The Glass Marble

When we first moved into the old farmhouse, the realtor said it had ‘character.’ I thought that meant creaky floorboards and drafty windows, not the kind of character that watches you while you sleep. Our daughter, Lily, was four then. She would stand at the top of the stairs, staring at the landing, and say, ‘The man with the glass eye is waiting.’ We laughed it off, thinking she had an imaginary friend.

The trouble started with small things. A pair of scissors vanished from the kitchen counter only to appear in the linen closet. My glasses would migrate from the nightstand to the bathroom sink. But the most unsettling was the marble. A single, clear glass marble with a swirl of red inside. It would show up in the most unexpected places: inside a shoe, in the fridge, once balanced precariously on the edge of the bathtub. We never saw it move.

I worked from home in a study that overlooked the back garden. Often, I’d feel a cold draft, or see a flicker of movement from the corner of my eye. One afternoon, I felt a tap on my shoulder. No one was there. My husband, Tom, heard his name called when he was alone in the basement. Our son, James, would cry in his crib, claiming someone was ‘breathing in his ear.’

Then the real terror began. One evening, as I was washing dishes, a framed photo of my parents flew off the mantel, shattered against the floor, and the glass shards arranged themselves in a rough circle around a single marble. We didn’t speak; we just stared in disbelief. That night, I saw it in the hallway—a massive, dark silhouette that blotted out the nightlight, its head nearly touching the ceiling. It moved, fluid and wrong, gliding from the bathroom into the wall and vanishing.

We hired a psychic, who told us to look for the source. We found a hidden compartment in the attic floor. Inside, there was a child’s shoe, a faded photograph of a boy with a glass eye, and a diary. The boy’s name was Elias. He had lived here in the 1920s, and he died of a fever at age nine. The diary spoke of a ‘friend’ who lived in the walls, who made him play games of hide and seek. The final entry read: ‘He wants my other eye. He’ll take it when I sleep.’

We tried to burn the diary, but the flames turned green and the pages remained intact. The marble appeared in the ashes, hot to the touch. That night, we heard a child’s laughter echo through the halls, followed by the sound of marble rolling on hardwood. In the morning, we found another marble, this one with a fleck of gold. The dark figure now stood in our bedroom doorway every night, watching. It no longer hid in the shadows. It let us see its hollow, empty eye sockets.

We knew then, we could never leave. Every time we packed a bag, the bags would appear in the attic, unpacked. The doors and windows would only open when the entity willed it. We were part of the house now. And the marbles, they were his collection. Soon, he would come for our other eyes.