The Lantern in the Hollow

My grandmother used to say that the river behind our village was not a river at all, but a grave that had forgotten to bury itself. The water had long since given up, leaving behind a cracked, blackened bed of mud and weeds. Trees grew right out of the middle of it, their roots tangled like drowned fingers, and on either bank, the forest pressed in so thick that the sun barely touched the ground. They called it the Hollow, and they said that the trees in the Hollow had tenants.

I didn’t believe it until the night I saw the lantern. I was eleven, walking home from my cousin’s house late, when I took the shortcut along the Hollow’s edge. The moon was hidden behind clouds, and the only light came from the faint glow of fireflies that danced over the stagnant pools. As I passed the old sycamore that leaned over the riverbed, I noticed a light bobbing among its branches. It was a lantern, old and brass, with a flame that never flickered. It hung in the crook of the tree, but there was no one around to have placed it there. I stood still, my heart thumping, watching the lantern drift gently as if an invisible hand was swinging it.

That’s when I remembered the story of the boy who vanished. His name was Tomas, and he was my age when he disappeared on his way to a wake. His family had gone ahead, and he promised to catch up on his bicycle, but he never arrived. They found his bike near the Hollow, but no trace of him. The elders whispered that the lantern was his, that he still haunted the river, trying to light his way home. They said that if you saw the lantern, you had to look away and walk fast, because it was looking for a new companion.

I wanted to run, but my legs felt like stone. The lantern glided down from the tree and hovered at the edge of the bank, as if it was watching me. I heard a sound—a soft, wet footstep, like a bare foot pressing into mud. It came from the riverbed, and I saw a shape moving among the reeds. It was small, like a child, but it had no face. Just a smooth, pale oval where its features should be. It reached out a hand, but I didn’t wait to see more. I turned and ran, not stopping until I burst through my front door, gasping and soaked with sweat.

I didn’t tell my mother for days, but she knew. She had that look, the one she’d get when she saw something she couldn’t forget. One evening, she sat me down by the fire and told me about her own encounter. When she was a girl, she used to play on the banks of the Hollow with her friend, Maria. They loved to skip stones across the dead river, pretending it was alive. One day, Maria dared her to climb the big mango tree that grew in the middle of the riverbed, where the two bamboo stalks crossed like a crooked finger. My mother climbed, and when she reached the top, she saw a lantern hanging in the branches. It was brass, with a glass screen, and inside the flame danced without any oil.

She said she felt a cold breath on her neck, and she looked down to see a boy standing on the riverbed, looking up at her. He was pale and wet, and his eyes were dark holes. ‘Come down,’ he said, but his voice was not a voice—it was the rustling of leaves, the creak of wood. ‘Come down and play.’ My mother scrambled down so fast she tore her dress, and she ran all the way home. She never went back to the Hollow again. She told me that the boy in the tree was not alone; there were more of them, hidden in the roots, waiting for a chance to pull someone into their world.

That autumn, the village decided to clear the Hollow. They said the trees were sick, and the river had to be drained to prevent floods. I watched from my window as men with axes and chainsaws marched down the bank. The saws whined, and one by one, the trees fell. First the sycamore, then the mango, then the two bamboos that had always looked like a pair of crossed bones. The men worked through the day, ignoring the cold that seemed to seep from the riverbed, ignoring the feeling that they were being watched. By dusk, the Hollow was a wasteland of stumps and tangled roots, and the lantern was gone.

That night, I woke to a sound outside my window. It was a light tapping, like a knuckle on glass. I pulled back the curtain and saw a man standing at the edge of the yard, holding a lantern. He was tall and thin, and his face was shrouded in shadow. He lifted the lantern, and its light fell on my window, and I saw that the man had no features, just a smooth expanse of skin where his face should have been. He didn’t move, just stood there, and I felt a cold dread seep into my bones. I ran to my parents’ room, but when I dragged them to the window, the man was gone.

The next morning, the men who had cleared the Hollow were found huddled in their trucks, dead of fear. Their faces were twisted, their eyes wide open, and their mouths frozen in silent screams. The village shut down after that. People stopped going near the Hollow, and it began to grow back, but not with trees. It grew with weeds and brambles, and a foul black mud that bubbled like it was boiling. And at night, if you stood at the edge, you could see the lantern swinging from a branch of a new tree, waiting for the next person who dared to pass by.

I never went back to the Hollow. But sometimes, when the wind blows through the cracks in my window, I hear a voice, soft and childlike, calling my name. And I remember the rule I learned that dark night: if you see the lantern in the Hollow, you must never look away, because if you do, you’ll see the one who holds it, and he’ll see you too.