The Measure of Amber

I was twelve, in the summer of ’86, and the heat had made that particular afternoon a swamp of lazy air and droning flies. My grandmother’s house, a creaking Victorian relic on the edge of the salt flats, was our annual refuge from the city. The house itself was a labyrinth of dusty rooms, each furnished with antiques that held the memory of a hundred years of her family’s secrets.

I had been napping in the guest room, a small chamber at the end of the hall that faced the western sun. The curtains were thin linen, and the afternoon light had turned the room the color of weak tea. Without warning, I was yanked from sleep as if a hand had gripped my chest. I sat bolt upright, heart hammering. The room was dim, the sun having finally slipped below the horizon, leaving a bruised purple afterglow.

And that’s when I saw it. A figure, small and slight like my younger cousin, Lucas, who was nine, darted across the foot of my bed. It moved with a jerky, unnatural speed, and disappeared behind the heavy curtain that darkend the alcove by the window. My breath caught. The fabric billowed slightly, and then a face emerged from the fold. It was Lucas’s face, but stretched, the grin too wide, the eyes glinting with a wet, oily light. It wasn’t alive. It was like a mask made of wax someone had left too close to a radiator.

I called out, my voice thin and reedy. ‘Lucas, that’s not funny. Get out!’ I threw a pillow at the curtain, which fell limp, revealing nothing. The silence that followed was filled by the ticking of the grandfather clock downstairs and the rustle of something in the wall. My skin prickled. I didn’t dare move.

I counted my own heartbeats until I could bear it no longer, then I lunged for the switch on the wall. Light flooded the room, blinding me for a moment. When my vision cleared, the alcove was empty. The curtain hung straight, and the window behind it was shut and latched from the inside. I forced myself to walk to the alcove and ran my hand over the fabric, feeling nothing but the rough cotton. I half-expected to find a trapdoor, but there was only the peeling wallpaper.

I left the room and walked down the hallway to Lucas’s room, my legs feeling like they were wading through mud. He was playing with a set of toy soldiers, spread across the floor. He looked up, his face open and innocent. I asked him, ‘Were you just in my room?’ He frowned and said, ‘No, I’ve been here the whole time. Do you wanna play?’ His voice was the same as always, but I couldn’t shake the image of that grin. I told him what I saw, and he shrugged, saying, ‘Maybe it was the ghost of Grandpa. Grandpa used to play tricks like that.’

I didn’t want to think about Grandpa. Grandpa had died in this house two summers ago, in the master bedroom downstairs. My grandmother had not changed the room since. She kept his dressing gown on the chair and his slippers beside the bed, as if he might return. And that was the thing: I had never feared Grandpa. He was a kind, rough-handed man who taught me card tricks. But what I saw in that curtain was not a kindly ghost. It was something that had borrowed a face.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in the dark, staring at the curtain, which had become a veil of menace. I must have drifted off, because the next thing I knew, it was the wee hours, and the moon was high. The room was silver and shadow. And there was a hum. A low, mechanical hum, like an old refrigerator, but it was coming from under my bed. I slid to the edge and peered over, and what I saw stole the air from my lungs. There was a small, round object, about the size of a clock, covered in a dust of what looked like amber resin. It glowed faintly, casting the shadow of something with too many legs on the floor. Then it blinked. It had a lens in its center, and it blinked at me.

I scrambled back, hitting the headboard. The hum turned into a chittering, and the creature under the bed skittered out, revealing itself to be not a machine but a thing of chitin and membrane, like a beetle swollen to the size of a cat, with a single compound eye that pulsed with amber light. It moved with a haste that was both mechanical and organic. It darted to the door, which was slightly ajar, and squeezed through the gap, leaving a faint trail of glowing dust.

I didn’t hesitate. I threw off the covers and followed. The hallway was dark, but the creature’s glow lit the way, bobbing down the stairs. It led me to my grandfather’s room. The door was open. I stepped inside, and the air was thick with the smell of camphor and something else, like ozone. The creature was on the dresser, next to the framed photo of my grandfather. And in the mirror behind it, I saw a reflection that was not mine. It was a boy, Lucas’s boy, but his eyes were empty, and a smile split his face from ear to ear, too wide, showing too many teeth.

‘We’ve been waiting,’ the reflection said, my own voice but twisted. ‘Your grandfather tried to measure it, but he was too slow. Now it’s your turn.’

I turned to run, but the door slammed shut. The creature on the dresser let out a high-pitched keen, and the reflection in the mirror stepped forward, through the silvered glass, into the room. I felt its cold hands on my neck, and I screamed. But no one heard. The next morning, my grandmother found me in the hall, shivering, babbling about amber and reflections. She didn’t doubt me. She said, ‘Our family has kept that thing in the attic for generations. Your grandfather tried to destroy it, and it killed him. I thought it was dormant, but it sensed you.’

I am thirty-five now. I still have night terrors. And in my attic, in a box lined with lead, rests the amber core, humming softly. I check on it every day. And I swear, sometimes, I see a small face pressed against the inside of the lid, smiling. But it doesn’t look like Lucas anymore. It looks like me.