Simon, Beth and Jay stumbled through the darkness, following the brook as it weaved through Seabrook Park. When the stream banked right away from the Nature Center, the teens went left, hoping for some cover in the building’s shadows.

They had abandoned the tool shed. They knew someone (some thing?) was out there watching them, stalking them, and staying in the cramped tool shed was making them feel like fish in a barrel. Before they made a run for it, Jay and Simon armed themselves with whatever they could find — a sharp cornered spade for Jay, and a vicious looking long-handled weeder for Simon. Beth, shaking, had fumbled for something lighter, and had wrapped her hand around a piece of shattered wood from the crumbling shed’s walls.

They pressed their bodies against the wall of the Nature Center, breathing fast and shallow. Simon’s knuckles were white as he gripped the weeder’s splintered handle. “I think we lost it,” he whispered.

A deep, menacing voice answered from the shadows. “Think again.”