The Glass Hummingbird

The summer I turned nineteen, I was stuck at my grandfather’s farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, housesitting while he recovered from hip surgery in the city. The place was a relic, full of ticking clocks and the smell of dust and old wood. My phone barely got a signal, and the only internet was a spotty satellite connection that made streaming a video a test of patience. I spent most days reading or staring at the fields, the endless wheat swaying like a golden sea under a punishing sun.

One evening, after another day of boredom, I stumbled upon an article about a rare neurological condition called ‘sensory dissociation,’ where people claimed they could feel their consciousness separate from their bodies. It was pseudoscience, but it fascinated me. I decided to try it, half as a joke, half out of desperation. I lay on the creaky bed in the guest room, which overlooked the overgrown garden, and focused on relaxing every muscle, imagining my mind floating upward, tethered by a thin silver cord.

To my surprise, I felt a strange lightness, a tingling at my extremities, as if I were drifting. But it felt too real, too unsettling, so I snapped my eyes open, heart racing. The room looked the same—the faded floral wallpaper, the heavy armoire, the dusty lace curtains. But something was off. The window, which had been closed, was now open a crack, and a faint, high-pitched hum filled the air, like a mosquito or a distant electrical wire.

I sat up, rubbing my arms, and noticed a small object on the nightstand that I hadn’t seen before: a glass hummingbird, about the size of my palm, impossibly detailed, with iridescent wings that seemed to shimmer even in the dim light. It was beautiful, but also deeply wrong. I didn’t own it. No one had been in the house. I picked it up; it was cold, unnaturally so, and the hum grew louder.

I put it down and went to the living room to check on my grandfather’s ancient portable radio. It was off. The hum followed me, a persistent, needle-like sound that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. I decided to ignore it, attributing it to my imagination, and made myself a cup of tea in the kitchen. The kitchen window faced the garden, and as I stirred the tea, I saw a figure standing among the tomato plants—a tall, thin silhouette with elongated limbs, its head tilted at an impossible angle. It was facing me, though it had no discernible face.

My blood turned to ice. I dropped the spoon, and when I blinked, the figure was gone. The glass hummingbird was now on the kitchen counter, though I’d left it in the bedroom. I felt a growing dread, a pressure in my ears, and the hum escalated to a piercing whine that made my teeth ache.

I called my grandfather, but the line was dead. I tried my cell phone—no signal. The landline was dead too. The power flickered, and then the house was plunged into silence, the hum suddenly gone. In that silence, I heard a new sound: a slow, rhythmic thumping, like a giant heart beating somewhere in the walls. It grew louder, faster, and I realized it was coming from the attic door at the end of the hallway.

I should have run, but my legs were rooted to the floor. The attic door creaked open by itself, revealing a darkness so absolute it seemed to swallow the light from the hallway. And floating out of that darkness, carried by an unseen wind, came a swarm of glass hummingbirds—dozens of them, their wings rattling like chattering teeth, their tiny black beads for eyes glinting with malice.

They swarmed around me, their hum building to a cacophony that felt like needles in my brain. I screamed and swatted at them, but they sliced through my skin, leaving thin, stinging cuts. I stumbled backward, tripping over furniture, trying to escape, but they herded me toward the staircase. I felt a sharp pain in my chest, and I looked down to see the original hummingbird embedded in my sternum, its beak buried in my flesh, drinking something that wasn’t blood—it was a cold, silvery light that I recognized as my own consciousness.

I fell to my knees, and the swarm converged on me, their weight pressing me down. The last thing I saw was the thin silver cord, which I’d imagined earlier, now visible, trailing from my chest and dissolving into the swarm. Then everything went black.

I woke up in a hospital bed three days later, covered in bandages, my grandfather beside me, looking worried. The doctors found no physical wounds, only a strange, unexplained anemia. They chalked it up to a stress reaction and a hallucination. I was released, and I never returned to the farmhouse. But I still have the scar on my chest, a small, circular mark shaped like a bird in flight. And sometimes, when the world is quiet, I hear that faint hum, and I know that somewhere, in a dark attic, a glass hummingbird is watching me, waiting for me to sleep again.