The Amber Hour

The first time I touched the planchette, I expected to feel a cold draft or a static charge. Instead, it was just plastic under my fingertips, slick with a faint sheen of sweat from my own palm. My cousin, Delia, had set up the board on the glass-top table in her sunroom, which felt wrong—too bright, too sterile for what we were attempting. She drew the curtains anyway, and the afternoon sun filtered through the beige cloth, casting everything in a sickly amber glow.

‘We’ll just ask a few questions, see if anything happens,’ she said, her voice steady, but I could see her knuckles whitening as she placed her hand on the planchette. I nodded, not trusting my own voice. The board was new, bought from a thrift store that smelled of mothballs and old paper. The letters were painted in a faded gold, almost illegible in the dim light.

‘Is there anyone here with us?’ Delia asked, and the planchette lurched under our fingers, moving with a jerk that was too deliberate for either of us. It slid to ‘YES’ with a dry scrape on the glass. I looked at Delia, and she gave a short, nervous laugh. ‘Okay, that’s something. Let’s ask another.’

‘Are you friendly?’ I managed, my throat tight. The planchette moved again, faster this time, to ‘NO’. A cold knot formed in my stomach. This wasn’t the playful skepticism I’d imagined. There was an intention in the movement, a weight that seemed to press down on our hands.

‘What’s your name?’ Delia asked, forcing a lightness she didn’t feel. The planchette traced a series of letters, stopping at each one with a click: ‘L-I-S-I-V-U-R’. I stared at the word, feeling the wrongness of it, as if the name itself was a stone dropped into still water, sending ripples of dread through the room.

‘Do you have a message for us?’ I asked, my voice barely a whisper. The planchette moved again, spelling out ‘G-E-D-C-G’. I tried to make sense of it, but it was gibberish. Delia frowned. ‘Maybe it’s an acronym? Or a code?’

‘Where did you die?’ I said, regretting it instantly. The planchette swung violently to ‘H’ then ‘G’, and then the planchette lifted off the board with a sudden force that made both of us gasp. It clattered onto the glass top and slid to the corner, as if pushed by an unseen hand. The air turned cold, and the amber light seemed to thicken, making it hard to breathe.

Delia grabbed the planchette and slammed it on ‘GOODBYE’ before either of us could speak. The board felt dead under our fingers, no resistance, no pull. We sat there in silence, the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen the only sound. The test was over. We had received answers, but they were incoherent, like a radio picking up fragments of a distant, broken transmission.

Fifteen minutes later, we tried again. I don’t know why we didn’t stop. Curiosity, maybe, or a dark need to understand what we had just contacted. We repositioned the planchette, and this time, the movements were fluid, almost eager. The spirit that came through called itself Mara. It was surprisingly articulate, answering our questions with clarity and a disarming warmth. It told us of its love for the old magnolia tree in the backyard, of a childhood spent chasing fireflies. It even laughed when Delia asked if it liked our favorite songs. It felt… real. And comforting.

But as we said goodbye, as we watched the planchette glide to the corner, I saw something that has haunted me ever since. On the glass table, where the board had been, there was a ring of condensation, like the mark of a glass that had been chilled and set down. But it wasn’t the outline of a glass. It was the outline of a hand, with long, thin fingers pressed flat against the surface, and from the center of that palm, a tiny amber drop of what looked like resin. I touched it, and it was warm. And it smelled of desert sand and something ancient.

That was the night I started to see the amber hands in my periphery—at the edge of the bathroom mirror, under the bed, moving just out of sight. The entity we contacted that night was not Mara. It was the creature behind the veil that had worn the name like a mask. And it had followed me home from that sunroom, a parasite of warmth in a world that had grown suddenly cold. I never told Delia, but I know she feels it too. We never saw the amber hour again without a chill running down our spines, because we know that’s when it watches, waiting for us to invite it back.