The Paper Lantern Room

My grandmother’s house sat at the end of a gravel lane in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, a two-story timber frame built in the 1920s. It had a wrap-around porch and a turret on the east side that no one ever used, and behind it, the forest pressed so close that the trees seemed to lean in, as if listening. I was nine when I went to stay for the summer, a city kid dumped in the middle of nowhere while my parents sorted out their divorce.

Gran was a quiet woman who kept her hair in a gray bun and her secrets in a locked cedar chest at the foot of her bed. She had a peculiar habit: every evening at dusk, she would light a paper lantern and hang it from the hook on the porch’s eave. The lantern was old, made of rice paper and bamboo, with faded red characters painted around the base. When I asked what they meant, she said, ‘They welcome the lost.’

My bedroom was on the second floor, at the end of a narrow corridor that creaked no matter where you stepped. The walls were covered in flowered wallpaper, and a single window overlooked the backyard and the treeline. On my first night, I woke to the sound of soft scratching on the glass. I thought it was a branch, but when I looked, the window was empty, and the lantern on the porch cast a warm glow just below me. Then I noticed the shadow: a thin, wavering shape that stretched from the lantern’s base across the lawn, pointing directly at the forest. I watched it flicker, and it seemed to move against the wind, as if reaching for something.

The next afternoon, I explored the basement. It smelled of damp earth and old newspapers. Gran never went down there, she said it was ‘not worth the trouble.’ I found a door behind the furnace, painted over many times, with a rusted padlock. The key hung on a nail by the stairs, and I took it. The door opened onto a set of stone steps leading down into darkness. I grabbed a flashlight from the workbench and descended.

The room was small, with dirt walls and no windows. In the center stood a wooden table, and on it lay a leather-bound journal, a brass compass, and a photograph in a silver frame. The photo showed two young women, one of them clearly Gran. She was smiling, arm around another woman with dark hair. On the back was written: ‘M and E, 1948.’ I opened the journal. The handwriting was Gran’s, but the tone was desperate. ‘The lantern keeps them at bay,’ it read. ‘But E. walked into the woods on the third night. I haven’t seen her since. I light the lantern every dusk, hoping it will guide her back. But it only shows me which way they took her.’ I flipped through more pages. There were maps of the forest, dotted with crosses, and drawings of thin, humanoid figures with elongated limbs.

I slammed the journal shut and ran upstairs. Gran was in the kitchen, peeling apples. She looked at me, her eyes tired. ‘You found the basement,’ she said. It wasn’t a question. I nodded. She set down the peeler and wiped her hands. ‘Ella was my sister. She loved those woods. When we were girls, we’d play hide and seek among the pines. One day, she hid too well. I saw something take her, not like a bear, something that walked upright but wasn’t human. I ran back home, but by the time I returned with help, she was gone. The lantern was my grandmother’s. She said it was a guide for the lost, but it’s more than that. It’s a warning. When it flickers, they’re close.’

That night, I couldn’t sleep. The lantern’s glow was a steady yellow, but around midnight, it began to pulse, like a heartbeat. I heard a faint rustling from the woods, and when I peered out the window, I saw them: silhouettes at the treeline, slender and impossibly tall, swaying slowly. One stepped forward. Its head tilted up toward my window, and though I couldn’t see eyes, I felt it was looking at me. The lantern flared, brighter than before, and the figure stopped. It seemed to hesitate, then melted back into the trees.

I spent the next week carrying a flashlight everywhere. I avoided the basement, but the journal’s words echoed in my mind. On the last night of my visit, Gran sat on the porch, staring at the lantern. ‘You see them tonight,’ she said. I confessed that I had. She nodded. ‘They only come for those who know about them. The lantern doesn’t keep them away forever. It just keeps them from remembering you. Once they know, they wait. They’re patient.’

I left the next morning. On the car ride back to the city, I looked out the rear window until the house shrank to a speck. The lantern was still glowing, even in daylight, a tiny flame suspended in the trees. I never went back.

Years later, I received a box of Gran’s belongings after her funeral. Inside was the lantern, folded flat, and a note: ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the whole truth. The lantern was never for Ella. It was for me. I saw them take her, and I ran. I never told anyone, not even my mother, that I left her there. The lantern is my penance. But now that I’m gone, it needs a keeper. I’ve written everything in the journal. You’ll find it in the basement, under the floorboards. Take care, my dear. They’ll be watching.’

I haven’t unpacked the box. It sits in my closet, the lantern’s paper edges visible through the cardboard. But last night, I heard a scratching at my window. When I looked, the streetlight flickered, and for a moment, a shadow stretched across the glass, thin and wavering. It pointed toward the woods that edge my neighborhood. I think I’ll need to learn what the characters on the lantern mean after all.