The Glass-Eyed Groom

I never believed in ghosts, not even when I was a child and the old house on Bramble Lane creaked like a ship at sea. My grandmother had died there, and my mother inherited the place, a Victorian relic with peeling wallpaper and a staircase that seemed to lean in when you weren’t looking. I was nine when we moved in, and I remember the first night, lying in my new bedroom with the moon casting long fingers across the floor, I felt a presence. Not a person, but a weight in the air, as if something were leaning close to my bed, breathing on my neck. I told my mother, and she laughed, saying it was just the old pipes or the wind. But she couldn’t explain the laughter I heard from the attic at night, nor the footsteps that followed me down the hall.

I called him Mr. Wren, after a picture in a dusty book I found in the library, a portrait of a man with sharp cheekbones and unsettlingly pale eyes. He was always there, standing at the edge of my vision, a tall figure in a long, dark coat that seemed to drink the light. He never spoke, but I could feel his gaze like a cold touch. When I was twelve, I started seeing him in my dreams. Not nightmares, but vivid, silent dreams where he would take my hand and lead me through the house, showing me rooms I had never been in, and then, at the foot of a grand staircase, he would stop and point to a door. I would wake before I could open it.

At fourteen, I told my mother that I wanted to leave, that the house was haunted. She dismissed me, saying I had an overactive imagination, and that I should spend more time outside with real friends. So I did. I made friends with a boy named Ethan who lived down the lane, and I tried to forget Mr. Wren. But he didn’t forget me. The dreams changed. Now, he would stand at the foot of my bed, his face inches from mine, and whisper, ‘You are mine.’ I would wake with a scream caught in my throat, and I would see a silhouette against the window, gone by the time I could turn on the light.

One night, after such a dream, I couldn’t move. I was lying on my back, my eyes sealed shut, but I could feel his presence at the end of the mattress, the weight of his knees pressing into the quilt. I heard him breathing, slow and heavy, and then I felt a hand on my ankle, cold through the sheets. I forced my eyes open, and he was there, more solid than ever, his coat dripping wet as if he had just come in from rain. He smiled, and his teeth were sharp. He said, ‘Finally, you see me.’

I screamed, and my mother rushed in, flicking on the light. The room was empty, but my ankle was bruised with finger-shaped marks. That was when my mother finally believed me. She found the history of the house in the town archives. A man named Edmund Vane had lived there in the early 1900s, a recluse who wore a long black coat and had a glass eye. He had been a bridegroom, but his bride died on their wedding night, and he was found hanged in the attic. His body was never removed, and his ghost, according to legend, sought a new bride.

I was his intended. He had been watching over me since I was a child, waiting for me to grow old enough. My mother tried to burn the house, but the fire would not catch. So we fled, moving to a city apartment with bright lights and no old creaking walls. But the dreams persisted, and now, even in my waking hours, I see him in reflections, in the corner of my eye. Last night, I woke to find the room cold, and he was sitting on the edge of my bed, holding a ring, a tarnished band. He said, ‘The groom awaits his bride.’ And I knew that all my running was in vain.

I am writing this from a motel room with the lights on, but I can feel him outside the door, waiting in the inky blackness. I don’t know how much longer I can resist. The house on Bramble Lane is gone, but he is not bound to it. He is bound to me.