Harry Thomas

Hollow Ground

Kyle

The words ‘Top Secret’ were printed across the top of the page in blocky Art Deco letters. Rick raised an eyebrow. Government types had protocols for stuff like this. Official documents used Times New Roman, Arial, or that typewriter one—some hangover from when bureaucrats in stained shirts punched at weighted keys.

Rick had seen his fair share of sensitive material. Some in the national archive, where declassified files went to die, others from actual whistleblowers back when he still worked in newspapers. Half of those had probably been sanctioned anyway. The real leaks—the good ones—had dried up long before he left print for radio.

But none of them, not even the spurious ones, had headers that looked like a bootleg Fitzgerald novel.

He set down his coffee and held his breath as the waitress approached. Kyle scrambled to cover the papers with the envelope.

Misty, whose name badge matched the foggy grey of her eyes, didn’t seem to notice.

“You want something off the lunch menu before Jamie clocks off?”

Rick shook his head. “No thanks.”

She looked at Kyle, but he kept his head down, hands flat on the envelope.

“Holler if you change your mind.”

The diner was their office when they weren’t at the shack. There were better places to eat—and definitely better coffee now that a Starbucks had opened at the freeway turnoff—but Bill’s was ten minutes from the station and open 24/7 for loggers and quarrymen coming down from the valley. After their midnight broadcast, Rick and Kyle could grab breakfast before the rest of the town even stirred.

“So what do you think?” Kyle asked.

“I think someone’s having you on.”

The fake leather seat creaked as Kyle leaned back. He was turning forty this year—six years younger than Rick, though you wouldn’t know it. The weight gain had accelerated after his dad died, and his hair, once slicked back in a ponytail, now clung to his scalp in greasy curls. He looped it behind one ear. It fell back again.

“How much did you pay for it?” Rick asked.

Kyle watched the door as another family left. “Fifty bucks.”

Rick let out a short laugh. “Whistleblowers don’t risk jail time for fifty bucks. I’ve told you—”

“I know, I know,” Kyle said. “It’s just—this one lines up with the podcast stuff.”

Rick flipped the envelope and scanned the pages again. The report claimed to be from Braywood Psychiatric Hospital—testimonies, medical notes, a hint of experiments. The usual bait.

Braywood had been the biggest psychiatric facility on the eastern seaboard a hundred years ago. A Gothic monolith buried in the forest north of town, home to the worst cases—violent, untreatable, forgotten. There were always rumours about what had gone on inside. Nothing verifiable. The place had shut down in the seventies and had been rotting ever since.

Something shifted under the surface of his thoughts—a low, involuntary flicker of unease. He blamed the lighting, the lack of sleep, the layout of the page. But still, he turned it face-down.

“You mention you were planning a podcast series before your ‘source’ coughed this up?” Rick tapped the page—cut-and-paste formatting, inconsistent fonts. Sloppy work.

Kyle didn’t answer.

“You’re being played, man.”

Kyle sighed. “Fuck.” He raised a hand. “Misty? I’ll take a slice of whatever pie you’ve got left.”

Rick drained his mug and shrugged on his jacket.

“You're not sticking around?” Kyle asked. “I could use your input.”

“Kids are over this weekend. Need to stock up the fridge.”

“Oh cool—you bringing them by the shack?”

They called it the shack, but it was one of the nicest buildings in town: a 1930s redbrick fortress with its own radio tower, looking out over a derelict strip mall. Rick liked how it stood there—defiant, irrelevant, a holdout in a world that had stopped believing in signals.

“Jack probably will. Billy…” He trailed off.

Last time she visited, they’d fought over her phone. She’d called him a loser, said she wished Ken was her real dad. That one landed. Ken—the Baltimore dentist. Whenever Rick picked the kids up, Ken always had some new car in the driveawy or a house extension to brag about. But it was the show she went for when she really wanted to cut deep.

“Rick Rolls' Midnight Mass. Conspiracy theories and glam metal? When are you going to get a real job?”

