The Lantern in the Hall

I was eight, not seven, and it wasn’t my brother’s room but my younger sister’s. We lived in a two-story farmhouse that sat alone in the middle of a hundred acres of corn. The upstairs was a long corridor with three doors: mine, hers, and a storage room that we were forbidden to enter. The bathroom was at the end, past the stairwell that opened into the living room below. It was July, and the upstairs was an oven despite the window units that hummed in each bedroom, pushing out weak, lukewarm air.

That night, I woke with a start, my heart hammering for no reason. I felt as if the whole house were tilting, like I was on a swaying ship, and the walls seemed to breathe in and out. I was not fully asleep, not fully awake. I lay in the dark, the ceiling fan slicing the shadows overhead, and I tried to still my spinning head. After what felt like an eternity, the sensation passed, and I was left with a dry mouth and a full bladder. I swung my legs out of bed and padded to the doorway, my feet sticking slightly to the floor.

All was quiet except for the low drone of the air conditioners. I stepped into the hall, and a heavy blanket of cold air wrapped around me. It was wrong. The upstairs should have been stifling, but this cold was damp and unnatural, like stepping into a cellar that had been sealed for years. I shivered and pulled my nightgown tighter. The bathroom was ahead, its door cracked, leaking a sliver of light. But something made me pause. A tug, like a string tied to my ribs, pulled my gaze to the left, toward my sister’s room. Her door was open, and I could see her outline in the glow of her nightlight.

I looked away and took a step toward the bathroom. The tug came again, stronger, insistently. I turned and looked down the hall. My sister’s room was dark save for the nightlight. But then, in the corner of my eye, I saw it. At the end of the hall, where the storage room’s door stood ajar, there was a faint, red glow. It pulsed, slow and rhythmic, like a heartbeat. I blinked, and it was gone. I told myself it was the taillight of a car passing on the dirt road, but no car had passed. The cold air seemed to thicken, and my skin prickled.

I forced my legs to move toward the bathroom. I walked past the stairwell, and I could see the living room below, bathed in the blue glow of the television that had been left on. Everything seemed normal, but the air was so heavy it was hard to breathe. I reached the bathroom and flicked on the light. The harsh fluorescent hummed, and I did my business as quickly as I could, my eyes fixed on the door. When I finished, I turned off the light and stepped back into the hall. The red glow was there again, brighter now, emanating from the storage room’s crack. It spilled onto the floorboards like liquid fire.

My heart hammered. I knew I should go back to my room, pull the covers over my head, and forget. But curiosity, that terrible, childish curiosity, pulled me forward. The tug in my chest was not a pull toward my sister’s room anymore. It was a pull toward the glow. I took a step, then another. My bare feet made no sound on the wooden floor. The air grew colder with each step, and I could see my breath puff out in small clouds. The glow pulsed faster, as if excited.

I stopped a few feet from the storage room door. It was open just enough for me to see inside, but it was too dark to make out anything. The glow seemed to come from deep within the room, from something hidden behind boxes and old furniture. I leaned closer, my hand resting on the doorframe. The wood was cold, colder than the air, and it seemed to vibrate, humming with a low, almost subsonic frequency. A voice, thin and reedy, like dry leaves rustling, spoke from inside. It was not a voice I heard with my ears, but one that seemed to form directly in my mind. It said, ‘Come in.’

I should have run. I should have screamed for my parents. But I didn’t. Instead, I pushed the door open wider, and the glow intensified. I saw a figure, tall and thin, made of darkness and shadow, but its face was a lantern, a glass case with a fiery red eye inside. Its eye fixed on me, and I felt a pull so strong that my feet slid forward, scraping against the floor. I gripped the doorframe, but it was no use. I was being drawn into the room like a moth to a flame.

Just as my toes crossed the threshold, a sound broke the silence. My sister, from her room, called my name in her sleep, a soft mumble that cut through the tension. The glow flickered, and the figure’s eye dimmed. For a moment, it hesitated, turning its head toward my sister’s voice. I seized the moment, yanked myself back, and sprinted to my room, slamming the door behind me. I dove into bed and pulled the sheets over my head, trembling.

I stayed there, shaking, until the gray light of dawn seeped through my curtains. When I finally peeked out, the hall was normal. The storage room door was shut, and the cold was gone, replaced by the familiar, sticky heat. I never spoke of that night, and I avoided the storage room for the rest of my childhood. But sometimes, in the dead of summer, when the air upstairs gets heavy and cold, I can feel that red glow at the edge of my vision, waiting. And I know that the lantern in the hall is still there, patient, still waiting for me to step inside.