The Lantern Man of Andrew

Calvin’s thoughts, heavy like the clouds over his village of Andrew, disturb his evening rest. Leaving his home, the same home of his childhood, Calvin goes for an evening walk to dispel the spirits whispering in his head. 

On a clear day, the trickster prairie summer sky would make the evening look and feel like midday. Today, however, is overcast, hiding any evidence of the sun behind the deep foliage of greying cumulonimbus clouds. There is no evening wind but the air contains a chill felt more and more in the ageing villages that dot the savannah of Alberta’s northeast.

Consisting of a few shops and residential homes, a walk through Andrew’s downtown core often holds the promise of activity. This evening however reveals no signs of life. The Seniors Rainbow Club, the cornerstone of the Andrew community, holds a regular perogy dinner and a chance for community fellowship. Calvin and his mother would go monthly, when she was still alive, basking in the good conversation and familiar food. Today, the club sits empty, the doors locked.

As he walks, Calvin’s thoughts dwell on his future. Or, said another way, the future of Andrew. 

Stepping across slabs of chipped sidewalk, Calvin sees a community crumbling from the shifting tectonic plates of a changing world. His neighbours tell him that none of their kids talk of making a life in Andrew. Even Calvin, who was born, raised, and has grown old here, has no childhood friends who remain. They move away for more amenities. They move away for greater services. They move for what they think they will gain, never thinking of what is lost.

Calvin looks around the homes and buildings as he walks past. The village isn’t dead but the signs of decay are abrupt, like spit in your face. The buildings slump and wilt, as if they were cardboard boxes left out in the rain. As he crosses the street, towards the park, he feels the rubble of the disintegrating asphalt road brush against his dragging feet. 

Andrew is a village with withering features but good bones, Calvin thinks to himself, like an old house with a solid foundation. Calvin knows that life in his small town is more valuable than easy access to fast food. Andrew is the last bastion of society. Here, in this assembly of single homes, farmer fields, and small businesses, a sense of community survives in today’s Canada. Calvin had been to enough big cities-Edmonton, Saskatoon, Winnipeg-to know they are all the same. Compared to a small town like Andrew, a city might as well be a foreign country. In the city, you are just one more rat scurrying to survive. In Andrew, neighbours know each other. People say hello on the street. You can let your child spend the day outside and never worry. No one laments the loss of places like Andrew until they’re ghost towns. 

Calvin surveys the town from his position on the road. He read in the Lamont Leader over breakfast one morning that the village council is cracking down on residents owing back taxes. Calvin was an accountant before he retired, making most of his money at tax season. Calvin could have told the village council that they were cutting into Andrew’s only healthy flesh left: the people. Instead of bringing in money, Andrew is now a town dotted with for sale signs. One day, Calvin feels he could be the last man wandering its streets. 

With no kids of his own, and relying on money from his Canadian Pension Plan to reach the end of each month, Calvin knows he too has to make a decision on the future of his own home. The stairs now feel too steep to climb and he can’t keep up with the repairs. Even if he could sell and find lodging elsewhere in Andrew, it won’t be the house where he was raised. It wouldn’t be where, when she became sick, Calvin cared for his mother.

For these thoughts crawling through every supraliminal synapsis of his brain, Calvin walks. Walking seems to lessen the weight of each thought, as if he could stay one step ahead of the shadow cast by his anxieties.

Calvin makes his way to what could be considered Andrew’s Central Park; a long field containing staples of a prairie province: a grain tower, a decommissioned train wagon, and a roadside attraction. To garner the attention of the outside world, the village built a giant fibreglass mallard duck as Andrew’s main tourist attraction. Calvin has been told it is the biggest mallard duck in the world, but then again, nowhere else has a statue of a mallard duck been built. Calvin looks up at this outsized ornament and observes its spread out wings, ready for flight. Another resident looking to leave, he thinks.

Feeling a pinch in his toes, Calvin sits on a bench beside the giant mallard. Looking down at his feet, he stares at his dirt embalmed shoes. He slid them on absentmindedly when leaving his home for his evening walk but regrets his choice. He usually just wears these old loafers when dithering on his lawn. He and his neighbour have an unsaid competition going, seeing whose sunflowers grow the tallest and whose lawn has the most life. He’ll lose this year, Calvin admits, as a fury of spotted knapweed has overpowered his yard and much of his front garden. Though these shoes work fine in the garden, they are too worn out for comfortable walking. His arches ache with regret.