“You used to like my show,” he’d said.

“Whatever, Rick.”

Rick—the first-name dagger—always used in front of Ken. Cue sympathetic winces.

“I’ll ask them,” Rick said now, tugging his hat lower. “Hopefully it’s Lacey doing the drop-off.”

As he stepped out, a cold draft slid under the door and across the floor—sharp enough that Misty looked up. Rick paused. Just the diner settling, he told himself. Just the wind finding an open seam.

Rick

The high street was less than half a mile, and got shorter every year. The stalwarts were easy to spot—flaking paint, tired signage. They didn’t waste money on facelifts or gimmicks. If you weren’t already using Mandy’s Stop & Shop, Mick’s Hardware or Phil’s Garage, you were either just passing through or had personal reasons for taking your business to the city.

Some newcomers tried to fight the decline—young couples from out of town, full of ideas and start-up cash, convinced a boutique gym or craft beer bar would lift the place. The boxing gym on East Street charged two bucks to use the weights. Joe’s Beer & Grill had one lager on tap and two things on the menu. No contest. The kids got excited on opening day, but once the prices hit their own pockets, the buzz faded. The stores closed. The couples moved back to Baltimore or D.C. to recoup their losses, leaving pristine glass frontages to fade under the sun.

Rick stepped into Spirit and Stone and ducked under a row of dreamcatchers. Aiyanna sat behind the counter, bent over a rock with a soldering iron. Wisps of smoke curled up, mixing with the last breath of a burned-out incense stick.

“Yanni,” Rick said, speaking over the soft bubble of pop music. A digital radio, tuned to anything but WBB, sat beside the handmade jewellery, herbal remedies and pine-scented candles.

“Hey, you.” She looked up with a smile, dark eyes wide. She waved away the smoke and dropped the chrome wand into its stand.

Rick leaned over and kissed her. Her dark hair spilled past her shoulders. Every time he saw her, he wondered if they looked strange together. He wasn’t in bad shape, but the age gap was obvious. She’d moved to Braywood after trying to live with her mother’s people on the reservation. Too late to make things work there, so she’d come here and opened the shop.

He’d never asked how much she made. He hoped it was enough to stay open a while longer.

“You like it?” she asked.

He glanced at the grey stone, now etched with a flurry of silver runes.

“What is it?”

“Doorstop. Or a paperweight. Might be too big for that, though. Got the solderer from Mick’s second-hand. The rock’s courtesy of the State.”

He grinned. “Don’t let the sheriff catch you.”

“Pretty, right?” She didn’t wait for an answer—just pulled a string tag from the drawer and leaned down to write a price.

Rick let his gaze trace the curve of her figure. “Sure is. I meant to say—I’ve got the kids this weekend. Hope that doesn’t mess with any plans. You’re welcome to hang out with us.”

She picked up the rock and walked to the wall shelving. “Oh, cool. Yeah, let me know what you guys are doing. I’ll swing by.”

“Just going to get food in. You want anything picking up?”

He always asked, even though they didn’t eat together much. Yanni lived above the shop. Rick rented a place from Kyle—a two-unit block on West Avenue. Kyle had the flat above his and always joked about switching so he didn’t have to battle the stairs. Lately, it felt less like a joke.

Aiyanna paused briefly—just long enough for Rick to notice—and glanced toward the front window. Then she smiled again.

She started to say something about ice cream, but stopped. A man stooped into the shop, his hair hanging in bleached clumps above dark eyes. His skin was pale and too smooth, like paraffin stretched across a mannequin’s skull—not quite alive, but not mask either. Adopted, somehow.

Rick had seen cult types before, but this wasn’t cosplay. This felt older, more extreme.

Then he saw the man’s feet.

Bare. Black stains marked the hem of his pants. His feet were caked in mud, the skin raw, with half-healed sores split open between the toes. Still, he smiled—broad, white– too wide.

“Morning,” he said. His voice was calm, disconnected—like the words weren’t quite his.

“Hi there,” Yanni replied, not yet close enough to smell him.

