The Amber Figure

The autumn of 1987 was a wet one in the hills of western Pennsylvania, and the gravel road that wound past the old Hemlock Hollow cemetery had turned to mud. On a night when the fog rolled in thick as wool, Marta Voss was driving home from her shift at the county hospital, her mind still humming with the beep of monitors and the smell of antiseptic. Her headlights cut a pale tunnel through the darkness, revealing the twisted branches of the roadside trees, their leaves already stripped by an early frost.

As she rounded a sharp bend, she saw it: a figure hovering a few feet above the ground, just beyond the rusted iron gate of the cemetery. It was a woman, old and bent, wrapped in a faded shawl that seemed to glow with a sickly amber light. Her face was a hollow mask of wrinkles, and her eyes were two black pits. She floated not with a ghostly grace but with a stiff, jerking motion, as if she were being dragged by an invisible force. Her arm was extended, one gnarled finger pointing directly at Marta.

Marta’s foot slammed on the brake, the car skidding to a halt in the mud. She stared, her breath fogging the windshield, her heart hammering against her ribs. The figure did not move, only that finger, unwavering. Then, slowly, the woman’s mouth opened in a soundless scream, and she began to drift sideways, passing through the fence as if it were not there, and disappeared into the dark woods beyond. Marta sat there for what felt like hours, her hands gripping the wheel until her knuckles went white. When she finally drove on, she did not look back.

The next day, she told her husband, Paul, about it. He laughed it off, blaming the fog and her exhaustion. But she couldn’t shake it. She started taking the long way home, avoiding that road entirely. Yet the image haunted her dreams: the amber light, the pointing finger, the soundless scream.

Two weeks later, Marta’s daughter, Lily, came home from school with a story. She had been walking their dog, a golden retriever named Gus, along the edge of the woods that bordered their property, when Gus stopped dead and started barking furiously at a stand of old oaks about three hundred yards away. Lily said the barking wasn’t playful or warning; it was a deep, terrified growl that she had never heard before. She tried to pull him away, but he wouldn’t budge. Then she saw it too: a faint amber glow between the trees, shifting like a heat mirage. It was just a flicker, then it was gone. Gus quieted immediately, his tail between his legs, and he refused to walk past that spot ever again.

Marta felt a chill race down her spine. She recognized the description all too well. That night, she couldn’t sleep. She lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, her mind racing. The next morning, she decided to investigate the spot where Lily had seen the glow. She put on her boots and took Gus with her, hoping his presence would give her courage. The woods were damp and still, the ground carpeted with wet leaves. When they reached the old oaks, Gus began to whine, pressing against her leg. There, at the base of the largest tree, she saw it: a tarnished metal box, half buried in the earth, its lid slightly ajar.

Marta knelt down and pried it open. Inside, wrapped in oilcloth, was a leather-bound journal, its pages yellowed and brittle. She opened it carefully. The handwriting was spidery, in faded brown ink that must have been a hundred years old. It belonged to a woman named Agnes Hollis, who had lived on this land in the late 1800s. As Marta read, the story unfolded: Agnes had been a midwife, a healer, respected by the community. But one winter, a child she delivered was born with a terrible deformity, and the townsfolk, in their ignorance, accused her of witchcraft. They dragged her into the woods, bound her hands and feet, and left her to freeze to death. Her last words, written in the journal, were a curse: ‘Let the one who bears witness to my suffering be marked, so that they shall never find peace until they set my spirit free.’

Marta shuddered. The journal recounted how Agnes had hidden it, hoping that someone would find it and give her a proper burial—her body had never been recovered. The final entry read: ‘My bones lie beneath the oak that shelters the first flower of spring. Bury me in consecrated ground, and my shade will be quiet.’ Marta looked around. At the base of the tree, a small patch of early-blooming crocuses, out of season, pushed through the dead leaves. She knew what she had to do.

That weekend, she and Paul dug beneath the oak. They found the skeleton, still wrapped in the tattered remains of a shawl, the jaw open in a silent scream. They carefully collected the bones and reburied them in the small churchyard of St. Andrew’s, with a proper ceremony and a headstone inscribed ‘Agnes Hollis, Beloved Healer.’ As the priest said the final prayers, Marta felt a weight lift from her shoulders. That night, she slept soundly for the first time in weeks, with no dreams of amber light or pointing fingers.

But the following day, as she drove past the cemetery, she saw a figure standing by the gate. It was Agnes, but now she was translucent, a pale, serene woman, her hand raised not in accusation but in blessing. She nodded once, and then she dissolved into the mist. Marta smiled, feeling a sense of closure. She thought the curse had been lifted.

Yet, as she drove on, she glanced in her rearview mirror and saw that the amber light had returned—not at the cemetery, but deep in the woods, moving parallel to the road. And this time, it was not a single figure. There were two: one pointing at her, and another, smaller, pointing back at the woods. Marta’s blood ran cold. She realized that the curse was not broken; it had only found a new host. The curse had passed to her daughter, who had also seen the glow. And in the woods, a new journal was waiting to be found, with a new name written in its pages. Marta’s own name.