Episode 1: What Lurks in the shadows
CONTENT WARNING: Fear of the dark
What Lurks in the Shadows. A Short Story by Arthur Burton, read by Oliver Burton.
What happens when the bombs drop, and you discover your bomb shelter might be more dangerous than the outside world?
Transcript
Narrator
Lanterns Aura Presents: Awaiting Publication. Episode One. What Lurks in the Shadows.
Theme song plays and fades out to a crackling fireplace.
Oliver clears his throat.
Oliver
What Lurks in the Shadows. A short story by Arthur Burton. Read by Oliver Burton. We never thought the bombs would actually drop. Well, I say we, but thinking about it, I don’t know if May was as calm as I had been. I guess I’ll never know now. She was the one that insisted on stocking up the bomb shelter that came with the house “just in case.” So maybe she had always known we would need it. It doesn’t matter what the reason was anymore. What’s done is done.
It was sometime just after eight at night, we had gotten a notification on our phone that a missile was inbound, that we had to seek shelter immediately. May and I had been in the middle of dinner when it came through, we didn’t take time to consider if it was a glitch, or a hoax. Not when the sirens started blaring as we tried to get our bearings. We didn’t even take the time to change out of our pajamas.
“We need to get to shelter” She had said with absolute certainty. In that moment I couldn’t think of anything to do other than follow her into our back yard. The shelter looked small from the outside, it was built into the ground when the house had originally been built in the 50s, back when people thought Russia would attack any day. All you could see from the entrance was an iron hatch around a small frame. I pried it open letting a small amount of light in, and turned on my phone’s flashlight as May started through the narrow entrance. I followed after, closing the hatch behind me, sealing us in that dark abyss.
It took us a few minutes to find the generator, we had almost slipped a few times down the slope at the entrance. And I’d only been down there when we had been stocking the place when we first moved in. Soon lights flickered to life, illuminating our new home for the foreseeable future. It was fairly spacious for a hole in the ground, there was a couch, a tv and a singular cheap DVD, a battery powered radio, a small kitchen if you could even call it that, and a small curtained off area where we could use a bathroom, plus some random supplies we thought would be useful. Candles, canned food, a flashlight, that type of stuff. We would have stocked it better, but like I said, we didn’t think we would ever actually need it. We didn’t even have a proper table, and the couch wasn’t very comfortable, but it’s all we had, and at least we had light, and food, and each other.
After making sure it was secured we waited. The walls of the shelter were thick enough that we thought it would keep us safe, but it also meant we didn’t have any signal. We had no way to know if our friends or family had made it, or to let anyone know we were down here. We waited for what felt like hours, but there was no shaking of earth as the world outside died in a fiery death, no collapse of the shelter being unable to handle whatever may come, not even a goddamn sound from outside. It was just, quiet. The hum of the generator echoing through our cramped living space that would be our home for the foreseeable future. We didn’t know if whatever happened outside was radioactive or not, so we waited, holding on to each other as we waited for the end that never came, as we eventually drifted off to sleep.
When we woke up we decided to make a proper inventory of our supplies, and try to get into some sort of routine. It wasn’t great. We had enough food to last us maybe a couple weeks, less water than that, no books, and the dvd case we got in the bargain bin didn’t have the right movie in it, so our only entertainment was a Mexican telenovela with no subtitles. And neither of us spoke Spanish beyond “hola” or “dónde está el baño”, so while it was at least somewhat distracting, it was difficult to follow. May attempted to follow what was going on, and I took to looking over the walls and ceiling, counting the marks along the visible areas to pass time, measuring the room with my eyes, except for the one area that never seemed illuminated quite right.
The room was lit by a series of lights along the ceiling, except the corner farthest from the hatch. The lights by the middle of the room didn’t reach it, and whatever lights that were originally back there had seemed to have gone out. It would have been an easy fix if we had any spare bulbs with us, but since we had none we were just left with that one corner noticeably darker than the rest of the room. I would at times catch myself staring at it, it was almost unnatural the way it seemed to swallow light, I couldn’t even make out space where the walls met. It didn’t seem possible that it could be that dark with how much the fluorescent lights illuminated everything else, but it just was. I don’t know how long I spent staring into that abyss the first day, it seemed to call to me with almost a whisper. I found myself both dreading the darkness, but also feeling it call to me. I was finally drawn away from it when May speak.
“Should we try the radio? See if there’s any updates?”
