The Lantern Tree

The town of Ashford had a place we all knew to avoid after dusk—the old Miller’s orchard, where the trees grew in crooked rows and the ground was thick with rot. My friends and I had dared each other to wander there for years, never seeing much beyond the usual unease: a chill that followed you like a wet breath, the sense of being watched from the gaps between the branches. But I never connected the small misfortunes that trailed me afterward—the persistent cough, my car’s radiator boiling over on a cold morning, my girlfriend leaving me for reasons she couldn’t explain—to that gnarled place.

One autumn night, with the moon hidden behind a veil of clouds, I took my new partner, Sam, and his brother, Reese, to prove I had no fear of the orchard. We walked past the NO TRESPASSING sign and into the damp, leaf-slick earth. The air was thick with the smell of rotting apples. Around 1:30 in the morning, I spotted it: a figure, darker than the night, crouched at the base of an ancient, split-trunked oak. It moved with a disjointed, insect-like gait, climbing the bark as if the tree were a ladder. I froze, my flashlight beam shaking.

Sam, trying to scare me, crept up and grabbed my shoulders. My scream was raw, and I swung my flashlight blindly, striking him across the temple. He stumbled back, cursing, and for a moment we were just two people in the dark, my panic and his anger colliding. But then Reese, who had been silent, pointed a shaking finger toward the tree. ‘I saw it,’ he whispered. ‘From the corner of my eye. Something pale and long, wrapping around the trunk.’ Sam looked at him, then at me, and for a moment, we were all uncertain of what was real.

The night ended in cold silence, and we drove back without speaking. A week later, my dog, a healthy border collie named Lucky, began to seize and foam at the mouth. The vet said it was a sudden neurological failure, nothing I could have prevented. I stood in the clinic’s waiting room, my hands trembling, and I remembered the way that figure had looked at me before it disappeared into the canopy—like it had marked me.

Months passed, and I tried to convince myself it was coincidence. But the bad luck didn’t stop; it grew teeth. My savings dwindled, my mother fell ill, and I began to dream of that tree, its roots like veins in the dark soil, and the figure with no face, always climbing, always watching. One night, I returned alone, driven by a compulsion I couldn’t name. I stood where I had seen it, and I looked up. The tree seemed taller, its branches twisted into a cage against the stars. And in the crook of the lowest limb, something glowed—a soft, sickly light, like a lantern made of skin.

I should have run, but I climbed. The bark was slick and cold, and as I reached for the glow, I heard a whisper, not in words, but in the creak of the wood: an invitation to stay. I touched it—a smooth, warm object, pulsing like a heart. It was a lantern, but its glass was a membrane, and inside, a tiny flame swirled. I felt a sting on my palm, and when I pulled back, black sap bled from a small wound. The lantern’s light flickered, and I saw in its glow a thousand faces, all of them mine, all at different stages of decay.

I scrambled down, my hands torn, and fled the orchard. But as I ran, the lantern’s glow followed me, hovering at the edge of my vision. I reached my car and drove, but the light remained in the rearview mirror. That was three years ago. I’ve moved, changed my name, but every night, when I close my eyes, I see that tree, and I feel the lantern’s pull. I know now that I didn’t escape—I brought it with me. And one day, it will set me down on those roots, and I’ll climb again, for good.