The Lantern in the Dry Grass

In the late autumn of 1987, my family moved into a house on a dead-end road in a town that used to be called Greenhollow, now just a suburb on the edge of a larger city. The road was lined with old eucalyptus trees, their bark peeling like scabs, and the wind through them sounded like whispers. I was six years old, and the house was a two-story brick box with a yard that sloped down to a dry creek bed. My mother said the previous owners had left in a hurry, leaving behind a garden shed full of rusted tools and a child’s plastic tricycle rusted to the handles. My father said it was just the market, but I heard the neighbor, Mrs. Okafor, tell my mother that the last family’s little boy had ‘gone missing’ in the scrub behind the house. I didn’t know what missing meant, but I felt a cold spot in my stomach whenever I looked at the back fence.

My name is Clara, and I was the kind of kid who noticed things. The first time I saw him, it was dusk, and the yard was swimming in that blue-gray light before the dark sets in. He was standing near the dead tree at the edge of the property, wearing a long coat that shimmered like oil on water, and holding a lantern that didn’t cast any light onto the ground. Instead, the light poured upward, illuminating his face from below, making his eyes look like empty sockets. He didn’t move. He just stared at me, and I felt a pull in my chest, like a hook caught under my ribs, tugging me toward him. I blinked, and he was gone, leaving only a faint smell of rot and dry grass.

That night, I told my mother, and she said it was just my imagination, that the wind could play tricks. But I knew what I saw. Over the next week, I saw him more often. He’d be at the edge of the yard, or through the kitchen window, holding that lantern, always just out of reach. One evening, my father came home late, and I heard him mutter to my mother about a man in a long coat walking through the scrub, ‘like he was looking for something.’ My mother told him to keep the doors locked, and she started leaving the porch light on all night.

I began to research the house in the only way a six-year-old could: by listening and drawing. I used crayons to draw the man with the lantern, and I taped the pictures to my wall. My drawings grew more detailed. I added a crooked fence, a dead tree, and a shape that might have been a child crouching in the grass. My mother noticed and asked me about the little figure in the drawing. I said, ‘That’s the boy who lost his name.’ I didn’t know why I said it, but it felt true.

Then came the morning of the first frost. I woke early, and the window was laced with ice. The man with the lantern was standing in the backyard, right in the middle of the dead grass, and the lantern was swinging gently, even though the air was still. I watched him, and he raised the lantern, and for the first time, I saw the ground around him was not dead. There were fresh green shoots, like in spring, pushing through the frost. And in the center, where he stood, there was a patch of dark soil, as if the earth had been turned. I felt a strange calm, and I walked to the back door, my bare feet cold on the linoleum. My mother was making tea, and I said, ‘He wants me to see what he buried.’ She dropped the kettle, and it clattered on the floor, but before she could say anything, I opened the door and stepped outside.

The air was crisp and stale. The man was still there, but he was turning away, walking toward the dry creek bed. I followed him, my feet numb, but I couldn’t feel the cold. He stopped at the edge of the creek, where the water was just a trickle, and pointed with the lantern toward a patch of reeds. I knelt down, and among the reeds, half-buried in mud, was a small, rusted toy truck. I picked it up, and the metal was cold and slightly sticky. At that moment, the man spoke, but his voice came from inside my head, like a radio turned down low. He said, ‘He forgot it. I’ve been keeping it safe.’ And then, for the first time, I saw his face clearly. It was not a face at all, but a hollow space, and the lantern flickered, and he vanished.

I ran back inside, clutching the toy truck. My mother saw me and screamed, and I dropped the truck on the kitchen floor. It made a dull thud, and I started crying. My father came running, and he looked at the truck with a pale face. He said, ‘That’s from the old Miller boy. He went missing in 1962.’ I didn’t know who that was, but I felt the presence of the man more strongly than ever. He was still there, somewhere, watching. The toy truck felt heavy in my pocket, and I knew I had to return it.

That afternoon, while my parents argued with the police on the phone, I took the truck and walked to the scrub behind the house. The scrub was thick with dry grass and tangled branches, but I pushed through, following a path that seemed to open before me. I came to a clearing, and in the center was a headstone, no bigger than a shoebox, with a name that had been worn smooth. The man with the lantern stood beside it, and this time the lantern cast a faint glow onto the ground. He nodded, and I placed the truck at the base of the headstone. As soon as I did, the lantern went out, and the man was gone.

I stood there in the silence, and I felt a release, as if a knot in my chest had come undone. But as I turned to go, I saw something glinting in the grass. It was another toy, a small plastic dinosaur. And I heard a whisper, like a child’s voice, ‘He’ll come back for that too.’ I looked around, but no one was there. The wind stirred the dry grass, and for a moment, I thought I saw a small shape moving deeper into the scrub. I ran back to the house, heart pounding.

Later, my parents moved us out of that house within a month, but I never forgot the man with the lantern. Years later, I learned that the town was built on land that had once been a burial ground for an unknown people, long before the settlers came. The man with the lantern was not a ghost of the missing boy, but a guardian of the forgotten, and the toy truck was just one of many objects he collected to remind the living of those who had been lost. I still have a drawing I made that night, of a man with a lantern standing at the edge of a dry creek, and in the grass, a small face looking up at him. I never saw him again, but sometimes, on quiet nights, I can still smell the dry grass and hear the faint sound of a lantern swinging in the wind.