The Third Circuit

The hill was a lung, and we were its breath. Every evening, after the children were tucked into their beds and the babysitter had arrived, we would climb. Me, Dara, and our friend Niall, the one who never seemed to tire. The hill was called Cnoc na Riabhóg, the Hill of the Partridges, but we just called it ‘the climb.’ It stood a mile from our small row of cottages, a green hump against the darkening sky, and at its summit, a ring of ancient stones that had been there since before anyone could remember.

We started in the late spring, when the evenings were long and the light lingered like a held note. The climb was brutal, a steep gravel path that switchbacked through gorse and heather, and by the time we reached the top, our legs would burn and our lungs would ache. But the view—a patchwork of fields and distant lakes, the whole county laid out like a map—was worth it. We would stand there, catching our breath, watching the last of the sun bleed into the horizon.

As summer deepened, the evenings shortened, and soon we were climbing in the half-light, then in the full dark. We brought torches, but the darkness felt heavier than the beam of a torch could cut. We laughed about it, trying to dispel the unease, joking that the ancient dead might be watching us, or that we might stumble upon a drug deal in the shadows of the cairn. Niall, always the fittest, would take the lead, and Dara and I would follow, our footsteps crunching on the gravel, our breath misting in the cool air.

It was on the third circuit of a particular evening—our usual two climbs, but we had decided to do a third, a foolish boast—that the experience began. We had reached the top for the second time, and Niall, not even winded, suggested one more. Dara and I exchanged a look, but we were too proud to say no. ‘One more, then,’ I said, and we set off again, the path descending into a darkness that felt more absolute than before.

As we reached the halfway point, the place where the path leveled out for a moment, I noticed a change in the air. It was a scent, faint but distinct, like damp earth and old stone, but also something else—something metallic, like blood. I stopped, and Dara bumped into me. ‘What is it?’ she asked. I shook my head, but the smell was already fading. ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Let’s keep going.’

We climbed on, and the path seemed longer than it had been. The stones beside the path, which were usually just dark shapes, seemed to have grown, looming over us. I aimed my torch at one, and the beam caught a carving—a spiral, but it seemed to shift as I watched, the pattern writhing like a nest of snakes. I blinked, and it was still. Dara gasped. ‘Did you see that?’ she whispered. I didn’t answer, because Niall was already ahead, and I didn’t want to be left behind.

We reached the summit, but something was wrong. The cairn—the circle of standing stones that we had visited dozens of times—was different. The stones were taller, and they were arranged in a pattern we had never noticed before, a kind of funnel leading toward a central altar-like stone that I could have sworn had not been there. And there was a sound, a low hum, like a wire strummed in the wind, but it was not the wind. It was coming from the stones themselves.

Niall walked toward the central stone, his torch beam dancing over its surface. ‘This is new,’ he said, his voice with a strange flatness. Dara and I followed, hesitant. As we drew closer, I saw that the stone was covered in carvings, but not the ancient spirals we knew. These were figures—human figures, but with too-long arms and too-many fingers, and they seemed to be moving, crawling over the surface like ants. I reached out to touch one, and my finger passed through it as if it were mist.

Then the hum became a voice. It was not a sound I heard with my ears, but a pressure in my skull, a series of words that I could not understand but somehow felt their meaning: ‘You have come. You have come to the third circuit.’

The ground beneath my feet trembled, and the stones began to glow with a sickly green light, the intricate patterns on their surfaces now visible, pulsing with an unholy energy. I turned to run, but my legs would not move. I was rooted to the spot, and I saw Dara and Niall frozen as well, their faces slack with terror. The voice continued, filling my mind with images—of people like us, climbing this hill over centuries, and each time, they had reached this point, this moment, and then they had been changed.

I saw a future, but it was not ours. It was a vision of the valley below, our cottages, our families, and they were all looking up at the hill, and their eyes were black, and they were smiling. And then the vision shifted, and I saw us—Dara, Niall, and I—standing among the stones, and we were not ourselves. Our skin had taken on the gray of the stone, and our eyes, too, were black, and we were chanting in a language that I now understood.

The voice said, ‘The third circuit is the threshold. You have crossed it. Now you must serve.’

And then the glow faded, the hum ceased, and we were standing in the dark, alone. The stones were as they had always been. The central altar was gone. The carvings were just spirals. We looked at each other, and for a moment, everything seemed normal. But then Niall said, ‘Let’s go down. We’re done here.’ And his voice was wrong—not in tone, but in the way it pressed against our ears, like the hum had.

We descended in silence. The night was cold, and the stars were out. Our torches flickered, and we didn’t speak. When we reached the bottom, we walked to our cars, and we drove home, each in our own vehicle, each of us knowing that something had changed but not daring to say it aloud.

That was three weeks ago. We have not climbed the hill since. We meet now, in the village pub, and we talk about ordinary things, but we cannot look at each other for too long. We have all had the same dream—of the hill, and the stones, and a voice that tells us it is time to return. And every morning, when I look in the mirror, I catch a glimpse of gray in my reflection, and I wonder if it is just the light.

But last night, I woke to find my bedroom door ajar, and I saw a figure in the doorway, tall and thin, its arms too long. It was holding my daughter’s hand, and she was smiling, and her eyes were black. And the voice in my head said, ‘The third circuit awaits.’

I have tried to find information about this, about what happened to us on that hill. There is nothing. No record, no mention of such an occurrence in the folklore. It is as if we have stepped into a space that exists between the known and the forgotten, and we are the only ones who know it. And we are being called back.

This is not a ghost story. It is something worse. It is a door that we opened, and it is waiting for us to walk through it again.