The Silt-Boned Lantern

I didn’t plan to get lost in Portland, Maine. I had a map, I had GPS, but the city twisted like a salted slug under my boots. By the time the streetlights flickered on, I was hopelessly turned around in a part of Deering Oaks Park that smelled of wet mulch and old secrets. I’m a tourist, so I have no shame: I ask anyone for directions. I’d asked a jogger, a woman with a stroller, and a man walking a three-legged dog, but they all pointed me toward something I couldn’t see on my map: a pond called Siltwater. I’d never heard of it, never read a single ghost story about it. I’d never even looked it up on my phone, so there was no way my brain could conjure the horror that came next.

The investigation group was a last-minute thing—a pod of strangers with flashlights and EMF meters, gathered by a man named Julian Croft, who ran a local ‘paranormal society.’ I was just there to warm up and ask for a lift out of the park. But Julian split us into four teams, and I got stuck with his second-in-command, a wiry guy named Pete Oakes. Pete had a rehearsed spiel about ‘The Woman of Siltwater,’ a classic ghost story that made me roll my eyes. He even cackled, ‘What’s a lake without a drowned bride, right?’ But I’d never heard it before, and I let him talk, zoning out.

We walked a muddy trail lined with cattails that rustled like dry paper. The pond was bigger than I expected, black as oil under the moon, with a single wooden dock that creaked. Pete stopped and pointed at something bobbing near the reeds. It was a lantern—an old, rusted thing with a glass pane missing, and inside, a single candle that somehow stayed lit despite the wind. ‘That’s not part of the story,’ Pete said, suddenly less jokey. I laughed, but my breath fogged in the cold. ‘Probably someone’s joke.’

The lantern turned slightly on its own, as if something had nudged it. The flame bent toward us, and I thought I heard a hum, low and insect-like. Pete said, ‘We should go,’ but the trail back seemed too dark, the cattails too tall. A mist crept over the pond, thick as soup, and from it emerged a shape—not a woman yet, but a ripple that moved against the current. The lantern rose out of the water, dripping, and the candle inside cast a sickly green light on a face that wasn’t there. I saw bone, wet and dark, packed with silt.

Pete grabbed my arm and pulled me away, but every step we took, the ground squelched as if it were swallowing our footprints. The lantern bobbed ahead of us, guiding us deeper into a part of the park I didn’t recognize. The trees had no leaves, but it was June. The air smelled of copper and decay. Then I saw the others—the jogger, the woman with the stroller, the three-legged dog—all standing in a line at the edge of the pond, their faces blank, their mouths moving in silent words. I realized I couldn’t hear my own footsteps anymore.

The lantern finally stopped at a place where the bank was churned mud. Pete was trembling, pointing at something half-buried: a small, rusted locket. I picked it up, despite every nerve screaming not to. Inside was a photograph of a woman with empty sockets, and beneath it, engraved: ‘You should not have asked.’ The lantern’s light flared, and I felt the silt between my teeth, the pressure of fingers closing around my ankle from the mud. I looked down, and the ground was not ground—it was a vast, slimy body, breathing.

I woke up on a bench outside the park gates, alone. The lantern was sitting beside me, its candle out. My clothes were dry, but my shoes were caked in black, greasy muck. A police officer asked if I was okay, and I nodded, but I couldn’t tell him what happened. I walked away, and when I looked back, the lantern was gone. But I still feel it—inside my chest, a wet sliver of something moving, like a fish in a shallow pool. Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I see the face from the locket, and I know that I didn’t just get lost. I was taken, and I left something behind in the silt. Now I can’t ask for directions anymore. Every time I open my mouth, the words come out as black water.