The Glass Walker’s Table

In the coastal city of Port Moraine, the winter of 1923 had been brutal. The harbor, a natural crescent carved by ancient glaciers, had always been a source of pride and commerce, but after the Great War, it had become a place of grief. On a foggy November morning, two vessels—one a munitions freighter, the other a Belgian relief ship—collided in the narrows. The resulting blast, a cataclysm that shattered windows thirty miles inland, obliterated the North End and sent a tsunami surging through the streets. Thousands died, and the city, once vibrant, was left with a scar that never healed.

I was twenty-two when I took the job at The Anchor’s Rest, a restaurant that occupied a former mortuary and, briefly, a makeshift morgue for the victims of the blast. The building was a grim, three-story Victorian with a gabled roof and a foundation that seemed to sink into the damp earth. Inside, the walls were paneled in dark oak, and the air always carried a faint, medicinal smell, like antiseptic and old flowers. I worked as a dishwasher, buried in the basement kitchen, where the heat from the steamers clung to my skin and the clatter of plates was a constant drumbeat.

My only respite was the ten-minute break I took each night, leaning against the back door that faced the alley. To my left, a narrow window—a stained-glass depiction of a lighthouse keeper—was set into the brick wall. The glass was warped with age, and in the flickering gaslight, the keeper’s face seemed to shift. One night, I noticed a figure in the window, not the painted keeper, but a man in a heavy overcoat, his face pressed against the glass from the inside. I assumed it was a reflection, but when I stepped closer, the figure moved, turning its head to follow me. I froze, and then it raised a hand, pressed its palm to the glass, and left a smear of condensation that lingered for a full minute.

I told my supervisor, a gruff old cook named Elias, who laughed and said, ‘That’s just the building settling, lad. Or maybe the ghost of a fisherman who drowned in the harbor. They say he still walks the tide lines, looking for his lost nets.’ But the next night, I saw it again. This time, the figure was closer to the window, its face pale and hollow-eyed, its mouth moving as if speaking words I couldn’t hear. I pressed my own hand to the glass, and through the cold, I felt a vibration, like a distant hum. I pulled away, and the figure disappeared, but a single drop of condensation rolled down the pane, as if it had wept.

Over the following weeks, the encounters grew more frequent, and more disturbing. The figure—I started calling him ‘the Watcher’—would appear whenever I was alone near the window, always on the inside, always pressing against the glass. Its features became clearer: a thin man with a scar across his jaw, his eyes dark and mournful. I learned from an old dockworker that the window had been salvaged from a church that had been destroyed in the blast. The church’s bell tower had collapsed onto a row of houses, and among the victims was a man named Silas, who had been a glassblower. He had been working on a new window for the church, a memorial to those lost at sea, when the explosion came. The window he was crafting was still in his workshop, and somehow, it had survived, encased in the frame of the very building that now stood on the site.

One night, driven by a compulsion I couldn’t name, I decided to trace the window’s origin. I found the remains of the old church’s foundation, now a weed-choked lot, and in the rubble, I discovered a fragment of stained glass, the same cobalt blue as the keeper’s coat. As I held it, I felt a surge of cold, and I heard a whisper—not in my ears, but in my mind: ‘They took my eyes. I see only through glass.’ That’s when I understood: the figure wasn’t a ghost with a grudge; it was a trapped consciousness, bound to the glass by the force of the blast. It had been a man who died as he was creating beauty, and now it was doomed to watch the world from behind a pane, forever separated from touch.

I returned to the restaurant, and that night, I approached the window with a strange reverence. I placed my hand flat against it, and the Watcher did the same, our palms aligning. I felt a warmth, a pulse, and then a faint cracking sound. I looked down and saw a hairline fracture running through the glass, starting at the point where our hands met. I stepped back, and the crack spread, spider-webbing across the entire window. Then, with a sigh that seemed to come from the glass itself, the figure faded, and the window darkened. The next morning, the glass was clear, unblemished, and the keeper’s face was gone, replaced by a simple, plain pane. I never saw the Watcher again, but I often find myself running my fingers over the smooth surface, wondering if I had freed it or merely transferred its curse. The restaurant closed years ago, but I still pass by that alley, and I notice that the new owners have replaced the window with a mirror. And sometimes, when the fog rolls in, I see my own reflection, but it moves a half-second too late.