The Lantern in the Hollow

I was fifteen when it happened, and no one believes me except for my cousin Marta, who was there. She doesn’t talk about it, but I know she remembers. We were at our grandmother’s farm in the Appalachian foothills, the kind of place where the woods lean in close and the creek sounds like whispers. Grandma Bea was a folk healer, not Wiccan exactly, but she knew the old ways. She said Halloween was a night when the veil thinned, and we should honor the dead with a simple ceremony in the clearing where her ancestors were buried.

Marta and I thought we could spice it up. We had seen a horror movie about a ouija board, and we thought it would be cool to contact something. Marta found an old board in the attic, dusty and cracked. We didn’t tell Grandma. We waited until she was asleep, then snuck out with the board, a lantern, and our make-believe robes made of old sheets. The clearing was a twenty-minute walk through the woods, a circle of grass surrounded by oaks, with a few mossy stones and a single grave marker that said ‘Ellen Marrow, 1821.’

As soon as we stepped into the clearing, I felt a headache split my skull, like ice pick behind my eyes. The lantern light flickered, and the hairs on my arms stood up. I told Marta, but she said it was just nerves, that the movie had gotten to me. We set up the board on a flat stone, and Marta lit a candle from the lantern. We took turns asking questions, but the pointer just slid around aimlessly. I wanted to leave, but Marta insisted we try harder. She whispered, ‘Maybe we need to say a prayer first, like they do in the movies.’ I didn’t know any prayers, so I just said, ‘Please protect us from anything evil.’

Suddenly, the pointer began to move in a deliberate pattern. It spelled out ‘HELLO,’ then ‘I AM ELLEN.’ Marta’s eyes widened with excitement. I felt a cold draft even though there was no wind. The candle flame bent sideways, as if something was breathing on it. I asked, ‘What do you want?’ The pointer glided to ‘FREEDOM.’ Then it spelled ‘RELEASE ME.’ I didn’t understand. The gravestone behind us began to hum, a low vibration I felt in my teeth. Marta looked pale. She whispered, ‘Grandma said this clearing is a passage for the dead.’

The lantern went out. The candle on the board flickered, but it was the only light. I heard a rustling in the trees, like something many-legged scurrying. The grave marker started to crack, slowly, like ice breaking. Dirt began to shift at its base, as if something was digging from underneath. We scrambled to our feet, the board sliding off the stone and clattering to the ground. We ran back to the house, but the woods felt wrong. The trees seemed to lean in, and the air was thick with the smell of damp earth and rot. We burst through the kitchen door, and Grandma was standing there, her eyes fierce old blue. She took one look at us and said, ‘What did you do?’

Marta confessed about the board. Grandma’s face went white. She lit a candle from the stove and walked us back to the clearing, even though we begged her not to. The lantern was glowing again on the stone, but the candle had melted into a puddle. The board was spelled out ‘DEATH’ in the dirt. The grave marker had split in two, and inside was a hollow space, empty but for a small metal box. Grandma knelt and opened it. Inside was a lock of hair tied with red thread and a photograph of a woman with dark eyes and a smile that didn’t reach her face.

Grandma told us, ‘Ellen was my great-grandmother. She was a midwife, but they accused her of witchcraft and drowned her in the creek. She’s been trapped here, angry and hungry. You gave her a way out. She’s gone now, and she’s taken a piece of me with her.’ Just as she said that, Grandma gasped and clutched her chest. Her eyes looked clouded, and her voice became thin. ‘She’ll come back for the rest tonight. We have to burn the lock.’ But the candle had gone out. We had no fire. In a panic, I grabbed the lantern, but it was empty of oil. The lantern was an antique, and I knew it hadn’t been filled for years. Yet it had glowed. And now it was dark.

We hurried back to the house, but Grandma stumbled and fell. Her breathing was ragged. She pointed weakly to the shed. ‘In the shed, the kerosene,’ she said. Marta ran to get it, but I stayed with Grandma. She held my hand with a grip like cold iron. ‘She’s not gone,’ she whispered. ‘She’s in the lantern. She’ll trick someone else to light it and free her. You must bury it in the creek, where she drowned, and bless the water over it.’ Marta came back with the kerosene. We filled the lantern and lit it. The flame burned blue. Grandma took the lantern and walked to the creek, her steps unsteady. At the edge, she said a prayer in a language I didn’t know, and threw the lantern into the black water. It sank, and the light went out.

Grandma collapsed, and we carried her inside. She was sick for weeks, but she survived. The lantern never resurfaced, but sometimes, when I walk by that creek, I see a faint glimmer beneath the water, like a eye opening. And I think I can hear a voice calling my name, faint and desperate, asking me to come closer. I never go near that place again. I’m nineteen now, and I still have nightmares of that lantern, waiting at the bottom of the creek, patient, hungry. A part of me believes it was real. Another part hopes it wasn’t, because if it was, then I don’t know who might be next to mistake its glow for hope.