He looks up from his feet, shocked to find darkness around him. He’s not sure of the time, having forgotten his phone in his restless state when he left his home. Night seems to have fallen so quickly that he wonders if he fell asleep there on the bench. When did it get so dark? Calvin wonders, how long have I been sitting here?

A resonance ricochets through the dark streets and empty fields of Andrew. At first confused by the sound of clamouring, Calvin strains to mould the distant noise into focus. With effort, the sounds materialise into the echo of heavy footsteps.  

Footsteps heading in his direction. 

Calvin turns around and looks across the field to the town grain elevator. There, he sees a single light, emanating a hazy yellow glow from a strange position near the base of the mill. 

Calvin knows this town and he knows this mill. There is no fixture from that point where such a light could shine. It must mean someone is there. 

Despite the darkness, Calvin is not yet ready to return home. Appeasing his curiosity, he stands up from his perch on the bench, dusts off his trousers, and moves toward the emanating light beckoning him from across the field.

As he walks, Calvin tries to understand what he is moving toward. The light coruscating from a moving form is too bright for his eyes to translate its source into meaning. This staccato footfall sounds heavy and laboured, like the last steps of a lost traveller in barren tundra. He cannot clearly see where this light directly originates but, as he gets closer, he delineates that it must be from someone holding a flashlight. A feeling of nostalgia washes over Calvin for a time before flashlights were an app on phones. Between his footsteps crunching down on the grass below, and the heavy lumbering of whatever is moving in his direction, Calvin hears another sound. Though muffled, he recognizes it as someone’s voice. 

On the road beside the grain tower, he stops when the mysterious light encases him. Battling past his eyes’ reluctance to look towards the flash, Calvin strains to focus on what lays beyond the illuminated veil of light. The image of what must be a man materialises, along with a sense of unease that nests in Calvin’s chest. His confidence floundering, Calvin can’t bring himself to signal his presence. Instead, he continues to step closer. 

The fulguration originates from a lantern of some sort, extending outward ahead of the person holding it. Even with the distance remaining between them, Calvin knows the man is big. The fellow walks oddly, moving unevenly as if a long ago injury discourages movement.

As the offcomer’s features became observable, a blinding wave of shock washes across Calvin’s body as if he was submerged in freezing water. An itchy sweat sprouts at his hairline as he gazes beyond the light’s shine. 

Calvin rubs his eyes as if the lantern’s light blinds understanding of the sight before him, as if Calvin’s subconscious mind is begging him to reject what he is seeing. The lantern carrier’s head holds no face, no discernable feature, and its hulking body is covered in coarse layers of what looks to be thick, warped flesh.  Calvin becomes aware of the sounds of whispering as it comes closer but his mind can’t concentrate on any words being said. Frozen in place by the brutal peculiarity of what he is witnessing, Calvin retains enough wherewithal to step aside so as not to obstruct the creature’s path. Paying no attention to him as it goes by, this harrowing sight lumbers towards the direction which Calvin had just come.

With the bright beam of the lantern no longer in his direct eyesight, Calvin can better see the source of the light itself, situated on this hulking entity’s left hand. It produces a halo of light surrounding its torchbearer, as if this Cimmerian kobold is quarantined by the darkness. What he thought was a lantern in this creature’s hand is in fact part of it. It is akin to a pile of flesh extending out an arm, as if molded from melted skin that pooled together. In the middle of that pile of matter is what looks to be an eye, staring forward and illuminating light principally from its cornea. Calvin blinks this impossible thought away, refusing to believe what he sees. 

As the creature passes, Calvin becomes aware of what comes with it.

Behind it, at the edge of the lantern’s glow, is a man. Of this Calvin is sure, the man’s features are as clear as this living apparition’s are oblique. This man appears to be moving in a weak trot, no faster than a snail across salt. He reminds Calvin of an abandoned dog chasing after an abusive owner.

The man mutters something, for which Calvin cannot understand. Forgetting his circumstances, Calvin takes a step closer to the stranger. The man does not look up at Calvin and, though his voice is raspy as if he had not spoken in a long time, his words are clear.

“Stay in the light,” the man says.

Still in fear’s hold, Calvin can only stare as the roaming beast and its follower forge ahead. As he passes Calvin, the man speaks again with a tired alacrity.

