By the Light of His Lantern

by Abe Moss

  Nothing in this world was as he knew it.

  The branches scraped like knives as the bird took flight and left him.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  His follower was back. It returned quieter this time, without the growling or the snorting. Perhaps it was a different follower altogether, something less animal than the first. But they were there, close to stepping on his heels in the dark. He shouted at them to leave again, but they wouldn’t. He chased them, but couldn’t hear the sounds of their steps retreating. They just weren’t there.

  He felt foolish. He spun wildly, lantern swinging by its tiny wire handle. The lantern cast its light before him, but suddenly the rustling was behind him again, so he spun a second time, and a third, this way and that, like trying to catch his own shadow.

  The dark was playing tricks…

  Was it only him? he wondered.

  “Who are you? What are you?”

  The shuffling was behind him now. He lashed his lantern at it, spinning on his heel, and found more of the same. Then again. He spun. Then again. And he spun.

  “Stop this!” he said. “Please!”

  He listened, wide-eyed, and the darkness grew silent around him. He took a deep breath to calm himself.

  He wandered up the path a ways and stopped. He turned around. He wandered back. A thought occurred to him and his heart nearly broke. He paced down the path and paced back once more.

  He wasn’t sure which direction he was headed.

  The frustration gathered in his throat, choked him there, and he thought he might start whimpering like a helpless toddler.

  For eternity, he thought. This will go on for all eternity, and there’s nothing I can do…

  He wouldn’t let himself think that way. He picked a direction and started off again, regardless of whether or not it was right. Perhaps it wasn’t. Perhaps he’d find himself back at the beach. No worries, he told himself. He’d just turn around and try again…

  The floodgates burned, bulged, behind his steadfast eyes. It was hard to breathe. He tried to keep his mind empty, focused on nothing but following the path, but like pesky wasps several thoughts slipped through and bit deep.

  …never getting anywhere…

  …trapped in here forever…

  …even if you do get somewhere, it will only be more misery…

  …not even death will end it…

  …cursed for eternity…

  …no matter how far you make it, one wrong move restarts everything…

  …why even try…

  He heard something. Sniffling. It was him. The floodgates were breaking. One last thought occurred to him before they did, an odd wondering.

  Will my tears also turn to poison in my mouth?

  “Hey…”

  A new voice stopped him in his tracks. It came ahead this time, very close. Its cadence sent thick waves of goosebumps over his body.

  A child’s voice.

  “H-hello?” he said.

  He moved toward it, deliberate, curious, and strangely hopeful. He hadn’t imagined it. Someone was there. Someone, he thought, who shouldn’t be.

  A light appeared in the distance, and the trees and branches shown black between the light and himself. The path bent, circled toward it. His hurried feet barely touched the dirt as he floated desperately onward.

  Someone there, something there!

  In the clearing at the path’s end, a two-story cabin waited, barely visible, with dim firelight in the window by the door. Over the door was a sign with a closed bowl of fire beneath it to give it light.

  It read: The Historic Inn.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Relieved as he was to find something through all the trees at the end of the winding path, he approached the front door with heavy feet. Something which seemed refreshing could all too likely be something else entirely, he thought.

  The darkness could be…

  Ah, he thought. He knew nothing about it. He only knew what the old man told him. Would he fear everything based on the words of someone who hadn’t ventured farther than twenty feet in the last… however long he’d been there?

  The door to the inn wasn’t shut completely. A gentle push opened it a few inches. He peeked inside. It was dim—as any place here would be—and silent. Trying to be equally silent, alert for anything in the shadows, Lewis stepped inside and shut the door behind him until it latched.

  Not including Lewis’s lantern, the room was lit only by a small cage of fire on the counter, which he would soon notice was nailed down. He stood at the counter and waited, saw no one on the other side.

  “Excuse me,” he said. No one answered. He leaned over the counter, peered at the ground on the other side. He extended his lantern, revealing not much else. It appeared he was alone.

  But where had that voice come from? He hadn’t forgotten.

  He looked at the entrance and considered. He needed a break, he thought. To continue on outside, through the perilous dark, sounded far too exhausting at the moment. So instead, he passed the counter where his light revealed a waiting stairway. He followed it up.

  Each stair gave a squeal, low and hidden. The banister he followed up with his hand was sheathed in dust. At the top of the stairs was a hallway. He moved, slow like a phantom, down its length and saw several shut doors along the way. When he reached the end, he discovered there was nothing else to see. Only the shut doors. Except for a painting hung on the wall there at the end. The frame was gold and decorative, and the painting itself was abstract. There were colors—red, black, possibly green—and lines which made shapes similar to arms and legs all interwoven.

  He startled at the sound of a door opening down the hall from where he’d come.

  “Hello?”

  There wasn’t a response. Slowly, even slower than before, with his sword held at his side, he tiptoed along the hall, silent as the layers of dust under his bare feet. So much dust. The light of his fire revealed the same shut doors all the way down, until he reached the very last—or the first, near the head of the stairs. This door was open now.

  “Hello?”

  He paused just inside the doorway. The feeling of being watched, or being followed, wound him up like thread on a spool, until he couldn’t hold himself still any longer and he shut the bedroom door behind him and turned the lock.

