The Glass Marble Pact

We had spent the entire summer collecting strange artifacts from flea markets and abandoned lots, but the planchette we found in a rusted tin box under the porch of a condemned farmhouse felt different. The wood was blackened, etched with symbols that didn’t match any alphabet I knew. My friends, Jenna and Priya, were skeptics, but I felt a pull, a cold hum when my fingers traced the grooves. We decided to test it in the cellar of that farmhouse, despite the NO TRESPASSING signs and the way the air thickened as we approached.

We sat in a circle on the damp concrete floor, a single candle flickering between us. I had read every book on the occult I could find, and I knew the rules: never use it alone, never in a place that felt ‘wrong’, and never, ever let the planchette rest on the symbol for ‘yes’ without a clear question. But we were drunk on adrenaline and cheap wine, and Priya’s fingers were already on the planchette.

‘Who are you?’ Jenna asked, her voice a mock whisper. The planchette didn’t move. I placed my fingertips on it, feeling a faint vibration. ‘Is anyone here?’ The planchette slid to ‘Yes’ with a jerk that sent a shiver up my spine. We all laughed nervously. ‘What’s your name?’ Priya asked. The planchette spelled out ‘MARGARET.’ We looked at each other. None of us knew a Margaret.

Then the candle flickered, and the temperature dropped. The planchette began to move in frantic circles, then it spelled out: ‘YOU HOLD MY BONE.’ I stared at my hand. In my pocket was a knucklebone I had found in the same tin box, a strange artifact I had kept as a good luck charm. Jenna’s face went pale. ‘Get rid of it,’ she hissed. I threw the bone across the cellar, and it clattered in the dark. The planchette stopped.

We thought it was over. We packed up and left, the candle dying as we climbed the stairs. But that night, in my dreams, I saw a woman in a soiled Victorian dress standing at the foot of my bed, holding a glass marble. She said, ‘You have taken what is mine. You must return it to the earth where the roots drink deep.’ I woke up gasping.

The next day, we went back to the farmhouse, determined to bury the bone. But the cellar door was sealed with fresh cement. We tried to pry it open, but the tools we brought felt useless. I looked down and saw the glass marble in the dirt, exactly like the one in my dream. I picked it up, and it was warm, almost pulsing.

That’s when we heard the whispers. Not from the marshy ground, but from inside our own heads. ‘Return the bone,’ they said, ‘or stay with me.’ Jenna screamed, ‘We can’t get in!’ Priya was already backing away, her eyes wide. I looked at the marble, and I saw my reflection, not mine, but the woman’s, smiling.

We ran. We drove back to the city, but the whispers followed. Every night, the woman appeared, closer each time. She held the marble, and I knew it was the price for the bone. I tried to throw the marble away, but it always found its way back to my pocket. I even tried to break it, but it was harder than diamond.

On the third night, the woman didn’t appear. I thought we were free. But the morning after, Priya called me in tears. She had found a bone in her bed, a human one, and a note in old handwriting: ‘One for each.’ I rushed to Jenna’s apartment, but she was gone. Her landlord said she had left in the middle of the night, mumbling about roots and the earth.

I know now that the bone we took was the woman’s finger, and the marble was her eye, lost when she was buried alive. She wants them both, and she will not stop until we are all in the ground. I have the marble, but I don’t know where the bone is. I’m writing this as a warning: if you find a rusted tin box with a black planchette, a knucklebone, and a glass marble, do not touch them. Do not even look at them. Because she will find you, and she will ask you to hold her bone, and you will not be able to refuse.

I have buried the marble in a potted plant, hoping that counts as ‘earth where the roots drink deep.’ But the plant has started to grow thorns, and the marble glows through the soil at night. I hear her voice in the rustling leaves: ‘You have until the first frost.’ I don’t know what happens after that, but I fear it’s not a trick.

If you hear a whisper that sounds like your own name, and you find a glass marble in your coat pocket, run. Go to a church, a mosque, a synagogue, anywhere holy. But don’t stay still. She is patient, and she has waited a hundred years to reclaim what was taken. And we have given her three new graves to dig.