The Glass Hum

I was fifteen, living in a cramped flat on the third floor of a crumbling building in the outskirts of Manchester. My best friend, Maya, had always been the one with the weird stories—kettles boiling on their own, lightbulbs shattering at 3 AM, and once, she swore something ice-cold and wet had grabbed her ankle under her duvet. I’d laughed it off, calling her dramatic, until the autumn she came to stay with me for a week while her parents sorted out their divorce.

My room was tiny, with a single window that looked out onto a bleak car park and a row of rusted bins. The only furniture was a narrow bed, a wobbly desk, and a cracked glass vase on the windowsill that caught the dying light of the streetlamps. We’d spent the evening watching cheesy horror films and eating crisps, ignoring the draft that seeped through the ill-fitting frame. At midnight, Maya went to the bathroom, leaving me alone with the hum of the old fridge from the flat below.

It started as a low, vibrating sound, like a distant engine. I thought it was the boiler, but it grew louder, more insistent, until the glass vase began to tremble. I reached out to steady it, but the moment my fingers touched the cool surface, the humming shifted into a thin, high-pitched whine. The vase tipped over and shattered, scattering shards across the floor. I stood there, frozen, as the sound died away. When Maya came back, she found me staring at the mess. ‘It’s just the wind,’ she said, but her voice wavered.

The next night, I woke to the same hum. My room was bathed in a sickly orange glow from the streetlights, and the shards of glass I’d swept under the bed seemed to be vibrating in unison. I sat up, and there, pressed against the window from the outside, was a face—pale, gaunt, with eyes that were nothing but black pits. It stared at me, unblinking, and I could see its breath fogging the glass, even though the window was sealed shut. I screamed, but Maya slept through it. By the time I looked again, the face was gone.

I told Maya the next morning, and she gave me a knowing look. ‘It’s the same thing that happened to me,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t mean you harm, but it likes to watch.’ I didn’t find that comforting. Over the next few days, the hum became my constant companion. It would start whenever I was alone, and the glass would vibrate—not just the shards, but every glass object in the flat. Glasses on the shelf clinked together. The mirror in the hallway rippled like water.

On the third night, I decided to face it. When the hum began, I walked to the window and pressed my face against the cold pane. The car park below was empty, but I felt a presence on the other side of the glass, a pressure like a hand being pressed from outside. The window steamed up, and words began to form in the condensation, letters scratched by an invisible finger: ‘LET ME IN.’ I stumbled back, knocking over the vase again. This time, the pieces didn’t just vibrate—they levitated, forming a swirling vortex in the middle of the room. Maya burst in, her face white. ‘Don’t look at it!’ she shouted, but it was too late.

The glass shards shot toward the window, embedding themselves in the frame in a pattern that resembled a face—my face, twisted in terror. The hum reached a crescendo, and then everything went silent. When I finally dared to look, the glass was gone, and the window was clear. But I could still feel the hum, faintly, like a heartbeat. I moved out of that flat a month later, but I can’t shake the feeling that the hum followed me. Sometimes, at night, I hold a glass of water to my ear, and I hear it—a quiet, insistent sound, as if something on the other side is trying to break through. And I know, one day, it will.