  Because it was a bedroom. There was a desk, mostly bare save an open booklet, its pages blank. A bed rested in one corner, with a nightstand beside it. There was a lamp on the nightstand, whose switch lent him nothing but an empty click. A window, glass cold as winter, lay hidden in the dark next to the nightstand. It provided him with a perfect view of the blackness outside. A tall dresser was pushed against the wall opposite the bed. He opened the drawers of the dresser and found them all empty. The nightstand, too. He wished his flame was brighter, for it reached just short of being able to light all four corners of the room at once. As it was, setting it on the nightstand put the far wall and the bedroom door mostly in shadow.

  The bed, he found, was incredibly soft, albeit smelling strongly of mothballs. He set the sword on the nightstand next to his jar lantern and lay back on the bed without pulling down the covers and suddenly found himself aching for sleep.

  He lay that way for what felt like hours and sleep never came. Well, of course not, he thought. Sleep would be an escape. The darkness couldn’t allow that. And if it did, he figured he probably wouldn’t enjoy it much anyway. It would be plagued by nightmares, no doubt. The worst kind, more terrible than anything he could imagine.

  So he lay very still on the bed, the lantern burning smoothly next to his head on the nightstand, and he stared at the ceiling with no evidence of thought in his eyes. No sleep, but a moment of peace at the very least…

  “Excuse me.”

  His blank eyes swelled. He opened his mouth and couldn’t find his voice. The one which spoke to him, somewhere in the room, continued.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” the voice said. It was a
man’s voice, soft-spoken. Polite. Not the same voice he’d heard outside at all. “I’m having an argument with my friend here. I was wondering if you could help us settle it.”

  Lewis sat up. “Where are you?”

  “That’s not important,” said another voice. Also male, a little deeper than the first. There was something else about it. Sarcastic, almost pleased with himself. “We were just wondering something.”

  The voices came from the middle of the room, but Lewis already knew there was nothing there. Or was it the middle of the room? They seemed to come from everywhere, or nowhere. Out of the walls, out of thin air.

  “Who are you?”

  “That’s not important either,” said the sly one. “Just answer a question for us, would you?”

  “Be nice about it,” the other one said.

  “I am being nice about it.”

  Lewis stood from the bed, grabbed his lantern from the nightstand. He paced to the other side of the room, sweeping its corners with the light. The room was empty and he was alone far as he could tell.

  “My friend and I were wondering how you ended up here. You’re the youngest we’ve seen in a while.”

  “I’m still figuring that out myself.”

  The voices whispered to each other. He couldn’t make out what they said.

  “Don’t ask him that…” said the polite one.

  “Ask me what?”

  The room became silent. Lewis returned to the bed and took a seat. He felt no threat from the voices. He set the lantern on the night stand, scooted across the bed until his back was against the wall.

  “Did your parents send you here because you’re in trouble?”

  Lewis felt silly for listening, and sillier for answering.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Are you a bad boy?” asked the sly one, and sniggered. “Was your daddy mad at you?”

  “Quit it,” said the polite one. “You’ll make him want to leave.”

  “I think he already wants to leave.”

  “What do you think my dad would be mad about?” he asked.

  The voices were quiet. And then they started their murmuring again, back and forth. Although he couldn’t understand them, it sounded heated.

  “Don’t say that. You shouldn’t say that.”

  “Why not? He knows what he did.”

  Lewis leaned forward. “Did what? What did I do?”

  “That’s rude.”

  “You worry too much.”

  “What is it? What do you want to say?”

  “Your daddy’s mad because you did something very bad.”

  “Oh yeah? And what was that?”

  After a savored pause, the sly one sang, “You kiiiiiilled her.”

  There had been a smile forming on Lewis’s lips. It faded. Suddenly he felt the need to catch his breath as though it had escaped him.

  “Don’t,” pleaded the kind one. “I’m sorry, my friend—”

  “Don’t apologize. We’re just talking.”

  “Killed who?” Lewis asked. Then before they could elaborate, “How do you know anything about me?”

  “Oh, he sounds upset.”

  “Of course he is. You shouldn’t have said anything…”

  “Who are you, really?” He waited, unsatisfied. Soon he became impatient. “Either way, I barely knew my father, so you’re wrong about that.”

  Silence. Lewis, feeling agitated, stood again from the bed.

  “Never mind. I’m leaving.”

  “Running away? Isn’t that what got you into this mess?”

  “Stop it already. Leave him alone…”

  “It’s fine. We’re just having fun.”

  Lewis started for the door. “Have your fun then. I’ll leave you to it.”

  “It says right here you killed her. Then you ran. Is that right?”

  He stopped with his hand on the doorknob. “I don’t know what you’re talking about…”

  “Right here, in the pages of this book.”

  Something shuffled nearby in the bedroom. Lewis flashed his eyes around, saw nothing. It shuffled again. Quiet. Shuffled again. Something fell from the desk and plopped onto the floor. He bent and picked it up—the empty booklet. Its dust coated his hand. He held it near the lantern, saw its pages weren’t empty anymore after all. On the page it was currently turned to, he read:

  …and as he read its pages, he realized it detailed his whole life, from the beginning all the way to the moment of that realization.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Who are you?” he asked, appeared on the page.

