The Lantern in the Gully

In the autumn of 2008, when I was eight years old, my cousin Lucy and I spent a weekend at my grandfather’s farm. The farm was a sprawling, rundown place with a rusted windmill that creaked even when there was no breeze. A deep, overgrown gully ran along the eastern edge of the property, a scar of tangled brush and shadow that my grandfather always warned us to stay away from. He told us it was ‘not safe’, but he never explained why. My sister Clara, two years older, was with us too, and we three were an inseparable breed of restless energy.

We spent the whole Saturday chasing each other through the rows of dead corn, throwing dried husks and laughing as the sun climbed and fell. As dusk settled, the air turned crisp and the farm grew quiet, save for the windmill’s mournful groan. We ate a hearty dinner of stew and bread, and then, as was our ritual, we went out again before bed, this time with a single flashlight. I remember the beam cutting through the dark as we approached the edge of the gully, drawn by a curious glow we hadn’t noticed before.

It was a strange, pale light, like a lantern burning with sickly yellow flame, bobbing about waist-high near the bottom of the gully. Lucy saw it first and grabbed my arm. ‘What is that?’ she whispered. We stood at the rim, staring down into the tangled darkness. The light moved, not erratically like a firefly, but with a deliberate, swaying motion, as if someone were walking. But we saw no one. I felt a coldness creeping up my spine, a childish dread that made my legs want to run.

Clara, bolder than us, called out, ‘Hello?’ The light stopped moving, and for a terrifying moment, it seemed to be looking at us. Then, it slowly began to climb the side of the gully. The brush crackled and rustled, and we heard a faint, wet sound, like footsteps in mud, but the ground was hard and dry. We turned and ran, our feet pounding on the packed earth, not stopping until we burst through the back door of the farmhouse. Grandfather was in his armchair, dozing over a book. He looked up, saw our faces, and his own went pale. ‘You saw the light,’ he said, not a question.

He told us then, in a low, unsteady voice, about a farmhand named Elias who had disappeared in that gully years ago. He’d been a quiet, solitary man who carried a lantern on his evening rounds. One night, he didn’t return, and his body was never found. But his lantern, according to local legend, still wanders the gully, searching for something, and it will lure the curious to its side. Grandfather said we were lucky to have run, because those who follow the light into the gully never come back.

We were too frightened to sleep alone, so we piled into one bed in the attic room, the window overlooking the gully. The curtains were drawn, but I could still see the faint glow of the lantern through the crack, moving slowly along the treeline. We whispered to keep our courage up, but soon the whispers died as exhaustion took us. I dreamt of a tall figure carrying a lantern, its face hidden, walking through a cornfield. In the dream, it stopped at the edge of the gully and turned to me. The light illuminated the bottom of a deep well, and in the well, a hand reached up.

I woke with a start. The room was dark, but I could hear Lucy’s rapid breathing. ‘It’s outside,’ she said, her voice shaky. We crept to the window and peered out. The lantern was right there, at the edge of the yard, just beyond the fence, its light flickering as if beckoning. And then, it started to move away, slowly, towards the old barn, its light weaving a path through the tall grass. We watched, frozen, as it disappeared behind the barn. A minute later, the windmill began to clang, and the sound was like a cry in the night.

We ran to Grandfather’s room, but he was already awake, his shotgun in hand. He said, ‘It’s not after you. It’s never after you, only for you to see. But if you see it, you must never follow. That’s the rule.’ He guided us back to bed and sat in a chair by the door, his eyes never leaving the window. We never slept, but as the hours passed, the lantern never returned.

In the morning, we packed up in silence, and Grandfather drove us home. As we passed the gully, I looked out and saw a patch of dark earth, like a recent burial, but no light. Years later, after Grandfather died, I returned to the farm to clean it out. Among his belongings, I found a journal. One entry, dated the week before we came, read: ‘I saw the lantern again. It moved to the barn, and I followed. It pointed to the well behind the old coop. I didn’t go near, but I know it’s there, waiting. I won’t follow. But the light, it knows me. It knows all of us.’

I went to the well, a dry stone shaft choked with weeds. I shone my flashlight in, and at the bottom, I saw it: an old, rusted lantern, its glass intact but dark. And next to it, a small, scattered pile of bones, as if an animal had crawled there to die. But I saw something else, too, something that made me flee without looking back. In the grime on the well’s inner wall, there was a handprint, small, like a child’s, and beside it, three words scratched into the stone: ‘I see you.’