The Amber Window

The first time I saw the amber windowpane was the last time I ever visited Marisol’s house. We’d been friends for two years, swapping mix CDs and comic books in the pale November light of our school hallway, but I’d never stepped foot inside her home. She told me it was old, older than the town itself, and that it had been in her family for generations. The only thing I knew for sure was that her family was the kind that kept secrets, secrets even from each other.

It was the week before winter break, and I had a bundle of gifts wrapped in newspaper: a set of shimmering nail polish I found at the drugstore and a bootleg Eminem CD I’d burned myself. My stepmother, Diane, pulled into the gravel drive of a three-story Victorian that sagged like a tired animal. The porch boards were warped, and a single window on the third floor glowed amber in the fading afternoon, as if a lantern had been lit behind the glass.

Nobody answered the bell. I knocked again, the sound swallowed by the thick silence. The door was unlocked, so I pushed it open, the smell of dust and old wood rushing out. I called Marisol’s name. A faint answer came from deep inside: ‘In the kitchen.’ I followed the sound past a parlor cluttered with lace and moth-eaten furniture, where a grandfather clock stood stopped at 3:33. There, Marisol sat at a scarred pine table, sorting cookies onto a tin plate. She looked up, surprised, but her smile was strained. ‘I told you I’d see you tomorrow,’ she said.

I placed the gifts on the table, and she unwrapped them with a careful precision, as if each piece of tape was a puzzle. When she saw the nail polish, she didn’t react. Then she picked up the CD, turned it over, and set it down. ‘Thank you,’ she said, but her eyes were on the window behind me. Through the yellowed glass, I saw the shape of a small face—not a child’s, but something sleek and wrong—pressed against the pane from outside. Then it vanished. I spun, but there was nothing but the wind rattling the bare branches.

‘Don’t stand there,’ Marisol said, rising quickly. ‘Come upstairs, I’ll show you my room.’ I followed her up a staircase that groaned under our feet. The walls were lined with faded portraits, all of the same family, their eyes following me. At the top, a hallway stretched dark, with doors on either side. She led me into a room with a canopy bed and a window that looked out onto the dried-up garden. On the windowsill, there was a small glass jar filled with amber-colored liquid. ‘My great-grandmother’s perfume,’ she said. ‘She left it for me.’ Her hand shook as she pointed to the jar. ‘Don’t touch it.’

A door at the end of the hall creaked open. Marisol stiffened. ‘That’s the attic. There’s nothing up there,’ she said, but her voice had changed, become flat. I could hear a dragging sound, like something heavy being pulled across a floor. ‘We should go back downstairs,’ she said, and grabbed my arm too hard. As we passed the amber window on the landing, I saw the face again, this time definitely inside the house, a reflection in the glass behind me. But when I turned, there was no one.

We sat in the kitchen, drinking lukewarm tea. I asked her about the family in the portraits. She said, ‘They’re the Grangers. They built this house. They’ve always been here.’ She paused, then added, ‘They don’t like guests.’ I laughed, but she didn’t. The clock began to chime 4 o’clock, but it hadn’t chimed in years. At the fourth stroke, the lights flickered, and every door in the house slammed at once.

I decided to leave. Marisol walked me to the porch, her face pale. ‘You have to forget you ever came here,’ she whispered. ‘They remember you now. They’ll watch for you.’ I stepped into the cold, and the door closed behind me. As my stepmother drove away, I looked back. In the amber window, three figures stood side by side, their faces pressed against the glass. They watched me until the house disappeared around the bend.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the window, and the faces. The next day at school, Marisol was absent. She never returned. The town said her family moved away suddenly, but the house sat empty, its windows dark. I tried to research the Grangers but found only a single record: a family who died in a fire in 1901. The fire started in the attic, allegedly in a room with an amber window.

Years later, when I was 30, I drove past the old road. The house was still there, leaning further into neglect. The amber window was glowing, softly, like a lantern. I knew with a certainty that made my blood cold: they weren’t dead. They were waiting. And they remembered me. They had always remembered me. I have never told this story to anyone until now. But I know that when I finally close my eyes for the last time, I will see that amber glow, and I’ll know that the Grangers have come to finish what they started on a gray December afternoon.