The Lantern’s Glow

Before we moved to the farmhouse, we lived in a neat little bungalow on the outskirts of a town called Millbrook. It was a good house, mostly, but the attic always felt wrong. We used it for storage, boxes of old clothes, Christmas decorations, and my grandmother’s hope chest. The attic was always cold, even in the summer, and the air had a thickness to it, like you were pushing through cotton. My niece, Clara, who was fourteen at the time she visited, once told me, ‘There’s a lady up there. She wears a long dress, like from a hundred years ago. She’s not mean, but she watches.’ I tried to ignore it, but I’d sometimes catch a whiff of lavender in the kitchen, and my pies, which were never anything special before, turned out perfect. I blamed it on the oven.

Then we had to move. The bank took the bungalow, and we found a place cheap—a farmhouse on the edge of a town called Raven’s End. It was a rambling old thing with a screened porch and a barn that leaned to one side. The previous owner, a woman named Marla, had let it go to foreclosure. The realtor mentioned she was ‘eccentric,’ which I later learned meant she had been into witchcraft. She’d been in her early thirties, and the neighbors said she’d been ‘seeing things’ at the end. We didn’t think much of it; we were just glad to have a roof over our heads.

The first odd thing was the smell. Not bad, but sweet, like burnt sugar and old roses. It clung to the curtains and the wood of the front door. I found a box in the pantry with dried herbs and a few candles, half-melted, in strange colors. I threw it away. I didn’t want that energy in my home.

A week after we moved in, I woke at 3 a.m. to a faint glow coming from under the basement door. I opened it, and there, on the dirt floor, was a lantern. An old kerosene lantern, unlit, but glowing with a soft, sickly yellow light. I hadn’t put it there. I picked it up, and it was warm to the touch. I put it in the garbage can outside, but the next night, it was back in the basement, sitting on an overturned crate as if it had always been there. The glow was dimmer, but it was there. My husband, Dan, thought I was imagining things. He never saw it. Only me.

Then the baking started. I hadn’t baked since we left the bungalow, but one rainy afternoon, I got a craving for sourdough. I made a loaf, and it was the best I ever had. The crust was crackly, the inside chewy and perfect. Dan said, ‘You should open a bakery.’ But I noticed the lantern’s glow started to brighten whenever I was in the kitchen. And I’d find weird things in my mixing bowl—a few stray hairs that were far too long to be mine, or a pinch of ash. I ignored it, because the bread was so good.

One night, I couldn’t sleep. I went down to the kitchen for warm milk. Through the window, I saw the lantern in the basement, but it wasn’t in the basement. It was floating in the yard, just beyond the glass, bobbing gently as if held by an unseen hand. I ran to the back door, but it was locked. The lantern drifted closer until it was right against the door, and I could see a face in the flame—a woman’s face, young, with hollow eyes. Her lips moved, but I heard nothing. Then the flame snuffed out, and the lantern dropped to the ground with a clatter.

The next day, I found a bundle of herbs tied with red string on the porch. I burned them in the sink. But that night, I saw her—not in a dream, but standing at the foot of my bed. She wore a dress of rough cotton, stained with something dark, and she held the lantern, unlit. She pointed to the floor, then to me, then to the ceiling. I don’t know what she wanted. She faded, but the image stayed.

I tried to find out more about Marla. I spoke to a neighbor, an old man named Jasper, who told me that Marla had ‘gone off the deep end’ after her husband died. She’d been trying to contact him, but she’d contacted something else instead. He said she’d kept a lantern in the basement, always lit, ‘to guide the spirits home.’ But she must have lit the wrong one.

Now, the lantern is in our living room. I can’t move it. Every time I try, it just appears back. And the baking—I can’t stop. I wake up at 3 a.m. and make pies, cobblers, breads. My hands work without my permission. I’m feeding something. I know that now. The lantern’s glow is steady, and sometimes I hear a humming, a woman’s voice, just under the sound of the oven. And I wonder, is she the same lady from the bungalow? Did she follow me here? Or is she something new, something that Marla woke up?

I’m afraid to turn off the oven. I’m afraid to let the lantern go out. And I’m afraid that one day, I’ll become like Marla—lost, trying to reach someone, and ending up with a tenant I never wanted.