The Bone Lanterns of Leary Lane

In the autumn of 1968, on the outskirts of a town that no longer appears on modern maps, the air often carried the smell of rotting leaves and wet stone. My aunt, Eleanor, and her older sister, Margaret, lived in a two-story house at the end of Leary Lane, a dirt track that wound down a hill toward the old railway bridge. The town was called Hollowbrook, a place of fading factories and shuttered shops, but the lane itself was lined with a row of crumbling cottages, their whitewash peeling like shed skin.

That evening, the sisters were taking the last bus into the city to see a film at the Rialto. They had walked down the lane, past the cottages, and reached the main road, where a new bypass was being carved through the fields. The construction had stalled for months, leaving a skeleton of steel girders and mounds of earth, and the bus stop was a temporary sign nailed to a fence post. The bus was late, so they stood in the cold, hugging themselves.

When the bus finally arrived, it was nearly empty. An old man in a cloth cap sat two rows ahead, murmuring to himself. The driver, a heavyset man with a flushed face, nodded as they boarded. Margaret and Eleanor took the bench seat near the back, the vinyl cold against their legs. The bus lurched forward, and the driver announced, ‘Detour due to the works. We’ll turn at the bottom of this street.’

But the street was not the one they knew. As the bus rattled along the main road, the familiar rows of terraced houses gave way to a stretch of open ground, where the cottages had once stood. Now, instead of the whitewashed walls, there were tall, rusted poles, each topped with a wire cage. Inside each cage, a small, blue-white light flickered, like a captured star. The lights cast long shadows across the road, and Eleanor felt a chill that had nothing to do with the autumn air.

‘I don’t remember these,’ Margaret said, her voice low. The bus slowed, and the driver looked back at them. ‘Don’t get off here,’ he said, his face pale. ‘Not tonight.’ But the bus had stopped at the end of the street, the engine idling. Through the window, Eleanor saw a woman standing at the roadside, her back to them. She wore a long, dark coat, and her hair was the color of straw. She did not move.

The driver pressed a button, and the doors hissed open, but the woman did not board. Instead, she slowly turned. Her face was a mask of smooth, pale skin, devoid of features except for a wide, lipless mouth. The mouth opened, and a sound came out—a low, wet clicking, like bones knocking together. The lights on the poles flickered and went out. In the darkness, the clicking grew louder, and Eleanor realized it was coming from inside the bus.

She looked down. The floor was covered in small, white objects—teeth. Human teeth, scattered like seeds. The old man in the front was gone. The driver was slumped over the wheel, his hands twisted into claws. Eleanor grabbed Margaret’s arm. ‘Run,’ she whispered.

They pushed through the emergency door at the back and fell onto the gravel, the door slamming behind them. The bus remained, its lights still off, and the woman was now standing directly in front of it, her mouth now gaping wide, revealing rows of teeth inside, growing in concentric circles. The clicking came from her jaw as she snapped it shut, over and over.

Margaret and Eleanor ran back the way they had come, past the poles, which now were not poles but bone pillars—femurs and ribs fused together, topped with lanterns made of skulls. The lights inside the skulls were not electric but wriggling worms. The cottages had reappeared, but their windows were black, and from within came the sound of stones being ground together.

They did not stop running until they reached their own front door. They never spoke of it again, but I know it was true because of the teeth. The next morning, they found one in each of their coat pockets—small, brittle, and warm, like they had just been pulled from a mouth. I have kept one, wrapped in cloth, in a drawer. Sometimes, at night, I hear a faint clicking from inside. But I never open the drawer.