Eve stood on the pebbled beach of Blackwater Lake, watching the last dregs of color and light fade from the sky. Her bag weighed heavier on her shoulder than it had when she’d gotten to the North Henge park, off Route 23, that afternoon. She’d spent hours in the summer sun copying down the henge runes from the standing stones, a cool breeze from the lake making the heat bearable. When the light had faded too much, she’d stuffed her notebook back into her backpack, along with her empty energy drink can.

And okay, maybe a few rocks. One or two. Who was going to stop her from picking up some pretty rocks, the stone police? Fuck off.

The park was nice. Quiet. The water of the lake, black with tannins, was still and calm, a mirror of the pine-covered slopes surrounding it. It smelled pleasantly of dead leaves and fresh water, and despite all of this, almost no one else had been there all day.

It was technically tourist season, but the Blackwater Henges had never been that popular. Which was stupid, because the henges were freely accessible and had some of the best examples of henge runes out of any of the sites in the area. Eve wouldn’t complain, though. It meant that no one had bothered her while she was working.

As nice as the park had been during the day, it was a lot creepier at night. Now, the dark water of the lake seemed to suck in the glow from the streetlights. The temperature had dropped quickly from the heat of day, and goosebumps pricked up on Eve’s bare legs and arms. She clenched her jaw to keep from shivering and scanned the tall pines that surrounded the park and the road. She narrowed her eyes at the moonless sky visible between them. The stars were brighter out here than she was used to, but they didn’t make up for the lack of moonlight. A breeze twitched the trees into rustling and swaying in her peripheral vision.

Eve yawned and pulled out her keys. She hadn’t expected the light to fade so quickly, but that’s what being in a valley was like, apparently. She looked at her phone. It was nearly ten. That would explain the yawns.

She started toward her car, parked as close as possible to the henge in her perpetual laziness, and then hesitated. It looked spooky in the darkness, like the shadows were thicker there than anywhere else. They dripped down the stones and pooled in the slight hollow where the henge stood.

After a second, she shook her head. She was being stupid. It was the same set of stones she’d climbed all over only an hour before. It hadn’t suddenly become cursed or something. She strode toward it purposefully.

And then someone screamed. Like, in-agony, despairing-of-ever-being-heard, screamed. Eve stopped, her shoulders pulling up toward her ears. The scream trailed off slowly and left the hairs on the back of her neck standing up. She took one step forward and looked around. She couldn’t see anybody nearby, certainly nobody close enough for that scream, which had sounded like it was coming from inside the henge.

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Eve almost took the long way around and left the screamer behind. A mystery scream coming from the tenebrous, rune-covered henge, with no visible person to cause it? That was exactly the kind of spooky shit she did not put up with. That was the kind of mystery shit her parents liked to study, the kind of thing Eve’s customers loved.

But.

But there were a few blind spots in and around the stones. It was possible someone was hidden behind them, someone who was quite suddenly dying horribly. She stepped closer, almost an arm’s length away from the nearest standing stone, and then she stopped again. Digging through her backpack, Eve pulled out the pink-coated brass knuckles Aunt Jessie had given her when she’d started college. She pushed them over her fingers and made a fist. Then she nodded to herself. It was probably too late to save whoever had screamed, but she’d be damned if she’d be an easy kill for whatever axe murderer liked to hang out there.

Just in case they weren’t dead, though, Eve stepped through the trilithon. “Hello?” she called. “Are you okay?” The park was silent, even the rustling trees stilled. She took another tentative step in and raised her fists. “Can I help you?”

When she got no response, Eve lowered her hands and walked more briskly through the henge. At the center stone, she paused and peeked around the side of it. Nobody. She would go, then, and leave the screamer to their fate.

A small whimper came from somewhere nearby, along with a whistling sound. Eve straightened quickly and glanced around. The whimper happened again, and with it came a low fog rolling across the grass like incense smoke.

Fuck this, Eve thought, turning to leave. The fog caught at her feet, and she tripped, hands and forearms slamming into the center stone.

For a brief second, the air lit up with a light that was somehow shadowed, a thin veneer over darkness. And then the world went back to night. Eve blinked over and over, the glowing spots in her vision proof that there had been a light. There were no more whimpers.

Eve pushed herself off of the stone, and the runes running in a spiral around it, now glowing, dimmed to black. She blinked at it for a moment, but the runes didn’t do anything interesting. She scowled at the stone, at the henge in general, and for good measure, she scowled at the lake, too.

This time, nothing interrupted her walk to the car. Eve turned on the lights and scanned the backseat, and when nothing was there, she sighed into the driver’s seat. That was just great. What better way to explore her new home than to have some kind of weird hallucination at one of the local henges?

Because it had, of course, been a hallucination. If that had all been real, Eve would be pissed. What fucking right did some stupid paranormal shit have to drag her into it? Absolutely none. She had moved to Blackwood to stop getting involved in her parents’ paranormal-folklore garbage. She wasn’t about to let some stupid death-by-screaming ghost fuck up her new life of not being bothered.

She did not feel like anything was following her as she drove home. That was part of the hallucination. And if someone or something had been in the car with her, she would have seen it by now. So that feeling, like someone was watching her, was fake, too.

She didn’t look in any of her mirrors until she’d turned several corners and thick forest separated her and the henge. Still, the feeling that something was following her persisted until she stepped into her apartment, locked the door behind her, and leaned her head back against it.

That night, Eve dreamed of moving pines, their arms swaying as they screamed and cried, as they begged her to help them. She woke once, cold and sweaty, with her sheets on the floor. She dragged them back over herself and fell into a dreamless sleep.