The Lantern’s Pale Eye

In the autumn of 2008, we moved into the old Barlow house on Mistletoe Lane. The house had a history, but we were young and desperate for space, and the rent was laughable. My daughter, Lily, was five, and my son, Sam, was still in diapers, just learning to walk.

It started with small things, the kind you dismiss. At first, it was just the creaking of the house settling, the occasional flicker of lights. But then, Lily began to wake up at odd hours. She’d stand at the end of the hallway, her nightgown ghostly in the dim light, and she’d point to the window at the far end of the hall. ‘The lady with the lantern,’ she’d say. ‘She’s waiting.’ I’d tell her she was dreaming, that it was just the streetlight through the bare branches. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.

As winter set in, the incidents escalated. Sam, who had just started sleeping in a real bed instead of his crib, began to have terrible nightmares. He’d scream in the night, a high-pitched wail that would have us running to his room. He’d be sweating, his small fingers clutching the sheets. ‘She touches my feet,’ he’d sob. ‘She tickles my toes with cold fingers.’ I’d hold him, rocking him, but he’d point to the dark corner of his room, where the shadows pooled. ‘She’s there,’ he’d whisper. ‘She’s always there.’

One evening, I decided to investigate. I borrowed an EMF detector from a friend who was into paranormal stuff. I wanted to prove to myself that there was nothing supernatural. I walked through the house, the detector beeping sporadically. In the hallway, it spiked wildly. I felt a chill, and the air grew heavy. I turned the corner and saw it—a pale, glowing orb floating near the window. It pulsed like a heartbeat, and for a moment, I thought I could see a face within it. A woman, her expression sorrowful, holding a lantern that cast no light. Then it vanished.

I didn’t tell the children. I convinced myself it was a trick of the light, a figment of my exhausted mind. But that night, I woke to a crash. I ran to the kids’ room. Sam was screaming, pointing at the window. Lily was sitting up, her eyes wide. ‘She came through the glass,’ Lily said calmly. ‘She stood over Sam and she sang.’ I felt a cold dread settle in my stomach. That’s when I noticed the frost on the inside of the window, even though the heating was on. And on the glass, I could see a distinct pattern of two small handprints, as if something had pressed against it from inside.

The next morning, I found a diary in the attic. It belonged to a woman named Margaret, who had lived in the house in the 1950s. She wrote of a child she had lost, a daughter named Clara. Margaret was obsessed with reaching her, and she believed that a lantern could guide her back. She wrote that she would stand at the window every night, holding the lantern up, hoping Clara’s spirit would see the light and find its way home. The last entry, dated December 1954, simply said: ‘She comes tonight. But she is not alone.’

I confronted the local historian, an old man named Mr. Henderson. He told me that Margaret had committed suicide in the house, hanging herself from the attic beam. But before she did, she had attempted a ritual to bring her daughter back. The ritual went wrong. Instead of inviting one spirit, she opened a doorway, and something else came through. Something that had been waiting, hungry. The lantern, he said, was a beacon not for the dead, but for the other.

That night, the power went out. The kids were in their room, and I heard them crying out. I rushed in, and there it was: a figure, tall and anthropoid, its skin like stretched leather, with long, thin fingers that ended in sharp points. It stood over Sam’s bed, and it was holding a lantern, but the light inside was a sickly green, and it pulsed like a living thing. I screamed, and the creature turned its head. It had no face, just a void, but I could feel its attention on me, a weight that pressed down on my soul.

I grabbed the kids and ran. We fled to the car, and I drove without looking back, my hands shaking. We stayed at a motel that night, the kids huddled in the bed with me, too frightened to sleep. I knew we could never go back. I also knew that the creature would follow, because the lantern had marked us.

Over the years, we moved frequently, always a step ahead. But every now and then, I’d see it: a flicker of green light in the corner of my eye, or the reflection of a tall figure in a window. And the children… they grew up with their own fears. Lily became obsessed with light, with driving away the dark. Sam, on the other hand, would sometimes go silent, staring at a corner, his eyes vacant. I knew what he saw.

Now, as I write this, I can hear a faint humming, a song that drifts up from the basement. The kids are grown and gone, but I stayed, hoping that perhaps I could end it. I’ve been studying, gathering materials. I think the only way to close the doorway is to desecrate the lantern. But the lantern is not in this house. It’s in the realm of that thing. And tonight, as I hear its footsteps on the stairs, I realize that the doorway isn’t just a place. Sometimes, the doorway is a person. And I’ve been holding it open all these years.

I can hear it breathing, right outside my door. The handle is turning. I know what I have to do. I will destroy the lantern, even if it means bringing that thing into the real world. Because my children deserve peace, and I am the one who kept them from it. This is my last confession. If you find this, tell them I’m sorry. And tell them to never light a lantern in the dark.