The Amber Room

My first memory of the house on Mulberry Lane is the smell of damp plaster and old wood, a scent that clung to the walls like a second skin. I was six, not five, when we moved in, in the autumn of 1981, the year the leaves turned early and the sky seemed perpetually bruised. We had come from a cramped apartment in Tampa, where the walls were thin and the neighbors’ arguments were my lullabies. My parents, Rosa and Miguel, had saved for years to buy this house, a grand old Victorian that had seen better decades. It stood at the end of a gravel drive, its porch sagging like a tired smile, its windows dark and unblinking.

From the start, I felt watched. Not by anyone visible, but by the house itself, as if it had eyes in its peeling wallpaper and creaking floorboards. My bedroom was at the top of the stairs, a narrow room with a single window that overlooked the overgrown backyard. The previous owners had left behind a few pieces of furniture, including a heavy oak dresser with a cracked mirror. I was forbidden to touch it, but I often stood before it, tracing the patterns in the wood with my fingers. One day, I noticed a faint outline on the wall behind the dresser, as if a large painting had once hung there. The wallpaper was slightly darker, a rectangle of faded roses against the muted gold.

I asked my mother about it, but she dismissed it, saying the house was just old and full of quirks. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that the rectangle was a door, a portal to something just beyond my sight. That night, I dreamed of a woman in a yellow dress, her face hidden by a wide-brimmed hat, standing in a field of sunflowers. She was calling someone, but I couldn’t hear her voice. When I woke, the dresser had been moved, pushed aside as if by a great force, and the rectangle was now a gaping hole in the wall, revealing a hollow space. Inside, I found a small, leather-bound journal, its pages brittle and yellowed.

The journal belonged to a woman named Helen, who had lived in the house in the 1950s. She wrote about her garden, her husband, and the constant sense of unease she felt, as if the house were trying to tell her something. She mentioned a room on the third floor, a room that didn’t appear on any blueprint, a room she had discovered by accident while searching for a lost cat. She described it as ‘the amber room,’ for its walls were covered with amber-colored glass panes that glowed like bottled sunlight. But she also wrote of a presence there, a whispering that grew louder each time she visited, until she could no longer bear it. The last entry was dated October 31, 1959, and read simply: ‘I have to go. It is waiting.’

I should have told my parents, but I was a child, and I was afraid they would think I was lying. Instead, I kept the journal hidden under my mattress and began to explore the house on my own. The third floor was locked, but I found a key in the kitchen drawer, a heavy brass key with an ornate bow. When I finally turned the lock and pushed open the door, the smell hit me first, a sweet, cloying odor like rotting flowers. The room was exactly as Helen had described: the walls were covered in amber glass, but the panes were cracked and dirty, and the light that came through them was murky, like looking through a jar of honey. The floor was covered in a thick layer of dust, and in the center stood a single chair, upholstered in faded yellow velvet.

I stepped inside, and the whispering began. It was not words, but a sound like the rustling of dry leaves, and it seemed to come from all directions. I felt a pressure in my ears, and the room seemed to shrink, the walls closing in. In the amber glass, I saw a reflection that was not my own. A woman with hollow eyes and a gaping mouth, her skin the color of old parchment, was staring back at me. I ran, slamming the door behind me, and I did not return to that room for weeks.

But the house knew I had trespassed. That night, I heard footsteps in the hallway, slow and deliberate, stopping outside my door. I lay in bed, frozen, as the doorknob turned slowly, but the door did not open. In the morning, my mother asked me if I had been walking in my sleep, because she had found the door to the third floor open and the key missing. I lied and said I didn’t know. But the journal was still under my mattress, and I knew I had to decode its secrets before it was too late.

The journal contained a series of dates, each corresponding to a full moon, and a phrase in Latin that I couldn’t understand. I copied it down and took it to the school library, where an elderly librarian recognized it. ‘Anima mea non sum,’ she said, her voice trembling. ‘It means, ‘I do not possess my own soul.’ It is a prayer, or a curse, used to summon something, to invite it in.’ She looked at me with concern, and I felt a chill run down my spine.

On the night of the next full moon, I crept up to the third floor, armed with the journal and a candle. The door was unlocked, as if it had been waiting for me. The room was darker than before, the amber glass almost black, and the whispering was louder, a chorus of voices that seemed to plead and threaten at once. In the center of the room, the chair was now occupied. A figure sat there, hunched and motionless, its face hidden in shadow. I could not move; I was rooted to the spot as it slowly raised its head, and I saw that it was the woman from my dream, but her face was a mask of decay, her eyes empty sockets, her mouth open in a silent scream. She pointed a bony finger at me, and the whispering became a single, clear voice: ‘You are mine.’

I fled, and I did not stop running until I reached the safety of my room. I locked the door and hid under the covers, but I could still feel her presence, pressing against the walls of my mind. The next morning, I found the journal open on my desk, and a new entry had been written in Helen’s handwriting: ‘She has returned. She will not leave until she claims another.’

I knew then that I had to destroy the amber room. But when I went to the third floor, the door was gone, replaced by a blank wall. The room had vanished, leaving only a faint outline in the wallpaper, like a scar. For weeks, I searched for it, but it was as if it had never existed. Yet the presence remained, lingering in the corners of my vision, whispering in the dead of night.

I am now an old woman, and I have returned to this house after many years, hoping to finally understand what happened. The house is derelict, condemned, but the third floor still stands, and I have found the door once more. It is open, as if awaiting me. I do not know what I will find inside, but I know that I must face her. The amber walls are gone, replaced by peeling plaster, and the chair is empty. But on the dusty floor, someone has written in ash: ‘You have come back. Now you will stay.’

I am writing this in the journal, the same one I found as a child, and I know that this will be my final entry. For I cannot leave, not anymore. She has claimed me, just as she claimed Helen, and I am bound to this house, to this room, for all eternity. If you ever find this book, do not look for the amber room. Leave this place, and never speak of it again.