The Glass Eye

Maya had always been drawn to the eerie, the unexplained. Her best friend, Cora, shared her obsession, so when Cora received a vintage spirit board for her sixteenth birthday, Maya knew what they had to do. Along with their friend Elise, who was new to the supernatural, they planned a session for Friday night at Maya’s house, a creaky Victorian fixer-upper her parents had bought six months ago. The house had a history, of course, but they weren’t sure it was haunted; they just wanted some fun.

They set up in the attic, a dusty, cluttered space that smelled of mothballs and old paper. The board was beautiful, inlaid with mother-of-pearl and a planchette that looked like a tiny coffin. Maya’s hands shook slightly as she placed her fingers on it, next to Cora’s and Elise’s. ‘We’re just moving it ourselves, right?’ Elise whispered, but her eyes were wide.

At first, nothing happened. They giggled nervously, asking silly questions like ‘Are there any spirits here?’ and ‘Give us a sign.’ The planchette stayed still. Then, a cold draft swept through the attic, making the candles flicker and sending a shiver down Maya’s spine. The planchette began to move, slowly at first, then with more purpose. It felt light, as if a feather were guiding it, not their hands. ‘I’m not doing that,’ Elise said, pulling her fingers away. Maya and Cora exchanged glances, their excitement turning to unease.

The pointer spelled out ‘K-A-T-E’, but that was wrong; their friend’s name was Elise, not Kate. Then it spelled ‘L-O-V-E’ and ‘Y-O-U’. Confused, Elise asked, ‘Who is this?’ The planchette spelled ‘G-R-A-N-N-Y’. Elise went pale. ‘My grandmother passed away last year. Her name was Granny. She called me Kate when I was little. But she always said she’d come back and watch over me.’

Suddenly, the candles blew out, plunging the attic into darkness. A faint, raspy breath echoed behind them, and a cold presence pressed close, suffocating. The planchette flew off the board and skittered across the floor. Maya’s hands trembled as she fumbled to relight the candle. In the flickering light, they saw the planchette had landed on a shard of glass – an old, cracked glass eye from a taxidermy display that had been among the attic’s junk. The eye seemed to stare at them, and in its depths, Maya thought she saw a tiny reflection of an old woman’s face, beckoning.

Then, from the corner, a voice whispered, not in her ear, but in her mind: ‘You should not have come.’ The pressure intensified, crushing them together. A cold hand gripped Maya’s shoulder, and she felt a finger prod her eye, the touch like ice. Terrified, she screamed, and the other two joined in, tearing the board in half.

The next day, they tried to burn the board, but it wouldn’t catch fire, warping and smoking but staying intact, the paint on the letters seeming to bubble. Later, Maya’s mother found her crying in her room, and when Maya tried to explain, her mother just shook her head and said, ‘This house had a prior owner, an old woman named Agnes. She was a collector of oddities. She had one eye, always wearing a glass one. They say she died alone in this attic, waiting for her granddaughter. Her name was Kate.’

Maya now avoids the attic, but sometimes she sees the glass eye in the corner of her vision, watching her from across the room. And sometimes, when she looks in the mirror, her own reflection seems to have a faint white film over one eye, and behind her, a figure of an old woman with a hollow socket, smiling. She knows it’s only a matter of time before the spirit claims what it wants – an eye for an eye.