Rick stepped back from the counter, giving her space.

“What are you after?” she asked.

“I’ve been asked to collect a resonance bowl. Sometimes called a singing bowl, or a Tibetan bell…”

Yanni nodded, turned to a nearby shelf, and lifted a small metal dish in both hands.

Rick raised his eyebrows. Business might not be as bad as he thought. Though to him, it looked like a cereal bowl—or something his gran might’ve used to hold potpourri.

“Will this do?”

“Ah, that is lovely,” the man said. “But I need the sound to carry through bone.”

Yanni’s face fell, sure she’d misheard. “Want me to order a bigger one?”

“No, but it’s a lovely store. Thank you for keeping it safe.”

He moved toward the shelves and inspected the rune-covered rock.

“Really—it’s no trouble,” Yanni said. “Just let me know what size you’re after.”

He raised one hand, touching the silver lines with his dirt-caked fingers.

“I doubt your supplier has what I need,” he said, fingers grazing the stone. “But things tend to surface when the time is right.”

Rick didn’t know whether to laugh or ask him to stop pawing the merch.

Yanni glanced at Rick, uncertain. “Anything else I can help with then?”

The man smiled.

The air shifted. A dense stillness settled in. The dreamcatchers had stopped moving. Something pushed at the edges of Rick’s vision—like looking through water. A metallic taste hit his tongue. He felt suddenly untethered—like the ground was no longer holding him at the same weight.

“Not yet.” the man said, locking eyes with Yanni until she blinked. “A pleasure to meet you, Aiyanna.”

Then he turned, paused at the door, considered Rick like a man inspecting a photograph, and smiled again before stepping into the sun. A faint chemical smell lingering in the air.

Rick let out a nervous laugh. “What was that about?”

Yanni stared after him, then closed the door with both palms flat and flipped the lock. She grabbed a pouch from her apron and dusted the floor with white powder.

“Yanni?”

She didn’t respond. She focused on the spot where the man had stood. Then picked up the rune-covered stone like it was hot with memory, too fresh to touch, moved through the corridor and out into the back street.

Rick followed.

She dropped the stone into the dumpster, scattered it with the same white powder and closed the lid. Then she washed her hands and dried them in silence.

Rick didn’t ask what the ritual was for. He didn’t want to know the answer.

“I think I’ll call it a day. Want some company for your shop?” She unlooped her apron with a thin smile.

Rick nodded, watching her closely. Yanni didn’t rattle easily and she didn’t close early. Not ever.

“Sure,” he said. “You want to tell me what that was about?”

She looked to the wide window. The dreamcatchers shifted softly, like something had been disturbed and hadn’t quite left.

Ethan

Tyler lobbed a balled-up note across the classroom. It hit Ethan’s shoulder and dropped to the floor. Up front, Ms. Craddock was mid-drone, Catcher in the Rye open in one hand, her nasal reading voice winding down the last fifteen minutes of the day.

Ethan smoothed the paper flat. Tyler was already back to staring at Emily Clarke, whose skirt and sandals seemed to have him hypnotised.

Howlern Lakes at 5. Andy’s got wine. I’ve got a fifty. The girls are coming.

Tyler caught Ethan’s eye and raised his brows. Ethan gave a thumbs-up—mostly for Emily’s benefit. Tyler’s money source was always a mystery. His dad worked construction when he wasn’t passed out drunk, and their house looked condemned.

Ms. Craddock dropped the book to her lap. “Is that in appreciation of the text, Mr. Foster?”

“What?”

“Is that thumbs-up in appreciation for my reading? Or an indication to Mr. Novak that you rate J.D. Salinger?”

“Both?”

A ripple of laughter. Even Emily smiled. Ethan felt the flush rise.

“Well, since we’re all so riveted by Mr. Foster’s insight,” Craddock said, turning to the whiteboard, “you’ll all be writing five hundred words on whether Holden Caulfield’s academic failure drives his alienation from society.”

The class groaned.

