She dusted herself off and stood, staring up at the moon. Then she took up her lantern and began to walk back down the path the way she had come.

We ducked behind a tree trunk as she passed, trying to make ourselves small and invisible. Grandma moved in a daze, slow and rambly as a sleepwalker. Only when she reached the edge of the clearing did she cut her eyes back toward us, to the tree where Murphy and I lay hidden. It was like she knew she was being watched, like she’d grown some strange animal sense and could smell us on the wind. We were dead silent, Murphy and I, while Grandma scanned the woods, the lamp held up to her face, her eyes squinted right at us. For a moment the whole world seemed to stop, I was so scared we’d be caught. Because I knew we’d looked upon something private, something sacred even, and there were always consequences for spying on the sacred.

But Grandma lowered the lamp, and she turned her eyes back toward the path. She walked quicker now, more sure-footed, through the field and toward the house.

When she was well out of sight, Murphy and I crept out of our hiding spot.

“What the hell was that?” said Murphy.

“I don’t know,” I said.

I walked over to the headstone, to whatever grave Grandma had been praying over. There was a smear of blood across it, wet and red and dripping. It reminded me of the Bible, how blood was spread over the doorposts before the plague of the firstborn. The stone was blank, no name or date.

“Whose grave is this?” I said. “Grandpa’s?”

“Maybe,” said Murphy. “I thought he ran off, though, right?”

We heard a twig snap in the woods, something hidden scampering away. Murphy and I froze as the moon uncovered itself from the clouds and cast a glow over us bright and clear as a spotlight. I was conscious of a thousand eyes gazing in, of hidden things in the darkness watching over us. I heard another stick crack in the dark, something moving in the trees. We weren’t alone, I knew that. I began to hear music from out in the darkness, human voices amongst all the animal sounds. At first I thought I was just imagining it, like maybe it was another vision or something. But then Murphy spoke up.

“Dude, do you hear that?” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “For a minute I was afraid it was just me.”

“Definitely not a vision. That shit is real. I wonder where it’s coming from.”

“Only one way to find out.”