When May drew my attention I was immediately aware of the fact I had slid to the edge of the couch closest to the corner without realizing it. I was even more aware of the sweat that seemed to have built up on my body despite the chill of the bunker. Shaking my head I decided right then and there that I wanted NOTHING to do with that corner of the bunker.
I went over to the shelves that had our supplies and searched around for the radio. It took some searching, but I eventually found it. Bringing it over to the table we tried to get it to work, but it wouldn’t even turn on. In the end we decided it would be best if we went to sleep, and we would deal with the radio in the morning. So I made sure the generator was full and we curled up on the couch to sleep as best we could given the circumstances. The next morning May started watching her show, and I decided to tinker with the radio, or I would have, but it was nowhere to be seen. I was sure we left it on the table the night before, but it wasn’t there, it wasn’t back on the shelf, or anywhere in between. I checked the whole bunker multiple times and it was just gone. No, that’s a lie, not the whole bunker. I hadn’t checked the corner yet. It was creepy, and I didn’t want to go over there. But in the end it’s not like I had a choice. Our living space was smaller than a studio apartment so it’s not like I could ignore a whole section of it forever, even if the whole thing seemed off with the way it seemed so unnaturally dark. And the whispering call that seemed to start whenever I looked at it too long. After longer than I would care to admit, I took out my phone flashlight, and slowly moved towards the abyss. The light somehow seemed dimmer the closer I got to the corner of the room, my phone barely illuminated it, but it illuminated enough that I could see the radio, perfectly unharmed, next to a series of scratches on the floor and walls that made my skin crawl. Right above the radio, carved roughly into the walls were seven words.
“Beware the dark. For you are not alone.”
I grabbed the radio and ran back to the couch, knocking over boxes as I went, clutching the radio like a life line. When I made it back May said something, but I could barely hear her over the sound of my own heartbeat. I tried to think it through logically, we didn’t have anything May could have used to make those marks, so she couldn’t have done it, there’s nobody else down here, so it had to be some sort of joke by the previous owner, and I almost had convinced myself, then I smelled the gas and it brought me out of my panic. Looking back I realized it hadn’t been boxes that I had knocked over, but our gas cans for the generator, and the lids were off. May screamed at me as I ran to pick it back up. For some reason the gas can was in the middle of my path from the corner, and not by the generator where we had left it the night before. May hadn’t moved from her seat all day. The words I saw on the wall echoed in my head again.
“Beware the dark. For you are not alone.”
In the end we had lost so much fuel that we had to start rationing, and I didn’t like the thought at all. May had to stop using her tv. She didn’t say it at the time, but I knew she blamed me for this turn of events. We left the generator running as we placed candles around the bunker, the flashlight I had hoped we could use didn’t have any batteries, so that just left us with the candles. We lit them as we readied ourselves for the dark. We were going to have the generator on only for little bits at a time, when we needed to cook to help ration the remaining fuel. If we only had a limited time where we had proper light, we wanted it to be when we were cooking so we didn’t start a fire, and make our terrible situation any worse. Even still, at this point we refused to go outside and face whatever had happened out there. We didn’t know if there would be any radiation, and thought the bunker, however creepy it was, would still be safer. I turned on my phone flashlight before reaching to turn off the generator.
As the hum died the room was plunged into darkness. I felt a chill up my spine. The candles barely seemed to light anything at all, and my flashlight let me see the outline of my feet as I began to shuffle my way through the sea of darkness the bunker had become. As I made it to the couch I felt May's hand in mine. I exhaled a breath I didn’t know I had been holding, and we settled in for the night, but I knew I wouldn’t be getting any sleep. May rested her head on my chest as I laid awake for what felt like forever, but it couldn’t have been more than an hour or two before I heard scratching from somewhere inside the bunker. May's steady breathing on my chest assured me she was close, and that wasn’t as comforting as it should have been.
“Beware the dark. For you are not alone.”
The words played in my head again and again and again as I realized they weren’t a joke. They were a warning. Slowly I grabbed my phone again, and pointed it towards the source of the scratching I turned on my flashlight again but all I saw was empty space, whatever had been making the noise was gone. May woke up at this and questioned me.
“What’s wrong honey?”
I debated what to tell her. I didn’t know what I could say without sounding crazy.
“I think there might be a rat down here. I heard something moving by the food.” I lied, though I’m not sure if it was to her or to myself.
