The Lantern Tree

I remember the house as a hulking silhouette against the Oregon mist, its gables like crooked fingers. We’d moved from a cramped apartment in Portland to this relic of a farmhouse, set on ten acres of marshy land that sank underfoot. My parents, Elsie and Martin, saw potential; I, at four, saw only a world of creaking floorboards and windows that wept condensation. My baby brother, Samuel, slept in a bassinet by the hearth, oblivious to the way the house seemed to exhale around us.

At first, it was just the ordinary strangeness of a new place—the smell of old wood and damp, the scurrying in the walls that I assumed were mice. But then came the voice. It didn’t speak in words, not at first. It was a hum, a low vibration that I felt in my chest when I pressed my ear to the floorboards. And then, one afternoon, I was in the parlor, playing with my wooden blocks, when a name surfaced in my mind like a bubble: ‘Maren.’ I said it aloud, tasting the syllables. My mother, dusting the mantel, paused. ‘Where did you hear that?’ she asked. I shrugged. ‘She told me.’

Maren became my constant companion. She was patient, never demanding, but she had a single obsession: the lantern tree. She’d whisper it in my ear while I played, a soft sibilance like wind through dry reeds. ‘The lantern tree, the lantern tree, where the roots drink deep and the dead don’t sleep.’ I didn’t know what it meant, but I’d repeat it to my mother, who would smile nervously and say, ‘That’s nice, dear.’

One evening, as the fog rolled in from the bay, I told my mother, ‘Maren is hot, and then she is cold. And she is in a dead box.’ My mother’s face blanched. She grabbed my shoulders. ‘What did you say?’ I repeated it, matter-of-factly, and then added, ‘She wants us to find the lantern tree.’

That night, my father, a history buff, began his research. The house had a murky past, but the most striking discovery was an old schoolhouse that had stood on the property in the 1800s. It had burned down under mysterious circumstances, and several children had perished in the fire. One of them, according to a faded newspaper clipping, was a girl named Maren Oakes, age eight. The fire had started near a large oak tree that the children called the ‘lantern tree,’ because they would hang paper lanterns from its branches during harvest festivals. The tree was long gone, but a stump remained in the marsh, half-swallowed by moss.

A few nights later, I awoke to find Maren standing at the foot of my bed. She was not the wispy figure I’d imagined; she was solid, waterlogged, her skin peeling, her hair plastered to her skull. ‘You must find it,’ she said, her voice like the gurgle of a drain. ‘The lantern tree. I’m not done.’

I screamed, and my parents came running. But they saw nothing, only me wide-eyed and shivering. The next day, my father, trying to reassure me, led me to the stump. ‘See, there’s nothing here,’ he said. But as we stood there, the ground began to tremble slightly, and a cold wind wrapped around us. I looked up at the sky, and for a moment, the clouds parted to reveal a twisted, black tree, its branches hung with flaming lanterns. Then it was gone.

My father dismissed it as a trick of the light, but that night, the humming grew louder. It became a thrumming, and then a rhythmic scraping, as if something were being dragged across the ceiling. I was in my room, the door ajar, when I saw a figure in the hallway—a small girl, dripping water, holding a single lantern. She walked toward Samuel’s room. I ran after her, but she vanished as I reached the doorway. Samuel was crying, his face red, and when I picked him up, I felt a cold spot on his back, as if something had touched him.

My parents were growing worried. My mother found old photographs in the attic—a class picture from the school, and there, in the front row, was a girl with hollow eyes and a missing hand. On the back, someone had written: ‘Maren, who brought the lanterns.’

The pressure built. The house seemed to groan at night, and I would find Maren standing in corners, her mouth open in a silent wail. She began to speak in the language of the dead—words that twisted my stomach—and I knew that finding the lantern tree was the only way to stop her. But the stump was empty, just a gnarled root. I felt helpless.

One day, my father went out to the stump with a shovel, determined to dig it up. I watched from the window as he struck the earth. He unearthed a small, rusted tin box. Inside, wrapped in oilcloth, was a child’s hand, preserved in a jar of murky liquid. My father recoiled, dropping it. That night, he burned the hand in the fireplace, hoping to end it. But as the flames consumed it, a high-pitched shriek filled the house, and the chimney belched black smoke that smelled of rot.

After that, things escalated. My mother found Samuel blue-lipped in his crib, barely breathing. She revived him, but he was listless, staring at nothing. I, too, felt a growing cold inside me, as if something were draining my warmth. Maren appeared to me at all hours, her face now gaunt, her eyes pleading. ‘The tree,’ she whispered. ‘You buried me under the tree. The roots drank me. I am still there.’

I finally understood. The tree was not a real tree; it was a memory, a grave. The schoolhouse had been built on a burial ground, and Maren had been killed, her body hidden beneath the oak. The fire was a cover-up. The lantern tree was her marker, and she wanted a proper grave, a name.

On the night of the next full moon, the ground in the marsh began to glow with a sickly green light. I walked out, drawn by an unseen force, leaving footprints in the mud. My parents followed, desperate, calling my name, but I was beyond hearing. I reached the stump and knelt. The earth was soft, wet, and I began to dig with my bare hands. The mud turned to clay, then to something else—bone. I uncovered a small skeleton, curled in a fetal position, a plastic toy lantern clutched to its chest. As I touched the skull, the humming stopped. The air grew still. And from the ground, a voice, clear as a bell: ‘Thank you.’

I looked up. The lantern tree stood before me, immense and real, its branches ablaze with light. Maren stood beneath it, whole and solid, a girl of eight with a shy smile. She looked at me, then at the sky, and began to ascend, her form dissolving into the night. The tree faded, and I was left kneeling in mud, my hands covered in grave dust.

My parents found me there, crying but warm again. We moved away soon after, but I never forgot. Sometimes, when the fog rolls in from the bay, I think I see a girl waving from beneath a tree, a lantern in her hand, and I wave back, glad that she is finally free. But sometimes, in the cold, dark hours, I wonder if I actually freed her—or if I simply opened the door for her to cross over, and she’s standing on the other side, waiting for others to join. And I remember the look in her eyes before she vanished: not gratitude, but longing. As if she had wanted me to stay with her under the roots, and I had refused. And I wonder, if I hadn’t refused, would I have heard the humming again, coming from the ground beneath the oak, calling my name?