A Season In Amber
A Paranormal Fiction Short Story
“Here you are, miss. The WQCR radio station at the corner of East Hill and Blakeville, middle-of-nowhere Vermont.”
The old bus driver leaned back to glance at his last passenger in the rearview mirror and reached over to pull the lever. The doors opened with a high-pitched creak that made her cringe every time. She stood and gathered her bags, her joints of her knees creaked almost as loud. She nodded, quietly thanked him for the ride, and descended the five steps to the pavement. Her laced Chelsea boots tapped lightly on the cement of the sidewalk, the sand and salt of the season crunched beneath every step up the short path to the dark green door. The multiple layers of paint chipped near the corners and around the dingy doorknob.
“So, this is Eden, Vermont, huh?” she muttered to herself as she reached out for the knob. She hesitated for a breath, a nameless pang of intuition. A moment of doubt freezing her hand to hover just above the knob. She glanced behind her toward the street once again. The bus had already left and was turning down another road and out of the bounds of the town.
Something felt off about the way the radio station sat at the town’s edge, when they were usually closer to the center of town. But everything about this town seemed to be veiled in a queer misalignment that was hard to pin down. It looked like a retro postcard, untouched by the passage of time, stagnating. It was the kind of town that clung to its past like an old melody stuck on repeat, like a broken record.
Shaking her head at her ruminating thoughts, she turned the knob and stepped through the threshold.
Cass left the still November evening behind her, the air crisp with the bite of late autumn giving way to the frost of winter. Suddenly, she felt grateful for the forethought of wearing fleece pants and a thick fishermen’s sweater under her jacket. Inside the station it smelled of old vinyl, a faint hint of dust, and stale coffee — but it was warm, both in temperature and color. The place was washed with tones of pumpkin orange, butter yellow, and avocado green mixed with red oak and aged brass details.
A relic from a bygone era, much like the man behind the mic.
Henry Greer had been hosting A Season in Amber for over fifty years. Cass had heard his voice in her childhood in a nearby town, crackling through her grandfather’s ’89 Ford Bronco radio on long drives home after extracurricular clubs. Now an adult, she’d taken the job as a part time night producer out of necessity. A gig to hold her over while she figured out what came next as a recent college grad. The summer internship in Boston was nice, but the bustle of a major metro gave her anxiety. The kind of anxiety she didn’t want to live with every day.
That’s why she came back to Vermont. It was quiet and calm for the most part.
It felt like home.
Except this town in particular was pretty pecular, even for rural Vermont. From the first night, something about the station felt… unnaturally preserved. As if it was a museum or a time capsule with a steady pulse of its own.
Eden itself wasn’t much different. It was a place where time dragged its heels, where the same stores sat in the same spots for decades, their signage barely fading. Where people held onto routines and habits like lifelines. Walking through Main Street felt like stepping into an old photograph. Her grandparents had quite a few old photographs from earlier generations. Mostly from the 20s, 40s and 60s. One that yellowed and frayed a bit at the edges but never truly lost colors or details.
It was almost comforting. In the same way the nostalgia of an old t-shirt or favourite childhood meal can conjure.
But this level of nostalgia was almost creepy.
Haunted.
Even the people seemed suspended in amber, with a sepia-tinted haze. Their faces strangely familiar, as if she had seen them before — not in passing, but in the exact same moment, repeated endlessly. The way Mrs. Harland at the diner wiped the counter with the same slow, circular motion every morning at opening and every evening at closing. The way the pharmacist across the street arranged bottles in the same sequence, day after day. Cass shook the feeling off as best she could, but it clung to her skin like the dust of the radio station.
Her first few shifts passed in a sleepy, predictable rhythm: screening calls and requests, monitoring audio levels, queuing up old jazz records. Henry sat in his booth speaking in that deep, measured voice and welcomed insomniacs and long-haul truckers into the folds of the night. He never used a script, never stumbled over a word. And his voice —
It was exactly the same as it had been on her grandfather’s radio ten years ago.
Twenty years ago.
She mentioned this to Edna, the station’s former producer who still stopped by every Thursday at 4pm. Edna had worked with Henry since the beginning, her fingertips stained slightly from decades of ink and reel tape. When Cass asked about Henry’s unchanging voice, Edna had only paused with a far-off gaze into the ether and heaved a long sigh.
“People like what they know, dear.”
