The Antique Lantern

In the salt-weathered town of Port Blaine, winter had emptied the streets. The university’s marine research station, a sprawling Victorian building overlooking the churning Atlantic, stood dark and silent, its halls echoing with the absence of students and faculty. Only the station’s aging caretaker, Mr. Abernathy, remained, his shuffling footsteps a lonely counterpoint to the December wind that rattled the windows.

I was Elias, a graduate student who had stayed behind to catalog specimens in the basement lab. When Mr. Abernathy handed me the keys to my dormitory room and the heavy iron key to the building’s rear entrance, he fixed me with a rheumy gaze. ‘You’re a brave one, staying here alone,’ he said, his voice like gravel. ‘The building’s got a mind of its own, especially when the lights go out.’ I laughed it off, chalking it up to old man’s superstition. After he left, I locked the rear door behind him, the click echoing through the empty corridor. I was alone with the groaning pipes and the smell of salt and old wood.

I spent the day at a café in town, nursing a coffee and watching the gray sea, but as dusk approached, I returned, determined to be inside before full dark. The station was a maze of high-ceilinged rooms and narrow staircases, its gas lamps converted to electric but still flickering with the building’s ancient wiring. I headed to my room, a small cubby on the third floor, and settled in with a book. But the silence was oppressive. Every creak of the timber, every gust of wind off the ocean, seemed to whisper. I tried to sleep but found myself staring at the ceiling, listening.

At 2 AM, a sound cut through the stillness: a low, rhythmic dripping, like water from a leaky faucet, but it came from somewhere inside. I got up, flashlight in hand, and traced the noise to the ground floor. The corridor there was pitch black, the electric lights dead. My flashlight beam cut through the darkness, illuminating peeling wallpaper and a trail of something dark and viscous leading toward the old specimen storage room—a room I knew was locked. The door stood ajar, and the smell hit me: rotting brine and something metallic.

I pushed the door open, and the flashlight revealed a scene that made my blood go cold. The room was strewn with crushed glass jars, their contents—preserved fish, crabs, and other sea creatures—sprawled across the floor, glistening under the beam. But what caught my eye was an antique lantern, brass and tarnished, sitting on a table in the center, flickering with a pale blue flame. It had not been there before. As I stepped closer, the flame swirled, and a voice, dry as parchment, whispered from the shadows: ‘You shouldn’t have come back, boy.’

I spun around, but the room was empty. The dripping had stopped. The lantern’s flame grew brighter, casting elongated shadows that danced across the walls. And then I saw it: a shape coalescing in the far corner, a hooded figure with no face, just a void where its features should be. It moved not by walking but by gliding, leaving a trail of that same dark substance. I stumbled backward, tripping over a shattered jar. The creature lunged, and I felt a cold hand grip my shoulder, icy and unyielding.

I tore free, sprinting up the stairs, the lantern light following me like a hungry eye. Every door I passed was averted, every window revealed only the black sea. I reached the rooftop, the wind howling, and found the lantern waiting for me, its blue flame dancing mockingly. The hooded figure emerged from the stairwell, blocking my only way down. It raised a skeletal hand, and the lantern levitated, floating toward me.

‘You will keep the flame,’ the voice rasped, ‘as the last one did, until the sea takes you.’ I looked beyond the railing—the jagged rocks below, the waves crashing in the dark. I had no choice. I grabbed the hot lantern, its heat searing my palm, and hurled it into the void. The lantern spun, and for a moment, the world seemed to freeze. Then it exploded, sending a shockwave that knocked me off my feet. When I looked up, the figure was gone, but the lantern’s shards remained, scattered on the rooftop, glowing faintly.

I didn’t sleep that night. At dawn, I packed my things and left, but as I stepped out the rear door, I felt a lingering chill, as if something had imprinted itself on my soul. I looked back at the station, and in the window of the specimen room, I saw the lantern, intact and glowing, and the shadow of a figure watching me. I turned and ran, but for the rest of my days, I never felt truly alone. And whenever I passed a window at night, I would catch a glimpse of a blue flame reflected in the glass, forever waiting to be tended.