The Lantern of the Hollow

It was during my final semester at university that I found myself buried in textbooks and research papers, the kind of scholarly drudgery that makes you forget the world outside. My apartment in the old mill town of Ashwick was a converted factory loft, vast and dimly lit, with exposed brick and iron beams. I sat at my desk, a single lamp casting a pool of light over my notes, when I felt a brush against my shoulder, as if a cold fingertip had traced my collarbone. I turned abruptly, my heart lurching, and scanned the far corner of the room. A tall, featureless silhouette stood there, darker than the shadows, motionless. I blinked, and it vanished, leaving only the afterimage of its form seared into my mind. I shook my head, chiding myself for staring too long at the flickering screen, and returned to my work, though a chill lingered in the air.

A sudden clatter shattered the silence. The heavy iron shutters that guarded the massive factory windows had been thrown open, their hinges screaming in protest. I rose, my legs unsteady, and crossed the cold concrete floor to the waist-high sill. As I peered out into the night, I saw the silhouette again, standing on the rooftop of the building opposite, which had been abandoned for decades. It was not a person; it was a void, a hole in the fabric of reality, and it seemed to be looking directly at me. I tried to step back, but my legs were rooted, my body frozen as if the air had thickened into glass. The figure raised an arm, and in its hand it held a lantern, its light a sickly green that cast no glow on the surrounding brick. It swung the lantern once, twice, and then the figure and its light dissolved into the darkness, as if they had never been.

I could move again, my limbs trembling as I rushed to secure the shutters, my hands fumbling with the heavy locks. I grabbed my keys, my phone, and my jacket, and fled my loft, sprinting down the empty cobblestone streets toward my friend’s apartment on the other side of the mill town. I pounded on his door until he opened it, bleary-eyed and alarmed, and I told him everything between gasps. He let me sleep on his couch, but even there I couldn’t shake the feeling that the lantern had marked me, that its light had left a stain on my soul.

The next morning, I returned to my apartment, dreading what I might find. The shutters were still locked, the desk untouched, but on the floor beneath the window lay a single object: a rusted, antique lantern, its glass cracked and dark, its handle wrapped in tarnished wire. I had never seen it before. I picked it up, and as I did, I heard a faint, dry rattling from within, like a handful of pebbles rolling around. A small piece of paper was wedged inside the frame. I pried it out. It was a faded photograph of a young woman in Victorian dress, her face partially obscured by a veil, and on the back, scrawled in pencil, was a name: ‘Eliza.’

I showed the lantern to a local historian, a woman named Mrs. Whitlock, who ran a tiny museum on the outskirts of town. She recognized it immediately, her face paling. She told me it had belonged to a lighthouse keeper who had gone mad in the 1880s, after his daughter Eliza drowned during a storm. He spent the next year lighting a lantern every night on the cliffs, trying to call her home, until one evening he climbed the tower and threw himself off. The lantern was said to have appeared at the site of every unexplained death in the region since then, always held by a shadowy figure, and always found by someone who had seen it and lived. Mrs. Whitlock advised me to destroy it, to burn it or sink it in the river, but as she spoke, the lantern’s glass flickered with a faint green glow, and I knew it had already claimed me.

That night, I dreamed of a lighthouse on a rocky shore, the beam sweeping across black water. In the dream, I stood at the top, holding the lantern, and I heard Eliza’s voice whispering from the waves. I woke to find my window shutters open again, and the silhouette standing in the corner of my bedroom, its lantern swaying. This time, it spoke, a dry rasp that sounded like old leaves: ‘You have seen the light. Now you must carry it until the one who belongs to it is found.’ I tried to shout, to move, but I was trapped in a waking paralysis as it approached, its hollow face inches from mine. It pressed the lantern into my hands, and the cold metal bit into my palms. When it let go, it stepped back and dissolved, leaving me clutching the lantern, its green light pulsing like a heartbeat.

I have since discovered patterns in the town’s history, a series of unsolved disappearances, all linked to dates when the lantern was said to have appeared. I have also learned that I am the sixth person to have taken possession of it, and none of the previous five are alive today. They all disappeared within a month of their first sighting, their bodies never found. I am starting to understand what I must do: find Eliza’s resting place, return the lantern to her grave, and release the restless spirit that has been bound to it for over a century. But I am also afraid that by seeking her, I will become her, that the lantern will consume my identity until I am nothing but a shadow in the corner of someone’s room, waiting for a new victim to see me.

I have not slept in three days. Every time I close my eyes, I see the lighthouse, and I hear the click of the lantern’s switch, and I feel the cold nothing of the void. Tonight, as I write this, the lantern sits on my desk, its glass dark, but I know that at midnight it will ignite again. The silhouette has been standing by the window since dusk, waiting for me to take the lantern and go. I know now that my story will not end well, but I must see it through. I must find the hollow in the cliffs where the lighthouse once stood, and I must hope that the lantern’s fire will be extinguished for good. If you find this lantern, do not look at it. Do not let it see you. Burn it. Sink it. Do anything you can to break the cycle. For once it chooses you, you will carry its light until you are empty, and then you will become the shadow that haunts the edges of other people’s lives.