“Stay in the light. Stay in the light if you want to live,” he says.

Calvin at first can’t understand the stranger’s meaning. When the words began to sink in, a voice rises within him, screaming to get as far away from these sad creatures as soon as possible. 

Yet, the stranger’s words hold power over him. Calvin feels an enormous weight, a need, to move with them, as if his life depends on it. An urgency to keep up as if something terrible will occur if he is left behind. As if something else is here, waiting beyond the light.

It is these thoughts that compel Calvin to take his first steps behind this lantern man. 

Slowly walking, Calvin falls in place beside the stranger. Calvin finds it hard to walk at the sluggish, scrabbling pace needed to stay in step with the stranger. Calvin can’t bring himself to look ahead at the giant entity trudging ahead so he keeps his eyes focused on his own feet.

His gaze drifts over to see the ripped and worn pants of his companion. His clothes are ragged, though he must have once been wearing a suit. His face is red and scabbed, as if exposed to radiation, though much of it is hidden behind a grey unkempt beard. Calvin’s gaze continues to the stranger’s bare and raw looking feet, blackened and bloody as they skirt across the pavement below. It’s as if he has been walking for days.

Confused by his own inner compulsion to walk, Calvin turns to his new companion for answers. Yet Calvin finds himself unable to organise the thoughts in his head. Instead of asking who he is, what is happening, or for information on whatever is leading them, Calvin instead informs the man that he has no shoes. 

Shuffling forward, the man answers. Quietly, he tells Calvin that his shoes fell off. 

Despite the disbelief of the moment he finds himself in, this man’s shoes became the focus of Calvin’s attention. He asks why he didn’t stop to retrieve them after they fell off.

The man’s breathing is laboured, but he is able to stutter out another sentence between wheezes. “Got to stay in the light,” the stranger replies. 

Calvin looks around at the darkness encasing the lanterns glow. 

“Why do you have to stay in the light?” Calvin asks.

Again the stranger summons energy to speak, and speaks confidently, as if the answer is the most obvious thing in the world.

“If you step out of the light, they get you.”

Calvin carefully lifts his head towards the imposing bogeyman in front of them, as if the act of looking at it carries a grave consequence. Calvin asks the man, “What will it do to me if I leave the light?”

Between bursts of laboured breathing, the man replies “It? It does nothing but moves forward.” The man would have spat in reference to the oddity ahead of them, Calvin thought, had he any saliva left to spare.

Calvin’s fear subsides with confirmation that this ethereal being in front of him is not an immediate threat. Daring again to gaze in the giant’s direction, Calvin sees a creature with no interest in him. It just shambles along in a direction that appears to have no meaning other than to the entity itself.

Overcome for the need for clarity, Calvin asks “If not him, what will get me?”

With a slight glance over his own left shoulder, the stranger nods in the direction behind him, into the darkness.

“There,” he says.

Calvin looks behind him and is greeted by an ocean of darkness, save for the subtle glow of distant streetlights in Andrew. 

Calvin’s face can’t hide his puzzlement. The man, with what looks to be great effort, slowly lifts his arm to gesture to the gloom behind them. 

At first, Calvin saw nothing past the reflection of the lantern’s light on the oil stained street. His eyes adjusting to the darkness, he sees the outline of something moving. 

Not just one thing. Many.

Through the soupy darkness, Calvin can visualise the silhouette of creatures. Not creatures but people, Calvin corrects himself, however their stilted steps and unnaturally elongated posture give them an otherworldly presence. 

Stopping so he can focus, Calvin strains his eyes into the night behind him so that he can make out their features. Their skin are ashen, their faces hollow, and their expressions hungry. They walk uniformly, as if they were soldiers in a military parade. Their longing eyes, Calvin realises, are focused on him. 

Calvin quickens his pace to catch up with the stranger. 

His mind is overwhelmed and craves answers, even though he is scant to believe any of it. Calvin asks the man what follows them. 

The stranger glances over his shoulder, then back at Calvin.

“You don’t recognize anyone?” The stranger asks.

Calvin looks back again, befuddled. He focuses his eyes on the marching bodies following them. There, in the assembly line of movement, his eyes are drawn to one particular face. Its features are contorted, its skin grey, yet Calvin recognizes it nevertheless.

It is his mother.

