The Lantern Keeper’s Debt

I never believed in ghosts. Not the kind that rattle chains or whisper in the dark, anyway. I thought I was just prone to waking up at odd hours, my skin crawling with a nameless dread, my eyes straining into the gloom for something that wasn’t there. That was before the winter of 2018, before I took the caretaker job at Blackwood Station, a decommissioned railway depot perched on the edge of a bog that locals swore was ‘cursed’. I needed the money, and the isolation didn’t bother me. I’d always been a loner.

The station was a relic: a Victorian brick building with a rusted iron roof, board windows, and a single platform overlooking a stretch of black water where the old line had once run. My duties were simple: check the perimeter, log the state of the structure, and make sure no vagrants took shelter. The previous caretaker had vanished a year prior, but the agency didn’t mention that until I’d signed the contract. They said he’d simply ‘walked off’ – no note, no trace. The locals told me otherwise. They said he’d been hearing things, seeing a man in a long coat who carried a lantern that burned with a cold, blue flame. I dismissed it as folklore.

My first week was uneventful. I settled into the small living quarters, a cramped room with a single cot, a wood stove, and shelves of forgotten railway manuals. The wind howled through the gaps, and the bog’s smell – damp earth and decay – seeped through the cracks. I kept a flashlight by my bed, but every night I found it moved – placed on the floor, across the room, or sometimes on the windowsill, facing outward as if someone had set it there deliberately. I put it down to my own restlessness, my habit of waking and stumbling in the dark.

Then came the night the station’s generator failed. I was reading by the light of a kerosene lamp when the hum died, plunging me into a silence so absolute it felt physical. I grabbed the flashlight – it was on the desk, I swear it was – but my hand met only air. The flashlight was gone. I fumbled for the matches, lit a candle, and saw it lying at the foot of the bed, switched off. I laughed nervously, picked it up, and clicked it. Nothing. The bulb had shattered.

That’s when I heard it: a sound like boots on gravel, slow and deliberate, moving along the platform outside. I crept to the window, my heart hammering. The moonlight was thin, barely illuminating the tracks, but I saw him – a tall figure, impossibly thin, standing at the edge of the platform, staring into the dark water. He wore a long coat, and in his hand was a lantern, but the flame was not yellow. It was a pale blue, like the bottom of a glacier, and it cast no light around him. It only illuminated his face from below, and I saw his eyes: one was a sickly yellow, the other a deep, wet red, like a fresh wound.

I froze. The figure turned its head slowly, fixing those mismatched eyes on me. I felt my bladder tighten, and a cold that had nothing to do with the wind crept into my bones. He lifted his lantern, as if offering it to me, and I saw his mouth move – no sound, but I read the words on his lips: ‘You see me.’ Then he stepped off the platform and vanished into the bog without a splash.

I didn’t sleep that night. I told myself it was a trick of the light, a hallucination from exhaustion. But the next morning, I found the flashlight on the platform, its lens shattered, the bulb coated in a black substance that looked like dried blood. I called the agency, but they said there were no cameras, no sensors. They told me to stay, that it was probably a prank. I told them about the figure, and the man on the phone went quiet. He said, ‘Mr. Ashworth, I advise you not to leave the building at night. And if you see the lantern man again, do not look into his eyes.’ He hung up before I could ask more.

The following week, I became obsessed. I combed through every record in the station’s archive, looking for anything about a previous caretaker or a man with a lantern. I found a newspaper clipping from 1923, yellowed and brittle, about a railway accident in the bog. A train had derailed, and the conductor, a man named Silas Vane, had gone into the swamp to help passengers. He was last seen carrying a lantern, wading into the reed beds. His body was never found. The article mentioned that his eyes were a defect – one yellow, one red – due to a rare iris condition. The locals called him ‘The Lantern Keeper’ because he always carried a signal light.

My blood ran cold. I stared at the article, and I felt a presence behind me. I turned, and there he stood in the doorway, dripping with bog water, his lantern flame now burning a dull red. He said, ‘You have seen me. Now you must take my place.’ I screamed, but no sound came out. He stepped forward, and I saw that his coat was not a coat – it was a tangle of roots and dead reeds, woven together. His face was not skin but bark, cracked and oozing. His eyes burned into mine, and I felt something inside me – a hook, a thread – pulling me toward the water.

I ran. I grabbed my flashlight – how it was there, I don’t know – and fled the building, stumbling across the platform, plunging into the bog. I waded through freezing water, the mud sucking at my boots, until I collapsed on the far shore. When I looked back, the station was dark, but I saw the blue light moving through the windows, as if searching for me. I crawled up the embankment, my lungs burning, and I didn’t stop until I reached the main road, hours later.

I never returned. I sold everything, moved to the city, and tried to forget. But it didn’t end. Now, every night, I have the same dream: I’m standing on the platform, holding the lantern, looking out at the bog. The flame is blue, and I can see their faces in the water – the passengers, the previous caretaker, all waiting for me to guide them. I wake up with my hand raised, as if offering a light. And in the corner of my room, I sometimes see a shadow, tall and thin, with one yellow eye and one red. I know it’s him. He’s always there, patient. He’s waiting for me to fulfill my debt, to take his place, to walk into the water and never come back.