The remark and the wistful tone confusd her even more, a deep frown creasing between her brows.
That was the thing about WQCR. The town clung to it and tuned in every night like a sacred ritual. Henry’s voice was the heartbeat of the place, his deep tenor steady and unbroken. Cass tried to dismiss the strange feeling that curled in her gut, but it only deepened when she started digging through old tapes in the archives when the calls lulled around 3 am.
The same callers. Saying the same words. Decade after decade.
That creep factor she initially sensed was deepening.
It seemed to naw at her even in the quiet moments. When getting dressed in the afternoons before heading to the station for the night shift. When she sat at the diner down the street for a quiet brunch a Sunday mornings. Or when she stood in the staff lounge to make the thrid pot of coffee for henry and herself.
It grew the more she tried to dig into what was really going on in this town.
One Friday night she played back a reel from November 1962, 1982 and 1992, then a digital recording from last week. The same woman, asking about the best places to see autumn leaves, down to the exact phrasing. The autumn leaves were pretty much already brown by mid-November this far north, so why ask such a thing now?
Although, unlike Henry, the woman’s voice appeared to age by 1982 and 1992. After 1992 she couldn;t find the woman’s call anymore. Cass assumed the woman must have passed away or gone to a nursing home, and unable to call in anymore. The same trucker, lamenting the loneliness of the road, in the same manner across three decades. The same man who called at 2:07 AM every Thursday, only to breathe softly into the receiver and clear his throat before hanging up. He plucked up the courage to call, only to have his words fail him every time.
She tried to tell herself it was a coincidence. Until she interrupted a caller mid-sentence one night and — she blinked, staring at the mic.
They didn’t notice. The voice kept going as if she’d never spoken at all. Were they deaf? Maybe it a pre-recorded show playing, and not a real person on the line.
Cass lay awake that night, staring at the ceiling of her small apartment above the old bakery. She found herself listening to the rhythmic creak of the sign outside as the wind pushed it back and forth. The rhythm lulling the unease a little. The town was so still, even in the dead of night, as if it held its breath between radio broadcasts. She thought of Henry, of the station humming with quiet electricity, of the same voices returning night after night like echoes caught in a loop.
The next evening, she found herself lingering outside his booth wavering in indecision. The ON AIR sign had gone dark, but Henry still sat in his chair, unmoving. His eyes, a pale blue reminiscent of a winter sky, flicked up to meet hers through the glass.
She stepped inside. “Henry?”
He tilted his head in an unspoken question. His eyebrow perked up, barely discernable.
“Cass?” He echoed.
His voice was warm and familiar. Exactly as it had always been.
“Can I ask you something?”
He gestured for her to sit. She hesitated before lowering herself into the chair opposite him. The quiet between them stretched long and thin, like old cassette tape unraveling.
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“This show,” she started. “It’s been running since 1944, right?”
Henry nodded. “That’s right.”
“And you’ve hosted it all that time.”
“Mm-hmm.”
She leaned forward. “You sound exactly the same in the earliest recordings as you do now.”
Henry’s lips curved into a faint smile. “I suppose I do.”
She exhaled, bracing herself. “How?”
He was silent for a long moment, considering her. Then, in that same steady, unbroken voice, he said, “Because this town needs me to do what has always been done.”
The air around them felt suddenly heavy. Cass shook her head slowly. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“Doesn’t it?” Henry leaned back in his cushioned office chair and folded his hands over his stomach. “People don’t really want change, Cass. Not deep down. They want what they know. What comforts them. I’ve been here for over fifty years because they need me to be.”
She tightened her grip on the arms of her chair to suppress a shiver.
“You’re saying the town… keeps you here?”
“In a way.” He looked at her with something like kindness, pity perhaps? “Or maybe it’s the other way around.”
Cass swallowed, her throat seemed to be drier than usual.
“And the callers? The ones repeating themselves word for word for decades?”
“They call because they’ve always called.” He shrugged. “The same voices. The same questions. A life caught in amber.”
She stared at him, waiting for a laugh, for some indication that this was a joke. Hazing-the-newbie kind of thing. Waited for him to let her in on it, whatever was going on here. But Henry only watched her with those ageless blue eyes, locked with her hazel-green gaze, as steady as the soft radio static between songs.
