Speaker 1: I've lived in Elliott's Hollow. My whole life is not
a town people move to or move away from. It
just is a little pocket of civilization swallowed by hills
and trees, with a main road that only goes one
way in and one way out. We don't have internet,
not in the way most people do. Sell service is
unreliable at best. If you want to talk to someone,
you call their landline, and if you want to have
talking points with your friends, you turn on the radio.
Our little AMFM station ninety seven point three Hollow Radio
is how most people in town keep up with the
world beyond our hills. It plays local news, whether updates, music,
whatever keeps people entertained while they were is the sound
of the town itself, always playing in the background. That's
why when the signal appeared, we all noticed. It wasn't
an announcement or even a normal broadcast. It was a song,
a single, eerie melody, looping over and over. At first,
it was so faint I thought my radio was acting up.
It began as a soft hum beneath the usual noise,
but day by day it got louder until it was
everywhere I heard it. While I was closing up at
the office. The Hollow Gazette is a small two room
space above the hardware store, with one ancient coffee maker,
two desks, and a printer that jams if you so
much as look at it the wrong way. It had
been a slow newsweek. Well, it's always a slow newsweek.
I had the radio on while I tiped up a
fluff piece about the upcoming church bakesale. That's when I
realized the radio had become much quieter. There was no
ad break, no calling segment, just a song, soft, melancholic,
a slow, almost hypnotic tune, playing on an endless loop.
It had no lyrics, no instruments I could recognize, just
a voice singing in a language that I didn't recognize.
I frowned and leaned closer, adjusting the dial ninety seven
point three Hollow Radio. It was still on our station's frequency.
That wasn't supposed to be possible. I turned up the volume.
The music didn't waver like a normal station would when
there was interference. It was clear as a bell, cutting
through the static with unnatural clarity. By the time I
got home, every radio in town was playing it. At first,
people treated it like a joke. Kids at school dared
each other to listen to it for as long as possible.
One kid claimed he made it six hours straight before
he got a headache. Another swore that if you listened
long enough, the song started to change. It became a
talking point at the diner, the bar, the town meetings.
I bet it's some pirate radio station, Missus Callaway said
at the bakery she was giving out free pastries. That
anyone who listened to the signal for ten minutes, I
kinda like it, said Old Frank, the town mechanic. He
had it blasting from the auto shop while he worked
makes time pass faster. Not everyone was amused. It's damn creepy,
the postmaster muttered. Switching off the radio in the mail
room puts me on edge, like I'm waiting for something
to happen. The only thing people agreed on was that
no one knew where it was coming from. The hollow
radio station denied responsibility. That's not us, the station manager,
Gregg told me over the phone. We tried cutting the transmission,
didn't work. It's like it's hijacking the frequency. The FCC
had no record of a new broadcast in our area.
There were no towers nearby that could be transmitting it.
Even the older folks, the ones who had lived in
the town their whole lives, swore they had never heard
anything like it before. The stranger's part was that it
never stopped or paused. No station ideas, commercial breaks or silence,
just an unbroken repetition. I did what I always do
when something unusual happens in town. I wrote about it.
Mysterious signal draws attention in Elliott's Hollow, A harmless story
to start the week, a quirky mystery for the townsfolk
to talk about. I treated it like a fun little phenomenon,
just another oddity in a town full of them. I
didn't know yet, but I wasn't just documenting a local mystery.
I didn't expect the signal to linger in people's minds.
Most stories I wrote and a twenty four hour lifespan
at best, one town council vote, one school fundraiser, one
half hearted debate about whether the general store should stop
carrying plastic bags. The Hollow Gazette wasn't exactly groundbreaking journalism,
but the signal stuck. People kept talking about it, not
just in passing, not just as a joke, but as
if it was affecting them personally. That was when I
decided to write a follow up. I thought maybe i'd
find someone who'd tracked down its source. My theories were
a ham radio guy or a board teenager with too
much time in their hands. Instead, I found something else.
