The Bone Lantern Keepers

Three years ago, my cousin Mara and I, along with our friends Simon and Elise, decided to spend a night in the abandoned granite quarry outside the town of Hollow Pines. The quarry had been shut down in the 1920s after a collapse that buried dozens of workers alive, and locals swore the site was cursed. We were young, reckless, and eager to prove the stories wrong. We packed a single digital camera, a flask of whiskey, and a stubborn refusal to use flashlights, since the quarry gates were chained shut and we didn’t want to draw attention.

We clambered over the rusted fence as the last light bled from the sky. The quarry stretched before us like a scarred mouth, its walls of gray stone rising forty feet. At the bottom, a stagnant lake reflected the moon, and scattered around it were the remains of old machinery—a broken crane, rusted cables, and a weather-beaten shack that once served as the foreman’s office. The air was thick with the smell of wet earth and decay, and a chill clung to our skin despite the summer warmth.

We wandered for over an hour, our footsteps echoing off the rock. There were no headstones, but the place felt like a tomb. Every so often, a faint whisper of wind would slither through the quarry, carrying what sounded like distant chanting. Mara gripped my arm, her face pale. ‘Do you feel that?’ she whispered. ‘Like something’s watching us from the water.’ Simon laughed nervously, but Elise, who had always been the most sensitive, stared at the dark surface of the lake and said, ‘There’s something down there. Something that doesn’t want us here.’

We decided to take a few photographs before leaving. The camera was a cheap digital model, its flash blinding in the dark. We snapped photos of the shack, the crane, and the water. But when we tried to review them, the screen flickered and showed only static. Simon shook it, swearing. ‘Maybe the humidity got to it,’ he said. Then, without warning, the camera snapped a picture on its own. The flash illuminated the quarry in a stark white burst, and in that split second, we saw a figure among the rocks—a tall, thin shape with arms too long and a head tilted at a wrong angle. It was gone when the light faded, but the damage was done.

We scrambled for the path that led out, but the path was gone. Where there should have been a gravel trail twisting up the slope, there was only a solid wall of stone. We ran along the perimeter, searching for any gap, any break, but the quarry walls seemed to have sealed themselves. Panic set in. Elise began to cry. Simon kicked at the rock until his foot bruised. Mara pulled out her phone, but it was dead, and so was mine.

Then we heard the chanting again, louder now, and it was coming from the water. We turned to see the lake’s surface rippling, not from wind, but from something rising. A line of figures emerged—gaunt, skeletal, their skin like wet gray stone, their eye sockets hollow but somehow burning with a faint blue glow. They climbed out of the water without a sound, and they began to walk toward us in a slow, deliberate line. Each held a lantern made of bone, and the flames within them were pale green.

The first one stopped in front of Simon. It raised its lantern, and the light washed over him. Simon opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out. His skin turned gray, then cracked, and within seconds, he was a statue of rock, his face frozen in terror. The figure moved on to Elise. She tried to run, but her feet had taken root in the quarry floor. The lantern’s light touched her, and she became a stone pillar, her hands reaching out for help that never came.

Mara and I ran, but the quarry was a labyrinth, and the figures were unrelenting. We stumbled over old machinery, our lungs burning, until we found a narrow crevice in the wall, just wide enough to squeeze through. We shoved ourselves inside, scraping our arms and legs, and crawled through the darkness, not knowing where it led. The crevice opened into a cavern beneath the quarry, a place that smelled of charred bone and ancient dust. In the center, on a stone altar, lay a single object: a bone lantern, intricately carved, with a flame that burned a cold blue.

Mara reached for it, but I grabbed her hand. ‘Don’t touch it,’ I said. But it was too late. The flame in the lantern flickered, and the chanting grew to a deafening roar. The walls of the cavern began to close in, and I felt a cold hand on my shoulder. I turned to see one of the figures, its empty sockets inches from my face. Its mouth opened, and it spoke in a voice that was both a whisper and a shout: ‘You have disturbed the keepers. Now you will join them.’

I closed my eyes, expecting the same stone transformation, but instead, I felt a searing pain in my chest. When I opened my eyes, I was back at the quarry’s entrance, lying on the ground. The sun was rising. Mara was beside me, unconscious but breathing. The camera and the flask lay nearby. I sat up, shaking, and saw that the quarry was just a quarry again—but when I looked at my hands, they were covered in fine gray dust, and there was a faint blue glow in my reflection on a shard of glass. I knew then that I hadn’t escaped completely. The keepers had marked me, and someday, when I least expect it, I’ll hear the chanting again, and I’ll walk into the water, and I’ll become a keeper too.

To this day, I have never shown anyone the last photograph the camera took before it died. It’s a picture of me and Mara, standing in the quarry, and behind us, reflected in the lake, are a row of figures holding lanterns. And in the foreground, our shadows are missing.