She couldn’t bring herself to address the pink elephant in the room: he doesn’t look his age at all. He’s been doign this for 50 years, since his 30s. He should be in his 80s sitting here. Except he looked like a well-dressed, well-groomed, mild-mannered, middle-aged man sitting in a dark brown leather office chair in an old radio station. Where did he even go between night shifts?
Why doesn’t his appearance or his voice change or age?
She was afraid of the answer. This whole situation was already way past uncanny territory.
Cass wanted to deny it, to rationalize it away, in whatever way she could. It’s 2015, how the hell was any of this even possible? Her thought immediately went toward the town — the way it never seemed to change, the way the streets and buildings felt locked in place, the way the people clung to A Season in Amber. An isolated town in northern Vermont preserved in its antiqued memory. A radio host who had never aged. A station playing the same stories, over and over, the needle of a record player stuck in a groove.
She stood abruptly, palms suddenly hot and damp, her mouth felt as dry as sand. It was hard to swallow the unease clawing out of her chest to curl at the base of her throat.
“I should go.” She could barely croak out the words as she stood, her knees didn’t feel like they would support her petite form.
Henry inclined his head gracefully. “You’ll be back.”
She paused at that statement, and turn slightly toward him. There was an intense, watchful look in his eyes she hadn’t seen before.
“What happens if the station goes silent after all this time?” The question flew out of her mouth before she could stop it.
For the first time, something in Henry’s placid demeanor shifted. A flicker of something more human, palpable. His carefully constructed composure slipped for a moment. The hazy overlay sharpened into focus. He leaned back against his chair again, perhaps to seem more calm and unruffled.
“That,” he said softly, “hasn’t happened yet. It can’t happen.”
The words he spoke softly yet firmly were simple enough, but they scrambled her brain regardless. The implications made her perception of reality shudder. Cass stared at him blankly, lost for words. She quietly wished him a good night and left the station. A choice was forming in her mind. A choice weighing heavy in her chest. She clung to her leather bag over her shoulder with a white-knuckle grip. The other hand stuffed into her coat pocket, twiddling her cell phone.
She could walk away. She could refuse to get involved any further. Pretend she never saw anything out of place or noticed any of the strangeness. She could go on with her life.
Maybe even go back-packing abroad for a year or two, and then go for her Master’s degree.
Or she could quielty stay in the town where nothing ever changed, where Henry would always be, waiting to broadcast into the quiet hours of the night. Doing the same thing as everyone else did, for who know how long.
The thought left a bad taste her mouth.
Or she could stop it somehow. Cut the signal. Break the loop. Free Henry and drag his ass out of that station —
She suddenly straightened and glanced around her.
She had been standing still grappling with her thoughts on the corner of Elm Street and Chestnut Ave for what felt likes hours. Her hands ached, her cheeks numb from the cold. Shaking her head to clear the ruminating thoughts from her mind, she started to walk home through the streets now sparce of people or signs of life. Past the diner with its flickering neon OPEN sign, past the rows of houses where porch lights glowed in pools of warm white light. A town that never changed, never aged, never moved forward.
She froze mid-step. A frission passed through her.
The strange knowing, a bizarre feeling that had settled in her stomach early today roiled now. She couldn’t hear anything outside her hitch of her breath and the pounding of her increasing heartbeat throbbing in her ears. Turning on a heel before she could think through her actions or the inevitable consequences, she sprinted through the empty streets. Her boots crunched and scraped against the salt layering the cold Vermont pavement for the half mile jog back tot he station.
Within minutes, she found herself back in front of the dark green door gasping for air, her lungs ad calves burning. She brushed hot tears away from her wind-burnt cheeks. The neon letters above her head humming against the darkening twilight.
The ON AIR light flickered back to life. Before she could let the rising angst steal her courage, her hand turned the knob and stepped into the dim entry hall of WQCR radio station.
At the end of the hall, Henry tilted his head and dipped his chin at the sound of the door opening and heavy breathing. He sat back in his leather chair, the back of his head resting on the top of the headrest behind him. A somber, wisened smile graced his middle-aged features. He let out a long, weary sigh.
He turned his head just in time to see a petite figure and the back of a deep chestnut ponytail disappear into the room next door.
Silently he watched as the ON AIR sign flickered off. He found himself nodding, accepting what was to come in his typically placid manner.
He pivoted his office chair around to face the door and waited for her to step through the threshold one last time . . .
