The Glass Marble

I never believed in the supernatural until the night I found a glass marble in my childhood bedroom. It was the summer I turned twelve, and my family had just moved into a creaky Victorian house on the edge of a dying town. The room I chose had a faded mural of a forest on one wall, and the previous tenants had left behind a box of old toys. Among the rusted cars and broken dolls, I found a single marble, clear with a swirl of blue inside. It felt cold, even in the July heat.

That night, I placed the marble on my nightstand and tried to sleep. But I kept hearing a faint scratching, like something was writing on the walls. I ignored it, assuming it was mice. The next morning, the marble was on the floor, and there were fresh scratches on the wall above my bed—like the word ‘HELP’ had been scrawled in a child’s hand. I showed my parents, but they said the house was settling. My dad muttered about ‘drafts.’

A week later, my cousin Lena came to stay. We were exploring the attic when we found an old Ouija board. The planchette was missing, so we used a fragile acorn cap. We set it on the board and asked if anyone was there. Nothing. But then the acorn cap twitched. It spelled out ‘M-A-R-C-U-S.’ Lena laughed, thinking I was moving it, but I wasn’t. My hands were on my knees. Marcus said he was a boy who used to live here, and he wanted to play. He asked if we liked marbles.

That’s when I felt the marble in my pocket—I’d brought it without thinking. It grew warm. Marcus moved the cap to spell ‘FINISH GAME.’ Lena and I felt a cold draft, and the lights flickered. We heard children laughing from the room downstairs. We ran, slamming the door behind us. But the laughter followed, echoing through the halls. When we reached the kitchen, my parents were there, acting like nothing was wrong, but the clock had stopped at 3:33.

From then on, the marble acted like a beacon. Whenever it moved, something bad happened. A cabinet door would slam, a window would crack, or I’d find a drawing of a stick figure with a noose in my homework. I tried to throw the marble away, but it always came back—once I found it in my shoe, another time floating in my bathwater. Desperate, I took it to the town museum’s old well and dropped it in. For a week, everything was quiet.

Then I found the marble in my breakfast cereal. And that night, I woke to see a pale boy standing at the foot of my bed. He had empty eye sockets, and he was holding the marble. He whispered, ‘You don’t want to play anymore?’ I screamed, and he vanished, but the marble fell to the floor, rolling toward me. It stopped at my foot. I picked it up, and I could see a face inside—my own, screaming silently.

I finally understood: Marcus wasn’t a ghost of a child. He was a trickster, a demon that fed on fear and loneliness. The marble was his prison, and I had let him out. Now, every time I close my eyes, I hear his voice. He’s not in the marble anymore; he’s inside me. And he’s planning to give me to someone else.