The Amber Collector

The summer I turned eleven, the world ended and began again in the same breath. We were living in a town that time forgot, a place called Vestervik, where the forest pressed against the back fences and the lake breathed mist in the early hours. Our house was a blue cottage with a sagging porch, not the yellow one I remembered from before the accident, but after my father’s heart gave out on the living room rug, my mother couldn’t bear to stay in the old place. So we moved to the edge of the woods, where the trees whispered secrets I didn’t yet understand.

It was my teacher, Mrs. Halvorsen, who first noticed the dark circles under my mother’s eyes. She called me to her desk one afternoon, her voice soft as a moth’s wing, and asked how Mum was doing. I said fine, because that’s what children say, but she gave me a stack of magazines wrapped in brown paper, tied with twine. ‘Give these to your mother,’ she said, her eyes strangely serious. ‘They might help her make sense of things.’

I forgot about the bundle for days. It sat on the kitchen table like a forgotten fruit, and one rainy afternoon, with Mum asleep on the couch and my baby brother in his cot, I untied the twine. The magazines were not filled with recipes or celebrity gossip. They were called things like ‘The Veil’ and ‘Beyond the Living’ and ‘Spirit Guide Quarterly.’ The pages were covered in grainy photographs of orbs, testimonies of near-death experiences, and instructions on how to communicate with the dead. I was too young, but I couldn’t stop reading. I felt a pull, a fascination that lodged in my chest like a splinter.

One article described a phenomenon called ‘the Amber Light’—a state where the souls of the recently departed lingered, trapped in a warm, honey-colored glow, unable to move on until they ‘unspool’ their unfinished business. It said that children, with their innocence, could sometimes see these lights. I didn’t believe it, but that night, I couldn’t sleep. I tiptoed to the window and saw, at the edge of the forest, a flicker of gold among the trees. My heart hammered. I blinked, and it was gone.

The next morning, I went into the woods. The forest was different after a storm; the roots were like gnarled fingers, and the moss seemed to glow with a viscous green. I followed a path I’d never seen before, and after a while, I found a clearing. In the center, a single birch tree stood white as bone, and at its base, a small jar—amber-colored glass, dusty, with a cork stopper. I didn’t touch it at first, but the memory of the magazine image was vivid: the jar in the picture was identical. I picked it up, and the world tilted. I saw a flash of a man with a kind face, and I knew, instantly, it was my father. He was speaking, but I couldn’t hear him. He repeated one word over and over: ‘Unspool.’

I shoved the jar in my pocket and ran home. I hid it in the back of my closet, behind my winter boots. But the visions didn’t stop. Every night, I dreamed of my father standing in a field of amber grass, his mouth moving soundlessly. And every day, the jar grew warmer to the touch, as if it were alive.

One evening, I took the jar out and held it in my palms. The amber seemed to swirl, and a voice filled my head, not auditory but felt like a cold hand on the back of my neck: ‘Let me out.’ It was my father’s voice, desperate. I tried to pull the cork, but it wouldn’t budge. I panicked and threw the jar against the wall, expecting it to shatter, but it ricocheted off without a scratch, cracking a corner of the plaster.

My mother heard the crash. She came to my room, her eyes hollow from grief and sleeplessness. She saw the jar on the floor, the amber glowing faintly in the dim light. Her face went pale as paper. ‘Where did you get that?’ she whispered. I started to explain, but she cut me off, her voice trembling: ‘Your father… he collected these. He said they were traps—for souls that had lost their way. He was obsessed. He thought he could help them, but it killed him.’

I stared at her, not understanding. She knelt down and picked up the jar, cradling it like a living thing. ‘He would go out at night with his own jars, searching for the amber lights. He said he had to ‘unspool’ them, to free them. But one night, he brought home a light that didn’t want to be free. It fought back. It took him over, and it killed him. I’ve been living in fear that it would come for us.’

Suddenly, the jar grew unbearably hot in her hands. She dropped it, and it shattered. A beam of amber light shot out, filling the room. I saw shapes—dozens of them—wispy forms of men and women, children, all with hollow eyes. They swirled around my mother, and her face contorted in pain. ‘Help me’ she cried, but her voice was drowned by a chorus of whispers: ‘Unspool… unspool…’

I grabbed the largest shard of glass, not caring that it cut my hand. I held it up, and the light seemed to pulse. I remembered the magazine instructions: ‘To unspool, you must guide the soul to its final memory, then let go.’ I focused on my father’s face, the last time I saw him, his eyes wide, collapsing. But there was another memory—a loving one, from earlier that day. He was laughing, lifting me onto his shoulders, spinning me around in the garden. I let that memory wash over me, and I screamed, ‘Go back!’ The light coalesced into a single point, and then it exploded outward, a shockwave of warmth that knocked me to the floor.

When I opened my eyes, the room was quiet. My mother was breathing, but she seemed older, more tired. The amber shards were gone, but the floor was stained with a dark residue that looked like dried honey. I never told anyone what happened. We moved again, away from Vestervik, and we never spoke of the jar or the lights. But sometimes, in the deep of night, I feel a warmth on my toes, and I know the amber light is still out there, waiting, hunting for those who can see it. I’m not afraid. I’m a collector now, just like my father. And I know how to set them free.

But the one thing I never found was the jar that held my father’s soul. I think it’s still in the forest, buried under the birch tree, its amber glass glowing in the dark, waiting for a child who is too curious, too brave, too lost to resist. And when that child finds it, they’ll learn that some lights are better left unspooled.