The Glass Marble Collector

On a rain-slicked August evening in 2007, I signed the lease for the Maplehurst Apartments, unit 3B. The building was a squat, soot-stained brick relic from the 1970s, wedged between a laundromat that hummed with perpetual vibration and a shuttered bakery whose ovens still smelled faintly of burnt sugar on humid nights. My sister, Delia, her husband, Marcus, and their two kids, Lily (who had just turned four) and Ben (a cautious two-year-old), moved in with me after their house was condemned due to faulty wiring. For the first few weeks, the only oddity was a persistent odor in the hallway near the utility closet—a mix of wet copper and rotten marigolds. Delia swore it was the pipes. I tried not to think about it.

Lily, being the imaginative sort, soon announced that she had a new friend. ‘His name is Pender,’ she said one evening, her tiny fingers tracing patterns on the grimy kitchen linoleum. I asked where Pender lived. She pointed at the ceiling. ‘In the attic, but he comes down when I call him.’ Ben, who was barely talking, would sometimes stare at empty corners and giggle. Delia chalked it up to kids being kids. Marcus, ever the rational one, said kids latch onto odd things when their routine is upset. I wasn’t so sure. There were times when I’d walk past Lily’s room and hear her conversing with the air, her tone respectful, almost subservient.

As September bled into October, Lily’s behavior took a sharp turn. She refused to go to the playground in the courtyard, screaming that the swings ‘hurt the sky.’ She wouldn’t watch her favorite cartoon about talking animals—every time it came on, she’d cover her ears and whimper, ‘Pender doesn’t like the colors.’ Even her prized collection of glass marbles, which she’d brought from the old house, was abandoned. She’d pack them into her sock drawer and not touch them. Delia grew worried. We tried to coax her to play, but Lily would only cry, her eyes darting to the corners of the room, as if afraid to be caught enjoying herself. One night, I found her sitting on the bathroom floor, perfectly still, staring at the tiled wall. When I asked what was wrong, she said, ‘Pender wants to see you.’

A week later, the air in the apartment grew thick. Marcus complained of migraines. Delia said she felt a cold spot in the hallway that smelled of old pennies. I, too, began to feel an eerie presence, especially at night. I’d lie awake in my twin bed, listening to the pipes groan, and I’d sense that I was being observed. I tried to dismiss it as an overactive imagination, but the feeling was too strong, too specific. It was like someone was hulking just beyond my line of sight. I took to wearing socks to bed because the floor felt clammy.

One Thursday, at 2:47 AM, I was jolted awake by the sensation of cold air drifting across my face. I lay rigid, my heart hammering. My room was dimly lit by the moon through the slats of the blinds. At the foot of my bed, a figure stood with its back to me. It was tall, gaunt, wearing a shapeless gray coat. It was staring out my window at the vacant lot across the street. I thought it was a burglar. I opened my mouth to scream, but my throat seized. Then the figure turned its head—and its eyes were red, two polished garnets set in a sallow face. They glowed faintly even in the dimness, and they fixed on me with a terrible, ancient sadness. The figure held up a hand; I saw it was clutching one of Lily’s glass marbles, a green one with a swirl of yellow. It made a faint clinking sound as it rolled the marble between its fingers. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, it dissolved into the shadows.

I scrambled out of bed and fled to the living room, where I curled on the sofa, shaking, until dawn. I didn’t sleep. When Delia came out with the kids, I told her what I’d seen. She paled, but said, ‘It was a waking dream, you’re exhausted.’ I wanted to believe her. But then Lily padded over, her small hand on my knee, and said, in a clear, quiet voice, ‘Pender really likes your room. He says it has the best view of the marbles.’ I felt goosebumps rise on my arms. I looked up at the ceiling, and for a moment, I could swear I heard a faint clink from above—like glass knocking against glass. And I knew, with a certainty that chilled me to the bone, that I had opened a door to something that had come to stay, and that Lily was its reluctant courier.