The Cartographer’s Lantern

I returned from the Kaimai Range three days ago, and I still see the light when I close my eyes. I’d joined a ten-day tramp through the North Island, a loop that wound through moss-draped ravines and along ridgelines that seemed to hang over the sea of cloud below. On the fourth evening, the guide led us to an old logging camp, abandoned since the early 1900s. The cabins were reduced to gray ribs, and a single chimney stood like a tombstone. At the edge of the clearing, a rusted railway track vanished into the hillside, its rails furred with orange growth. The guide, a man named Hemi, said the tunnel had been meant to connect the camp to a sawmill on the other side, but the project was abandoned after the collapse that killed six men. ‘They never found the last one,’ he said, his voice low. ‘The one who went in to fetch the others.’ I laughed it off, but something about the way the tunnel mouth exhaled a breath of cold air made me uneasy.

That night, we camped in the clearing. I woke at two in the morning, a thin sliver of moon casting just enough light to reveal the shapes of the tents. I needed to relieve myself, and I walked past the tunnel entrance, feeling a pull to look inside. The dark was absolute, but as my eyes adjusted, I saw it: a faint amber glow, far back, bobbing as if carried. I told myself it was a reflection from the moon on wet rock, or perhaps the fabled foxfire, but the movement was too deliberate. It pulsed once, then twice, then went out. I hurried back to my tent, heart thudding, and did not sleep again.

The next morning, I mentioned the light to Hemi. He went pale and shook his head. ‘No one’s been in there since the search party,’ he said. ‘The family of that last man, they put a curse on the mountain. They said he would never rest until he found his way home.’ I tried to dismiss it as superstition, but the image stayed. At dusk, I slipped away from the group, claiming I needed to gather firewood. I walked to the tunnel mouth, my torch in my hand, and stepped inside. The air was heavy with the smell of wet ash. The rails groaned under my boots as if protesting my weight. A hundred meters in, the beam of my torch caught a glint: a brass lantern, sitting on a rock, its glass intact, the flame lit as if waiting for me.

I should have run, but curiosity held me. I knelt to examine it. The base was engraved with a name: ‘E. Wainwright.’ The same surname as the missing man, I later learned. A cold draft blew from deeper in the tunnel, and the lantern flame guttered but did not die. I picked it up, and as I did, I felt a pressure in my skull, a whispering sensation that wasn’t sound but something else, a presence. I set the lantern back and stepped away. The flame went out. I turned to leave, but the tunnel now seemed longer than it had been. The entrance was a bright pinprick in the distance, and the walls felt closer, as if the mountain were breathing. I walked faster, and behind me I heard a scrape, like metal on stone, a rhythmic dragging, as of a body being pulled. I broke into a run.

I burst into the open air, gasping, and looked back. Nothing. The tunnel mouth was dark and still. But when I returned to camp, I found the others gathered around the fire, faces pale. They told me I had been gone for three hours, not twenty minutes. They had come looking for me, but the tunnel was blocked by a rockfall. I had not seen it. I checked my watch: it was indeed three hours later. I did not speak of the lantern again. But in the nights since, I have seen the light in my window, bobbing in the dark just beyond the glass. My name is not Wainwright, but the lantern now hangs in my study, its flame lit, and I cannot extinguish it. I fear it is not a lantern at all, but a beacon, and I have answered it.