The Glass Eye

I’ve lived in the Pacific Northwest for most of my life, and I’ve always been drawn to old, forgotten places. My work as an archivist takes me into basements of county buildings and attics of historical societies, but the one place that truly unsettled me was the Beacon Hill apartment. It was a modest two-bedroom in a building from the 1920s, with radiators that clanked and windows that rattled in the wind. I lived there for six years, and in all that time, I never felt anything truly wrong.

That changed on a rain-drenched November night. I was in the living room, half-watching a late-night documentary about shipwrecks, while my brother, Leo, dozed on the couch next to me. The storm outside was fierce, but the building had weathered worse. At 2:47 AM, the power flickered, and the TV went dark. Leo stirred, muttered something, and fell back asleep. I got up to check the breaker box, but before I could, I noticed something odd on the coffee table.

There was a small glass eye resting on top of a stack of old magazines. It was the size of a marble, milky white with a blue iris, and it seemed to be looking at me. I froze. I had never seen it before in my life. I reached for it, but as my fingers brushed its cold surface, I heard a faint scratching from the wall behind me. It was rhythmic, like nails dragging across wood, and it seemed to come from inside the wall itself. I turned, but the wall was bare.

Leo woke up, rubbing his eyes. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. I pointed at the glass eye, but when I looked back, it was gone. ‘I swear I just saw it,’ I said, my voice trembling. Leo stared at the empty table, then at me. ‘You’re seeing things,’ he said, but his face was pale, and he wasn’t joking.

Over the next week, the presence in my apartment grew. I would hear soft footsteps in the hallway when I was alone, and the feeling of being watched never left me. I started sleeping with the lights on, and I avoided the living room at night. One evening, I was in the kitchen making tea when I heard a child’s voice whisper, ‘I see you.’ I spun around, but the room was empty. The glass eye was sitting on the counter beside the kettle.

I knew I had to find out what was going on. I spoke to the building’s super, an old man named Mr. Kowalski, who had lived there for decades. He told me that the apartment had been the site of a tragedy in the 1950s: a young girl named Elsie had lived there with her grandmother. Elsie had a glass eye, the result of an accident, and she was obsessed with mirrors. One day, her grandmother found her dead on the bathroom floor, covered in blood, with the glass eye missing from its socket. The official report said she had fallen and struck her head, but Mr. Kowalski believed it was something else.

‘She used to talk to the wall,’ he told me in a hushed tone. ‘She said there was a face in the wall that wanted her eye.’ I felt a chill run down my spine as I remembered the scratching sounds.

I decided to investigate the wall. I spent an entire Saturday moving furniture and examining every inch of the plaster. Behind the couch, I noticed a faint crack that seemed wider than the others. I probed it with a screwdriver, and a piece of the plaster fell away, revealing a hollow space. Inside, nestled in insulation, was a small box. My hands shook as I opened it. Inside was a child’s doll, but its eye had been gouged out, and in its place was a signet ring with a strange, spiraling symbol. And there was a note, written in faded handwriting: ‘For Elsie, who saw what I could not. Keep her company.’

That night, I didn’t sleep. I placed the doll on the coffee table, just as I had seen the glass eye, and I waited. At 2:47 AM, the power flickered, and the TV turned on by itself, showing static. Then, a voice came through the speakers, distorted but clear: ‘You found my friend. Now give me my eye back.’

I didn’t have the glass eye. It had vanished. In a panic, I searched the apartment, but it was nowhere to be found. As I stood in the living room, I felt a cold breath on my neck, and I heard a scratching sound in the wall, right behind me. I turned and saw a face pressed against the inside of the wall, its features distorted—a gaping mouth and a single eye, glassy and blue.

I grabbed the doll, threw it into the wall cavity where it had come from, and sealed the hole with a tile. The scratching stopped, but the presence remained. Leo and I moved out two weeks later, and I never spoke of it again. But sometimes, in quiet moments, I catch a glint of something small and round in the corner of my vision, and I hear a whisper: ‘You can’t hide from me.’

I still see the face in my dreams, its single eye wide open, as if it’s waiting for me to return and give it what it wants. I don’t know what that is. I’m just glad I escaped.