The Lantern List

The summer I turned nine, we moved to a borrowed cottage on the edge of the Thornwood Cemetery. It wasn’t a real town, just a handful of houses clustered around a crossroads, and our nearest neighbor was a mile down a dirt track. The cemetery itself was split in two: the new section, with its neat rows of polished granite and plastic flowers, and the old section, where the headstones leaned like drunkards and the grass grew wild and tangled. My parents called it ‘quaint.’ My little brother, Milo, and I called it our kingdom.

Our mother, ever the organizer, invented the Lantern List. On clear evenings, she’d hand us a sheet of paper with odd tasks: ‘Find a grave with a stone angel,’ ‘Find a date before 1900,’ ‘Find a bug that looks like a jewel.’ We’d take our kerosene lantern, its glass chimney smudged with soot, and prowl the old section for hours, ticking items off with a stubby pencil. We were never disrespectful—we stepped carefully, spoke in hushed voices, and always left a penny on the oldest grave we found.

One night, the list had a strange addition: ‘Find the gate that isn’t there.’ Milo and I exchanged looks. Our lantern cast a weak circle of light, and the old section was especially dark that night, the moon hidden behind clouds. We wandered past the tilted crosses and sunken plots, the names worn smooth by a century of rain. We were about to give up when Milo grabbed my sleeve and pointed. There, between two hunched oak trees, stood a wrought-iron gate. It wasn’t there before. It was rusted, but the latch was clean, as if someone had oiled it recently.

Beyond the gate, we saw a path that didn’t match the cemetery’s map—a narrow trail of crushed white shells, glowing faintly in the dark. ‘We shouldn’t,’ I whispered, but Milo was already pushing the gate open. It swung with a low creak, and the air changed. It was colder, and there was a smell like wet earth and burnt sugar. The shells crunched under our sneakers, and the sound was too loud, too sharp in the silence.

The path led to a clearing where a single stone arch stood, covered in moss. Beneath it, a table lay like a slab, and on it rested a leather-bound book. Its pages were blank at first, but as we leaned closer, ink began to seep through, forming letters in a spidery hand. It was a list, just like ours, but the items were different: ‘A lock of hair from a living child,’ ‘A name spoken backward three times,’ ‘A tear from a heart that never loved.’ Milo laughed nervously, but I felt the cold creep up my spine. The last line read: ‘One who reads this list must complete it, or be added to it.’

We tried to run, but the gate was gone. The path had become a maze of identical stone arches, each one holding another book. The shells now looked like bone chips. Our lantern flickered, and I saw shadows moving at the edge of the light—not just shadows, but shapes with too many limbs, crawling on the ground. They didn’t approach, just watched, as if waiting for us to make the first move.

I remembered my mother’s rule: never take anything from the old section. But we had taken something—we had read the book. The only way out, I thought, was to finish the list. I tore a strand of hair from my head and placed it on the book. Milo spoke my name backward, three times, his voice shaking. For the third item, we both started to cry. The tears fell on the page, and the ink absorbed them, glowing faintly.

The shadows receded. The arches began to fade, and we found ourselves back at the gate, which now stood open, leading to the familiar rows of our cemetery. We stumbled through, and the gate slammed shut behind us. We didn’t look back. We ran all the way home, our lantern out, and we never played in the old section again.

But the book isn’t finished. I know it, because sometimes at night, I find a pen in my hand, and I write. I write names and dates and places I’ve never been. And last week, I wrote my own name at the bottom of a new page, beneath the line: ‘One who reads this list must complete it, or be added to it.’ I try to convince myself it’s just a nightmare. But Milo has started sleepwalking, heading toward the old section, calling my name in a voice that isn’t his. And I know, with a certainty that freezes my blood, that the gate will find us again.

The list is long, and it’s waiting.