The Lantern Maker’s Apprentice

In the rust-belt town of Ashburn, where the steel mills had long since gone cold and the streets were lined with boarded-up storefronts, there was a shop that never seemed to close. It was called The Lantern Maker’s, and it sat at the end of a dead-end alley, its windows glowing with a warm, amber light that was out of place in the gloom. I had passed it a hundred times, always feeling a pull, a curiosity that bordered on hunger. I was a collector of oddities, you see, and I had heard whispers of the lanterns that could ward off more than just the dark.

The old man who ran the shop, Mr. Kilgore, was a stoop-shouldered figure with eyes that seemed to hold the flicker of a candle flame. He never spoke unless spoken to, and his hands were stained with soot and wax. One evening, as I lingered outside, he beckoned me in with a gnarled finger. ‘You want a lantern,’ he said, not a question. ‘But lanterns are not made to be seen. They are made to be felt.’

I bought a lantern that night—a simple thing of brass and glass, with a wick that seemed to burn without consuming. Mr. Kilgore warned me, his voice low and gravelly, ‘Do not light this in the presence of mirrors, for it will show you what you have lost. And do not let it go out until the sun rises, or you will invite what it keeps at bay.’ I laughed it off, thinking it was just the ramblings of a superstitious old man. But I was wrong.

That night, I set the lantern on my nightstand and lit it, the flame dancing with an eerie calm. I fell asleep to its gentle glow, dreaming of a hallway with doors that opened to rooms I had never seen. In one room, there was a child’s crib, empty, and a rocking chair that moved on its own. In another, a mirror that reflected not me, but a woman with hollow eyes and a mouth full of ash. I woke with a start, the lantern still burning, but the flame now tinged with blue.

I tried to blow it out, but the flame only bent, as if breathing, and a whisper filled the room. It was not a voice I recognized, but it was close, too close, as if it were inside my ear. ‘You should not have lit it,’ it said. ‘Now I can see the way.’ I looked around, but the room was empty, save for the lantern. The blue flame cast long, swaying shadows that didn’t match my movements.

Over the next days, I noticed changes. My reflection in the mirror would lag a half-second behind, as if something else was trying to wear my skin. I began to find soot on my hands, though I never went near the lantern during the day. And at night, I would hear the creak of a rocking chair from my closet, though it was always empty. The lantern became my obsession, my curse. I couldn’t bear to extinguish it, for the fear of what the dark might bring, but keeping it lit was draining my very essence.

I returned to Mr. Kilgore, desperate. He looked at me with a sorrowful pity. ‘The lantern is not the vessel,’ he said. ‘It is the lighthouse. What it keeps at bay is not outside, but within you. You have a hollow space, a void that the darkness has found. I can take the lantern back, but the doorway has been opened. The only way to close it is to feed it what it wants.’ I asked what it wanted. He simply pointed to my chest. ‘Your grief,’ he said. ‘You carry it like a stone. Give it up, and the flame will dim.’

I had not wept since my mother died years ago. I had buried my grief under layers of dusty obsession and dim curiosity. That night, I knelt before the lantern and let the tears come, for all the losses I had never mourned. The blue flame flickered, sputtered, and for a moment, I thought it would go out. But then it flared, brighter than before, and the shadows around me began to solidify into a figure with a face I had seen in my dream—the woman with hollow eyes. ‘Not grief,’ she whispered, her voice like the rustle of dead leaves. ‘You gave me grief, but I am hungry for more.’

I ran. I fled my apartment, the lantern still burning on the floor, and I did not look back. I wandered the empty streets of Ashburn, the cold seeping into my bones, and I found myself at the dead-end alley. The Lantern Maker’s was dark, for the first time in years. A note was taped to the door, in handwriting that was not Mr. Kilgore’s, but mine. It read: ‘You cannot outrun the flame. It burns in you now.’

I have not been back to that alley since. I have thrown away every mirror in my home, and I sleep with the lights on. But still, at night, I feel the warmth of a flame against my cheek, and I see, in the corner of my eye, a woman with hollow eyes, sitting in a rocking chair, waiting for me to acknowledge her. The lantern is gone, but its light lingers inside me, and I know that one night, I will be the one who answers the door when someone comes looking for a lantern to ward off the dark.