The Red Lantern

The house on Thornapple Lane was a Victorian relic, its bones creaking with age. I was eight when we moved in, and the first thing I noticed was the red lantern in the upstairs hallway. It hung from a rusted hook, its glass stained crimson, casting a blood-colored glow at night. My parents dismissed it as a decorative oddity, but I knew better. It was a beacon.

My bedroom was at the end of the hall, directly under the lantern’s reach. Every night, I’d lie in bed, staring at the crack under my door, watching the red light bleed through. It pulsed, like a heartbeat. One night, I heard footsteps—slow, deliberate, stopping just outside my door. The handle jiggled, then stilled. I pulled the covers over my head, whispering a prayer I didn’t believe in. When I peeked out, the door was open a crack, and a shadow spilled across the floor, elongated and wrong.

Years later, at thirteen, I was in the living room with my parents, watching a storm rage outside. The power flickered, and the red lantern sputtered to life, casting the room in a sickly glow. My father sat in his armchair, reading a newspaper, my mother by the window. I was on the floor, doing homework. That’s when I heard it—a faint scratching from the wall behind me. I turned, and there was a face pressed against the window, pale and featureless, its mouth open in a silent scream. I screamed, but my parents saw nothing. My mother insisted it was a tree branch, but I knew the truth. The house was hungry.

One week later, my father vanished. He went to the basement to check the fuse box and never came back. The police searched for days, but found nothing. My mother grew haggard, her eyes hollow. I started sleeping with the lights on, but the red lantern bypassed the switch, its glow seeping through the walls. I began to hear my father’s voice calling my name from the attic. I climbed the pull-down stairs one afternoon, and found the lantern’s twin, larger and brighter, hanging from a beam. Beneath it was a photograph—my father, his expression serene, his hands clasped, surrounded by a circle of white ash. I reached for the photo, and the lantern flickered, and the attic door slammed shut behind me.

I was trapped in the dark, the red glow pulsing. I felt a presence, cold and vast, pressing against my back. I turned, and there it was—the figure from my childhood, but now it had a face. It was my father, but his eyes were black voids, and his mouth was stretched into a grin that didn’t belong to him. He spoke in a voice that was both his and not his, a chorus of whispers: ‘You are the last lantern.’ I woke up in my bed, drenched in sweat, the red light gone. The house was silent. I ran downstairs, and found my mother in the kitchen, stirring a pot of tea. She smiled at me, but her smile was a little too wide, and her eyes didn’t meet mine.

I knew then that the house had taken her too. That night, I packed a bag and fled. I never looked back at Thornapple Lane. But as I drove away, I saw the red lantern glowing in the attic window, and I knew it was waiting for me to return. Someday, I would have to face it. But not tonight. Tonight, I ran.