The Lantern in the Wall

The paper mill had been shut down for years, but the smell of rot and old chemicals still clung to the air like a wet blanket. That’s where I found my brother’s notebook, its pages swollen and warped, a green ink that had bled into incomprehensible shapes. I’d come to clear out the old foreman’s office, but the notebook was tucked behind a loose panel, as if someone had hidden it there on purpose. I recognized the handwriting—Elara’s. My brother had never been a writer, had barely spoken a word about anything that troubled him, but here were pages and pages of cramped, frantic script.

I read the first entry with a knot in my stomach. ‘It started after the mill closed,’ he wrote. ‘When Dad lost his job, we moved into that little house on Willow Street, the one with the peeling paint and the smell of damp. I was twelve. I thought I was having nightmares—a green light, always watching from the corner of the room. But it wasn’t a nightmare. It was when I was awake. A face, the size of a dinner plate, floating about a foot from the floor. It had no body, just that face, with eyes like holes in a rotten pumpkin and a mouth that moved but made no sound.’

I put the notebook down, my breath coming in short gasps. My brother had never told me this. Not once. Not even when we were kids, when we shared a room. I’d thought his sleepless nights and crying fits were just nightmares, but now I realized they were something else. The green face was real, at least to him. And as I read on, I learned that it only stopped when he started smoking—he said the smoke made it fade, like it was afraid of the fire. He’d kept up the habit for thirty years, even though he knew it was killing him.

And then, the final entry, dated just last week: ‘I told my sister. I don’t know why, but she seems to believe me. She’s planning to have the priest come over, and the family’s going to that new animated movie. For the first time in years, I feel like maybe I can get rid of this thing. But I’m scared. I know it’s not real, but it feels real. How can a face just appear in the air? And why does it follow me?’

My hands were shaking. I looked around the rotting office, at the graffiti on the walls, the shattered windows, the crumbled asbestos. And then I saw it—a faint green glow, seeping from a crack in the wall, right where the panel had been. It pulsed like a heartbeat, slow and rhythmic. I moved closer, my shoes crunching on broken glass. The glow was coming from a small, brass lantern, wedged in the wall cavity. It was old, tarnished, and the glass panes were almost black, but through a tiny gap, a green light flickered.

My brother’s notebook said that when he stopped smoking, the face became more solid, more patient. He’d tried to quit before, but the face would always return, more menacing each time. And now, as I stared at the lantern, I realized that maybe the face wasn’t a hallucination. Maybe it was tied to this lantern, to the mill, to something that had been here long before we were born.

I should have left it. I should have burned the notebook and never looked back. But I had to know. I reached for the lantern, and as my fingers touched the cold metal, I heard a low hum. The green light flickered, and then a shape began to coalesce in front of me—a face, identical to the one my brother described, but now it was looking at me. Its lips parted, and for the first time, I heard a voice, like gravel scraping against glass: ‘You shouldn’t have come, sister. You shouldn’t have opened your brother’s fears.’

The lantern went dark. The face vanished. But I knew it wasn’t gone. It was waiting, inside the lantern, inside me. I ran out of the mill, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that my brother’s burden had just been passed to me—that the green face now had a new host. And as I drove home, I thought of Elara, my poor brother, who had finally found peace after the priest’s visit, but I knew in my heart that peace wouldn’t last. Because the lantern in the wall had been found, and its light would never be extinguished, only transferred.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I saw the face in my periphery, always watching from the corner of my eye. And when I finally closed my eyes, I felt a cold breath on my neck, and a whisper that echoed in my skull: ‘You are mine now, sister. You and your brother. I have waited a long time for a family to share my loneliness.’

I’d thought I was helping my brother. I’d thought the priest was the answer. But the priest had only given him a temporary reprieve, a bandage on a wound that never healed. Because the face wasn’t a demon or a ghost. It was a fragment of something older, something that had been trapped in that lantern when the mill was built, and it fed on fear and doubt. My brother had fed it for years, and now it wanted a new meal. Me.

I haven’t told anyone about the lantern. I haven’t told my brother that I found his notebook and that I know the truth. I’ve started smoking too, just to keep the face at bay, even though I hate the taste. Every night, I light a cigarette and watch the smoke rise, hoping it will drive the green light away. But I know it won’t last. The face is patient. It has all the time in the world. And one day, when I’m old and tired, it will take me as it took my brother, and the cycle will continue.

And the only thing I have left is the notebook, still hidden in the mill, waiting for someone else to find it—someone else who will open the panel and see the lantern, and let the face in again. Because the lantern never dies. It just waits for a new door.

I’m writing this now, not as a confession, but as a warning. If you ever find a small brass lantern with a green glow, don’t touch it. Don’t even look at it. Burn the building to the ground. Because what’s inside isn’t a ghost or a demon. It’s a thing that loves company, and it will never let you go. My brother is free, but I’m not. And neither will you be if you read this and still go looking. Stay away from the mill on Willow Street. And if you see a green face in your room tonight, just remember: it’s only there because you let it in. I did. And now I’m paying the price.