Hope had never seen Stonehenge in person. He had only seen photographs of it.
The world-famous landmark looked like this: a dozen or twenty enormous stones formed a huge circle, with many more stones haphazardly arranged in the middle.
Sentinel Hill was a remote hill in the remote little town of Dunwich, practically in the middle of nowhere.
Its summit was bare earth, without a blade of grass or a single tree, yet several simply carved stone pillars stood there, arranged in a circle.
Like a miniature Stonehenge.
Wilbur's destination was one of the round stones inside the circle.
Its surface was flat, perhaps five or six meters wide, and half a meter off the ground.
It was too regular to look natural.
It's just like an altar, Hope thought.
He felt something beneath his foot. It was long and rounded, unlike a stone or a branch.
Hope crouched and picked it up: a yellowish-white cylindrical object, like the bone of some creature.
"A thigh bone," Wilbur said. "Put it down. We need to get the bonfire ready. If you want it, you can take one home when we leave."
A thigh bone?
Hope checked its length. Though incomplete, it was longer than his forearm. What kind of creature had a thigh bone that long...?
Hope held the bone against his thigh for comparison. If it belonged to a person, that person would have been a little shorter than Hope...
"This used to be a graveyard," Wilbur said.
Hope flung the thigh bone away as if he'd been shocked. It struck a stone pillar and split in two.
Looking at the broken bone, he regretted it and wanted to put it back where it had been, but its original spot was no different from where it lay now.
He got