“Be careful,” the woman said as she passed me on the trail. “There’s something that speaks through the rock up there. I’m not sure if it can be trusted.”

I raised an eyebrow. She didn’t read like someone who heard voices in the woods, but then, I never was a great judge of character.

She looked back up to where the path jogged behind a grove of pine trees and was lost to the shadows then back at me. She sighed and it mixed with the wind. “Don’t pay me any mind, then, but you’ll see.”

She resumed walking and I lost sight of her around the next bend. Shaking my head, I continued walking up the hill and deeper into the forest.

“Never can tell who is mad and who isn’t by sight,” I said to myself as I raised my hand to shade my eyes from the sun that cut across the path in the wake of a fallen tree.

“Isn’t that the truth?” a voice asked behind me. It made me think of rumbles deep in the earth.

I spun around, but no one else was on the path. “Hello?” I asked, feeling at once silly and anxious for hearing voices.

“Hello, indeed. I’m down here, not up there.”

I looked down, sweeping my eyes over the sides of the path and when they came to rest on the face staring back at me from the rock, I screamed.