Lantern Night

Twenty-five years ago, five men chained the doors of the Harlan Paper Mill during a strike. The fire that followed killed a twelve-year-old boy whose body was never found. The town called it an accident, raised a statue of a smiling child holding a lantern, and every October floated paper lanterns down the Susquehanna to remember him.

This year is the twenty-fifth anniversary. The TV cameras are coming. And on the first night the lanterns go up, someone breaks the face off the statue.

Now a silent figure is walking the streets of Harlan's Ferry, wearing that smiling plaster face and dragging the rusted chain that once locked the mill. He never speaks. He never runs. He leaves an unlit lantern beside every body, and a single mark to keep count.

Nineteen-year-old Wren Castell has just come home to bury her mother. She is about to learn why her father has never once come to Lantern Night. And why the man in the mask has been waiting for her.

Five names. One chain. Keep count.