The Lantern in the Loft

My father always said the hill was a good place to build. We left the dry heat of Bakersfield when I was nine, heading north to a plot of land in the Oregon Coast Range, a place called Fog Hollow. The house took a year to finish, timber-framed and smelling of sawdust, with a long porch that faced a valley of misty firs. My room was at the end of the upstairs hall, and in its ceiling was a square panel, painted the same white as the plaster, with a small brass ring. I remember lying in bed, staring at that panel, imagining a ladder folding down and a secret room above, a place where I could keep my comics and my collection of agates.

For the first few years, nothing seemed wrong. I had friends from school, we had chickens and a goat, and my brother and I built a fort in the lower meadow. The only odd thing was the attic. Whenever the wind blew hard, I could hear a faint thrumming, like a plucked string, coming from above. My father said it was just the house settling. My mother said it was the wires. I tried to open the panel once, but it wouldn’t budge, as if sealed shut. I figured it was nailed tight.

When I was fourteen, I started waking at night to a different sound: a slow, rhythmic scraping, like something being dragged across the floorboards in the room above. It would last for a minute, then stop. I told my parents, but they dismissed it. ‘Probably a raccoon,’ my father said. But raccoons don’t move in a straight line, and they don’t pause right above your bed. I began to keep a flashlight by my pillow.

One night, a storm knocked out the power. The house was dark, and the rain hammered the roof. I heard the scraping again, louder, and then a thump. The attic panel creaked. I grabbed my flashlight and aimed it at the ceiling. The panel was slowly rising, pushed up from within. I should have run, but I was frozen. A thin beam of light from a lantern, an old oil lantern, spilled through the gap, casting a flickering glow. A hand, pale and long-fingered, gripped the edge of the opening. Then a face appeared—not an animal, not a person. It was gaunt, with skin like stretched parchment, and its eyes were dark pits. It looked at me for a long moment, then withdrew. The panel closed with a hollow clunk.

I didn’t sleep that night. In the morning, I told my parents, but they said it was a dream. The storm had knocked a tree limb onto the roof, they said, and that was the noise. But I knew what I’d seen. I tried to climb into the attic from the garage, but there was no access. The panel was the only way.

Over the next weeks, the presence grew bolder. Sometimes I’d find my things moved: a book left open to a random page, my agates arranged in a circle on the floor. At night, I’d feel a breath on my neck, even though no one was there. My brother started sleeping with the lights on. My parents finally grew worried, but when they called a contractor to open the panel, he found it sealed with a strange, dark resin that smelled like burnt oil. He refused to go further.

Then, late one night, I heard a voice, thin and reedy, like wind through a crack in a window. It said my name, ‘Nora.’ I woke up. The panel was open, and the lantern was swaying, casting long shadows. A ladder, old and weathered, had descended to the floor. I knew I had to go up. I don’t know why. It was like a pull. I climbed, my heart pounding. The attic was bigger than the house. The roof slanted up to a peak, and in the center sat a heavy wooden chest, bound in iron. The lantern was on top, its flame steady.

I lifted the lid. Inside were objects wrapped in yellowed cloth: a child’s shoe, a braid of hair, a tarnished mirror. At the bottom lay a leather-bound journal, its pages brittle. I opened it. It belonged to a woman named Edith, who had lived in this house before it was built. She wrote of a ‘visitor’ who came from the hill, a presence that wanted to be let in. She wrote that she had made a bargain, but now she was trapped. The last entry was dated a hundred years ago. ‘It wants a new vessel,’ she wrote. ‘Do not look in the mirror.’

I looked at the mirror. My reflection was not mine. It was a gaunt face with dark pits for eyes, smiling. I dropped the mirror. It shattered. The lantern blew out, and the attic fell into darkness. I fumbled for the ladder, but it was gone. The panel was shut. I was trapped in the dark.

For three days, I wandered the attic, which seemed endless. I found doors that led to other attics, other roofs, other houses in other times. I saw Edith, a young woman in a long dress, crying in a corner. ‘You must break the bargain,’ she whispered. ‘Burn the lantern.’ The lantern lay where I had left it, unlit. I took it and found a box of matches in my pocket. I struck a match, lit the lantern, and threw it into the chest. The cloth caught fire. The attic filled with smoke. I coughed, my eyes stinging, and then I was falling, tumbling through darkness.

When I opened my eyes, I was on my bedroom floor. The attic panel was closed, and the room was cold. My parents found me, shaking, and said I’d been crying out in my sleep. They had no memory of the days I thought I’d been gone. I looked at my hands. There was a burn mark on my palm, in the shape of a lantern.

I never went near the attic again. We moved the next year. But sometimes, at night, I hear the scraping. And I see the lantern, swaying, in the corner of my eye. The house is gone now, torn down, but the hill remains. I wonder if the visitor has found someone new.