"Looking for Answers" (Image & Text Copyright Wylddane Productions, LLC)
“A lantern still burns beneath the water, and those who follow it are never seen again.” ~White Harbor tale
Two nights after Jonas Miller was claimed, the glow did not fade. If anything, it grew sharper, steadier, no longer a wavering shimmer but a pale beacon burning in the black water. By day, it was barely there — a trick of light if one didn’t look too long. But when evening fell, the whole village could see it: a lantern’s glow, far out from the docks, swaying gently as if carried by unseen hands.
The white pines hissed overhead, their long needles sighing in restless gusts. To the villagers, it sounded like whispers — the trees repeating secrets carried from the lake. The waves lapped softly at the rocks, but even they seemed to murmur, a hushed language of half-heard words and garbled calls, vibrating in the air and slipping into the bones.
The old men muttered in the tavern, fear palpable in their whiskey-laden breaths. Henrik spat into his glass. “Lanterns don’t burn in water. Not unless the lake wills it.”
Paulsen leaned forward. “It was the same when Caleb Dorn vanished. Lantern bobbing for days, daring someone to row out. His brother tried once. Came back with his hair white and his hands shaking. Never fished again.”
Lars shook his head. “It ain’t a lantern at all. It’s a lure. Same as a fish takes a hook. And we’re the fish.”
But on the edge of White Harbor, in a weathered house of many rooms crouched beneath the whispering pines, another pair of eyes watched the glow.
Ephraim Cutter had been a teacher once, a scholar in a town that barely knew what to do with such men. His windows were tall and old, peering like ancient eyes through the trees and down toward the lake. He had filled his house with books — some modern, some so old the bindings crumbled at a touch. The villagers said his library was larger than his pantry, and that he could go weeks without being seen.
Now Ephraim walked his rooms at night, a candle guttering in his hand, searching the shelves for what he already feared he would find. He read of drowned towns, of phantom fires, of waters that remembered the blood spilled into them. His fingers lingered on passages of lights beneath rivers in old Europe, of spirits who beckoned from the shore in Norse sagas.
But his thoughts always circled back to White Harbor. Its history. Its pattern. Its hunger.
He closed one cracked tome with a trembling hand and stared out his narrow window toward the swaying glow. The pine branches hissed against the glass like voices urging him to speak, to warn. But what warning could he give a people who already knew?
The lake had fed. The lantern burned.
And Ephraim Cutter, in his lonely house of many rooms, whispered to the empty air:
“It is not finished. It never is.”
~Wylddane
Two nights after Jonas Miller was claimed, the glow did not fade. If anything, it grew sharper, steadier, no longer a wavering shimmer but a pale beacon burning in the black water. By day, it was barely there — a trick of light if one didn’t look too long. But when evening fell, the whole village could see it: a lantern’s glow, far out from the docks, swaying gently as if carried by unseen hands.
The white pines hissed overhead, their long needles sighing in restless gusts. To the villagers, it sounded like whispers — the trees repeating secrets carried from the lake. The waves lapped softly at the rocks, but even they seemed to murmur, a hushed language of half-heard words and garbled calls, vibrating in the air and slipping into the bones.
The old men muttered in the tavern, fear palpable in their whiskey-laden breaths. Henrik spat into his glass. “Lanterns don’t burn in water. Not unless the lake wills it.”
Paulsen leaned forward. “It was the same when Caleb Dorn vanished. Lantern bobbing for days, daring someone to row out. His brother tried once. Came back with his hair white and his hands shaking. Never fished again.”
Lars shook his head. “It ain’t a lantern at all. It’s a lure. Same as a fish takes a hook. And we’re the fish.”
But on the edge of White Harbor, in a weathered house of many rooms crouched beneath the whispering pines, another pair of eyes watched the glow.
Ephraim Cutter had been a teacher once, a scholar in a town that barely knew what to do with such men. His windows were tall and old, peering like ancient eyes through the trees and down toward the lake. He had filled his house with books — some modern, some so old the bindings crumbled at a touch. The villagers said his library was larger than his pantry, and that he could go weeks without being seen.
Now Ephraim walked his rooms at night, a candle guttering in his hand, searching the shelves for what he already feared he would find. He read of drowned towns, of phantom fires, of waters that remembered the blood spilled into them. His fingers lingered on passages of lights beneath rivers in old Europe, of spirits who beckoned from the shore in Norse sagas.
But his thoughts always circled back to White Harbor. Its history. Its pattern. Its hunger.
He closed one cracked tome with a trembling hand and stared out his narrow window toward the swaying glow. The pine branches hissed against the glass like voices urging him to speak, to warn. But what warning could he give a people who already knew?
The lake had fed. The lantern burned.
And Ephraim Cutter, in his lonely house of many rooms, whispered to the empty air:
“It is not finished. It never is.”
~Wylddane
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