The Lantern in the Wall

I was barely three when we moved into the old Merriweather place on Juniper Lane. It was a sprawling Victorian that had been cut into four apartments, and ours was the ground floor, with a fireplace that hadn’t been used in decades. My mother, Evelyn, was a single parent working double shifts at the diner, so I spent a lot of time alone in our small living room, staring at the faded wallpaper and the cracks in the ceiling.

It wasn’t long before I started talking about ‘the tall man with the round hat.’ I’d point to the corner by the bookshelf and say, ‘He’s here again, Mommy. He wants to show me something.’ Evelyn would turn, expecting to see a neighbor or a salesman, but there was never anyone there. She chalked it up to an overactive imagination, or maybe a dream I’d had. But I was insistent. I remember the way he looked: a man so dark his skin seemed to swallow the light, wearing a weathered hat pulled low, and a long coat that brushed the floor. He never spoke, but he’d lift his hand, and I’d see a glint of metal – a lantern, I know now – and he’d point toward the wall behind the bookshelf.

We lived there for only six months, but in that time, I described the entire apartment to Evelyn in detail – the exact pattern of the cracks in the ceiling, the number of slats on the baseboards, the way the floor creaked by the window – all things she had never mentioned to me. She was unnerved, but we moved out just before my fourth birthday, and I soon forgot about the tall man.

Years later, when my son, Danny, was about the same age, he started talking about ‘the man with the round hat’ too. We were living in a ranch house in the suburbs, a new build, and I nearly dropped the dish I was holding when he said it. He pointed to the corner of his bedroom, where we had a small bookshelf. ‘He says hi, Mommy. He remembers you.’ I felt a chill crawl up my spine. I hadn’t thought about that apartment in decades.

I called my mother, and she confessed something she’d never told me. The day we moved out of the Merriweather place, as she was packing the last box, she found an iron crucifix on the bookshelf. She had never owned one, and it wasn’t ours. She’d thrown it away, thinking the landlord had left it. But now, with Danny’s talk, she told me that she’d later learned from a neighbor that the house had once been a stop on the Underground Railroad. Slaves fleeing north had hidden in a crawl space behind the bookshelf in our very apartment.

A few weeks later, while Danny was napping, I decided to look into it more. I found the old property records online and discovered a passage hidden behind the wall in our old apartment – a narrow space barely wide enough for a person to squeeze through. It had a small window, now bricked over, that looked out onto the side yard. The neighbor who told my mother said that the last fugitive to hide there was a man who had been caught – he was found by slave catchers and dragged out, and they hung him from the old oak tree in the backyard. They left his body for days as a warning. His name was never recorded, but he was described as a tall man who wore a round hat.

I finally understood. The man I had seen, and now Danny saw, was the spirit of that fugitive, forever searching for a way out, or for someone to help him. He wasn’t evil – he was just lost. But why was he appearing to us? I wondered if it was because we had the bookshelf, and maybe he thought we could open the passage for him.

Danny woke up then, and came into the kitchen rubbing his eyes. ‘He’s gone now, Mommy,’ he said. ‘He said thank you for remembering.’ I hugged him tight, and I knew I had to go back to that old house, to find the bookshelf and see if the passage was still there.

I drove to Juniper Lane, but the house was gone. It had been torn down years ago, replaced by a strip mall. The oak tree was nothing but a stump. But as I stood on the sidewalk, a man walked past me – tall, dark skin, a round hat pulled low. He paused, glanced at me, and nodded. Then he walked on, and vanished around a corner. I never saw him again, but I felt a strange peace. I knew that he had finally found his way out, and that he had been waiting all those years for someone to acknowledge him, to remember his story, and to let him go.

Danny never spoke of the man again. But sometimes, late at night, I think I hear a faint clink of a lantern, and I smile, knowing that some secrets, once unearthed, can finally rest.