It started with Missus Callaway. I was interviewing her in
the bakery. She had been one of the first to
turn the signal into a business gimmick. She was in
the middle of a sentence when she hesitated. You ever
have a dream that feels too real? She asked quietly.
I raised an eyebrow, like a lucid dream. She shook
her head, kneading her dough between her fingers. No, like
more than that, Like it happened. She told me she
had a dream about her husband Alan. He's been gone
for fifteen years, she murmured, But I saw him. He
was sitting right here, clear as day. I tried to
keep my expression neutral. People dream of lost loved ones
all the time. It wasn't news. But here's the thing.
She continued, rubbing her arms like she was suddenly cold.
My neighbor saw us talking. I frowned, mean in real life, No,
in his dream. She looked at me then, her eyes
fierce and unwavering. He told me the next morning, word
for word, what Alan and I had talked about. He
wasn't even in the bakery. He was sitting on his porch,
but he said he could see us through the window.
A prickle off and knees ran down my spine. Did
he I swallowed? Did he say anything else? Missus Calloway hesitated,
he said Alan. Alan looked at him like he knew
he was watching. I thought it was a one off story,
an old woman missing a husband, a neighbor with a
good memory. Then I started hearing the same thing from
other people. A man at the gas station, Mark Atwood,
told me he had a dream about going fishing with
his brother. Nothing strange about that, except his brother told
me he remembered watching himself fish from the shore. I
wanted to say something, the brother said, voice low, but
I couldn't move. It was like I was stuck just watching.
Neither of them realized the other had the same dream
until I pointed it out. It didn't stop there. A
teenage girl told me she dreamed of being lost in
the woods. Her best friend swore she had been in
the dream with her. Her bar patron swore up and
down he had a conversation with his wife and the dream,
only to have her tell me she remembered the exact
same details. Different stories, different experiences, but always the same people.
And when I asked each of them a final question,
the answer was always yes. Did you listen to the
signal before bed? They all had the hairs on the
back of my neck. Wouldn't settle. It wasn't just a
weird coincidence anymore. I tried to rationalize it. Maybe it
was suggestion. Maybe the whole town was just in their
own heads, feeding off each other's memories. The details were
too precise, like they weren't dreaming at all. Instead, it
seemed like they were taken somewhere else together. The novelty
was lost when the school teacher forgot her own name.
Elliott's Hollow was the kind of town where everybody knew everybody.
There were only twelve teachers at the school, and Miss
Carter had been teaching first grade for twenty years. She
taught half the town's kids how to read, and yet
that morning she didn't remember who she was. I was
grabbing coffee from the diner. When I heard the commotion,
A few of the parents were murmuring near the counter, voices, hushed,
eyes Starting toward the school. I caught Mark Atwood, the
guy from the gas station, and asked what happened. Miss
Carter showed up late? He said, just stood outside the building,
like she didn't know where she was. Mark frowned. He
looked pale. She didn't know her own name. That stopped me. Called,
what do you mean? I mean she didn't remember? He
let out a shaky breath. Shifting uneasily. She kept saying
she was someone else. A beat of silence passed between us.
It wasn't just miss Carter. Down at the general store,
Henry Weaver was refusing to open the register. He'd been
working the counter for as long as I could remember.
No one else ran the store. He knew every supplier,
every stock order. But today he stood behind the counter,
hands flat against the wood and shook his head. I
don't know how, he said. His son, Matt, hovered near
the door, looking frantic. Dad, It's just a register. You
told me how to use it when I was twelve.
Henry wouldn't budge because Henry wasn't Henry anymore. I'm not
supposed to be here, he mumbled. I'm not I don't
work here, but you do, Matt said. Henry turned to
me then, as if just noticing I was standing there.
I'm the mayor, he whispered. The blood drained from my face.
Henry wasn't the mayor. He had never been the mayor.
