Chapter 1 – Dry Hill
Dry Hill, Nevada, wasn't much different from any other small town in 1963.
Main Street had three diners, each claiming to serve the "Best Coffee in America." The air smelled of gasoline and baked dirt, and in summer, heat waves shimmered off the blacktop, making the horizon dance. When the sun went down, the sky turned a sleepy orange before fading into the deep desert purple only towns like Dry Hill ever seemed to know.
It was the kind of place where people left their doors unlocked and kids could ride their bikes across town before dinner. Mothers gossiped over fences. Fathers came home smelling of motor oil and sweat, turning up the radio just in time for the end of the ballgame.
If you asked anyone, they'd say Dry Hill was a good place to raise a family.
Quiet. Friendly. Ordinary.
And they'd be right — mostly.
There was just one place that didn't fit the postcard.
About five miles north of town, past the wheat fields and the dry creek bed, stood a chain-link fence draped in rust and barbed wire. Faded government signs clung stubbornly to it, the paint peeling but the words still legible:
PROPERTY OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY
NUCLEAR TEST RANGE – KEEP OUT
Folks around here had another name for it — the Forty-One Grounds.
Back in 1941, thirty-seven workers vanished there overnight. No bodies. No wreckage. Just gone. The newspapers called it The Tragedy of '41, but nobody in Dry Hill liked to talk about it. After the Army sealed the place, it just sat there — a scar in the dirt, humming softly at night when the wind blew right.
Jack Miller had heard all the stories.
He was fourteen that summer, the kind of kid who spent too much time with his nose buried in magazines and horror comics. His mother said those books would rot his brain. Jack figured it was already half-rotted, and he didn't care.
He lived on Orchard Lane in a tired blue house, paint flaking off the sides, a porch that leaned slightly left, as if it had given up trying to stand straight. His mom worked nights at the diner. His dad — once a proud war hero — now spent most evenings with a bottle for company.
Jack didn't mind the quiet. Quiet gave him room to think, and sometimes thinking was all he had.
Most nights, he met his two best friends behind the school bleachers: Calvin Briggs and Elena Ortiz. Calvin was all noise and bad ideas — the kind of kid who'd jump first and figure things out on the way down. Elena was his opposite: smart, careful, the type who noticed things nobody else did until it was too late. Together, the three of them made a strange mix — curiosity held together by boredom and summer heat.
That Thursday afternoon, the air felt heavier than usual. Dust blew low across the football field as they walked home. The town looked the same as always — kids playing stickball in the street, Mrs. Henderson watering her roses — but something about it felt tilted, like the world was holding its breath.
Calvin kicked a rock down the road. "You guys ever wonder what really happened out at the test site?" he asked.
Elena sighed. "You're still on that?"
"I'm serious," he said, grinning. "They say some of those scientists didn't die. They just… disappeared. Like they stepped clean out of the world."
"That's just a story," Elena said.
"Then let's find out," Calvin shot back, his grin stretching wider — the one he always wore before getting them into trouble.
Jack hesitated. He thought of the fence, the signs, the way grown-ups would change the subject when you mentioned it. Curiosity pulled at him quietly, steadily, like gravity.
"What if we actually went?" he asked, surprising himself a little.
Elena stopped walking. "You two are out of your minds."
"Maybe," Jack said. "But I don't have anything better to do this weekend."
⸻
They found the gate just as the sun sank, the sky a streak of bruised orange fading into violet. The wheat stalks whispered in the soft evening wind. The fence was farther off than they'd guessed, the wire glinting in the last light.
Jack inhaled deep. The air tasted like dust and something older — like secrets waiting in the shadows.
"Here it is," Calvin whispered. Though it wasn't really a secret. The fence loomed before them: rusted chain-link topped with barbed wire, a faded sign reading NUCLEAR TEST RANGE – KEEP OUT. The letters were half-gone, eaten away by sun and time.
Elena shivered. Not from the cold — the air still held warmth — but because the place felt wrong, like wearing a shirt two sizes too small.
"You sure about this?" she asked.
Calvin grinned that dare‑me grin. "Yes. We'll go in, look around, see what we can find. Nothing crazy, no monsters. Just a little adventure."
Jack looked down at his sneakers. His heart thumped louder than the wind through the wheat. He thought of his mom at the diner, his dad at the kitchen table, the comics stacked like trophies in his room. He nodded.
Together, they moved toward the gate. The latch was old, roughly bent outward. Calvin forced it up, and they slid through one at a time into the fenced-off territory.
Inside, the ground felt heavier. The wheat field gave way to cracked, yellow grass and patches of bare dirt where nothing grew. Dead weeds reached up like silent fingers. They walked past a rusted guard post, windows dark and empty. Inside were desks with papers turned to dust. A coffee mug sat on one corner, handle broken off, stained dark.
Elena whispered, "This is… creepy."
Jack didn't answer. His eyes were fixed on a large concrete door ahead, rusted shut, with the letters PROJECT ARACHNE faintly visible.
"Project Arachne?" he muttered.
"Sounds like a spider," Calvin said under his breath.
Jack swallowed.
They pushed the door. It groaned, metal scraping metal. The sound echoed in the tunnel beyond. The door swung open into a cool shaft of air that rushed past their faces — colder than the evening outside. It smelled like mold, and something older, something forgotten.
Jack flicked on the flashlight Calvin had brought. The beam caught the walls: long cracks, dried-rust stains, traces of dark shapes that looked like shadowy webs, or maybe old wiring.
Elena followed quietly. Calvin moved ahead, his bravado fading into caution.
Each step felt heavier, the air thicker. Jack's stomach churned. He thought of the thirty-seven workers who vanished, of the hushed whispers at the diner, of the cold dread that sometimes wakes you at three in the morning.
Then Calvin stopped.
"Look at this," he said quietly.
On a metal table lay a small box. Old. Ornate. Its edges dulled by rust and neglect. No lock. Just welded shut.
Jack stared. Elena stared.
"What do you think it is?" she asked.
Calvin shrugged. "Don't know yet."
Jack felt a tug of fear — and something else. Magnetism. The box seemed to call to him. His hand hovered above it.
"Maybe we shouldn't," Elena said.
Jack touched it anyway. The metal was cold. Colder than the air around them. A short breath escaped his lips. He felt a tiny shock, not physical, but deep in his chest.
"Let's go," Calvin said urgently. "Take it back before anything weird happens."
Jack nodded. They lifted the box and made their way out. The door clicked behind them. The air outside felt lighter. The wheat field looked peaceful again in the fading light.
But Jack knew — as the desert wind blew low across the grass — that nothing was peaceful anymore.