The Lantern Man

It was the last night of October, and the air smelled of wet leaves and cold metal. I was seventeen, spending the night helping my father toss folded newspapers onto the porches of a neighborhood where the streetlights flickered like dying fireflies. My father drove the van, and I rode shotgun, a stack of papers between us. The route was a labyrinth of narrow, winding lanes, lined with houses that had peeling paint and porches that sagged under the weight of forgotten furniture.

We stopped at a particular corner, a place I always dreaded. It was a dead-end street, where the road ended at a chain-link fence, and beyond it, a dark, overgrown lot. The single streetlight at the corner buzzed and sputtered, casting a sickly orange pool that barely reached the worn path to a row of metal newspaper boxes. The boxes themselves were old, their red paint chipped, and their lids creaked like bones when you opened them.

That night, the darkness felt thick, as if it were a solid thing pressing against the light. My father stayed in the van, adjusting the radio, while I hopped out, a bundle of papers in my arm. I walked to the first box, its lid slightly ajar as if someone had left it that way. I leaned over, the cold metal against my chest, and began to stuff the papers inside.

That’s when I heard a voice, soft and close, behind me. ‘Excuse me, miss?’

I spun around, my heart hammering. A man stood there, not ten feet away. He was thin, almost gaunt, with a pale face that seemed to absorb the light rather than reflect it. He wore a long coat that hung past his knees, and in his hand, he held a small, unlit lantern, the kind you might see in an old tale. I didn’t see him approach, and the sound of his voice had been so close that he must have been right behind me only moments before.

‘Sorry to startle you,’ he said, his voice gentle. ‘Could you tell me the time? I’ve lost track, and my watch has stopped.’ He held up his wrist, but I could see no watch, only the pale skin and the faint blue veins beneath. The lantern swung slightly as he gestured.

I glanced toward the van, where my father sat, unaware, fiddling with the radio dial. I looked for a clock, but the street was bare, and my own phone was in the van. I turned back to the man, and something about the way he stood—so still, so patient—made me shiver. ‘It’s… I think it’s around ten-thirty,’ I said, my voice steadier than I felt.

The man smiled, a thin, dry smile that didn’t reach his eyes. ‘Ah, thank you. You’ve been most helpful.’ He dipped his head, and as he did, the lantern in his hand flickered with a faint, cold light, as if a breath had crossed the flame, but the glass was dark. He turned and began to walk away, into the deeper shadows beyond the fence.

I hurried to the van, my legs unsteady. My father looked up as I climbed in. ‘Who was that?’ he asked, frowning.

‘Just a man asking for the time,’ I said, my heart still racing. I looked out the window, but the man was gone, swallowed by the dark. I tried to shake off the unease, but a thought clung to me like a burr: that lantern had been unlit, yet I swore I saw a glow.

We finished the route, and the night passed uneventfully. But the next morning, I heard on the news that an elderly man had been found dead in his home on that same dead-end street, the one with the chain-link fence. The cause of death was unknown, but the report mentioned that his last words, spoken to a neighbor days before, were about ‘the lantern man’ who appeared at the edge of the yard when the lights died. The neighbor thought he’d been confused.

I never told anyone about the man at the box, but I couldn’t shake the image of his unlit lantern, and how the darkness around him had seemed to bend, as if it knew him. Now, when I pass that street, I see the streetlight still flickering, and I wonder if he’s still there, waiting for someone else to ask for the time—a time that, perhaps, only he knows will be the last.