The Lantern at Mile Marker Nine

By the time the fog came down, Anya's father had already stopped saying "I know exactly where we are."

The car crept along the mountain road at the speed of a sleepy tortoise. On the left, the hill rose in a dark wall. On the right, there was nothing, only a long grey emptiness where the valley should have been. The headlights lit a few feet of road and then simply gave up, swallowed by white.

"The map says eleven more kilometres," said Mum, peering at her phone. "The map also thinks we are in a field."

In the back seat, ten-year-old Anya hugged her backpack and tried not to look out of the window. She had watched too many scary films with her cousin last summer, the kind where the fog always meant something. She told herself it was only water in the air. She told herself that three times.

"Mile marker nine," Dad read aloud, as a small stone pillar slid by in the gloom. "At least that means..."

"Dad," said Anya.

"Yes, love?"

"There is somebody in the road."

The car braked. The tyres hissed on wet gravel. And there, at the very edge of the headlights, stood a figure.

It was a man, or the shape of a man, tall and thin, wrapped in an old grey coat that hung to his boots. In one hand he held a lantern. It was not a torch or a lamp, but a real lantern with a glass chimney, glowing a warm, steady gold. He did not wave. He did not shout. He simply raised the lantern, slowly, high above his head, and held it there.

"Lock the doors," whispered Mum.

"He is not walking toward us," said Dad. "He is just... standing."

"Standing in the middle of nowhere at midnight," said Anya's mother. "Reverse. Reverse, please."

The man lowered the lantern, then raised it again, as if asking the same question over and over: Stop. Please. Stop.

Anya stared. Something about the way he held it did not feel scary. It felt like the way her grandfather used to hold up his hand at a crossing, to hold back all the cars so a child could cross safely.

"Dad," she said again, very quietly. "I think he wants us to stop here."

"We have stopped here, sweetheart."

"No. Stay stopped."

Dad turned off the engine. The silence that fell was enormous. The fog pressed against the windscreen like a curtain. The lantern did not move. And then, from somewhere ahead, from the dark where the road ought to be, came a noise.

It began as a low, tearing groan, like the world's biggest zip being slowly undone. Then a rumble. Then a roar. Pebbles pattered on the roof. Through the fog, thirty feet ahead, something enormous and invisible slid away into the valley with a long, tumbling thunder, and the ground trembled beneath the car.

Nobody breathed. Slowly the thunder faded to a trickle of stones, and then to nothing.

"The road," whispered Dad. "The road has just..."

"Fallen," said Mum, her voice tiny. "Right where we were driving."

Anya looked for the man.

He was still standing there, at the edge of their headlights, but now he was lower, just by a step, and the headlights seemed to shine straight through his grey coat. Then the lantern's glow dipped, softly, like a nod. The golden light thinned to a candle's flame, to a spark, and the road in front of them was only fog.

Nobody said a single word for what seemed like an hour.

When the sky lightened, they walked, carefully, to where the road had been. A great tongue of earth and rock had slid down the hill, taking the tarmac with it. Beyond it, a deep and silent gulf yawned, and Anya's father, usually a very brave man, sat down on a stone and held his head in his hands.

At first light a jeep from the highway department arrived, and a stout, weather-beaten man in a woollen cap climbed out. He looked at the broken road and at the family sitting beside their little car.

"You stopped at mile nine?" he asked.

"A man with a lantern waved us down," said Anya.

The man in the woollen cap said nothing for a moment. He took off his cap and held it in both hands.

"Grey coat?" he asked softly. "Old-fashioned lantern with a glass chimney?"

Anya nodded.

"We call him Lantern Uncle." The highway man's eyes were bright. "Back in 1978, the road-keeper at mile nine saw this same hillside begin to slip. A bus full of school children was coming round the bend, in fog, just like last night. He ran out in front of it with his lantern and stood his ground until the driver stopped. The children were saved." He turned his cap over. "He was not."

Nobody spoke.

"They say he comes on foggy nights when the hill is about to move. He never speaks. He only stops the cars. In forty years, three families have told me they met him. You are the fourth."

Anya stood up and looked at the broken road, at the place where a lantern had shone through the fog. She did not feel afraid any more. She felt something warmer and heavier, like a promise.

"Can we say thank you?" she asked.

The highway man smiled, a crinkly, tired smile. "People leave a small lamp at the marker. Nothing grand. A little diya. It seems to please him."

That evening, on the way home by the long road, Anya's family stopped at a roadside stall in the nearest village, and Dad bought a clay lamp and a little bottle of oil. They drove back to mile marker nine and lit it on the stone pillar, shielding it from the wind with their hands. The flame trembled, steadied and rose.

For a moment, Anya thought she saw the fog on the far side of the road glow a little gold.

"Goodnight, Lantern Uncle," she whispered.

And on the dark hillside, very softly, as if from a long way away, something like a lantern dipped in return.