The Unclosed Lantern

This was when my family still lived in a small town in the highlands of northern Vietnam. I was about five years old. My older brother, who was eight, had a friend named Linh who lived just a few houses down the dirt road. Every morning, Linh would come to our stilt house or we would go to hers, and we would walk together to the village school. Linh was often at our house, and she knew exactly where my brother and I slept. I usually slept with my grandmother on a mat in the corner, while my brother slept with our parents in the main room.

One rainy season, Linh fell ill with a terrible fever. Her family did not call for the village healer until it was too late, and she died in her sleep. During her funeral, my brother went to pay his respects. My parents forbade me from going, saying I was too young and that the spirits might be restless. I was also too scared to go. When my brother returned, he was pale and quiet. He told me that Linh’s eyes were wide open, staring at the ceiling. Her mother had tried to close them, but they would open again the moment she let go. The villagers whispered that Linh’s mother had neglected her, that she had been more concerned with her gambling debts than her daughter’s cough. They said that on the night she died, Linh had called out for her mother, but no one came.

That night, as I lay on my mat beside my grandmother, I couldn’t sleep. The wind howled through the bamboo walls. I heard a sound like a child crying—soft, hiccuping sobs. I thought it was my brother, but when I peeked, he was asleep. The crying seemed to come from the corner of the room, near the door. I buried my face in my pillow. Then I heard a voice, thin and reedy, like a sick child: ‘Let me in.’ I froze. The voice came again, closer. ‘Let me in, I’m cold.’

I whispered to my grandmother, but she was snoring. The wooden latch on the door rattled, as if someone was trying to open it. I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed. After a long while, the sounds stopped. I finally fell asleep, but in my dreams I saw Linh standing at the foot of my mat. Her eyes were open, black and empty. She pointed a finger at me. ‘You were supposed to come,’ she said. ‘You were supposed to play with me.’

I woke up screaming, but no one heard. The next morning, I told my mother what I had heard. She exchanged a worried look with my grandmother. That evening, my grandmother took out a small brass lantern, one that had belonged to her mother. She lit a candle inside it and placed it by the door. ‘For the wandering soul,’ she said. ‘So she can find her way home.’

But the lantern did not help. Every night, I heard the crying, the rattling, the voice. My parents started sleeping in the corner with me, but the sounds only grew louder. My brother said he saw a shadowy figure crouched outside our window, calling my name. Our neighbors began to avoid us, fearing that Linh’s restless spirit had attached itself to our family.

One night, I woke to find my grandmother gone. The lantern was on the floor, its candle extinguished. I crept to the door and saw her standing in the yard, speaking to someone I could not see. She was chanting in a trance, her voice low and rhythmic. Then she turned and came back inside. ‘She is bound to the earth,’ my grandmother said. ‘She does not know she is dead. She thinks she is still waiting for you to walk to school with her.’

I felt a cold breath on my neck, and a small hand took mine. I turned, and there was Linh, her face blue, her eyes fixed on mine. ‘We are going to be late,’ she said. I screamed, and the grip tightened. My grandmother grabbed my other hand and pulled me away, shouting at the spirit, telling it to cross over. But Linh only stared, her mouth open in a silent wail.

From that night on, I could not leave the house. Every time I tried, I would see Linh waiting at the edge of the yard, her hand stretched out. My family decided we had to leave the village. We packed our belongings and moved to the city, far away from that stilt house and the small brass lantern my grandmother left behind.

But even now, decades later, when I close my eyes, I see Linh’s open eyes, and I hear her voice calling my name. And I know that somewhere in that abandoned village, the lantern still burns, and a girl with unclosed eyes waits for a playmate who never came.