The Lantern Maker’s Vigil

In the autumn of my junior year, I transferred to St. Agnes Academy, a sprawling campus that had once been a convent. The main building, a hulking Victorian manor, still housed the nuns’ old quarters, and the smell of old wood and incense clung to the halls. I was a new kid, so I kept to myself, until I met Elara and her friend Sam. We had history together, and they were the first to be friendly.

One afternoon, during choir practice in the basement of the old chapel, I felt a draft despite the sealed windows. I glanced at the doorway, a rusted iron grate that had been locked for decades, and saw a pale figure standing there, just out of the corner of my eye. It was a nun, but not in the usual habit; her veil was black and glistened like wet silk, and her face was a blur, as if she were underwater. I blinked, and she was gone. Elara, who had been humming next to me, stopped. ‘You saw her too?’ she whispered. Sam shook her head, confused.

The next day, during lunch in the portable classroom near the old orchard, I looked out the window and saw a procession of Sisters walking among the leafless apple trees, their rosaries swaying. I grabbed Elara’s arm. ‘Do you see them?’ She squinted and shrugged. ‘Just the wind in the grass.’ But I knew what I saw. And then I noticed something odd: each Sister carried a small, glowing lantern, though it was noon.

I started digging into the school’s archives. The library had a section on the convent’s history, and I found a diary, kept by a young novice named Sister Agnes. The entries were mundane until one, dated October 31st, 1942. It described a ritual they performed every year to keep ‘the shifting ones’ away, using paper lanterns painted with protective symbols. The last entry was messy, scrawled: ‘The lanterns have gone out. They are coming.’

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I had drawn one of the symbols from the diary on my arm, thinking it was a joke. At 3:33 am, I felt a cold hand on my shoulder. I turned, and there stood the blurred nun from the doorway. She pointed a thin finger at the window. Outside, on the campus lawn, a row of figures stood, each holding a black lantern that emitted no light. As I watched, they began to walk toward the old chapel. I grabbed my camera, determined to prove it.

I snuck out, following them. They glided, their feet not touching the ground, and faded into the chapel’s basement. I crept down the stone steps, the air thick with decay. The grate that had been locked was now ajar. Inside, the figures had formed a circle around a stone altar. On the altar lay a heart, still beating. They were chanting in a language I didn’t know. I tried to back away, but my foot caught a loose stone. They all turned, their faces finally clear: they were the nuns from the photos, decades dead, and their eyes were sewn shut.

One of them, the tallest, held a lantern that suddenly erupted in blue flame, illuminating a name on the base: ‘E. H.’ My initials. She gestured to the heart, and I realized it was meant for me. I ran, tearing up the stairs, but I was not alone. A sound followed me, like the soft jingle of rosary beads. I burst out into the night, and the campus was silent. I looked back, and the chapel was dark.

The next day, the diary was gone from the archive. When I asked the librarian, she said no diary had ever existed. But on my arm, the symbol I had drawn had turned into a scar, shaped like a lantern. And every night, at 3:33, I see a light flicker outside my window, beckoning.

I never told Elara or Sam, but I found a way to make it stop. I lit a paper lantern with a symbol from my memory, and I placed it on the altar in the basement, which I now know is a doorway. The next day, the lantern was gone. The nurses said I was found wandering in the orchard, holding a broken rosary. I don’t remember, but I know what I saw. And I know that the lanterns must never go out, or the sisters will walk again.