The night was like any other to David Hawkins, the night watchman. Quiet, a touch eerie, and boring. The inhabitants of the camp had finally all returned to their cabins, first the campers at 10 after the campfire ended and before his shift started an hour later, and now the staff just after midnight. David had smirked to himself as he finished another cigarette, watching a few of the older staff stagger dizzily back to their cabins. No doubt a few of them had been passing something alcoholic around during the after parties, but he hadn’t had the heart to bust them on it tonight of all nights.

David flicked his flashlight up for a moment as a shadow crossed in front of him. His eyes caught the tail-end of a squirrel as it scurried up a tree, and his heart resumed it’s normal pace after a few moments. Much as he enjoyed the solitude that his position provided him, he couldn’t help but acknowledge that being the only person awake in the camp was creepy. Especially when there was enough cloud cover to blot out the moon, the stars, and the comet that had appeared in the night sky in recent days.

David continued his patrol through the northern end of the camp, occasionally pausing near the cabins for a few minutes to listen for anything out of the ordinary. He often found that in the dead of night, letting his ears do the work was much easier than trying to find anything with the beam of his flashlight first. His first couple weeks at the job had been nerve-wracking, jumping at every sound and his flashlight constantly scanning the underbrush. Over time, he had started to get used to the sounds of the forest at night, but it was definitely quite a shift from anything he had been used to before. Jeremy had warned him that the woods of the Adirondacks were very different from the streets of New York City.

David sighed, kicking a loose stone in the pathway as he worked his way south and onto the main field. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, following his brother out into the wilderness of northern New York. He had always been closest to Jeremy out of his brothers, being the closest in age, but even the four year gap between them sometimes seemed insurmountable. Jeremy was already close to getting married to Yasmina with their wedding just over two months away, while he was straight out of high school with no idea of what to do next and no drive to figure it out. Jeremy had put a good word in with admin to get him the job, trying to help him get out of a slump, but even now, as summer was just past the halfway point, David still felt as lost as when he had driven the five and a half hours to the camp with a faulty GPS and some bare-bones directions.

His boots crunched as the pathway changed from packed dirt to fresh wood chips, emerging from the close-cropped trees out into the amphitheater. The remains of the bonfire still glowed, gherry-red and orange, the embers crackling and popping every few seconds as the charred wood continued to settle. Wisps of smoke danced lazily out of the ring of stones, out of the clearing towards the lake a few dozen feet beyond the amphitheater. David picked his way slowly down between the benches to the fire ring next to the stage platform in the middle of the clearing. The trees sighed around him, rustling as a breeze rolled through, sending a new burst of sparks spiraling into the air like fireflies. He stared into the embers, watching as the colors shifted and pulsed, reds and oranges and yellows mixing together slowly and deliberately.

A glint of light caught his eye, and he looked up at the huge, polished stone that stood on the other side of the stage platform. A red flicker of light danced across the face of the blackened monolith. David turned around, looking for the source, but the amphitheater and the forest behind it was impenetrably dark. Rubbing at his eyes, he looked again, but the red light continued to flicker across the surface of the boulder.

“All right, guys, knock it off. Whoever’s shining that laser pointer, go back to bed.” David called into the night. His only answer was the whispers of the wind through the trees, and the light dancing on the stone continued.

“Seriously, knock it off. If I have to come up there, whoever’s responsible is going to see the Director tomorrow.” The light continued to flicker on the stone, and David sighed as he turned to walk up the pathway.

“All right, don’t say I didn’t warn-” David stopped, his ears prickling, pulling him back to look at the stone.

The dot of red light was frozen in place on the flat of the stone. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up as a faint ringing in his ears became noticeable. As David moved closer to the stone, he paused. Was the ringing growing louder? David circled around the stage platform closer to the monolith, and sure enough, the ringing in his ears increased with every step. Only it wasn’t coming from his ears, he realized.

It was coming from the stone.

David didn’t buy into the whole “this stone is an asteroid or meteorite or whatever from space” bullcrap the camp spouted to make themselves feel special. More likely, whoever found it had put a lot of marketing work into making it seem otherworldly just to draw people to come visit the camp, to show off something interesting that other camps in the Adirondacks didn’t have. Naturally, the staff, for the most part, was expected to push the hype of the “meteorite” and make the campers feel special and connected to it, but as the night watchman, David had little to no contact with the campers themselves, and no reason to peddle the camp’s bullshit.

Except now, in the dead of night, with a mysterious light with no source shining on the stone and it making some kind of high-pitched hum, David wasn't so sure that it was all bullshit anymore.