As Calvin looks back, the stranger begins to speak. “You see someone you know, right?” he says between wheezes. “I saw my father there, once. I thought he died, but there he was walking.”

Calvin shakes his head to reject what he sees, yet, he can’t pull his eyes away. He watches his mother, her eyes glaring back at him. Doubting his vision, he still summons the strength to speak.

“Mom…” he begins.

The man grabs his arm suddenly, with more strength and speed then Calvin thought he could possess. Calvin stares intently at him.

“Don’t speak to them,” the man says. “Don’t say a word meant for their ears.”

Calvin was about to ask why when he looked back to see his mother, separated from the group and much closer to them. Calvin, looking into his dead mother’s eyes, sees her pupils fixed on him; her face holding an anxious look of hunger.

Calvin turns away. For the first time tonight, he feels the wind. It is cold.

“When my father died,” the stranger says without prompting, I had to take over the family farm.”

He pauses to catch his breath.

“Before that, I was going to go to town and learn a trade from my uncle but, with daddy gone, someone had to take care of things.” After he finishes talking, the man looks as if he just ran a marathon. His wheezing sounds like exhaust raddling out of a worn-out car.

Calvin talks as if confirming the man’s story. “My mother got sick. I came back home after university to take care of her. She died years later. That was a long time ago now.” 

“I’ve been in Andrew ever since,” Calvin says, as if astonished by the answer.

The stranger nods. Pulling from a deep reservoir of strength, the man says “someone who once walked with me, she’s gone now, said she saw her doctor back there. She hated that guy. Of all people, why the doctor?” The stranger barks a gasping laugh.

“For what it’s worth,” the stranger adds, “I don’t think it’s actually my father. Just looks like him.” He pauses. “I don’t look back there anymore, not worth the stress.”

Calvin pulls at the string of something the man said. 

“There were others walking with you?” He asks.

“They come and go,” he replies absently. “I was out looking for my dog. Found this sad creature instead. There was already an older lady walking with it, looking like she just came from watching a show in her Sunday best. She looked as bewildered to be there as I was.” 

The man struggles with his breath awhile, and then continues. “We had nice chats, given the situation.”

“What happened to her?” Calvin asked. 

“While walking, we passed by a bench,” he said. “The woman didn’t talk much by this point. She just said she was going to sit down for a moment. She was still sitting when they came for her.”

He then adds with a touch of vulnerability, as if reliving a nightmare. “They were cruel.”

Calvin feels warmth emitting from the lantern. It makes his skin warm but insides cold, as if he were in a microwave. 

“How do we get out of here?” Calvin asks abruptly.

“Sunlight. Once the sun comes up, we’ll get out of here. I’m sure of it.” The man says, nodding his head. 

Calvin walks in silence with the stranger; the only sounds are the tired shuffling feet of the stranger and the heavy scraping clomp of the lumbering visitant. 

Calvin, strangely compelled to make conversation, asks the man how long he has been walking. 

“I cannot say,” he replied. “It feels like days. But it’s been nighttime since I began, so it couldn’t be that long.” 

Calvin looked him over. The man was dressed in brown pants, a dress shirt, and a jacket, all ripped and soiled by sweat and time.

“Do you know where we are now?” The stranger asked. 

Calvin replied. 

“Andrew?” The stranger says, “Can’t be. I was there once, not long after the post office opened up so I could mail my sister in Ontario. Andrew is no more than a church and a few haystacks. My eyes aren’t much anymore but I can tell this is a big city.”

Calvin doesn’t respond, feeling like the man must be delirious with fatigue. 

They walk in silence for a time, the lantern man forever lurching ahead of them. The stranger sees Calvin staring intently at the creature. As if reading his mind, the stranger says “I’ve never heard it speak, never got it to look back. I tried talking to it, pleading with it to let me go or let me rest a while. I cursed it when others fell behind. I’ve even told jokes for a reaction. If it hears me, it gives me no indication.”

“I heard it speak,” Calvin says. “When I was walking earlier. I heard it.”

“That was me.” The stranger said. “I heard you coming over, like a fool. I tried to tell you.”

“What were you trying to say?” Calvin asks.

“I was trying to tell you,” the stranger starts, then pauses, before saying “I was trying to say don’t let the light touch you.”

“Why can’t the light touch me?” Calvin asks.

“When the light touches you, it’s too late” is the stranger’s reply.

