The Lantern Man’s Appetite

I’m Marcus, and I’m twenty now, but this happened when I was eighteen, during that stretch of summer when the heat was so thick you could chew it. My family had taken in my aunt and her two kids after her house burned down, so I was bunking with my cousin, Danny, in the attic room of our farmhouse. The room had a single dormer window that faced the old Peters’ place, abandoned for decades, and beyond that, the cornfields that went on for miles. I’d always been a heavy sleeper, but that summer I started having these episodes where I’d wake up but couldn’t move, my whole body pinned like a bug under glass. I didn’t know then that it was sleep paralysis, and I didn’t know that something in that house had been waiting for just that state to find me.

That morning, it was just before dawn, the sky that weird purple-gray before the sun commits. I woke up on my left side, facing the door, and I was frozen solid, not even a twitch. My eyes were the only things that worked, and I could see Danny’s bed across the room, he was snoring, a lump under the sheet. The air was hot and still, but I felt a cold spot near my shoulder, like someone was breathing on the back of my neck. I tried to yell, but my jaw wouldn’t budge. Then I heard a noise, a sound like dry cornstalks rubbing together, coming from the hallway. And the door, which was ajar, started to swing open, slow, inch by inch. My heart was pounding so loud I thought it would wake Danny, but he just kept snoring.

Through the gap, I saw a shape, tall and thin, wearing what looked like a yellow raincoat, but it was muddy and torn. It had a lantern, the kind with a glass globe and a handle, and the light inside was a sickly green. The shape pushed the door fully open and stepped into the room, its steps made that rattling sound, like it was walking on dried husks. It moved to the foot of Danny’s bed and stood there, looming over him, the lantern casting a green glow on his face. Danny didn’t stir. Then it turned its head, a featureless void under a wide-brimmed hat, and I felt it look at me, even though it had no eyes. And I understood, in a way that bypassed thought, that it was disappointed. It wanted me awake and aware, to savor my terror. It leaned down, and its breath was the smell of rot and burnt sugar, and it whispered, in a voice like wind through a dead tree, ‘Not yet, little pig. I come when you can’t move, but you’ll still be screaming.’

Then it was gone. The door was shut, the lantern’s glow faded, and I could move again, gasping, drenched in sweat. I shook Danny awake, but he just mumbled and rolled over. I told my parents, but they said it was a bad dream, probably the heat. But I knew better. That was the first time. After that, it happened again and again, always when I was in that paralyzed state, always just before dawn. The thing, I started calling it the Lantern Man, would appear in different places: at the foot of my bed, in the corner, once even crouched beside me, its face inches from mine, watching me with that nonexistent gaze. It never touched me, but it would whisper things, about my family, about how it had been waiting in the old Peters’ house for years, and now that we were here, it had a claim on the bloodline. I tried to fight it, I read everything I could on sleep paralysis, on demons, on folk magic. I tried sleeping with lights on, with a cross on the nightstand, with salt lines at the door. Nothing stopped it.

The worst was when I realized it wasn’t just me. My cousin Danny started having nightmares, waking up screaming about a man in a yellow coat. And one night, I woke up in paralysis to see the Lantern Man standing over Danny, and its mouth was open, and from its throat came a clicking sound, and I saw a pale, wriggling thing, like a grub, crawl out of its mouth and onto Danny’s forehead. Before I could even process, the thing sank into his skin, and Danny twitched in his sleep, but didn’t wake. After that, Danny began to change. He’d stare at the old Peters’ house for hours, and he’d talk to himself in a language I didn’t know. I tried to tell my parents, but they thought I was being dramatic, said Danny was just going through a phase.

Then came the night I knew I had to do something. I was in paralysis again, but this time it was different. The Lantern Man was there, but it wasn’t just standing. It was holding a scythe, the blade rusted but sharp, and it was standing over me, and it said, ‘The deal is done. The boy is mine. You, you’re just the messenger.’ And it raised the scythe, and I thought I was dead. But then, from outside, I heard a rooster crow, the first light of dawn, and the thing hissed and vanished. The paralysis broke, and I ran to Danny’s bed. He was sitting up, but his eyes were black, not white, and he smiled at me with too many teeth. ‘Come play, cousin,’ he said in a voice that was not his. I ran out of the room, screaming, and my parents finally believed me when they saw what Danny had become.

We tried everything. A priest came, but he took one look at Danny and crossed himself, said this was beyond him, that it was an old thing, a corn spirit gone wrong, that it fed on fear and had been starved until we came. He gave us a ritual, a heavy one, that involved burying a jar with our names and a piece of Danny’s hair under the foundation of the old Peters’ house at midnight. So that’s what we did, my dad and me, the night before we moved out. It was the most terrified I’ve been, walking through that dead cornfield, the stalks cracking underfoot, carrying that jar. We found the foundation of the old house, barely a slab, and I started digging. I was so focused, I didn’t notice the lantern glow until it was right behind me. I turned, and there it was, the Lantern Man, and it was furious. ‘You cannot bury me!’ it shrieked, and the wind picked up, and the cornstalks bent like they were bowing. My dad shoved me aside and threw the jar into the hole, then poured the dirt and stamped it down. The Lantern Man let out a sound that was like a thousand crickets dying, and then it was gone.

We moved away that week. Danny was back to normal, mostly, but he still has nightmares. And the sleep paralysis stopped for me, thank God. But sometimes, just before dawn, I catch a whiff of burnt sugar, and I see a faint green glow under my door, and I know it’s still out there, waiting, maybe for another family to move into that farmhouse, or maybe for us to come back. I’m writing this as a warning, but I know it won’t help. The Lantern Man has a long memory, and an even longer appetite.