The Pale Lantern

It was the autumn I turned ten that my family drove the winding mountain roads to my aunt’s isolated farmhouse for the harvest gathering. The house, a rambling Victorian with peeling paint and a sagging porch, sat at the edge of a pine forest that seemed to drink the light. I’d been there before, but never for so long, and never with so many relatives crammed into every corner. My cousin Elias, two years my senior, and I drew the short straws and were assigned to the attic bedroom, a narrow space under the eaves with two iron-framed beds and a single dormer window that looked out onto the black treeline. The room smelled of mothballs and old wood, and the floorboards groaned with every step, as if the house itself was unsettled.

That night, after a dinner of heavy food and louder laughter, we climbed the creaking stairs to our room. Elias fell asleep almost instantly, his breathing deepening into a rhythmic snore. I lay awake, listening to the wind rattling the windowpane and the occasional hoot of an owl. I must have drifted off, because the next thing I knew, I was wide awake in the dead of night, my heart pounding for no reason at all. The room was pitch black except for a thin sliver of pale, sickly light emanating from under the closet door across the room. I hadn’t noticed any light there before we turned in, and the closet was supposed to be empty. I stared at it, my mind racing, but I convinced myself it was just a reflection from the moon or the hallway. I rolled over and tried to shut my eyes, but the feeling of being watched crept over me like a cold draft. I could sense something in the dark, something just beyond the periphery of my vision.

I held my breath and turned my head slowly. There, standing between the two beds, was a figure—so faint it was almost transparent, like smoke given shape. It was the shape of a thin woman in a long dress, her face obscured by shadow, but her eyes glowed with a dim green light, the same light that came from under the closet door. She didn’t move, just stood there, watching. I wanted to scream, but my throat tightened. I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed, but when I opened them again, the figure was gone. The light under the closet door had vanished. I lay frozen until dawn, my eyes fixed on that door, waiting for it to open.

The next morning, I told Elias what I’d seen, but he laughed it off, saying I’d had a nightmare. I tried to forget it, but the image of that woman stayed with me. Over the next few days, I noticed things. In the attic, there was a locked trunk I’d never seen before, covered in dust. I asked my aunt about it, and her face went pale. ‘That was my grandmother’s,’ she said, her voice tight. ‘She was a bit… odd. She used to wander the woods at night, looking for her lost child, a girl who drowned in the creek behind the house years ago.’ She refused to say more.

On the last night of our visit, I woke again to that same green light, but this time it was stronger, filling the room with an eerie glow. The woman was standing at the foot of my bed, more solid now, her face clearer. She had hollow cheeks and a wild look in her eyes. She raised a trembling hand and pointed at the closet door. I turned to look, and the door was slowly opening, revealing a darkness so deep it seemed to swallow the light. In that darkness, I saw the faint outline of a small girl, drenched and shivering, her hair plastered to her face. The woman mouthed something, and I could read her lips: ‘I found her.’

I scrambled out of bed, waking Elias, and we fled the attic, sprinting down the stairs to the living room where the adults were still playing cards. When I tried to explain, my aunt’s face drained of blood. She told us that the creek had been dried up for decades, and that no one had ever found the girl’s body. The woman, her grandmother, had gone mad after the drowning and had locked herself in the attic, refusing to leave until she found her daughter. She died there, and the trunk was hers.

We left the next morning, and I never returned to that house. But sometimes, in the stillness of the night, I see that green light, and I hear a woman’s voice whispering, ‘I found her.’ And I know that somewhere, in that attic, the door to the closet is still open, and they are both waiting for someone else to find them.