The Glass Marble Medium

It happened during the autumn I turned fourteen, in the little town of Harrow Creek, where the fog rolled in off the river like a slow tide and the houses hunched together as if sharing a secret. My mother had forbidden any ‘spirit boards,’ as she called them, but that only sharpened my curiosity. So when my cousin Vera and I found an old wooden board in the attic of her grandmother’s house—stained with something that looked like rust but smelled of copper—we knew we had to try it. We didn’t have a planchette, but Vera’s grandmother had a collection of marbles, and we borrowed a heavy green one that felt cold as a river stone.

We set up in Vera’s basement, a damp concrete space smelling of mothballs and old paper. A single bulb flickered from a wire, casting long shadows. We placed our fingers on the marble, which rolled easily over the painted letters. At first, nothing. Then the marble began to move in small, hesitant circles. We asked, ‘Is anyone there?’ The marble slid to ‘YES.’ I felt a chill crawl up my spine, but I told myself it was Vera pushing. She swore she wasn’t.

Over the next few evenings, the spirit called itself ‘Elspeth.’ She said she was seven years old when she died, in 1892, of a fever that ‘turned her blood to water.’ She told us about her father, a lighthouse keeper on the coast, and how she used to play on the rocks, collecting sea glass. She said she missed the ‘shiny bits.’ Our sessions grew longer. The marble moved with increasing confidence, sometimes spelling out whole sentences without pause. But one night, the tone changed. Elspeth began to describe how she truly died—not fever, but drowning. She said her father pushed her into the sea because she was ‘not his own.’

The marble stopped, then spelled out: ‘HE WATCHES.’ I asked, ‘Who watches?’ The marble flew to ‘YOU’ and then ‘BEHIND.’ We whipped around, but there was nothing. We laughed nervously, but a heavy silence settled. On the way home, I kept glancing over my shoulder, feeling a presence, a pressure like fingertips on my neck.

The next day, Vera called me in tears. She said she had found the marble shattered in her pocket, though she hadn’t touched it since the night before. And in her room, scratched into the wall above her bed, were the words: ‘NOT YOURS.’ I tried to rationalize, but when I went to her house, the scratch marks were deep and raw, as if made by actual claws. Her grandmother, who had come up to see what the fuss was, turned pale and whispered, ‘That’s the same thing that was said to your great-aunt.’

We dug through old family records. Vera’s great-aunt had disappeared in the 1920s after playing with a similar board. The official story was she ran off, but her diary, hidden in the attic, contained a final entry: ‘The marble moves by itself now. It says it wants to be whole. It says it needs a vessel. I fear it is not Elspeth.’

That night, we conducted a final session, against our better judgment. We used a new marble, a blue one. As soon as we touched it, the board spelled ‘I LIE HERE’ and then ‘UNDER THE OAK.’ Something in me snapped. I threw the board into the fireplace, but the fire died instantly, and the board didn’t burn—it just smoldered, the letters glowing like coals. Vera screamed. I looked at her, and I saw that her eyes, for a split second, were not her own—they were silver, like the inside of an oyster.

We ran to the oak tree in her backyard, a gnarled old thing. Under it, we dug. We found a small wooden box. Inside was a child’s dress, rotted to threads, and a handful of marbles—all shattered. Wrapped in a cloth was a lock of hair, and a note in faded ink: ‘The moon forgets its name. The tide remembers. So I am here.’

I don’t know what we unleashed. But after that night, I began to see things differently. Sometimes, when I look in the mirror, my reflection is a beat behind. Once, I saw a child standing in the corner of my room, dripping wet, holding a green marble. She smiled, and I felt a cold hand grip my heart.

I’m writing this now because I’ve tried to stop, but the marble always finds a way back. It appears on my pillow, in my coat pocket, even in my shoe. I have about a million questions, but I’m afraid to ask. Because now I know that some doors, once opened, don’t close. And the thing behind them is patient.

Last night, I woke to the sound of scratching. On my bedroom wall, in fresh, wet lines, were the words: ‘PICK ONE.’ I haven’t slept since. I’m telling you this because maybe someone else has heard of this—the glass marble medium—and knows how to send it back. But I’m starting to think that’s not possible. Because the marble is not a portal. It’s an eye. And it sees me. Always.