Calvin is sceptical to believe his companion. Still, he finds himself turning and moving to the seemingly random ebbs and flows of the phenomenon ahead of him.

Calvin looks at his surroundings. The trudging beast has led them into the Andrew school parking lot. Calvin looks into the empty windows of the building. Since becoming an acolyte of the presence ahead of him, Calvin has seen no signs of life in the town. He wonders why no one else is out. Why he can’t see a house with any lights on. If he could just get someone’s attention, he thinks, maybe he can get out of here. It’s not a good plan but it’s a plan. Even so, Calvin can’t shake the feeling that no one is going to see him for a long time.

Manoeuvring through the parking lot, a concrete barrier ahead separates two rows of parking. When crossing it, Calvin simply lifts his feet over the barrier as if it were a normal step. The stranger however, stops in his tracks. It took a few steps for Calvin to notice the stranger is missing beside him. He looks back and sees the effort his companion puts into lifting his bare foot. Calvin sees the strain on the man’s face, the exertion to lift his leg a few inches off the ground.

Calvin motions to go back and help him when his eyes involuntarily flicker to the moving horde behind them. Calvin sees the hungry bodies getting closer. He can feel their excitement, their anticipation. 

Despite his effort, the man’s foot can’t rise above the concrete barrier. In his struggle, the man topples forward. 

The suddenness of his fall jerks Calvin into action, and he runs out of the lantern’s light, back to the stranger.

On the ground, the stranger makes no attempt to get up, looking almost relieved. Calvin is almost to the man when he sees the first body pull itself on top of him.

At first the stranger seemed too tired to scream but, when you’re being eaten alive, you eventually scream anyway. 

Frozen, Calvin can’t pull his eyes away from the sight in front of him. Other bodies join in on the feast of the old man. 

Others continue toward Calvin.

Calvin looks up into the eyes of the one closest to him, the one that looks like his mother. He turns and runs before she can reach him. Back in the lantern’s glow, He can still hear the old man struggling but can’t bring himself to look back again. 

Calvin’s eyes focus forward as he wipes the cold sweat from his brow. He tries to catch his breath as he walks. The giant figure leading him by searchlight seems unaffected by the muffled screams of his once companion. It simply continues its shambling waltz forward, to some unknown destination.  

Calvin’s gaze is attracted to a blinking movement from the lantern itself. He looks at the back of the flesh covered light source. The iris in the light seems to be glancing backwards, towards the carnage. When the sound of feasting stops, the eye again turns forward.

Calvin is now alone with the lantern man. He sleepwalks in a hazy concoction of fear and fatigue until a passing street sign creates a fury of action in his synapsis. He is at the end of his own street, his house on the other end of the road. He can already see the sunflowers in his neighbour’s yard. He feels his keys in his pants pocket. He could run home and call for help before those things get him, he thinks. If Calvin were to escape, now would be the time. If not, it would be just a matter of time before he could barely keep within the light. Or be too tired to get up from a fall, like the old man.

Calvin observes the tilting glow of the lantern. The numinous entity is starting to move east, further away from Calvin’s home, towards the outskirts of town.   

Calvin stops moving, brave enough to stop but unable to take the first step towards his street and out of the light’s perimeter. He watches this cadaverous giant lurch forward, seemingly unaware or unconcerned by any decision Calvin has made. Calvin refuses to look back, but slowly watches the centre of the light move away from him, as if it was a blanket being tugged off him as he slept.

Calvin’s body shakes involuntarily. As he is about to leave the embrace of the light, something deep in his lizard brain shouts to be heard. A voice inside him says that he needs to be smart, that he can’t act rashly. Calvin acknowledges that he may only get one shot at getting away. Calvin rationalizes to himself that the safe bet is to wait until there is someone nearby to help him or something closer he can escape into. Peering into the darkness down the street where is home is found, his resolve weakens.

Calvin suddenly thinks he could even learn how to direct this other-worldly escort, like it is a horse with reins. There are many options to try before running off into the darkness, Calvin realizes. Even if it takes him a bit longer to reach home, it is safer than abandoning the safety of the lantern’s shine. Someone is bound to see him, Calvin assures himself. Besides, it can’t be night forever.

With that, Calvin submerges himself again into the lantern’s glow, letting its shimming veil cocoon him as he walks in tandem with the harrowing light.

***

K.G. McLeod is a writer based in Alberta, Canada.