The Lantern in the Paddy Field

The first time I set foot in the village of Kharagpur, the monsoon had just begun to recede, leaving the red earth slick and the air thick with the smell of wet thatch and rotting leaves. I had come for my grandfather’s final days, or so I thought. My mother had been there for a week, her voice over the crackling phone line a mixture of worry and forced optimism. ‘He’s eating, Arjun. He’s drinking his broth. The swelling in his legs is going down. Maybe the old stubborn fool will pull through after all.’

I believed her. I wanted to believe her. My grandfather, Bishnu, was a man of iron will and wild superstitions, a farmer who had spent seventy years wrestling life from the same patch of land his father had tilled. When I arrived at the family homestead, a sprawling mud-and-brick compound with a courtyard shaded by a neem tree, I found him propped up on a cot, his skin like old parchment, but his eyes sharp, watching me with a strange intensity. ‘Arjun,’ he rasped, his voice like dry leaves. ‘You’ve come. Good. There’s something you need to do for me.’

He made me dig a hole under the old neem tree, right where its roots bulged like veins. He told me to find a tin box. I dug for an hour, the soil cool and yielding, and found it wrapped in oilcloth: a small, rusted tin. Inside was a brass key, tarnished green, and a photograph of a young woman with a stern face and a thick braid. ‘Your grandmother,’ he said, ‘before she was your grandmother. She left me this key. It’s for the lantern in the paddy shed. Don’t open it until the night of the full moon, and don’t light it unless you have to.’ He made me swear on the Gita, and I did, thinking it was the rambling of a sick old man.

The days passed. He seemed to rally, eating his rice and dal, scolding my mother for using too much salt. But the full moon approached, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that the village was holding its breath. The paddy field across from our house stretched into darkness, the stalks whispering in the wind. At night, I heard things: a distant drumming, the lowing of cattle that didn’t exist anywhere, and sometimes, a faint, reedy voice singing an old harvest song I recognized from my childhood. It was my grandmother’s voice, I was sure of it, though she had been dead for over a decade.

On the night of the full moon, the sky was a black velvet dome pierced by a cold, white orb. My grandfather slept fitfully, muttering in his sleep. I took the brass key and went to the paddy shed, a leaning structure of bamboo and corrugated tin. Inside, amidst the rusted tools and sacks of grain, hung an ancient oil lantern, dust-covered and cobwebbed. The key turned the lock on its base with a grating sound, and the glass panel swung open. Inside, instead of a wick, there was a small, folded piece of paper, yellowed with age. On it, written in a spidery hand, were the words: ‘Don’t light it. She’ll come back.’

My blood ran cold. I had heard the stories, passed down through generations, of the woman who had drowned in the irrigation canal fifty years ago, whose body was never found, and who, it was said, could be called back by a lantern lit with a particular oil. The lantern had no oil, and no wick, but as I stood there, I felt a draft, and the glass panel clicked shut on its own. From outside, I heard a splash, like something heavy falling into water.

I stepped out of the shed. The paddy field was a silver sea under the moon, and in the distance, near the canal, I saw a figure. A woman in a white sari, black hair loose and streaming, standing so still she could have been a scarecrow. My grandfather’s words echoed in my head: ‘Don’t light it unless you have to.’ But I had opened the lantern, and now she was here. She began to walk toward me, not touching the ground, her feet skimming the tops of the rice plants. A chill that had nothing to do with the night air crawled up my spine. I stumbled back into the shed, and as I did, I saw a brass bowl filled with a dark, viscous liquid, and a wick, coiled like a sleeping snake. I hadn’t noticed it before. The liquid smelled of mustard oil and something else, something metallic, like blood.

I knew I had to light it. The figure was closer now, her face clear in the moonlight—it was my grandmother’s face, but young, not the wrinkled countenance I remembered from photographs. Her lips were moving, but I heard no sound. I fumbled with the matches, my hands shaking. A voice, my grandfather’s voice, came from behind me, but it was faint, as if from a great distance: ‘Don’t, Arjun. It’s not her. It’s a devil wearing her skin.’ I struck a match, and the wick caught with a sputter, flames leaping up a sickly blue. The lantern blazed, and the figure stopped, her head tilting as if in curiosity. The flame flickered, and the lantern went out, as if a breath had extinguished it. The shed was plunged into darkness, and I heard a wet, slapping sound, like bare feet on mud, growing closer.

I ran. I sprinted across the courtyard, bursting into the house, slamming the door behind me. My mother was awake, her eyes wide. ‘What happened?’ she asked. I told her everything, the key, the lantern, the figure. She turned pale. ‘Your grandmother made him promise. She said if he ever lit that lantern, she would come and take him. It’s her condition, Arjun. She’s not here to hurt you. She’s here for him.’ I ran to my grandfather’s room. He was sitting up in bed, staring at the window, which was open to the night. His face was a mask of terror. ‘She’s here,’ he whispered. ‘She’s finally here.’

The window rattled, and a hand, pale and dripping, appeared on the sill. My grandfather began to shout, a guttural cry that seemed to come from his very soul, and he pointed at the corner of the room. I turned, and there, standing in the shadows, was the figure from the field, now dripping water, her sari clinging to her, her eyes hollow and black. She raised a finger to her lips, and then she was gone. The window slammed shut, and my grandfather fell back on his pillow, dead. I later found out that the woman in the photograph was not my grandmother, but her sister, who had died in the canal, and that my grandfather had been secretly engaged to her before he met my grandmother. He had broken it off, and she had drowned herself out of grief. The lantern was her way back, and he had known it, but he couldn’t resist the pull of the past.

I left the village the next morning, and I never returned. The lantern, I burned, and the ashes I scattered in the canal. But sometimes, when the moon is full and the wind blows over the paddy field, I think I see her, walking, her finger to her lips, telling me to keep the secret of the lantern in the paddy field.