THE SUN WENT BLACK AT 2:17 P.M. AND THE FOREST STARTED SCREAMING

I was taping down a power cable behind Stage B when the light died.

It didn’t dim. It didn’t fade.

It just ended.

The heat vanished with it. The clearing collapsed into a ceiling of black so thick it felt low enough to touch. Music cut mid-note. Fryers went quiet. Six hundred people stopped at once like something had pressed pause on the day.

For a breath there was nothing.

Then the forest began to scream.

It started far out past the vendor tents. A wide ring of sound circling the grounds. Men. Women. Children. Long ripping cries that broke into coughing. Someone praying fast. Someone begging slow. It carried without wind. It didn’t echo. It felt placed.

The night lights snapped on automatically. Strings over the food court. Path lights along Lantern Loop. The stage floods.

Most of the crowd was gone.

A stroller lay tipped on its side. A funnel cake burned in oil. A little sandal sat beside the face paint table with the strap still buckled.

Thirty of us remained under the lights, turning in slow circles, listening.

The deputy hit his radio. Static spat back. Then Bri from ticketing came through in her cheerful daytime voice.

“Please remain in lit areas. Guests outside the lights are in active processing.”

Her tone never cracked.

The transmission ended in a tearing noise that made everyone flinch.

A man near the beer tent started shouting his wife’s name into the trees.

The deputy told him to stop.

The branches behind him jolted in a straight line.

The man lifted off the ground like something reeled him upward. Lantern bulbs burst when his shoulder hit the string. He vanished above the light line and his scream cut off mid-breath.

The forest answered with his voice.

That broke us.

Chairs rose off the gravel and came at us flat and fast. A menu board twisted sideways and split against a table. A cash box shot across the clearing and took the deputy to one knee.

The air stayed still. Banners hung limp. Only the objects moved.

We ran for Lantern Loop because the path lights were on.

They triggered ahead of us before we reached them.

One. Then another. Then four in a row.

Something moved in the dark just beyond each circle.

The next row lit and showed people standing across the trail.

Festival wristbands on their arms. Dirt on their clothes. Black cloth tied over their eyes.

Their mouths were open.

One of them screamed in my voice. The exact crack in it from a jobsite accident I had when I was nineteen. A sound I had never heard recorded. There it was.

They stepped forward together.

The deputy fired. The bullet struck a man in the chest. He rocked from the impact, then straightened. Something shifted beneath his skin where the round went in, sliding across his ribs.

They ran at us.

We fled toward the amphitheater bowl.

The rim lights came alive and showed the missing crowd gathered below.

Hundreds of them packed shoulder to shoulder facing the stage. Eyes covered. Mouths open.

They screamed in sections. One half. Then the other. Then a single person alone until their throat failed. The sound moved across them like someone conducting.

On the stage was a structure built from poles, cable, antlers from the taxidermy booth, torn banners, broken light bars. It wrapped around a shape that never held still. Child-sized one glance. Tall as the trees the next.

People were caught inside it.

Some still moving because they were alive.

Some moving though they shouldn’t have been.

The lights behind us shut off in a straight line, leaving only the stairway into the bowl illuminated.

The PA system I wired that morning came on.

“Night session now open. Voice confirmation speeds processing.”

Names began to be read.

After each name came a tearing sound.

Then mine.

We ran into the side trees.

Branches cracked above us. A glass jar burst near my ear. The deputy fell hard behind me and did not get up.

I found the ranger utility shed by memory and shoved whoever was with me inside. Steel door. Deadbolt. A metal shelf wedged across it.

The screaming circled the cinderblock.

Sometimes distant.

Sometimes pressed against the wall.

An old battery radio on the shelf clicked on.

Bri again.

“If you hear familiar voices, do not answer.”

Her tone shifted, almost warm.

“Unless you want to come back.”

The sparkly-jacket girl stood from the floor. Dirt ran from her nose. Her face had emptied.

Every loose tool in the shed lifted at once.

Hammer. Wrench. Screwdriver. Nails.

They hung there, turning slowly until the sharp ends faced us.

The steel door bowed inward.

A laugh slipped through the seam. It sounded like Bri trying to laugh while choking.

The deadbolt cracked.

The tools moved.

We crawled through the back maintenance hatch while the shed tore apart behind us.

We reached the service road.

A county plow truck sat sideways across it. The driver slumped in his seat. His mouth was packed with festival wristbands so tightly they cut his lips.

I’m writing this on the back of his route sheet.

The sky is still black.

The screaming is still moving through the trees.

The PA is still reading names.

I never said where we ran.

I never said the road number out loud.

The speaker in the forest just came on in my voice.

“County plow truck on Route 18 is safe. Bring the children first.”

The passenger door handle just jerked down.

It’s opening.