The Hollow Lantern

It was the kind of night that felt wrong from the start—a Halloween that didn’t end when the last trick-or-treater dragged their plastic pumpkin home. I’d drifted off on the couch, the glow of a forgotten horror marathon still flickering on the TV, when I felt myself slip sideways out of my body. Not a dream, not a nightmare—just a sudden weightlessness, a cold rush, and then I was hovering above my own sleeping form on the sofa, my chest rising and falling in a rhythm that didn’t match my breathless awareness.

I floated through the walls of my rented house, past the quiet bedroom where my partner, Mara, slept with our cat curled at her feet. The air had a faint, sourceless hum, like a refrigerator in an empty kitchen. I grabbed my keys from the hook by the door, though my hand passed right through them, and stepped out into the night. The street was a ghost of itself—the familiar row of houses with their jack-o’-lanterns now dark, the sidewalks empty except for a thin, ankle-high fog that coiled around the lampposts.

I walked toward the corner where the old gas station used to be, now a convenience store with flickering fluorescent lights. A couple emerged from the mist—a man and a woman in clothes that looked like they’d been bought yesterday but had a stale, musty smell. I waved. They didn’t respond, their gazes fixed straight ahead, their footsteps silent, leaving no prints in the fog. It was then I noticed the lantern in the woman’s hand: an old brass affair with a glass panel, and inside it, not a flame, but a single, white moth, fluttering against the metal.

I followed them, not out of curiosity but because something in my gut said that were I to lose sight of them, I’d be lost forever. They turned down a path that hadn’t existed in my waking life—a gravel trail overgrown with weeds, leading into a dense thicket of oaks that I knew for a fact stood at the edge of a parking lot. The fog grew thicker here, up past my knees, and the hum deepened into a low, intestinal rumble.

We came to a clearing where a webbed, rusted fence surrounded a well, its stone rim cracked and mossy. The woman stopped, set the lantern on the ground, and turned to me. Her face was smooth, almost featureless, like a mask of new skin. She spoke in a voice that didn’t come from her mouth but from the well itself: ‘You’re not supposed to be here. This is the gloam between, where the walkers go. Your kind—the sleepwalkers—you always think you can visit and leave. But the hollow lantern is lit for the stag, and the stag drinks from the well of forgetting.’

I tried to speak, but my throat was filled with something thick, like dry cotton. The man stepped aside, revealing behind him a figure that had been hidden by the trees—a shape of antlers and shadow, towering, with eyes like white coals. The moth in the lantern began to beat its wings harder, and I realized with horror that the lantern was not a source of light but a cage, a beacon to draw the stag to its prey. The stag lowered its head, and I saw that its chest was open, empty, and inside it was the echo of a heartbeat—my own heartbeat, slowed to a crawl.

I remembered a story my grandmother once told me, back in Wales, about Annwn, the otherworld that lies just beyond the veil. She said that when you sleepwalk there, you must never look at the stag, because he is the collector of souls who’ve forgotten their bodies. She warned me to carry a piece of iron, but my keys were useless now. I forced my eyes to the ground, and I saw my own shadow on the gravel—something I’d never had in this realm before. It was faint, but it pointed away from the stag, back toward the path.

I turned and ran, my weightless legs pumping, the fog dragging at me like a million tiny hands. Behind me, the stag let out a sound that wasn’t a roar but a low, vibrating thrum that shook the ground and rattled the lantern, sending the moth into a frenzy. I burst through the thicket and onto the pavement, the streetlights flickering back to life, the convenience store’s neon buzz sharp and real. I didn’t stop until I was back inside my house, and I saw my body still on the couch, still breathing.

I slammed back into it with a jolt, sitting up, gasping, my heart racing. The TV was showing static. Mara stirred, half-awake, and mumbled, ‘You okay, Alex?’ I nodded, but I was staring at my keys on the hook—they were gone. I checked the floor, the couch cushions, and then I saw it: a single, white moth, perched on my shoulder, its wings trembling. I killed it with a pillow, but the spot where it landed began to itch, and I knew I’d be see that lantern again, that well, and the stag waiting patiently for the next night I let myself drift too deep.

I haven’t slept well since. I keep a piece of iron under my pillow—an old railroad spike my neighbor gave me for luck. But last night, I woke at 3 a.m., and I could swear the fog was pressing against the window, and in the glass, I saw the reflection of a woman holding a brass lantern, the moth now alive and fluttering. She was smiling, and her lips formed a single word, the word I’d been too afraid to say: ‘Mine.’