The Last Lantern

Ever since I could remember, I was drawn to the strange and the unseen. My parents and grandparents were researchers, and our house was a library of the odd. I had seen things with my own eyes that would make others doubt their sanity. So when my mother was taken from us, I felt it in my bones before the news came. We were at a winter camp in the highlands of the Central Province, far from the sticky heat of Colombo. I was eleven, and it was the day after Christmas, a morning so cold that the grass crunched under our boots.

My cousins, Ravi and Nisha, and my best friend, Tharindu, had come along to keep me company. The camp was a cluster of wooden cabins surrounded by misty pine forests and a lake that never seemed to thaw completely. The caretaker, an old man named Mr. Fernando, warned us about the old temple ruins on the far side of the lake. ‘Don’t go there after dark,’ he said, his eyes clouded with age. ‘The monks who died in the fire still walk those stones.’ We laughed it off, but I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold.

That evening, as the sun dipped behind the hills, I decided to explore the ruins. Ravi and Nisha were busy playing cards, and Tharindu was reading a comic. I slipped out, telling no one. The path to the ruins was overgrown, and the air grew heavier as I approached. The stones were blackened, and the smell of smoke lingered, even years later. I stepped carefully, my heart pounding not with fear, but with a strange excitement. That’s when I saw her—a woman in a white saree, standing by a broken pillar, her back to me. She turned, and my breath caught. It was my mother, but her face was pale, and her eyes were hollow. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but no sound came out. Instead, a whisper brushed my ear: ‘Run.’

I turned and ran, crashing through the undergrowth, branches tearing at my clothes. I didn’t stop until I reached the cabin, gasping. The others looked up, surprised at my disheveled state. ‘What happened?’ Nisha asked. I tried to explain, but the words came out jumbled. Then my aunt’s phone rang. It was my grandmother, her voice cracking with sobs. My mother had been found dead in our home, her throat cut, the details too gruesome to repeat. The time of death was around five that morning, the exact moment I saw her ghost in the ruins.

From that night on, the camp changed. The air grew colder, and the shadows seemed to move with intent. I couldn’t shake the image of my mother’s face. But worse, I began to see other things—a flicker of movement by the lake, a faint chanting from the ruins. My aunt and uncle arrived the next day, their faces drawn. They told me that my mother had been investigating a possessed artifact, a carved wooden mask that had been unearthed near the ruins. They believed the mask had followed her, and that it was now here, drawn to the very place it had been buried to keep it from unleashing its evil.

That night, we gathered in the main hall, the only room with a fireplace. The lanterns cast long, dancing shadows. Mr. Fernando told us the full story: the monks had discovered the mask, which was a door to a vengeful spirit, and they had tried to destroy it, but their fire only awakened it. The monks perished, and the mask was sealed beneath the ruins. Someone had disturbed it recently, and that someone was my mother. Now, the spirit wanted a new host, and it had chosen me, the child who could see the dead.

I felt its presence then, a pressure in my skull, a voice whispering in a language I didn’t know. The others didn’t see it, but I did—a shadowy figure with a mask for a face, standing in the corner, its eye holes like empty sockets. It reached out a hand, bony fingers extended, and I screamed. The power flickered, and the lanterns went out, plunging us into darkness. When the backup lamps came on, the figure was gone, but I knew it was waiting.

Determined to end this, I grabbed a lantern and ran to the ruins, ignoring the shouts behind me. The moon was full, casting silver light on the charred stones. At the center, where the main altar had been, I saw a gaping hole. Inside lay a wooden mask, carved with snarling faces and tangled vines. As I reached for it, my mother’s ghost appeared again, more solid this time. ‘Destroy it,’ she said. ‘Fire is the only way.’ I lifted the mask, feeling its cold malevolence seep into my fingers. I set it on a pile of dried leaves, and with a trembling hand, I struck a match and tossed it. The mask burst into flame, and a terrible shriek filled the air, shaking the ground. I watched as it twisted and blackened, and then, silence.

When the others reached me, I was sobbing among the ashes. The spirit was gone, and so was my mother’s ghost, but her last words echoed in my mind: ‘You’re a fighter.’ I never told anyone about the other vision I had—a future where I would one day carry the same mask, not to destroy, but to use. But that’s a story for another time.

I am thirteen now, living with my aunt and uncle, still seeing the dead, still drawn to the unknown. The camp closed down after that, the ruins deemed unsafe. But sometimes, when the night is cold and the moon is full, I see a flickering light across the lake, and I know that somewhere, the last lantern still burns, waiting for me.