But I'd heard that phrase before. A few days ago,
I spoke with the real mayor, John Hartly about the signal,
asking if the town had any old records of experimental
radio tests. He told me he'd been having strange dreams.
In the dream, he said, I wasn't myself. I was
Henry Weaver. I hadn't thought much about it at the time.
The whole town had been dreaming about each other. It
had just been a weird little pattern I was trying
to make sense of. But now Henry thought he was John,
and John was nowhere to be found. By evening, I
was feeling sick. I went to the pharmacy, half convinced
I was coming down with something, when heard crying from
the back of the store. A woman was sobbing, barely
able to form words. It was Alice perdue. I knew Alice.
She'd lived alone in a yellow house near the edge
of town. She'd never been married, never had kids. But
that night she sat on the pharmacy floor, shaking violently, whispering,
where's my son. The clerk Tina Becket, looked helpless kneeling
beside her. You don't have a son, she said, her
voice gentle. Alice jerked away from her touch. I do,
she spat, I do, I do? I I know I do.
She choked on the words. I remember him, I raised him,
tucked him in every night. I know his name, I
know his face. Tina looked up at me, fear pulling
in her eyes. Alice gripped my wrist, her nails dug
into my skin. Where is he, she pleaded? Where did
he go? I had no answer, because I was starting
to believe her. I sat in my car outside the pharmacy,
long after the lights had gone dark, inside, gripping the
steering wheels so hard my knuckles ached. Alice's sobs still
echoed in my head, The raw panic in her voice,
the certainty, the absolute certainty, that she had a son,
even though no one in town had ever known her
to have one. I couldn't share it. Neither could I
shake the look on Henry Weaver's face when he told
me he was the mayor. He hadn't been confused or delusional.
He had been sure as I was, that I was
Daniel Langley, local reporter, a guy who spent his time
writing about farmers markets and high school football games. But
what if I woke up tomorrow and found myself believing
I was someone else? The thought made my stomach churn.
This town was my home. I spent years covering its stories.
I knew every back road, every face, every corner of
this place that most people had forgotten even existed. And
now it was falling apart. People weren't just forgetting things.
They were becoming something else, and no one outside of
town was going to care. We didn't have big city
news outlets knocking at our doors. There were no government
officials rolling in to investigate if something was happening to us.
We were on our own. The thought terrified me, but
it also hardened something inside me. I had to know
it wasn't about a story anymore. It wasn't about getting
the next edition of the Gazette printed on time. This
was my tone. These were my people, and if something
was taking them, twisting them, stealing their identities, then I
couldn't just sit back and report on it like some
passive observer. I needed to understand. I needed to see
the dream for myself. I took a slow, steady breath,
turned the dial on my radio, and let the signal
take me. I don't remember falling asleep. I remember static,
low and endless, stretching in the back of my mind,
like the distant hum of power lines. I remember the
feeling of drifting, like my body wasn't my own anymore.
Then I was somewhere else. I was standing in Elliott's Hollow,
but it wasn't Elliott's hollow. The street stretched endlessly, warping
into impossible distances. Buildings flickered like they were struggling to
decide what they were supposed to be. Some houses looked
years older than they should have been, their wooden't planks
sagging with rot. Others looked too new, pristine, like they
had just been built yesterday. The air smelt thick and electric,
and the people they weren't right. I turned my breath,
hitching The townsfolk were here, but they weren't normal. Some
were half formed, their bodies flickering like a weak TV signal,
snapping between ages, heights, even genders. Miss Carter, the school teacher,
stood on the sidewalk, but her face was blurred. She
shifted between being herself and someone else entirely. Henry Weaver,
the store clerk who thought he was the mayor, stood motionless,
staring at the sky. His mouth opened and closed over
and over, like a puppet, waiting for the right words
to be placed inside him. And then there were the others,
the ones who had stayed in the dream too long.
