The Lantern Man of Dead Man’s Cove

We were five idiots with a car full of cheap beer and a map that had a red circle around a place none of us had ever been. It was New Year’s Eve, 2007, and the air in Mangalore was thick with the promise of something, though we didn’t know what. My college buddies—Ravi, Sanjay, Meera, and Anita—were already chanting ‘Happy New Year!’ out the windows at bewildered street dogs and the occasional cyclist. I was behind the wheel, nursing a single beer, because someone had to keep us from ending up in a ditch.

We took the coastal highway north, past the glittering lights of the city, until they faded into the dark smudge of the Western Ghats on one side and the vast, breathing Arabian Sea on the other. The road was good, but the palms leaned in like curious spectators, their fronds hissing secrets. The plan was to find a quiet stretch of beach to watch the first sunrise of 2008, but Anita, the one with a taste for the macabre, had another idea. She pulled out her phone, its screen glowing ghostly pale, and said, ‘There’s a place called Dead Man’s Cove about thirty kilometers ahead. It’s supposed to be cursed—a shipwreck in the ’80s, people say you can still hear the crew calling for help if you go at the right time.’ Sanjay, already halfway to drunk, clapped his hands. ‘That’s the spirit! Let’s scare ourselves into the new year.’

I didn’t want to, but the vote was four to one, and the roads were empty. So I turned where the GPS told me, and we drove down a cracked asphalt path that narrowed into a dirt track, the headlights illuminating a wooden sign that read ‘Dead Man’s Cove—Private Property, No Trespassing.’ The boards were rotten, the paint flaking, but someone had recently scratched a fresh, crude drawing of a lantern beneath the words. Meera shuddered. ‘That’s new,’ she said, and Anita laughed, but it was a nervous laugh.

We parked at the end of the track, and the silence hit us like a wave. The bonfires and distant music from the city were gone. Here, there was only the rhythmic crash of waves and the rustle of wind through the casuarinas. The beach was a crescent of black sand, and at its southern tip, a jagged rock formation jutted into the sea, almost like a pointing finger. That was the cove. We carried a cooler of beer and a flashlight, and we walked toward the rocks, the sand cold and wet under our feet. As we got closer, I noticed something odd: a single lantern, old and shaped like a storm lamp, sat on a flat rock at the base of the formation, its glass dirty but unbroken, the wick dry. ‘Someone’s been here,’ Ravi said, shining his light around. There were no footprints, though. None.

We set up a small fire from driftwood, and for a while, the beer and the jokes kept the dark at bay. We sang old college songs, and Anita tried to tell a story about a drowned sailor who lured people into the water with a light, but she kept stopping, staring into the dark beyond the firelight. ‘I swear I saw someone out there,’ she said, pointing toward the rock where the lantern sat. I squinted, but saw nothing. Sanjay, always the daredevil, grabbed the lantern and lit it with his lighter, the flame dancing into life. ‘Let’s see if the ghost wants to party,’ he said, and he placed it back on the rock, the warm glow casting long, shifting shadows.

That’s when we heard it. From the water, a sound like a creaking door, followed by a faint, reedy voice that seemed to come from the lantern itself. It was a man’s voice, weak and pleading: ‘Help me… I’m still here…’ We all froze. The fire crackled, and the voice came again, clearer this time: ‘Don’t leave me…’ Sanjay laughed, but it was hollow. ‘It’s the wind, or a fishing boat,’ he said, but we all knew the sea was empty. Then the lantern flickered, and the flame turned an eerie blue, and the voice changed, becoming harsh and guttural: ‘You shouldn’t have lit my light, boy.’ The temperature dropped, and the fire went out, not gradually, but like someone had pinched it. We were plunged into darkness, the only light the blue glow from the lantern, which now seemed to pulse like a heartbeat.

I fumbled for my flashlight, but it wouldn’t turn on. Panic rose in my throat. Meera screamed, pointing at the water. We all looked, and there, where the waves met the shore, stood a figure—tall and gaunt, draped in rags, holding an identical lantern that burned with the same blue flame. Its face was a hollow, black void, and despite the distance, we could hear it whisper: ‘One for the cove, one for the sea, one for the lantern, and one for me.’ It counted us with a slow, skeletal finger: ‘Ravi, Sanjay, Meera, Anita… and the driver.’ The last word hit me like a physical blow.

We ran. We scrambled back toward the car, our feet slipping on the sand, the blue light following us, but never seeming to get closer. The car was where we left it, and I jammed the keys into the ignition, my hands shaking. The engine revved, and we sped down the dirt track, gravel flying, the car fishtailing on the loose stones. I didn’t look back, but in the rearview mirror, I saw the figure standing at the edge of the trees, its lantern swinging gently, as if saying goodbye.

We drove in silence until we hit the main highway, the city lights a welcome relief. We didn’t talk about what happened, not then. We pulled over at a dhaba on the outskirts, ordered hot chai, and sat shivering, trying to convince ourselves it was the beer, the night, the stress of the New Year. We laughed nervously, made jokes about ‘ghost hunters’, and pretended we were brave. But none of us could forget the voice, or the way it had called each of us by name.

We got home around dawn, exhausted. The sun rose, and we went to our separate rooms, intending to sleep away the memory. But when I woke in the afternoon, there was a text from Ravi: ‘I found something. Come to my place.’ I went. He was sitting on his bed, his face pale. He held out his phone. There was a photo from the night before, one we hadn’t taken. It was of all of us standing around the fire, but behind us, in the shadows, clear as day, was the figure, its hollow face turned toward the camera. And in the corner of the photo, near the ground, was a small, ornate lantern, glowing blue. Ravi whispered, ‘It wasn’t just us. It’s in the picture.’

We tried to burn the photo, but it wouldn’t catch fire. We tried to delete it, but the file remained, like a stain on our phones. Over the next week, strange things happened: the smell of saltwater in our rooms, the sound of waves when silence was expected, and our reflections in mirrors taking a split second too long to follow our movements. Anita started talking about the lantern in her sleep, repeating the same phrase: ‘He wants us to light it again.’ We ignored her, but we couldn’t ignore the growing dread that something was following us, something that had attached itself to us that night.

New Year’s Eve is tomorrow, a year later. I haven’t spoken to Ravi, Sanjay, Meera, or Anita since that night—we severed all ties, each trying to convince ourselves it was a shared delusion. But tonight, I received a package, with no return address. Inside was a single item: an old lantern, its glass clean, its wick fresh. And a note in a handwriting I didn’t recognize, but which seemed familiar: ‘You were the driver. You left the last one. Don’t make me wait another year.’