The Lantern in the Bog

I live in a cottage at the edge of Bittermead Fen, a stretch of marshland that no one visits after dusk. The nearest neighbor is two miles down a dirt track that floods in autumn, so when I see lights out in the mire, I pay attention. But that night, the lights weren’t out in the fen. They were in my yard.

It was a humid September evening, and I was reading by the window when a pale green glow swept past the glass, like a firefly with a fever. I set my book down, and for a moment I thought it was the reflection of my oil lamp—but the lamp was behind me, and the yard was dark as coal. I went to the door, but the light was already gone. I chalked it up to marsh gas, though I’d never seen it rise that high.

Then I saw it again, closer this time, hovering over the patch of wild grass where my garden used to be. And with it came two smaller lights, the color of old blood, drifting low and slow. They moved in tandem, like eyes scanning the ground, and I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the night air. The green light began to circle, faster and faster, while the red ones stopped just a few feet from my porch.

My heart was pounding. I grabbed a lantern—it had a faulty striker, but I didn’t need it, because the lights were bright enough to read by. They began to advance up the path, the green one leading, the red ones following like leashed hounds. I could see their reflections in the puddle near the well, but the strange thing was, the reflection moved a split second after the lights did. As if the lights were not the source, but the shadow.

Something about that lag made me flee. I ran through the house, shouting for Aunt Maren, who was babysitting my little cousin in the back room. She came out with a spoon in her hand, annoyed at the noise. ‘What in the world, Elsie?’ she said. But when she saw my face, she shut up quick. I dragged her to the window, and there they were: two red orbs now pressed against the glass, the green light floating up onto the roof, seeming to peek over the eaves.

Aunt Maren took a long look, then pulled me back. ‘It’s just the marsh lights,’ she said, but her voice was thin. ‘Must be a trick of the fog.’ She told me to go to bed, that I was tired and reading too many old books. I didn’t believe her, but she shooed me out of the room and went back to her knitting. I lay in bed, listening to the rain start to fall, and I felt the stare of those red lights like a weight on my chest.

Eventually I crept back to the window. The lights were gone. But in the wet soil by the porch, there were footprints—not belonging to any boot I knew, long and narrow, with toes that were too many. And on the glass, where the red lights had pressed, there were faint outlines of hands, only the hands were too small, like a child’s, but with fingers that bent at impossible angles.

I didn’t sleep that night. I kept the lantern burning, though it cast no light on the yard. In the morning, Aunt Maren said I’d been dreaming, but I showed her the prints and the marks on the glass. She turned pale, and for the first time, she didn’t have an answer. She just said, ‘We should burn sage’—but I’ve lived here long enough to know that the fen doesn’t care for sage.

Since that night, I’ve seen the lights every week, always a little closer. Last night, the red orbs came right up to the window, and this time, they didn’t stop. They passed through the glass like smoke, and I felt something cold brush my cheek. I don’t scream anymore. I don’t even move. I just sit in the dark and watch the light in the bog, waiting for the day it decides to stay.