Especially when the second light showed up, flickering quickly around it’s surface.

David took a step backwards, pulling out his cell phone as the second light flickered and danced across the surface of the stone, a few feet from the now-stationary first. And before the second one stilled, a third light appeared, a few feet from the second.

“What the fuck?” David continued to step back, flicking to the messenger app on his phone. He sent a quick message to Jeremy with a picture of the stone, as more lights began appearing, first flickering and dancing sporadically across the surface of the stone, each one eventually settling and becoming completely still. And with each light that found its place, the high-pitched whine grew louder.

David cursed, suddenly remembering that his cell phone had no reception and that his message wouldn’t get to his brother’s phone. He put his flashlight away as the light on the stone became bright enough to see with. David switched his phone camera to video mode and started recording as he reached down to grab the radio on his belt. As he did, the speaker erupted with static, and David dropped it. It continued hissing and screeching, and David cursed again.

By the time the lights stopped appearing, there was a dot of light for each square foot of the surface of the stone, and the stone was emitting enough noise that now it was his ears that were ringing. He stopped recording, putting his hands over his ears instead. David walked around the back of the stone, finding that the entire visible surface of it was covered in the same lights, spaced equidistant from each other.

David’s mind raced, trying, and failing to figure out what was going on. With as much noise as the stone was making, he was sure that soon, the residents of the closest cabins would awaken and come to investigate. Should he go try to rouse some of the staff now? Or call the Director? With the radio on the fritz, going to alert someone in person was the only option.

The noise, already high-pitched, began to shift to an even higher register as the lights all moved upwards in unison, collecting at the pointed top of the stone. David squinted, the lights all together making a shining spot of light brighter than a car headlight. A stiff wind picked up as the light intensified, erupting into a bright red beacon from the top of the stone that pierced into the night sky.

“Holy shit.” David breathed, as the clouds parted where the light hit them. The comet, directly overhead, seemed enormously large. Was the beacon of light making the comet appear so vividly red, or was it glowing the same red as the stone on it’s own? The wind howled around him, ripping leaves off of the trees. David jumped as a tree crashed to the ground a few dozen feet into the forest, and suddenly, it didn’t seem like his decision to keep watching whatever was happening was very smart.

David’s feet suddenly felt lighter than air as he turned and sprinted towards the back of the amphitheater. The harsh red light of the beacon threw everything into sharp contrast, the bright benches and their dark shadows flickering and dancing, making the ground itself seem to spasm and tremble. David stumbled halfway up the path, realizing that it wasn't a trick of the light, the ground was shaking slightly.

David had just reached the top of the path when the world exploded.

Pain bloomed across his back as he was thrown from his feet, slamming sideways into a tree. His phone was thrown from his grip as he slid to the ground, unable to see or hear, nothing but blinding, burning pain consuming his consciousness.

Was it seconds, minutes, or hours before he was able to breathe again? To open his eyes and see again? To realize that whatever had happened was so far beyond normal that he had absolutely no way to rationalize what had just happened to him?

His brain sputtered as he looked at the amphitheater, which, despite his own experience of being thrown several feet through the air, didn’t seem to have a single scratch of damage. To the stone, which now glowed all over, like an intense glow-in-the-dark sticker, with ripples of red light whirling somehow beneath the surface of the stone. Finally, to the sky, where the stars continued to twinkle through the hole in the clouds, while his mind tried to wrap around the fact that the comet now seemed to be as large in the sky as the moon, burning a vivid, bright and angry red.

David let out a breathy kind of laugh, a wry, disbelieving, unknowing and hysterical giggle that erupted from somewhere deep within and spilled out from his lips unbidden. Despite the pain across his back and from his arm, David couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of what had happened, what was currently happening to him. How was he going to explain this to the Director in his morning report? ‘Giant stone turned into a giant red glow stick and blew up without destroying anything, otherwise a pretty quiet night.’

Something snapped in the woods behind him, and David groaned as he tried to push himself to his feet. He used the tree as leverage, finally getting to his feet as a branch snapped closer to him.

“Hey, over here, could use some help.” David pulled the flashlight out of his pocket and flicked it on towards the noise.

He got the barest impression of something enormous moving through his blurred vision. An ear splitting screech blasted him from just feet away, nearly taking him back off his feet.

A single second of blinding, all encompassing pain, too quick to even take a breath, to scream-

David’s flashlight hit the ground, it’s beam dyed a dark ruby red.