The Lantern Man

The women in my lineage have always been haunted by the presence of what we call the Lantern Man. It started with my great-grandmother, who saw him in the coal cellar of the family farmhouse in the turn of the century. He was a tall, gaunt figure, wearing a long coat, and always holding a dim, flickering lantern that cast no light on anything but his own face. He would stand at the edge of the cellar steps, watching her as she fetched coal. She never spoke of him to anyone, but her nightly terror was evident in her journal, which I found years later.

My grandmother encountered him in the 1960s, in a cramped apartment in a city that never slept. She would wake to see him standing in the corner of her bedroom, the lantern casting a sickly glow on his hollow cheeks. He never moved, never spoke, just watched. She grew used to his constant presence, even as she married and had children. It wasn’t until they moved out of that apartment, leaving behind a life of unpaid rent, that he made his move. On the last night before the move, my grandmother woke to find him not in the corner, but inches from her face. The lantern flared, illuminating his gaunt features with a light that seemed to come from within him. He opened his mouth, and a sound like dry leaves scraping together whispered her name: ‘Mabel.’ She scrambled to turn on the lamp, but the bulb had burned out that very evening. She stumbled to the wall, flicked the main light switch, and in that burst of electric light, he was gone. She never saw him again, but she carried a chill in her bones for the rest of her days.

I am twenty-one years old, and I have just moved into my first solo apartment, a studio in a building that was once a textile mill. The walls are thick, the ceilings high, and old machinery stains mark the concrete floors. My mother, who has seen him, warned me before I moved: ‘He follows the women of our blood. He is a herald of change, a watcher at the threshold.’ I dismissed it, thinking it a family legend.

But on my first night in that apartment, as I lay in bed, I felt a cold draft. I turned to see a tall, thin figure standing in the far corner, holding a lantern that cast no light on the room. His face was in shadow, but I could feel his gaze on me. I tried to ignore him, to rationalize it as a trick of the dim city light filtering through the window. But the next night, he was closer, a step nearer to my bed. I could see his long fingers wrapped around the lantern’s handle, the bones visible through his translucent skin.

I called my mother, frantic. She told me to leave, to find a new place, but I had nowhere else to go. She said, ‘He wants something, that lantern. He wants to give it to you. But you must never take it.’ I spent my days searching for a new apartment, and my nights with every light on, hoping to keep him at bay. But he always came, standing just outside the circle of light, his lantern mocking me with its dark glow.

One night, exhausted and desperate, I confronted him. ‘What do you want?’ I screamed. He didn’t speak, but he raised the lantern, and for the first time, a dim light emanated from it, not illuminating anything around it, but casting his face in sharp relief. His lips moved, and a raspy whisper filled the room: ‘Evelyn.’ My name. The sound was like a dead thing stirring.

I backed away, my heart pounding. I grabbed the lamp on my bedside table, but the bulb flickered and died. I lunged for the wall switch, but as my fingers touched it, he moved closer, and his face contorted into a sneer. The light from his lantern pulsed, and I felt a cold hand brush my shoulder. I screamed and slammed the switch. The room flooded with harsh, electric light, and he was gone. But his voice lingered, a whisper in my ear: ‘You can’t run forever.’

I spent the rest of the night in the bathroom, huddled under the fluorescents, shaking. The next day, I found a new apartment, a bright, modern place with no history, no corners for shadows to lurk. But as I packed my few belongings, I found an old lantern in the closet of that mill apartment. It was rusted, the glass cloudy, and the handle felt cold. I knew it was his, and I knew I must not take it. I left it there, and I never saw him again.

But sometimes, late at night, in my new apartment, I catch a flicker of light in my peripheral vision, a brief glow that disappears when I turn to look. And I remember my mother’s warning: ‘The Lantern Man passes the lantern to the next generation. He cannot move on until one of us accepts it.’ I pray I never do.