**Reactivity warning: This short story includes the description of sexual assault; readers please take care.**

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"It all started with the old cars hidden in the woods..." her voice wavered. Meena's hair was disheveled, her clothing was tattered and despite not having purchase, her dirt filled nails were scratching at the table. Her eyes were wild, as if she experienced unworldly things during her time lost in the woods.

"It's alright, Meena. You're safe now - what happen in the woods?" The detective tried their best to be soothing, to be reassuring. However, it was abundantly clear that he was frightened and Meena's sporadic movements made him uneasy. "Please Meena, we need to know what happen to the others..."

This time she didn't look at him. She looked down at her hands, and smiled. Meena began the story again...

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It was an unusually warm fall day in Becket, Massachusetts, which made it perfect for hiking The Becket Land Quarry. The trails and tree-line were painted with beautiful gold and auburn foliage. Despite Meena being a Becket-local, she had never explored the tails here - she was a spiritual person, and believed the stories that people whispered about the miners who lost their lives. However, today she put aside her intuition, that the trails were riddled with desperate spirts searching for their way out of the woods, and would make an exception for Dalton. Dalton was her crush since the third grade, and this was the first time that he asked her out to something that wasn't a required school event. It didn't bother her that his friend Xavier was joining them; she hoped that an extra person would buffer her awkwardness.

Meena arrived at the trailhead at approximately 4:30 in the afternoon, later than she would have liked, given that the sun is setting earlier every day. Dalton promised the trail wouldn't take long, and that he would bring a bag with basic hiking gear. As she sat on the wooden fence of the trailhead waiting for them to arrive, she swore she heard voices in between the rustlings of the trees. Yet when she turned around to see who was there, she was met with the woods. It was closer to 5 when Dalton and Xavier showed up, which was mildly annoying for Meena but she quickly forgave them, the moment Dalton swooped her up in a hug.

It didn't take long before the old machinery began to appear, and each had a tag with details about the Quarry's demise in the 1960's. There was nothing about the rusted machinery that appealed to Meena, in fact, the more remnants of the abandoned operation there were, the louder the voices seem to become.

"Meena come this way, we want to show you something off trail! You're going to love it."

Just above the crest of a small hill, both of the boys patiently waited for her to catch up. They were looking down a forged path slightly off the main trail, and when she finally reached the top, she heard a voice whisper "they will find their graves this way". It couldn't be possible - there was no one else around and the trees don't speak. So, she followed the boys as they made their way through the woods, careful to avoid burweed or anything that resembled poison ivy.

The old cars started to appear hidden deep within the woods. It made Meena wonder how they got here in the first place. However, Dalton was right, she did love this place. Just through the trees was an opening that oversaw a portion of the quarry, and Dalton was alone sitting on the granite rocks waiting for Meena to arrive.

"Where is Xavier?" She asked as she sat down next to Dalton.

"He said he was going to piss somewhere." He smiled and shook his head, as if this behavior from Xavier was to be expected.

As the sun began to set over the quarry, Meena felt Dalton sit closer to her and place his hand upon hers. She couldn't believe what was happening, couldn't believe that her first kiss would be with Dalton, let alone while the sun was setting. It felt romantic. It felt unreal. She turned to face him, and found him already looking at her. Instinctively, she looked away to hide her blush, but he gently held her face and pulled her in for a kiss. It was brief, she thinks, but it felt like a lifetime. As she opened her eyes, she was met with a ghostly face behind his shoulder. A horrific face; it was slightly upturned with a mouth wide open and its eyes were glassy - lifeless.

Meena couldn't help but abruptly pull away from Dalton and look out over the quarry. She refused to look back at him, afraid she would see the ghastly face again. However, he wouldn't let her go, and forced her back into a kiss. The romance quickly disappeared as she tried to get away from Dalton, but he held her tight and continued to force himself onto her. He got his hand under her bra, aggressively grabbing her breasts and forcing his tongue into her mouth. Perhaps it was a stroke of luck that she was able to knock him over and release herself from his grip.

"Wow Meena, that isn't really a way to thank someone for taking you on a date." This couldn't be true; this wasn't the Dalton that she thought she loved. This couldn't be the boy that she had a crush on for all of these years. Before she had a chance to respond, a muffled sound came from behind her. A loud of enough, yet still blunt, noise reverberated through the trees and sent chills up her arms. She could tell that Dalton heard it too because we went still, clearly spooked by the sounds coming from the woods as well.

"Xavier, you're good to come out - all of our clothes are on." However, Xavier didn't speak a word because Xavier was no where to be found. It was if the sun decided to disappear in this moment, because the woods before them became so dark that they couldn't see a few feet in front of them. It was unexpected when Dalton shot up from his sitting position and looked straight at Meena.

"Did you hear that?" Meena couldn't respond, still reeling from the face, the whispers, the assault, the betrayal. Before she mustered up the words to say she did, Dalton was off frantically running through the woods, leaving her behind to fend for herself. Instinctively, she took off running for him, hoping that there would be some decency left in him to protect her from the ghosts of the quarry.

However, no matter how hard she ran, Dalton was always ahead of her, yelling for Xavier. Xavier never responded and eventually, when Meena stopped running, she noticed that she couldn't hear Dalton anymore. They were gone, and she was left with the spirits of the miners that drown in the quarry all those years ago.

What felt like only hours, days had passed before Meena was found, sitting on a rotting tree and picking twigs from her hair. It was then that she realized the others were never found, and she knew that they never would be. The miners took them for themselves, and drown them in the quarry. She couldn't help but feel relief, and smiled that Dalton would never be able to tell the tale about their date.