The Lamplight Visitor

The first time I saw her, I was six, not three. It was the summer of ’87, and we’d just moved into my grandmother’s old farmhouse on the edge of the Saltmarsh, a place where the reeds grew taller than a man and the air smelled of brine and rot. My parents thought it would be a fresh start, a way to escape the city’s noise. My father worked nights at the canning factory, and my mother, exhausted from the move, would put me to bed early, leaving the hallway nightlight on—a small, yellow bulb that cast a weak glow.

I remember that particular night because I woke to the sound of the wind rattling the windowpanes, and the moon was full and low, turning the fields silver. The nightlight had gone out, and the hallway was a black maw. I lay still, listening to the hum of the refrigerator below, when I heard the front door creak open. I didn’t think much of it—my mother sometimes stepped out to the porch to smoke—but then I heard footsteps, not the familiar shuffle of my mother’s slippers, but a measured, deliberate tread, like someone walking on bare wood, not linoleum.

And then I saw the light. It spilled from the hallway, a pale, cold luminescence, as if the moon had leaked inside. I sat up, my heart thudding. A figure stood at the end of the hall, silhouetted against that light—tall, impossibly thin, with a long, flowing gown that seemed to be made of the light itself. Her hair was a deep, rusted red, hanging past her waist, and her face, when she turned toward me, was serene, with a smile that was too wide, too fixed. Her eyes were like candles, flickering with a warm glow, but they held no warmth.

She took a step forward, and the light grew brighter, filling the hall, touching the walls, the floor. I wanted to scream, but my throat closed. I pulled the covers over my head, pressing my palms against my ears, but I could still hear her—a low, humming sound, like a lullaby sung in a key that wasn’t quite right. She spoke, her voice muffled by the blankets, but I caught fragments: ‘Little one, come see,’ and ‘The marsh remembers.’ I felt a cold draft as she passed my door, and then the bathroom door creaked open.

I don’t know what possessed me to follow, but I was a child, and curiosity overrides fear. I slipped out of bed, my bare feet silent on the worn floorboards. The bathroom door was ajar, and a faint, sickly light leaked from within—not the harsh fluorescent of the bulb, but a soft, pulsing glow, like a dying firefly. I pushed the door open. The room was empty, but the mirror was fogged, and on its surface, written in the condensation, was a single word: ‘Stay.’ The window was open, and outside, the reeds swayed, but there was no moon now—only the endless black of the salt marsh, and a single, distant light that bobbed and dipped, like a lantern carried by a traveler.

I closed the window and went back to bed, but I didn’t sleep. I lay there, watching the door, until dawn. In the morning, my mother found me on the floor, wrapped in a blanket, shivering. She thought I’d had a nightmare. I didn’t tell her about the woman. I didn’t tell her about the word on the mirror. But I never slept with the nightlight off again, and for years, I avoided that bathroom.

I’m twenty-three now, and I returned to the farmhouse after my mother’s funeral. She died of a stroke, sudden, peaceful, but I found her diary. Written in the margins, in her neat hand, were notes about a ‘presence’ in the house, a ‘lamplight visitor’ who came when the moon was full. She’d seen her too, as a girl, but she’d never followed. She wrote, ‘I know what she wants. She wants the child to come to the marsh, to be her successor. I’ve kept her at bay, but I’m tired. Perhaps I’ll go to her willingly.’ The last entry was dated the night she died. It said, ‘She came to me, not in the hall, but in the field. She reached out her hand, and I took it. It was cold, but not unpleasant. I felt the marsh calling me. I’ll be with the reeds now.’

I stood on the porch, looking at the saltmarsh, the reeds waving in the wind, a lone light flickering far out, as if waiting. And I heard her voice again, from the memory, ‘Little one, come see.’ I felt a pull, an ache in my chest. But I turned away, locked the door, and drove out of the driveway, dust flying. I haven’t returned since. But sometimes, at night, I swear I see a light bobbing at the edge of my property, and I hear the window rattling, and I remember the word on the mirror: ‘Stay.’ I’m afraid I know what she means.

The end.