“Due Monday. Late submissions get an F. Which impacts your finals. Which impacts your future. Enjoy your weekends.”

Ethan watched Emily gather her things. Maybe tonight was a chance to actually talk to her.

Tyler mouthed what the fuck and gave Craddock’s back the finger.

When school let out, Ethan, Tyler, and Andy were already plotting the pickup. Andy’s dad had a bottle stashed—Tyler had cash; they’d hit up the gas station at the edge of town to try their luck with passing truckers. Then it was off to Howlern Lakes to make a fire and wait for the girls.

It all went to hell when Andy saw his dad’s truck in the driveway.

“Shit. No way I’m getting it now.”

“Just stuff it in your jeans,” Tyler said.

“It’s a wine bottle, Tyler.”

“I know that, Andy.”

Ethan winced at the sharp tone. First-name snipes were never good. He stayed quiet. Tyler’s house was plan B, but that meant risking his dad’s mood swings. Last time, a plate had missed Tyler and nicked Ethan’s arm. Not exactly a cozy sleepover.

“Pretend you’ve got a boner over Chloe Madderson,” Tyler said.

“If he catches me, you owe me the fifty.”

“Fine. But if he doesn’t, you get Chloe to skinny dip.”

“Oh, because that’s easy.” Andy put on a falsetto. “Hey Chloe, love your rack, how about a quick muff splash in the lake?”

Tyler laughed—at the mental image or the word muff, Ethan wasn’t sure.

“You’ve been circling each other for weeks,” Tyler shrugged. “Can’t be that hard.”

“Fine. I get the bottle, you get Emily to skinny dip.”

Andy’s mom had already found the stashed bottle. When he walked in, his dad didn’t yell—just muttered, “I wouldn’t be here when your mother gets home,” which was somehow worse.

So they ended up at the gas station. Tyler held court while Ethan and Andy flanked him like reluctant backup.

“Don’t come on too strong,” Tyler said. “Just casual: ‘Hey, you mind grabbing us a case? Pick up something for yourself too.’” He shaped his finger into a gun and shot it at the imaginary trucker.

Ethan glanced at Tyler. “How did you get the fifty anyway?”

Tyler looked around, suddenly cagey.

“You know those Virginia conspiracy forums on Reddit?”

Andy snorted. “The ones where old dudes offer blowjobs for fifty bucks?”

Tyler rolled his eyes. “No. Real forums. Paranormal crap, UFOs, all that.”

Ethan leaned in. Tyler’s tone had shifted. This wasn’t typical bravado.

“There’s this guy asking about Braywood Asylum,” Tyler said. “Said he’d pay for info. Records. Testing reports.”

“What kind of testing?” Ethan asked.

“The usual psychic bullshit, CIA stuff. So I wrote something. Fake report. Sent it over. He paid me.”

“Wait, for real?” Andy asked. “Who is this guy?”

“Some fat dude. Works at the radio tower. Met me in the alley behind the WBB building. Paid me cash.”

“You’re kidding,” Ethan said.

“Swear on my balls.”

Andy howled. “You blew a fat guy for cash.”

Tyler just grinned. “Just a bit of creative writing. Craddock would be proud.”

Ethan stared at him. “You seriously sold some made-up report on the asylum for fifty bucks?”

“Yep.”

“What if he comes after you?”

Tyler scoffed. “He’s huge. He doesn’t even know my name. Besides, it’s Braywood—everyone thinks something weird happened up there. I just gave the guy what he wanted. He didn’t even blink when he handed it over. Just stared at me like I’d confirmed something."

That part stuck with Ethan.

When they got to the gas station, the forecourt was empty. They took turns chucking rocks at the mile marker. One guy in a Dodge pulled in. Tyler approached. The guy shook his head.

“Not a chance, buddy.”

They waited another twenty minutes.

Tyler stood. “Fuck it. Let’s go.”

Ethan followed, but the story clung to him.

His mom once warned him to stay away from the asylum, said it was where bad thoughts go to grow teeth.

*