Mist and Footprints

He saw the light again the following morning.

This time it was just past six, and he was the only one awake. He'd always been an early riser, a habit that his school friends found baffling and his teachers considered suspicious. He'd pulled on his coat over his pyjamas and unzipped the tent as quietly as possible, stepping out into air that was cold enough to make his breath visible, the grass around the tent glittering with frost.

The mist was in. It lay across the surface of the lake like a thick, slow-moving layer of cloud, and it had advanced into the birch trees so that the trunks appeared and disappeared depending on how the mist moved. Felix walked to the treeline and stood there, watching the lake.

The light was moving again. Same warm yellow glow, same unhurried pace, this time on the near shore, moving from left to right along the edge of the water. It was closer now. Felix could see that it was definitely a lantern, the old-fashioned kind with a handle at the top, casting a gentle circle of gold on the mist around it.

He couldn't see who was carrying it.

That was the thing that stopped him where he was and raised every hair on the back of his neck. The lantern was at approximately waist height, moving steadily, with the slight swinging motion of something being carried by someone walking. But the mist was thick, and he couldn't make out a figure behind it. Just the light, moving alone through the grey morning.

He took one step toward it.

The light stopped.

He took another step.

The light turned. Very slowly, the way a person turns when they've heard something behind them. It faced him directly, warm and steady, and for a long moment nothing happened.

Then it moved toward him.

Felix stood his ground, which he later thought was either very brave or very stupid, probably both. The light came through the birch trees, swinging gently, and when it was perhaps ten metres away it stopped again.

In the mist, just at the edge of the light's reach, Felix could see a shape. A person-sized shape, indistinct, like a figure seen through frosted glass. Small for an adult. His height, perhaps, or a little shorter.

"Hello?" Felix said. His voice came out steadier than he'd expected.

The shape moved. Not forward, not backward. It tilted its head.

"I'm not trying to bother you," Felix said, which he immediately felt was a strange thing to say. "I just wanted to see if you were all right."

The shape stood perfectly still for three more seconds. Then the light went out.

Not faded, not flickered. The same instantaneous disappearance as the night before. One moment it was there, casting gold across the frost and mist. The next, it was simply gone, and Felix was alone in the grey morning among the birch trees, listening to his own heartbeat.

He waited for several minutes. Nothing returned.

On the way back to the tent, moving through the wet grass, he stopped.

There were footprints in the frost.

They came from the direction of the lake, through the trees, to the spot where the light had been. Small footprints, roughly his own size, made by boots with a distinct pattern on the sole. They were clear and deep, as though made by a solid, real person.

They stopped precisely where the light had gone out.

There were no footprints leading away.

Felix crouched over them for a long time. He took out his notebook and sketched them carefully. Then he went back to the tent, started the camping stove, made two mugs of tea, and sat waiting for his dad to wake up.

"You look like you haven't slept," his dad said, emerging with his hair in several directions at once.

"I slept fine," Felix said. "Dad, do you know any local people I could talk to about the history of this lake? Actual history, not post office lady history."

His dad regarded him over the mug. "What did you see?"

"I'll tell you when I've got more information."

His dad nodded slowly. "Right. Well. Pat at the site office has lived here all her life. If she'll talk to you."

"She'll talk to me," Felix said. "I'll be charming."

"You've never been charming in your life."

"I'll be polite, then. It's almost the same thing."

Pat, it turned out, would talk. Once it became clear that Felix was genuinely curious rather than mocking, once she had established that he wasn't going to dismiss what she said, her expression of permanent disapproval shifted into something that might, in the right light, have been described as eager.

She told him about the Lantern Boy.

"It's been seen for at least a hundred years," she said, sitting behind her desk with both hands wrapped round a mug of something that smelled of ginger. "Maybe longer, but a hundred years is what's documented. Boy with a lantern, walking the edge of the lake. Usually seen in mist or early morning or at night. Never in broad daylight."

"Who is he?" Felix asked.

"Nobody knows for certain. There are two main stories." She held up a finger. "First one says it's the ghost of a boy who drowned in the lake, long ago. Nineteenth century, most likely. No name recorded."

"And the second?"

She held up another finger. "Second says he was never a real boy at all. That he's something the lake made, or something that's always been there, and the lantern is a warning. Guides people away from the dangerous parts of the shore, the places where the bank drops away suddenly or the ground gets unstable."

Felix considered this. "Which do you believe?"

Pat looked at him for a moment. "I've seen him," she said simply. "Twice in my life. Once when I was about your age, once about ten years ago. Both times in the morning mist." She paused. "He doesn't feel frightening. That's all I can tell you. He feels sad."

Felix wrote both versions in his notebook, thanked Pat, and went to find his dad.