The Lantern in the Peat

It was a Thursday in late autumn. School had ended, and the sky was already a bruised purple by the time I left my friend Milo’s house. We had been watching some old horror film, but the real dread began when I stepped onto the lane that cut through the marsh. My home was a twenty-minute walk, and the path was familiar, yet tonight it felt wrong.

I noticed him almost immediately: a tall, thin man in a long coat, keeping pace about thirty yards behind me. He never gained, never fell back. I felt his gaze on my neck, but I refused to turn. I told myself it was just a farmer or a dog walker, but something about his stillness bothered me. I focused on the ground ahead, my own shadow stretching long in the weak light of a waning moon. I glanced sideways, trying to catch his shadow without turning my head. It wasn’t there. No shadow, no silhouette on the ground, just the gritty path and the tufts of grass. My heart quickened, but I kept walking, my breath fogging in the cold air.

Finally, I reached my street. The houses were dark, and mine was no exception. I slipped through the side gate into the back garden, my boots crunching on frost. I latched the gate behind me and turned to the house. The windows were black, but as I looked up at my sister’s room, a pale, face-like shape pressed against the glass from inside. It was there for a heartbeat, then gone. I blinked, chalking it up to the reflection of the streetlight or my own paranoia.

I unlocked the back door and stepped into the kitchen. The warmth of the house was welcoming, but the silence was heavy. I flicked on every light as I moved, chasing away the shadows. I ate my dinner in the living room, the TV chattering to fill the emptiness. Afterwards, I took my plate to the kitchen and set it in the sink. I was about to wash it when I heard a soft, rhythmic scraping from the back garden, like something dragging across the stone path. I froze, listening. The scraping stopped. I told myself it was the neighbor’s cat or a branch in the wind.

But then I saw it: a small, flickering light in the garden, just beyond the kitchen window. It moved slowly, bobbing as if carried by a hand. It was a lantern, old-fashioned, with a glass pane and a candle flame inside. I stepped closer to the window, and the lantern stopped, as if its bearer were looking back at me. The light swayed, then began to move again, toward the end of the garden where a wooden bench sat beneath the bare apple tree. The light settled there, casting a long, distorted shadow on the grass—a shadow that was not my own, but the man’s.

I felt a cold dread pool in my stomach. I moved to the window to get a better look, but the lantern was gone, leaving only the dark. I stood there for a long time, my heart pounding. Then I heard a knock at the front door. Three slow, deliberate knocks. I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. The knocking came again, more insistent. I crept to the front window and peered through the gap in the curtains. No one was there. But on the doorstep, a small object gleamed in the light of the porch lamp: a brass lantern, unlit.

I don’t remember opening the door. I just remember standing in the doorway, staring at the lantern. Then I saw the note tucked under it, written in a neat, old-fashioned hand: ‘You forgot to close the gate. I’ve taken care of it.’ I looked toward the side gate—it was open, swinging slightly in the wind. The man was gone, but his shadow had found a home, and I knew I would never sleep easy again. That night, I didn’t close the gate. I left it open, and I kept the lantern in my room, never lit, as a reminder that some things you cannot outwalk.