The Bone Lanterns

The summer I turned sixteen, my mother and I drove nine hours to the remote town of Morrow’s Hollow, where my grandmother, whom I called Nana June, lived in a decaying Victorian house at the edge of a forest. Nana June had been a teenage mother, giving birth to my aunt Celia at fourteen, then my mother at sixteen, and my aunt Renee at nineteen. She gave my mother up for adoption when she was just a baby, keeping Celia and Renee. My mother found Nana June when she was a young adult, and since then, we visited every few years.

Morrow’s Hollow was a ghost town in all but name. The main street had a boarded-up diner and a general store that smelled of dust and old spices. But the real strangeness lay behind Nana June’s house: a crooked field dotted with mossy stones that she called the ‘old resting place.’ She would speak of the people who had lived here before, the Wabanaki who had been pushed off their land, and how she could feel them watching from the trees. She also claimed the house itself was alive with spirits, that the creaks and whispers were conversations from another time.

Usually, my mom brushed off Nana June’s talk, but this summer, something had shifted. My mom had been quiet on the drive, and I caught her staring at the treeline with a haunted look. Nana June, with her wild gray hair and hands like dried roots, kept pressing us: ‘Stay up with me tonight. We’ll light the candles and ask them for guidance. It’s important.’ Finally, my mom agreed, her voice thin.

At eleven, we went out back. The moon was a silver coin, and the field was a sea of tall grass. Nana June set up a circle of candles, their flames flickering in a breeze that seemed to come from nowhere. She handed me a worn leather pouch filled with dried herbs and bones. ‘Hold this,’ she said. She began to sing in a language I didn’t recognize, her voice rising and falling like a lament.

Then she asked, ‘If you are really here, show yourselves. Tell us what you need.’

At first, nothing. The candles held steady. My mom shifted on her feet. But then the flames leaned away from us, as if something was breathing on them. Nana June’s eyes went wide. ‘They’re here,’ she whispered. A sound like a low hum filled the air, and the grass at the edge of the circle parted, as if an invisible creature was moving through it. I clutched the pouch, feeling the bones vibrate.

‘Ask them about the lights,’ Nana June said to my mom. My mom shook her head, but Nana June insisted. ‘The lights you saw in the forest, the ones you’ve been dreaming about.’ My mom’s face went pale. ‘I’ve never told you about that,’ she said. Nana June smiled, a thin, knowing smile. ‘They told me.’

The hum grew louder, and the candles began to sputter. I saw something then: a shape, tall and featureless, standing at the edge of the circle, outlined in a faint blue glow. It raised an arm, and the candles went out one by one. In the darkness, I heard Nana June’s voice, but it was wrong, layered with another voice, deeper and older: ‘They want you to stay.’

The next morning, I woke up in my bed, fully clothed, with no memory of how I got there. My mom was sitting by the window, staring out at the field. She looked older, hollow-eyed. ‘We’re leaving today,’ she said. But as we packed the car, Nana June came out, holding a large mason jar filled with what looked like fireflies, but they were luminescent green. ‘Take this,’ she said to my mom. ‘It will light your way home.’ My mom hesitated, then took it.

We drove for hours, but the road seemed to repeat. Every time we passed a sign for Morrow’s Hollow, my mom’s hands tightened on the wheel. The jar glowed brighter, casting eerie shadows on the car’s interior. Then my mom started talking, her voice distant, ‘When I was six, I had a dream about this place. I saw a woman in white, standing among the stones, calling my name. I never told anyone. But when I met Nana June, I knew she was that woman.’

We pulled over to a gas station that appeared to have been abandoned for decades. The jar’s light pulsed, and my mom got out, her steps mechanical, walking toward the tree line. I followed, frightened. There, among the pines, was a clearing with a ring of stones, and in the center, a large flat rock. On the rock lay a single object: a lantern made of bones, assembled from what looked like human ribs and a skull, with a sickly green flame inside.

My mom reached for it. ‘Don’t!’ I shouted, but she grabbed it. The moment she did, the forest erupted with whispers, and the lantern’s light blazed. I saw figures emerging from the trees, tall and shadowy, the same one from the field. My mom turned to me, her eyes not her own. ‘They’ve waited a long time,’ she said in that layered voice. ‘For a daughter to return.’ And then the ground swallowed her, as if the earth opened and pulled her down. I screamed, but she was gone.

I ran back to the car, but the road was gone. The forest had encroached, and the only path led back to Morrow’s Hollow. I drove, or maybe I walked, and eventually I found myself at Nana June’s door, night falling. She was waiting, the bone lantern in her hands, the green light casting her face in ghastly hues. ‘You’re back,’ she said, as if she’d known I would be. ‘Your mother was the last one. The ones in the ground, they hunger for their own blood.’

I tried to flee, but the house had changed. The halls twisted, and the windows showed only forest. Nana June chased me, not running, but gliding, her form flickering. ‘You have the blood too,’ she said. ‘You can keep them company.’

I woke up in a bed, not mine, in a room I didn’t recognize. The window showed the field, and across it, I saw my mother’s silhouette, and beside her, the tall figure from the night. They were walking toward me, and I knew the lantern was lit for me now. The summer of 2007 never ended. I am still in Morrow’s Hollow, and the bone lanterns burn forever, each one a wayward soul of our family, calling the next one home.