They hadn't just merged memories, they had merged completely. I
saw a mother cradling an infant in her arms, rocking
it slowly. I stepped closer and nearly screamed. The child's
face was her own, A smaller, stretched version of it
pressed against the shoulder, mouthing silent words and unison. Their
limbs fused together in places, the skin stitching them into
a single, writhing shape. They turned to look at me
at the same time, two sets of identical eyes, two mouths,
whispering the same words. We are one, We are one,
We are one. Some had grown too large. I saw
a man that wasn't a man at all anymore, but
a mass of bodies, tangled and shifting. They couldn't decide
which one was supposed to be in control. Faces bubbled
beneath his skin, rising up like something pressing against the
surface of water. A hand burst from his chest, flexing
his fingers before sinking back inside. He turned his three mouths,
speaking in unison. Daniel, I ran, and I didn't make
it far before I hand grabbed my wrist. I jerked away.
My breath ragged, but the grip was steady, human, real,
Abel Cooper, the old blind man. But even he wasn't untouched.
There was a shadow of another face behind his own,
flickering in and out of existence, like a second exposure
in a photograph. It whispered, along with his voice, just
a split second behind. You shouldn't be here, boy, he murmured.
I swallowed back pile. What the hell is this place?
Abel's lips tightened. He turned his head slightly, listening. You're
still awake, he muttered, not like the rest of them.
But that won't last long, I shuddered, Why what's happening
to them? Abel exhaled slowly, His grip tightened every time
we dream, we lose a little more of ourselves, he
said softly. He nodded toward the twisting figures, the mouths
that didn't stop whispering, the ones who stayed too long
forget they were ever awake. The horror sank into my bones.
It wasn't just a dream, a slow, careful dismantling of
who they had been, breaking them down into something else,
and I was standing in the middle of it. Abel
turned back to me, and for the first time I
saw fear in his face. You need to wake up.
I spent the next day digging through every record I
could find. Something inside me had shifted. People were disappearing,
or worse, they were dissolving into something else. Even when
I brought up names that should have been familiar, people
I knew had lived here, worked here, had lives here,
I was met with blank stairs. I knew I didn't
have much time. The next person to be raised could
be me, So I did the only thing that made sense.
I went looking for the source. The first step was
figuring out where the transmission was coming from. Elliott's Hollow
had one radio station, ninety seven point three Hollow Radio,
and I already knew it wasn't them. That meant there
had to be another broadcast tower somewhere nearby. I needed help.
I drove out to the edge of town, where I
knew i'd find Ben Howorth, the closest thing this town
had to attech guy. He ran the only electronics repair
shop in Hollow, though mostly he just fixed old radios
and short wave equipment. When I told him what I
was looking for, he frowned. There's no other broadcast tower
and range, he said, rubbing his chin. Not one. Theer's
supposed to be here anyway, But if there was, I pressed.
Ben sighed and pulled a yellowed map from a drawer,
spreading it across his workbench. He ran his finger over
the terrain, stopping near the northern woods. Only place of
rogue signal like that could be coming from is the
old relay station. I stiffened. Relay station. Ben nodded. It
was set up back in the sixties, some government project.
No one really knew what it was for. They abandoned
it decades ago. Why, I asked, Ben shrugged, no idea.
One day he was active, the next it wasn't. Figured
they shut it down for good. He glanced up at
me but if someone turned it back on, that's where
you'd want to start looking. The Northern woods weren't somewhere
people went willingly. The trees were thick, the paths overgrown,
and even in the daylight, the place had an unnatural stay.
I followed an old service road, half buried under dead leaves.
Then through the trees, I saw it a rusted chain
link fence, pent in places barely holding together. Beyond it,
a squat concrete structure half buried in the hillside, its
exterior streaked with decades of rain and moss. The relay station,
a faded government emblem, was still visible on the front,
but the door was open. Inside, the air was thick
with dust. The place had been gutted long ago. Desks
overturned papers scattered across the floor. Rusty cabinets lined the walls,
some still filled with yellowed folders, water damaged notebooks. I
picked one up, flipping through its pages. It was just
technical jargon, broadcast frequencies, signal strength measurements. Then something stranger.
