The Marble Eye of Mrs. Gable

My name is Eli, and I’m thirteen. My mom and I have always had a sixth sense for things that shouldn’t exist. Most people think it’s nonsense, but after what happened at my great-aunt’s house in the fall of 2015, I knew we weren’t imagining it.

We were visiting my great-aunt Hilda in a small town called Stillwater, tucked into the hills of New Hampshire. Her house was a huge, drafty Victorian with a wraparound porch and a tower that seemed to lean just a little too far. The back room, though, was always locked. Aunt Hilda said it was filled with old junk, but the way she said it made me shiver.

One afternoon, while Aunt Hilda was napping and Mom was reading in the sunroom, I wandered upstairs. I found a key in an old china dish on the hallway table, labeled ‘Back Room – Do Not Disturb.’ Of course, I took it.

The back room was at the end of a narrow corridor, past a crooked doorframe. When I turned the key, the lock clicked with a sound like a tongue smacking. Inside, the air was thick with dust and the smell of mothballs. The room was crammed with furniture draped in white sheets, stacked like frozen ghosts. I noticed a small, ornate vanity against the far wall, its mirror covered with a heavy cloth.

I pulled the cloth off. The glass was dark, but as I leaned in, I saw my reflection – but behind me, there was a movement. I spun around, but nothing was there. Just then, I tripped over a loose floorboard and stumbled, knocking over a small marble statue of a sleeping cat. Its head cracked off, and inside the hollow base, I found a glass eye. It was a deep amber, with a tiny fleck of gold. I pocketed it before I could think.

That night, I dreamed of a woman with white hair and a long black dress, standing at the foot of my bed. She had one eye missing, and in the socket, there was that same glass eye, watching me. She whispered, ‘Return it to the garden, or I will come for yours.’

When I woke, the eye was on my pillow, staring at me. I hid it in my sock drawer, but it kept appearing in other places – in my shoe, in the bathroom sink, even in my cereal one morning. Mom noticed my jumpiness and asked what was wrong. I couldn’t tell her; I was too scared she’d think I was crazy.

Then the scratching started. Every night, from inside the walls, like fingernails on wood. And always, that whispered command: ‘Return it to the garden.’

One day, I tried to give the eye back to Aunt Hilda, but she just stared at me, her own eyes milky with cataracts. She said, ‘You’ve found her, then. Poor Mrs. Gable. She was my grandmother’s sister, you know. She lost her eye to a crow pecking it out when she was a girl. They buried her with that eye, but someone stole it from her grave years ago. She’s been restless ever since.’

I felt a chill. ‘So I need to return it to her grave?’ I asked, but Aunt Hilda shook her head. ‘No, child. She wants it in the garden, where she used to sit. That’s where she was happiest. But don’t go alone.’

That night, I couldn’t sleep. The scratching grew louder, and I saw the woman again, her empty socket dripping with something black. She reached for my face. I screamed, and Mom rushed in. She saw the eye on my pillow, glowing faintly, and she gasped. ‘Eli, where did you get that?’ I confessed everything, and to my surprise, she believed me. She said she’d seen things too, since she was a girl.

We decided to put the eye back in the garden at dawn. Just before sunrise, we slipped out the back door. The garden was a tangle of overgrown roses and tall weeds, with a stone bench near the center. As we approached, the air grew cold, and the sound of cawing crows filled the sky. Mom held my hand, trembling.

I knelt and dug a small hole at the base of the bench. As I placed the glass eye into the earth, the scratches stopped. The crows flew away, and the sun broke over the hills, warming the garden. The woman did not appear again.

But the next morning, I found a small gift on the garden bench: a perfectly smooth white pebble, shaped like an eye. I keep it on my nightstand, and sometimes, in the dark, I see a faint glint in it. I think Mrs. Gable is watching over me now, grateful that I brought her eye home. Or maybe she’s just waiting for someone else to take it.