The Blue Bulletin

The damp clung to everything in Harrowgate, a town that had long since forgotten the sun. My name is Elara Marsh, and I’d moved into the old Ashworth house on the edge of the fen with my two daughters, Mira and Juniper. The house was a Victorian relic, all peeling wallpaper and draughts that sang through the floorboards. We’d been there for five months, and I’d grown used to the creaks and groans that punctuated the night, attributing them to the wind or the house settling. The children were often with their father on weekends, but even when they were home, I’d dismiss the thuds and rattles as their footsteps or the neighbor’s dog. It was easier to pretend.

But then the blue bulletin arrived. It was a letter, slipped under the door one rain-slicked morning, printed on thick, watermarked paper. The header read ‘Office of Unclaimed Occurrences’—an official-sounding body I’d never heard of. The message was brief: ‘We have received a report of an unclaimed occurrence at your residence. Please contact us at your earliest convenience. Fail to do so and the occurrence will remain yours.’ No signature, only an embossed emblem of an eye with a tear. I crumpled it, assuming it was a prank from the local teens.

A week later, Mira, my eldest at ten, came down for breakfast with a strange look. She said she’d found a blue feather on her pillow, and that during the night she’d heard a tapping at her window, like someone asking to come in. I soothed her, saying it was a bird. But the next day, Juniper, who was seven and rarely scared, refused to enter her room. She claimed a man with a grey face and no eyes stood in the corner, watching her. I searched the room, found nothing, but the air was cold, and I felt an inexplicable dread.

That evening, I decided to investigate. I waited until the girls were asleep, then crept into the attic—a place I’d avoided due to its oppressive mustiness. The stairs groaned under my weight, and as I reached the top, I found a old trunk, locked with a tarnished padlock. I picked it open with a hairpin, and inside found a stack of faded newspapers from the 1920s. One headline read: ‘VANISHING ACT: LOCAL MAN DISAPPEARS WITHOUT A TRACE.’ The article mentioned a man named Elias Grimshaw who lived in this very house, and who was last seen carrying a blue lantern into the fen. The article ended with a quote from his wife: ‘He always said the fen would take him. He’d bring back that blue light, but it took him instead.’

Suddenly, the temperature plummeted. I heard a faint whisper, like a breath at my ear: ‘It’s not the fen that takes, it’s the light.’ I spun around, but the attic was empty. Below, I heard Mira scream. I rushed down, finding her in her doorway, pointing at her window. There, pressed against the glass, was a face—grey, featureless, with two hollow sockets where eyes should be. It stared at Juniper, who was frozen in her bed. As I watched, it slowly receded, dissolving into the night.

I knew then I had to act. I drove to the town archive, a crumbling building with a clerk who looked as old as the papers. He flinched when I mentioned the blue bulletin. He led me to a microfiche reel, and there I found it: a record of ‘Unclaimed Occurrences’—it was a government program from the 1930s, a way to ‘assign’ hauntings. If you ignored a bulletin, the entity would be bound to your home permanently. The only way to dismiss it was to find the object that anchored it: the blue lantern.

That night, with a torch and a rope, I went into the fen. The water was cold, the reeds whispering like a thousand voices. I remembered the article: Elias was last seen near the old stone bridge. I waded, my pregnant belly heavy, feeling for something solid in the mud. My foot hit metal. I reached down and pulled up a lantern, its glass intact but the light extinguished. As I held it, the air around me shimmered, and I heard a sigh—a sound of release.

I splashed back to the house, drenched and shivering, and placed the lantern on the kitchen table. The girls were asleep, but the face appeared at the window, this time closer, its hollow gaze fixed on the lantern. I lit a match and touched it to the wick. It caught, glowing a furious blue. The face pressed against the glass, then began to fade, like smoke. And in that moment, I understood. Elias’s ‘vanishing’ wasn’t a disappearance—it was an invitation. The light was a doorway, and the entity was a guardian, warning others away.

I blew out the flame, and the face vanished. The house fell silent. The blue bulletin had been a summons, and I had answered it. I kept the lantern in a locked cupboard, and each month, a new bulletin arrives, but now I recognize it: the ‘Office of Unclaimed Occurrences’ is not a government, but a part of this world that requires acknowledgment. I burn the letters, and the house hums with a peaceful quiet. The girls sleep soundly, and I count my blessings as I await my new child. But some nights, when the wind is right, I catch the faint scent of marshland, and I know it will always be there—just a breath away, waiting.