The Lantern Bearer

The old Alvarez house sat on Callejon de los Suspiros, four doors down from our own. It had the same sliding capiz windows, the same stone base and wooden upper story, the same mango and acacia trees crowding its yard. But where our house hummed with life, the Alvarez place was a hollow tooth. The neighborhood kids swore a caretaker came during the day, but at night, the windows were dark, and the gate stayed locked.

It was Holy Week, and the air smelled of burning palm leaves and dust. My Tita Lita had promised to take me and my younger sister, Mara, to the evening parade of the fifteen mysteries. We were to carry lanterns—paper-covered bamboo shapes of moons and stars—and walk behind the adults as they prayed the rosary through the streets. Tita said she’d pick us up at six. At a quarter to seven, the church bells had rung, and the parade had already passed our house, its faint singing drifting back like a bad omen.

‘We missed it,’ Mara said, her voice small.

Tita Lita was furious, pacing our living room. ‘Your mother told me six! I thought you’d be ready!’

I looked out the window. The last of the parade’s lanterns bobbed near the plaza, a constellation of moons and stars receding into the dark. Beyond them, the Alvarez house stood silent, its capiz windows catching the last light like eyes.

‘I’ll take them,’ I said. ‘We’ll catch up.’

Tita hesitated, then shook her head. ‘No. It’s too late. The parade will be at the church soon. You’d only see the end.’

But I didn’t want to disappoint my sister. ‘We’ll walk ahead to the chapel and find a spot. We’ll see them pass.’

Tita looked at us, then at the darkening street. ‘Fine. But stay together. And don’t go near the Alvarez house.’

Of course, we had to pass it.

We walked hand in hand, the only sounds our footsteps and the distant murmur of prayers. As we neared the Alvarez gate, a chill ran through me. The gate stood ajar. Not wide, but enough to slip through. I told myself the caretaker had left it open.

Mara tugged my sleeve. ‘Look.’

A lantern lay on the ground just inside the gate. A paper star, crumpled and damp. I should have kept walking. But Mara let go of my hand and bent to pick it up.

‘Mara, leave it!’

She lifted the star. It was warm, as if someone had been holding it. Inside, the candle flickered—impossible, it should have gone out in the wind. And then a voice, soft and broken, came from the house: ‘Little ones, bring it back.’

The front door was open now.

We should have run. But the voice sounded like our grandmother’s, who had died a year ago. Mara took a step toward the door. I grabbed her arm. ‘No.’

The lantern in her hand pulsed, glowing brighter. The door’s threshold was a line of shadow. Beyond it, the stairway creaked as if something heavy had just walked up.

‘It’s just the wind,’ I whispered.

But Mara said, ‘She wants us to come in.’

I wanted to drag her away, but my feet felt rooted. The glow from the star spilled into the house, revealing old furniture draped in white sheets. On the stairs, a small shape—a child’s shadow—turned and vanished.

‘We have to return it,’ Mara said, and stepped inside.

The door slammed shut behind us, leaving us in darkness. The star in Mara’s hand guttered, then caught again, casting our shadows long and jagged. Upstairs, something began to hum—a tune I knew, the children’s hymn we sang during the parade.

We climbed the wooden stairs, each step groaning. At the top, a hallway stretched into blackness. The humming came from the last door. Mara pushed it open.

The room was a child’s bedroom, decades old. A wooden rocking horse, a moth-eaten teddy bear, a shelf of dusty books. In the corner, a small figure sat on the bed, its back to us. It wore a white dress and held another lantern—a moon, dark and cold.

‘You came,’ the figure whispered, and turned.

It was a girl, maybe eight, with brown skin and black hair—but her face was wrong. Her features shifted, flickering like a bad signal, settling on a face I recognized: mine, as a child.

‘I’ve been waiting,’ she said. ‘They left me here, that night. The parade didn’t stop for me.’

I remembered now. The story our grandmother used to tell, of a girl who had been locked in the Alvarez house during a Holy Week parade, who had died of fright when the lights went out. We had thought it just a tale.

The girl held out the moon lantern. ‘Take it. It’s yours.’

I reached for it, but my hand went through it as if it were smoke. The girl smiled, and her face shifted again—now Mara’s face, then mine, then a blur of them both.

‘You’ll stay now,’ she said. ‘You’ll join the parade.’

Outside, the real parade had reached the church, the last notes of the hymn fading. But in the Alvarez house, the windows began to glow with a cold, trembling light, and one by one, shadow children appeared in the hallway, each holding a paper lantern shaped like a star or a moon. They formed a line, descending the stairs, and the door opened outward.

Mara and I walked with them, our feet not touching the floor. The girl led us through the streets, past our parents’ house, where we saw our bodies still standing at the window, watching the parade. But there was no time to call out. The shadow children moved in silence, their lanterns casting no light on the road, only on the faces of the houses.

At the church, the parade was ending. The children of the real parade lowered their lanterns, their faces gleaming with sweat. Our procession passed through them, invisible. The girl turned to me before stepping into the church’s shadow.

‘Don’t forget,’ she said. ‘In the morning, they’ll find your bodies—yours and your sister’s—in the Alvarez house. But you’ll be here, with us.’

The door of the church closed, and the shadows swallowed us.

When I opened my eyes, I was lying on the cold floor of the Alvarez house, Mara beside me. The sun streamed through the capiz windows. The caretaker was there, shaking his head, muttering about children who broke in. He thought we were vandals. He kicked us out.

We walked home in silence. Our mother threw her arms around us, crying, asking where we had been. We said we’d gotten lost. But we didn’t tell her that we now saw the lanterns everywhere—on the street, in the trees, in the windows of our own house. And at night, when the lights went out, we heard the soft knocking on our door, and the girl’s voice, asking if we were ready to join the parade again.

We are.