  “What is this? How are you doing this?”

  “It isn’t us,” said the polite voice.

  “The Historic Inn,” added the other. “Full of histories.”

  Lewis looked again to the unfolding story, saw the words appear one after the other in an endless stream.

  He read its pages, angry and confused, until he was distracted by the sound of footsteps outside his door.

  He paused, disbelieving. Sure enough, he listened as those old stairs groaned under someone’s weight, footsteps climbing to the upstairs hall outside his door. He tossed the booklet on the desk, then went to the nightstand and retrieved the sword.

  “You should leave, Lewis,” the polite voice advised. “Quickly.”

  The sly voice, full of menace: “The innkeeper is coming.”

  Lewis did a quick search of the room, and just as he expected, his only exits were either the door or the window. Upon further observation, he saw the window contained no mechanism to open. Just a pane of glass.

  A knock on the door.

  “Before you leave,” the polite voice said, full of urgency. “Take us with you!”

  Lewis hesitated. “What do—”

  “Here,” said the sly voice. “In the desk drawer.”

  It was true, he hadn’t checked the desk drawer when he first arrived. Only the dresser and the nightstand. He hurried to the desk, listened as the doorknob rattled in the dark. He pulled open the top drawer and what he saw sent his mind reeling.

  A tiny pair of sneakers, pale under a film of dust, sat abandoned inside. Simplistic faces were drawn on the toes of each shoe in what looked like black marker. Two eyes and lines for mouths. One sneaker frowned, the other grinned. Lewis stared into the drawer, lost in the strangest sensation of déjà vu.

  What was first a knock turned into pounding. Whoever stood on the other side of the bedroom door desperately wanted in. Lewis left the open drawer, left the sneakers inside. He never heard their voices again. He went to the window, checked one last time that he had everything—he’d only come with the lantern and the sword, both in his hands. He shoved the sword through the glass, shattered it. He chopped around the window frame, freeing the last shards. He could see nothing outside, not the ground beneath or whatever else might wait below, but he had no choice. He straddled the windowsill. His foot touched only open air on the other side. As he considered the fall, the bedroom door burst open. Through the darkness, something bore down on him, moved through the room like a gust of wind. Without any more help than that, he tumbled out of the window, succumbed to the abyss outside it.

  “Guh!” was the sound he made upon landing on his shoulder in the dirt. His jar lantern rolled from him. He let it. He turned onto his back, wheezing.

  The air was still and calm.

  He wanted to lay there a while longer. Possibly forever. Somewhere nearby another bird cawed, possibly the same one. He crawled onto his knees, carried the lantern up by its wire handle, staggered to his feet, and limped deeper into the unknown ahead.

  Eventually the dirt ended and he waded into a field of knee-high grass. Still better than trees, he thought. Better than the woods.

  Curiously, a little hurriedly—the fear that the innkeeper could still be in pursuit—he changed course and cut through the field in a different direction. He cast fervid glances behind him every chance he got, a habit he might nev
er break. After long enough, he accepted it was unlikely he was still being followed. Whatever had been inside the inn, he’d left it there. He was alone again.

  Soon, cutting through the grass he discovered a dirt path. He decided to follow it, to have something, at least, to guide him somewhere. Anywhere. Who knew where he was going…

  The fields rustled in a gentle breeze.

  Something touched his hand in the dark.

  He gasped. He spun around. The lantern showed him a face, pale and glowing, child-soft. It smiled, with more innocence than this world could ever possibly permit.

  With a familiar voice he’d heard not so long before, they said, “Hey.”

  Lewis screamed.

  Chapter Four

  Complications

  Nice progress today, Kellie. Keep up with practice and you’ll have it down in no time.”

  Catherine smiled and waved at the small girl, whose back was turned so as to make it a mostly useless gesture, as her mother led her down the sidewalk to their car.

  Catherine shut the door and took a seat on the couch. She threw her head back, mouth open to emphasize her mental exhaustion.

  Twenty minutes later she was in the kitchen. She pulled out several bags of frozen fruits and vegetables. She loaded them into her blender. When she was finished, she poured half of it into a tall glass. She took a sip, grimaced.

  She took the smoothie down into the basement.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Sunday night the television cast a pale blue light over her and everything else. She watched the news in bed, wide-eyed, listening to story after story of tragedy and all the sensational fluff in between. Maybe the tragedies were sensational fluff, too. It was hard to tell anymore, she thought.

  There was a story, an ongoing investigation. A kidnapping. Police were looking for a young girl, the news anchor said. She’d been missing a week so far, no signs of her or her abductor anywhere. Witnesses described the abductor as a white male in his early to mid-forties. The girl was twelve.

  Catherine shuddered in bed. She eyed the remote next to her as the story unfolded. They replayed old witness recordings, two women outside near where it happened, telling the camera they’d seen the man force the young girl into his car. It happened so quickly, they said. Catherine’s eyes flitted to the remote time and time again, and sometimes they drifted over her bed to the floor, through the floor, through the downstairs to the basement underneath.