The Lantern Room

The night my cousin Marco vanished from the old lighthouse on Pyre Point, I was twelve and he was ten. We were spending the summer with our grandmother, who had inherited the keep from her brother, a man who’d been a lampist back when the light still ran on oil. By then, the Coast Guard had automated everything, and the tower stood silent, but my grandmother kept a lantern burning in the window, ‘for the old ghosts,’ she’d say with a wink. We didn’t take her seriously. We were wrong.

The trouble started when Marco and I discovered the spiral staircase behind a locked door in the cellar. It wasn’t on any of the blueprints we’d found in the study. The stairs were made of black iron, cold to the touch, and they wound down into absolute darkness. Marco, being the bolder one, grabbed a flashlight from the kitchen, but I noticed the beam barely penetrated three feet ahead. He insisted we go down, and I, being the older cousin, felt I had to protect him.

We descended for what felt like an hour, though the stairs were only about fifty feet. The air grew thick and salty, and the walls began to sweat. At the bottom, a heavy oak door with a brass nameplate read ‘LANTERN ROOM’ in faded letters. It was unlocked. Inside, the room was small and circular, with a stone floor and a ceiling that sloped to a peak. The walls were lined with shelves holding glass jars of all sizes, each filled with a murky liquid and something floating inside—ribbons, buttons, locks of hair, and, in one jar, a small, whole hand. In the center of the room stood a pedestal with an oil lamp, unlit. Marco reached out to touch it, but I grabbed his arm.

‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘We should go back.’

But Marco shook me off. ‘It’s just a lamp.’ He turned the brass key on its side. Instantly, a flame flickered to life inside, casting a warm glow that was somehow wrong—it made our shadows stretch in the opposite direction of the light. And then we heard it: a chorus of children’s voices, laughing and singing, coming from the jars. The liquid in each jar began to churn, and the objects inside swirled as if stirred by invisible hands.

We ran. We tore up those stairs, through the cellar, and burst into the kitchen, slamming the door behind us. But the laughter followed. It wasn’t until we were in the bright, sunlit kitchen, with the smell of our grandmother’s bread in the air, that the sound faded. When we looked at each other, we were both pale. ‘We never speak of this,’ I said, and Marco nodded.

But the room had left a mark on us. That night, I woke to Marco’s bed empty. My grandmother was already in the hallway, her hand on the cellar door. ‘He’s down there,’ she said, her voice flat, as if she’d known this would happen. She led me down the stairs, through the same door, and into the Lantern Room. Marco stood by the pedestal, his eyes fixed on the lamp, which was now burning brightly. He didn’t turn when we entered.

My grandmother spoke softly. ‘He’s listening to them. The children of Pyre Point. They all went missing over the years, lured by the light. My brother, John, was their keeper. He thought if he could capture their souls in the jars, they’d be at peace. But the lamp is greedy. It wants more.’

She reached into the pocket of her apron and pulled out a silver locket, the one she always wore but never opened. ‘This is my daughter’s hair,’ she said. ‘She died when she was eight. I’ve kept it to remember her, but it’s time to let her go.’ She snapped the locket open, tipped the hair into the flame. The fire roared, turning blue, and the jars around us began to glow. The laughter swelled into a cacophony of joy, and Marco turned to us, his eyes normal again. But I saw something else in that flame—a face, contorted, furious.

My grandmother pulled us out of the room, and as we fled, the door slammed shut behind us. We didn’t stop until we were in the kitchen, breathing heavy. The lamp was still burning, but now the room was silent. The next day, we tried to find the cellar door, but there was only a solid stone wall. The staircase, the room, the jars—all gone.

But at night, from my bed, I hear the children playing. And sometimes, when I look out the window, I see the lighthouse light sweeping across the sea, but it’s not the automated beam. It’s warm, and it moves as if searching. And I know the lamp still hungers, waiting for the next child to stumble upon that hidden door.

We left Pyre Point soon after, but I never forgot. And I never stopped hearing the laughter. Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I see the jars, and in one of them, floating in the murky water, is a small, whole hand—the hand that reached for the lamp, the hand that pulled Marco away. It’s my own hand, reflected in the glass.