook the air, and then she was gone, dissolved into the night. The wind died, and the graveyard fell into an eerie silence.

I stood there, panting, waiting for the feeling of relief, but it didn’t come. Instead, I felt a new presence, lighter, but no less unsettling. I turned, and behind me stood a young girl, no more than ten, with tear-streaked cheeks and hollow eyes. She pointed at the shattered glass and said, ‘You freed her, but now I have no home.’

I don’t know how I knew, but I understood that the woman had been a malevolent spirit that had trapped this child, and by destroying the eye, I had released the child’s spirit as well, but she was now bound to me, just as the other had been. She follows me now, a silent companion. She watches over Oliver, and sometimes, when I look in the mirror, I see her reflection behind me, a faint ghostly outline.

I have learned that some bonds cannot be broken, only redirected. And so I live with her, carrying the weight of two worlds, one living, one dead. The glass eye is destroyed, but the sight it granted me remains, a permanent mark on my soul. I see the dead more clearly than ever, and I know that they see me too, as if I am one of them, waiting for my own release.

But I have no intention of joining them. Not yet. I have a son to protect, and I will do whatever it takes to ensure that the shadows keep their distance, even if that means making a deal with the spirits that linger in the dark. And perhaps, in the end, that is the true horror: not the spirits themselves, but the awareness that we are never truly alone, and that the ones we love are always watched by eyes that slumber in the unseen.

I tell no one. Not my husband, not my friends. I carry this secret like a second skin, and when Oliver wakes from his nightmares, I hold him close and whisper, ‘It’s okay, I’ll always be here.’ But I know that I am not the only one here. And I wonder, sometimes, if the child I saved was truly the one trapped, or if I have simply become the next link in a chain that will bind my own descendants, a legacy of sight and sorrow that will never end.