The Lantern Man

The three of us were scraping by that autumn, helping Mrs. Kessler with her paper route along the old county road that wound through the farmlands and scattered houses of our small town. It was just past three in the morning, the air crisp and heavy with the smell of damp earth and rotting leaves. My friend Tony, who knew every rumor and legend from here to the next county over, nudged me as we passed a derelict farmhouse set back from the road, its windows dark and gaping. ‘That’s the place they say has a thing in the cellar,’ he whispered. ‘Old man Harlow went mad down there, they say, and his wife never came out.’

I laughed it off, the way I always did, and as we walked past, I decided to play a joke. I told them I saw a shape in the window, and when they looked away, I crept up the creaking porch steps and cupped my hands against the pane of the front window, pretending to peer in. The glass was cold, and my breath fogged it. I was about to turn and shout something silly, but something moved inside. A figure stood there, just on the other side of the glass, close enough that I could see the texture of her gown. She wore a white nightgown, and her long, black hair hung in strings over her face, and she stood perfectly still, except for a slight tilt of her head as if she was listening to my heartbeat.

I stumbled backward, lost my footing on the edge of the porch, and fell hard onto the gravel below. As I scrambled to my feet, I looked back at the house, and that’s when I saw him—a man, standing at the corner of the porch, half in shadow. He wore a worker’s cap and had a face that seemed too long, with eyes that caught the faint moonlight and glinted like wet stones. He didn’t move, didn’t speak, just stared at me with a stillness that felt older than the house itself. I ran. I ran faster than I’d ever run, past Tony and his mother, who were calling after me, and I didn’t stop until I was half a mile down the road, leaning against a mailbox, gasping for air.

When they caught up, I tried to explain what I’d seen, but the words felt thin and stupid. Tony’s mother just shook her head and said, ‘That’s the Harlow place. Best to steer clear.’ But the image of that woman in the window and that man on the porch stayed with me. For weeks, I couldn’t sleep without a light on, and every time I closed my eyes, I saw that white gown and that long face. I started taking the long way to school, avoiding that stretch of road, but the dreams got worse. In the dreams, I was standing on that porch again, and the woman’s hair would part, and underneath there was nothing—just a smooth, blank void where her face should have been. And the man would raise a hand, and in it was a lantern, glowing with a sickly yellow light, and he would point it at me, and the light would pull me toward the house.

Then, about a month later, I woke up in my own bed, but my shoes were caked with mud and leaves, and there was a thin scratch on my arm that looked like it came from a nail. I don’t remember getting up, don’t remember going anywhere, but I knew where I had been. But that man—the lantern man, I called him—he didn’t haunt my dreams anymore. Instead, I felt him watching me from the edges of my vision, at the bus stop, in the reflection of a store window, always just a glimpse, always with that lantern, and I knew that one night, he would come for me, and I would follow him into that house, and I would never come out again. And I was right. Because last night, I woke up on the floor of that house, in the basement, and the lantern was sitting on a shelf next to me, its flame flickering, and I could hear them breathing in the dark. So now I’m writing this, scrawling it on a scrap of paper I found in my pocket, because I don’t think I’m going to leave this place. And if you ever see a lantern in the window of that old house, don’t go near it. Don’t even look at it. Because that’s how he finds you.