The Lantern in the Attic

The first time I saw it, I was six, not four. It was the summer we moved into my grandmother’s old house in the hills of Vermont, a place that smelled of mothballs and damp wood. My room was at the end of the hallway, under the eaves, with a small dormer window that looked out onto the forest. The attic door was in my closet, always slightly ajar, no matter how many times I pushed it shut.

It started with a light. A soft, pulsing glow that seeped through the crack of the attic door like a feverish sunrise. I’d lie in my bed, my heart thumping against my ribs, and watch that light grow and dim, grow and dim, as if something in the attic was breathing. My parents said it was just the moonlight catching the dust, or maybe a faulty wire. But I knew better. I knew it was waiting.

The first time it showed itself, I had woken from a nightmare—a dream where I was drowning in a sea of black water, my lungs burning, while a voice whispered my name over and over. I gasped awake, my sheets drenched in sweat. The room was dark, but the attic door was glowing, and from the shadows stepped a figure. It was a man, tall and thin, with a face that was blank, like a mask of pale clay. He wore a long coat that seemed to absorb the light around him, and in his hand he held a lantern that cast no warmth, only a cold, blue flicker. He stood at the foot of my bed, staring at me with eyes that were not there—just smooth, pale skin where eyes should have been. I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t move. I just watched him, and he watched me, until the first light of dawn crept through the window and he faded, but I could still feel his gaze.

After that, he came often, but always changed. Sometimes he wore my father’s face, but his skin was gray and translucent, and his smile was wrong—too wide, too many teeth. Other times, he was an old woman in a tattered nightgown, her hair hanging in wet strands, and she would sit on the edge of my bed and hum a tune I didn’t recognize, a tune that made my bones ache. Once, he appeared as a child, a boy my age, with hollow cheeks and a look of infinite sorrow. He pointed to the attic door and mouthed the words, ‘Let me out.’ But I never did.

The nightmares worsened. I would dream of being trapped in the attic, surrounded by boxes of my grandmother’s things, and the lantern would swing from a hook, casting long shadows. I would hear scratching, like nails on wood, and a voice that pleaded, ‘Why won’t you help me?’ I would wake with scratches on my arms, thin red lines that vanished by morning. My parents took me to doctors, to therapists, but I couldn’t tell them. I was afraid they’d think I was crazy, and worse, afraid that if I spoke his name—if I gave him a name—he’d gain power over me.

When I was twelve, I finally decided to confront it. I took my father’s flashlight and climbed onto the attic stairs, my legs shaking. The air was cold and still, heavy with dust. The lantern was there, sitting on a trunk, but it wasn’t lit. I picked it up. It was old, made of brass and glass, and inside, the wick was charred. I turned it over, and on the bottom was a name: Elias Vane. I had never heard that name before, but as I spoke it aloud, the attic filled with a sound like a sigh, and the lantern burst into blue flame. A figure solidified in front of me—the man, but now his face was not blank. It was twisted in agony, his mouth open in a silent scream. He reached out to me, and I saw that his hands were burned, the skin blackened and cracked. He mouthed, ‘Thank you,’ and then he was gone. The lantern went out, and the attic was empty.

I thought it was over. But I was wrong. That night, I went to sleep in my own bed, and I dreamed of a vast, empty field under a starless sky. In the distance, a light flickered—the lantern. And from the darkness, a voice called out, not the man, but something else. It said, ‘You freed him. Now I can follow.’ I woke up screaming, and when I looked at the attic door, it was open, and there was a shape standing in it—tall, darker than the shadows, with two burning white eyes. And it spoke in a voice that was not a voice, but a whisper that scraped against my mind: ‘You are the lantern now.’ Ever since, I have carried that cold light inside me. I see it in reflections, in the corner of my eye. And when I close my eyes at night, I feel the hunger of the thing that waits behind the door, growing stronger, waiting for the moment I finally open it.