The Lantern in the Rain

The evening had settled in like a damp shroud over our subdivision in Lapu-Lapu City, not far from the old wharf where fishing boats swayed against the tide. It was 1993, and the brownouts were as regular as the monsoon rains, plunging our narrow streets into a darkness that felt almost sentient. My friends and I—twelve to fourteen years old, restless and wild—welcomed these blackouts as invitations to play. That night, the air was heavy with residual wetness from a downpour earlier at five, and the ground squelched beneath our bare feet as we gathered by the skeletal fence of the abandoned lot where bananas and cassava leaves sprawled in chaotic green.

There were five of us: me, Miguel, the twins Andoy and Andres, and a girl named Lita who could run faster than any of us. We decided on hide and seek, and since the lot offered plenty of cover—old cardboard boxes, a rusted bicycle frame, and a pile of hollow blocks—we scattered like roaches when the countdown began. I chose a spot behind a stack of rotting wood that reeked of termites and damp earth. The others went deeper into the shadows. I held my breath, listening to the distant bark of a dog and the hum of crickets.

Then Lita, who was ‘it’, started her search. I could hear her footsteps, tentative, squelching. But after a minute, she halted. Her voice came out barely above a whisper, but it cut through the dark: ‘Hey… what’s that?’ I peeked from my hiding spot. Across the narrow street, beyond the lone streetlamp that stood dead, there was a small fire. It hovered about knee-high, glowing like a firefly’s bulb, but steadier, more deliberate. It cast a faint orange shimmer on the wet asphalt. My first thought was that some kids had set a candle inside a snail shell again—a prank we did to scare pedestrians. But this was different. It wasn’t moving erratically like a candle holder. It pulsed, low and steady.

I stepped out, and the others did too, drawn by a curiosity that felt like a cold finger tracing our spines. We watched as the flame began to grow. It elongated, stretching upward like a living thing, its edges licking the air without smoke. It swelled to the size of a lantern, then a basin, casting long, dancing silhouettes that seemed to reach toward us. The air around it shimmered, and a faint, high-pitched whine started, almost like the tuning of an old radio.

‘Let’s go back,’ Andoy muttered, but none of us moved. The flame was now taller than us, a roaring pillar of fire that gave off no heat, only a biting cold that made our skin prickle. And inside it, we began to see shapes. At first, they were just indistinct twists, but then they coalesced into a face—gaunt, with hollow eyes that seemed to look right through us. The face pushed forward from the flames, mouth opening in a silent wail.

I wanted to run, but my feet were rooted like the banana stalks around us. The face then split into many, a dozen pale visages contorted in agony, pressing against the flame’s surface as if trying to escape. The high-pitched whine grew louder, becoming a multilayered chorus of whispers, all saying, ‘We see you… we see you…’

Then the flame began to move. It drifted across the street, floating over the damp grass, leaving no scorch marks on the earth. We stumbled backward, tripping over the debris. The flame stopped at the edge of the lot, hovering just a few feet from us. Lita screamed, and that broke the spell. We turned and fled, scattering in all directions. I ran through the cassava leaves, their broad leaves slapping my face, and I didn’t stop until I burst through the back gate of my house, slamming it shut behind me. I pressed my back against the door, panting, my heart a drum in my chest.

For the next few days, none of us talked about it. We avoided that lot and the street where the flame had appeared. But something had changed. At night, I would dream of that face, and I would wake up with the sensation that something was watching me from the corner of my room. And then, one evening, my mother went out to the backyard to hang clothes. She came back inside, her face pale, holding a small, charred object. ‘This was on the line,’ she said, showing me a piece of wood, blackened and cracked, shaped almost like a child’s toy soldier.

I walked to the window. Across the street, in the lot where we used to play, I saw the flame again—small, like a bulb, but it was watching me. It flickered, and then it began to grow. I closed the curtains and backed away, my breath shallow. From that night on, the flame never left. It would appear every evening, sometimes low, sometimes towering, always at the edge of our vision. And I knew, deep in my marrow, that it was waiting for something. For one of us to come back. For the game to continue.

Years later, we moved away, and I never saw the flame again. But sometimes, in the rain, when the power goes out and the world goes dark and wet, I think I catch a glimmer of light where there should be none. And I hear that whisper, faint but persistent, calling my name.