The Lantern Game

It had been nearly seven years since the incident at Maktab Dato’ Sulaiman, a boarding school nestled among the rubber estates of northern Perak. I was in my final year, and the air was thick with the impending SPM exams. But as the holidays approached, a different kind of fever gripped the younger students: a fascination with the occult. Games like the Pencil Game, Bloody Mary, and the Ouija board had swept through the dorms, their whispers growing louder with each passing night.

The incident occurred not in the main halls, but in the old abandoned biology lab, a place known for its cracked windows and the lingering smell of formaldehyde. One evening, a week before the break, I was in the Surau with my classmates, reciting the Quran and idly chatting, when a piercing scream tore through the twilight from the direction of the lab. At first, we assumed it was the familiar crash of a broken window, but the scream did not stop. It rose and fell, a wail of pure terror, and then silence.

We rushed out, a motley crowd of students and teachers, and found the door to the lab ajar. Inside, a group of juniors huddled in a corner, one of them—a girl named Ina—shaking uncontrollably. She was clutching a tattered, lantern-shaped cardboard prop, the kind used in school plays. ‘We were playing the Lantern Game,’ she stammered. ‘You light a candle inside, ask a question, and the flame is supposed to answer. But the flame… it turned blue, and then it started whispering.’ I had never heard of this game, but the fear in her eyes was unmistakable.

Over the next few days, the game spread like a contagion. Students began holding sessions in the dormitories, the library, even the bathroom stalls. The rules were simple: you needed a paper lantern, a candle, and a question written on a slip of paper. You placed the slip under the lantern, lit the candle, and recited a chant in a language no one understood. But the results were always the same: the flame would flicker, turn an eerie azure, and then a voice—thin and reedy—would answer in a language that seemed to seep into your bones. The answers were always cryptic, always unsettling, and always left the players with a lingering sense of dread.

I tried to ignore it, but my curiosity got the better of me. One night, unable to sleep, I found Ilias, a quiet junior, sitting alone in the common room with a lantern. ‘Don’t,’ I warned, but he was already lighting the candle. As the flame caught, it danced wildly before turning blue, and a voice emerged, not from the lantern but from the shadows around us. ‘The caretaker knows,’ it said. Then the flame extinguished, and Ilias began to sob. The caretaker, a reclusive man named Pak Man, had been found dead the previous week, hanging from the rafters in the workshop. The official verdict was suicide, but the whispers said otherwise.

I started to dig deeper, questioning the juniors who had played the game. They all spoke of a ‘guardian’ who would answer their questions, but some also claimed to see a figure in the corner of their eyes—a tall, gaunt shape with hollow eyes. I confronted one of the teachers, Cikgu Rahman, who had been at the school for decades. He went pale and warned me to stop. ‘The lantern game was used by the old caretakers to communicate with the spirits of the forest,’ he said. ‘But something went wrong. The guardian is not a spirit; it’s a demon that feeds on the fear of the young.’

The next morning, three students were found in a trance-like state, unable to speak or move. They had played the game the night before. The school was in chaos. I decided to put an end to it. I gathered all the lanterns and burned them in the incinerator, but that only made things worse. That night, I heard a whisper in my ear: ‘You should not have done that.’ I turned to see a shape materialize from the shadows—the gaunt figure the juniors had described. It pointed a long, bony finger at me, and I felt a cold hand grip my heart. I staggered back, and it vanished.

Realizing the game was tied to the forest that bordered the school, I resolved to confront the source. I found an old, weathered lantern in Pak Man’s workshop, hidden under a tarp. It was different from the others—black iron, with an eerie green glass. On the base, a date was carved: 1942. I knew the area had been a site of a Japanese internment camp during the war. Perhaps the spirits of the dead were involved.

I set the lantern on a stump at the edge of the forest, lit a candle inside, and spoke the chant. The flame turned a sickly green, and the air grew cold. A voice, older and more powerful, answered: ‘You have summoned me. What do you want?’ I asked, ‘What are you?’ It replied, ‘I am the guardian of the forgotten. Those who were buried here, their suffering gave birth to me. The lantern game was my way of reaching out. But the children’s fear is delicious.’ I realized the game was a trap, feeding the entity with their terror. I extinguished the flame, but the damage was done.

The following week, the school was closed indefinitely. Several students and teachers were hospitalized, and I moved to a different school. But the memory of that green flame and the hollow voice haunted my dreams. I never spoke of it again, but every time I see a lantern, I hear that voice: ‘You should not have done that.’ And I know, deep down, that somewhere, in a corner of a schoolyard, the Lantern Game still waits for its next player.