“A rat? Quick get the generator back on!”
I had her follow me as I got up, I didn’t know what was going on, but I wasn’t letting her get too far away from me until I was sure we were safe. The generator powered back up with barely a fight, but the lights didn’t turn on. May found the problem before I did.
“It looks like it chewed through the cords that runs from the generator.” I knew in that moment that we needed to leave, but I had to convince May. She was convinced I was overreacting.
“We need to move the food to higher shelves. Maybe it’ll starve.”
“But we might not be as safe as we thought. If a rat could get in, then whatever radiation there could be outside probably is getting in too.”
“Or, it could have already been down here when we came down. It’s not like we always kept this place sealed before we needed it.”
And that was that, she wouldn’t leave, no matter how hard I tried to convince her. And I couldn’t leave her down there. We settled into an uneasy silence as we contemplated our next move before she spoke.
“Vic, did you blow out some of the candles?”
“No, why?”
I looked around and realized why she had asked before she answered. The candles around the bunker that we had meticulously lit, had begun going out. Not just the ones by the couch, but the other flickering lights were dying off one by one across the whole bunker. I raced over to the table that had previously had a half dozen or so candles illuminating it, which now had one solitary flame left. I grabbed the book of matches from nearby and desperately started relighting them. As I finished lighting the last one May gasped from behind me.
Carved into the table was a series of words that definitely weren’t there when we went to the generator.
“Beware the Dark, for you are prey.”
The words seemed to invade my mind, playing over and over like a series of whispers crescendoing into a deafening roar that didn’t end, even when I felt May's hand in mine. It just subsided but remained present. I stood up and the remaining candles went out in an instant and we were left with the only light being the dim light from my cell phone's flashlight, which began to flicker as we made our way towards the hatch. We only made it a few feet before it went out entirely, and the whispering intensified again. We stumbled through the dark for what felt like an eternity and I thought we would die at any time, that our tormentor might strike and end this cruel game it was playing with us, but the strike never came. I reached my hand out in front of me as we walked and kept going, step by step I shuffled in the direction of the door, far longer than it should have taken. Eventually I felt my hand touch the cold metal of the door, and releasing May's hand I pushed with all my might, once, twice, three times I pushed and heard the door groan from the force, before it finally moved on the fourth push. It opened, and the whispering stopped in an instant as the cool air and the blinding light from our porch light rushed inside. I stepped outside to our undamaged yard. Everything was exactly how we had left it. My phone began receiving notification after notification as I stepped into the light. From what I could gather in that moment the missile had never hit, or maybe it had never been launched at all. I turned and offered my hand to May, only to see her relieved expression grow terrified as she was dragged back into the abyss by some unseen force, and the hatch shut itself, and I was left outside, free from the bunker, but never alone, for there are shadows everywhere, and we are all prey.
Oliver stops reading as the story ends, and stumbles over his words as he tries to collect himself.
Oliver
That was, quite a lot. This story was included in a folder given to me by my fathers lawyer when the will was read and his stories were left to me with the instructions to read this one first. While my father was well known for writing horror, I don’t think he had ever written about something as primal as the fear of the dark in any of his published works, not any that I’ve read at least. Did he even send this to his publisher? And why did he specify that he wanted me to read this one first? It’s not like the order really matters since he’s dead, and I’m going to be recording them all eventually, regardless of quality or content. Regardless, I think I will follow this same format for future sessions, recording the story with no pauses, and giving my thoughts at the very end. Make it feel more real, like in an in person book reading just like Uncle Dave used to when Emma and I were kids.
Oliver gets lost in thought.
Oliver
Sorry, I’ll be back with another story soon. Thanks for listening to my rambling.
The theme song starts playing.
Credits
Oliver: Carter Lyon
Narrator: Sean McGarry
Written, Directed, and Edited by Sean McGarry
Produced by Carter Lyon, Karma Night, Matthew Laycock, and Sean McGarry
Art by Andrew Watson
Awaiting Publication Theme Song: Books and Other Mysteries by James Donovan Also featuring Fantasia and Fuge in G Minor by Johan Sebastian Bach
For updates follow us on Instagram, Bluesky or Youtube under Lanterns Aura.
Or visit our website Lanternsaura.com, this is also were you’ll find transcripts of episodes
If you like and want to support the show check out lanternsaurashop.com or our other projects
Episode 2 will debut on November 15 2026 at 11:00 EST
Thanks for listening.
