The Last Lantern of Khempur

They say Khempur no longer exists on any map.

Back in 1897, when I was only seventeen, I first heard of the cursed village while traveling with my uncle—an eccentric archeologist obsessed with forgotten towns of Eastern India. He often mumbled about Khempur during his whiskey-drenched evenings, warning in a slurred voice, “Never light the last lantern. It wakes her.”

I always thought it was a myth. Until the letter came.

It arrived one stormy evening in a yellowed envelope sealed with melted wax. Inside was a trembling scrawl from a man named Harinath Roy, claiming he was the last living resident of Khempur. He said he had “unfinished business” with my uncle, who had died just a week earlier from what the doctors called “a sudden stoppage of the heart.”

But I saw the look on his face when we found him. Mouth wide open, eyes blood-red, and both hands clenched as if trying to hold something… or someone… back.

The letter mentioned that I was “the next chosen.” I didn’t understand, but something in me needed to know. I packed a bag and went. Alone.

The road to Khempur wasn’t on any modern map. I had to follow vague directions, old cartographer’s notes, and more than a few gut feelings. The path narrowed the deeper I went. Trees arched unnaturally overhead, casting shadows even in daylight. Birds stopped singing. Wind stood still.

By the time I reached the village, dusk had fallen like a curtain. Khempur was… forgotten.

Rotting wooden homes leaned on each other like tired drunks. A dried-up well sat in the center, and above it, a rusted lantern dangled on a bent iron post.

The air was thicker here. Not just humid—alive. It was like the place was watching me.

And then… I saw her.

She stood by a tree, wearing a red saree, edges tattered like burnt paper. Her back was turned, her black hair reaching all the way down to her ankles. She was completely still—too still. Not even the breeze touched her. I blinked… and she vanished.

I should have run. Every instinct screamed. But the village pulled me deeper, like it knew I wouldn’t leave.

I found shelter in a half-burnt temple, where the walls were scorched with black handprints—tiny, as if from children. That night, the whispers began. My name, from all directions. “Anik… Anik…”

The voices crept into my dreams, chanting in languages I didn't know but somehow understood. When I woke, the temperature had dropped. Frost crusted the windows. I stepped outside, and Khempur had changed.

The village looked… awake.

Doors creaked open. Shadows darted between trees. I heard dragging feet and wheezing breaths. And always, that soft swish—the sound of a saree brushing against the ground behind me.

I reached the lantern. That same one my uncle had warned me about.

I don’t know why I did it. Maybe the village made me. Maybe I was already too far gone. But I struck a match and lit the last lantern.

And the ground breathed.

It pulsed like a dying heart. From every cracked doorway, figures began to emerge. Broken, twisted bodies—some crawling with shattered limbs, others floating inches above the ground, swaying like puppets.

Their mouths moved, but no sound came.

Then… she returned.

No face. Just a void—a swirling pit of black where features should be. Her voice came from inside my head:

“You brought the flame. Now she remembers.”

The villagers began to surround me. Close now. Too close.

Their eyes were all wrong—reflective, like mirrors—but in each of them, I didn’t see my face. I saw my uncle. Screaming.

I turned and ran, but the forest was gone. The path, the sky, even time itself had unraveled. I was trapped in a place stitched together by memory and death.

The last thing I remember is her hand—cold, bony, but not dead. Alive with hunger.

I woke three weeks later in a government hospital on the edge of West Bengal. The police said I was found lying by an old rail track, unconscious, dehydrated, muttering nonsense in Sanskrit.

They think I lost my mind.

But here’s the truth:

I still have the lantern.

And sometimes, when the night is quiet…

…I see her reflection in the glass.