By the last week of October, the city had begun to change.

Pumpkins appeared on apartment steps. Storefronts filled with fake cobwebs and black candles. Even the streetlights seemed brighter, as if the city were afraid of what might be hiding between them.

At the edge of downtown, where the buildings leaned close together like conspirators, there was a narrow street called Mercer.

Most people avoided it after dark.

The shops along Mercer had been closed for years, and the windows of the old apartment buildings were covered with yellowing paint. There were no restaurants, no bus stops, and no reason for anyone to go there at night.

Except for the rumor.

Every Halloween, people whispered the same warning:

“Don’t walk down Mercer Street after midnight. If you see the lanterns, someone close to you is about to die.”

Talia first heard the story when she was sixteen.

She and her friend Juno had been walking home from a Halloween party, dressed in cheap costumes they had bought from a drugstore. Talia wore a black witch’s hat. Juno had plastic vampire fangs that kept slipping out whenever she spoke.

When they reached the corner of Maple Avenue, Juno stopped.

“Take the long way,” she said.

Talia looked toward Mercer Street. It was already dark there, although midnight was still an hour away.

“Why?”

“Because of the lanterns.”

Talia laughed. “You mean the streetlights?”

Juno shook her head.

“No. The lanterns.”

They took the long way home. Talia forgot about the conversation by morning, but the story returned every Halloween after that, passed from student to student like a secret no one could prove.

Some people said the lanterns belonged to the ghosts of families who had lived on Mercer before the buildings were torn down.

Others claimed that, decades ago, a fire had destroyed half the street. The dead had been carried away at night by people holding lanterns, and now they returned every Halloween to collect someone new.

Nobody knew which version was true.

Everyone agreed on one thing: if you heard footsteps behind the lanterns, you should not look back.

Now, one week before her eighteenth birthday, Talia found herself walking past Mercer Street alone.

She was carrying coffee to the hospital, where her father had been recovering from heart surgery. He had seemed better that afternoon, but her mother’s last phone call had sounded frightened.

Talia had promised to come immediately.

She was texting her mother when she heard the sound.

Scrape.

A pause.

Scrape.

It sounded like metal dragging slowly across pavement.

Talia stopped walking.

The city seemed to quiet around her. Traffic faded. The wind disappeared. Even the buzzing neon sign above the convenience store went dark.

Then came three soft knocks.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

Talia looked across the street.

At the far end of Mercer, a small yellow light drifted through the darkness.

It was followed by another.

Then another.

Lanterns.

They bobbed gently as they moved down the street, though no one appeared to be carrying them. Their light spilled across the cracked pavement and revealed the abandoned buildings one by one.

Talia’s fingers tightened around her phone.

She should have run.

Instead, she stepped closer.

A figure appeared behind the lanterns.

It was a woman wearing a long black coat. Her hood covered most of her face, and one pale hand held a lantern that burned with a weak, yellow flame.

The woman began walking toward Talia.

She made no sound.

The lanterns moved with her, drifting in a slow procession.

Talia backed away, but her feet seemed stuck to the pavement.

The woman lifted her head.

Talia felt a sudden, terrible shock of recognition.

The woman’s face was hidden in shadow, but something about her was familiar: the shape of her mouth, the slight tilt of one eyebrow, the scar near her temple.

Talia had that scar.

She had gotten it when she was twelve, after slipping on an icy sidewalk.

The woman came closer.

A car turned onto Mercer Street. Its headlights swept across the road, flooding the scene with white light.

For one second, Talia saw the woman’s face clearly.

It was hers.

Not exactly. The woman looked older and thinner, her skin stretched pale over her bones. Her eyes were dark and exhausted. But it was unmistakably Talia’s face, worn down by years of grief.

Talia stumbled backward.

The woman smiled.

“You hear them now,” she said.

Talia could barely speak. “Who are you?”

The woman raised her lantern.

Its light spilled beyond Talia, toward a narrow alley between two abandoned buildings.

There, more lanterns waited.

Dozens of them.

Some hung in the air. Others rested on the ground. Their flames flickered in a long line that stretched deeper into the darkness.

Talia suddenly understood that Mercer Street had once been a neighborhood, not just a road. Before the current buildings had been constructed, small houses had stood there. Families had lived and died there.

Then, nearly a century ago, a fire had swept through the block. The city cleared the burned houses, buried the remains beneath layers of rubble, and built Mercer Street over the ruins. No memorial marked the dead. No names were carved into stone.

The city had covered them up.

But it had never made them disappear.

The lanterns were not guiding the dead back to the living.

They were guiding the living toward the dead.

Talia’s phone buzzed.

Her mother’s name appeared on the screen.

MOM: The doctors are with Dad. Please hurry.

Before Talia could answer, another message appeared.

MOM: They don’t think he’ll make it through the night.

The lanterns brightened.

A cold hand touched Talia’s chest.

She gasped.

The woman stood directly in front of her. Her skin was freezing, but her fingers felt strangely familiar.

“You were supposed to come with us,” the woman whispered.

Talia looked down at the lantern in the woman’s hand.

Inside the glass, the flame burned without moving.

Then Talia saw something reflected in it.

Faces.

Dozens of pale faces stood behind her in the reflection. Men, women, and children dressed in clothing from different decades. Their mouths were open, but none of them made a sound.

They were waiting.

The woman leaned closer.

“Everyone finds their way to Mercer eventually.”

Talia pulled away and ran.

She sprinted toward Oak Street, her shoes striking the pavement. Behind her, the lanterns began to move.

Scrape.

Step.

Scrape.

Step.

The sound followed her, growing louder with every second. She heard footsteps behind her, hundreds of them, all moving at the same slow pace.

She did not look back.

At the corner, her phone slipped from her hand. It struck the pavement and skidded beneath a parked car.

Talia almost stopped to retrieve it.

Then the footsteps reached the end of Mercer Street.

She ran harder.

The moment she crossed onto Oak, the sounds vanished.

Talia spun around.

Mercer Street was empty.

The lanterns had disappeared. The woman was gone. Only fog curled between the buildings.

Near the curb, something glowed faintly.

A single lantern rested in a puddle.

Talia should have left it there.

Instead, she picked it up.

The metal was warm.

Then her phone began ringing beneath the car.

Talia dropped the lantern and crawled underneath to retrieve it. Her mother was calling.

“Talia?” her mother said when she answered. Her voice trembled. “Where are you?”

“On my way,” Talia said. “What happened?”

There was a pause.

“The doctors tried everything,” her mother whispered. “Your father is gone.”

Talia closed her eyes.

For a moment, she could not hear the traffic or the wind. She could only hear the three knocks from Mercer Street.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

When Talia reached the hospital, her mother was sitting alone in the waiting room. Her face was wet with tears. A doctor stood nearby, speaking quietly to a nurse.

Talia hurried toward her mother.

Then her mother looked past Talia’s shoulder.

The color drained from her face.

“What is that?” she whispered.

Talia turned.

At the end of the hospital corridor, a yellow light flickered.

A lantern hovered in the darkness.

Then another appeared beside it.

And another.

The hospital doors clicked open one by one as the lanterns drifted toward the room where Talia’s father lay beneath a white sheet.

Talia understood then that the legend had never meant someone close to you would die because you saw the lanterns.

The lanterns appeared because someone close to you had already died.

They were not warnings.

They were invitations.

And behind Talia, the first lantern began to move toward her.