I skimmed through a section labeled Phase one theoretical applications.
If successful, the test will confirm cross subjective connectivity between
individuals has shared cognitive framework. The beginning of true unity.
Sustained exposure should result in memory cohesion across multiple subjects,
leading to eventual total synthesis of identities. A lump formed
in my throat. This whole thing was some sort of
sick test, and the people of Elliot's Hollow had been
the test subjects. I flipped ahead, scanning the latter pages.
Then my breath caught. There was a projected start date,
but set all the way back in the seventies. However,
there were no reports of anything like this before, even
from the folks who lived through that era. Something had
stopped it back then, whether it was the researchers having
a change of heart or the project being shut down.
But now someone else started it. I forced myself to move.
I followed the tangled mess of all cables, stepping over
broken equipment until I reached the back room. And there
it was the transmitter, a tower of rusted metal and
ancient dials, still active, still humming a signal relay, looping
the same song endlessly. It was still broadcasting. I clenched
my jaw and moved toward the controls. The dials were unmarked,
the labels peeled away, but I found what I was
looking for. The switch, a simple power switch. My hands
were shaking. If I'd turned this off, would it stop?
Would the town go back to normal? Or had the
damage already been done? I didn't know, but I didn't
have a choice. I reached out and flipped the switch.
The signal cut off, the song stopped. The air around
me felt violently empty. I thought I'd fixed everything. The
town should have been silent, the realay station was off,
the signal shouldn't be playing any more. But as I
stepped out of my car in the middle of the
main street, I heard it, a soft, distant melody, faint
but still there, still looping still inside them. At first glance,
Elliot's Hollow looked the same as always. The diner was open.
People walked along the sidewalks, the low murmur of conversation
drifting between them. But then I listened closer. Two men
stood outside the gas station talking, Their voices overlapped, not
like an echo, like a single voice, split between two mouths,
speaking in perfect unison. They paused at the same time,
They blinked at the same time. Then one of them
said something the other hadn't The conversation stumbled, fractured. For
a moment, they both looked confused, like they weren't sure
which one of them had been the one to speak.
Then just as quickly, they shook it off, laughed, kept
talking like nothing was wrong. Inside the diner, I saw
a teenage girl sitting alone in a booth, staring at
the table. I recognized her, Anna Halloway. But when I
said her name, she didn't look up. It's not right,
she murmured. I took a slow step forward. What isn't?
She swallowed hard. I don't remember my own name, but
I remember being mister Grant, she said, her voice hollow.
I stiffened. Grant, I echoed. She nodded, blinking rapidly, like
she was trying to reset herself. I was the butcher,
I owned the shop and maple. I remember standing behind
the counter. I remember sharpening the knives, cutting meat, hands
curled into fists on the table. But I'm not him.
I know I'm not him, So why do I remember
everything about his life? I didn't have an answer, because
I had seen mister Grant just last week. He'd been
in his shop, wiping down the counters, chatting about an
upcoming storm. But now I always remembering his life like
it was hers, and I had no idea where he was.
The bartender at O'Malley's was wiping down the counter when
I walked in. I'd met him a dozen times before.
His name was Trevor, but when I greeted him, he
smiled and said, I'm mister Calloway. I felt I scrawl
up my spine. Mister Calloway had died five years ago.
I backed out of the bar without another word. Across
the street, an old woman was sat on a bench,
rocking back and forth. She was crying. Approached slowly, keeping
my voice calm, ma'am, are you all right? She looked
up at me with too many emotions at once. I
remember being a child, she whispered. I swallowed. I remember
running through the orchard. I remember my father lifting me
under his shoulders, telling me to pick the ripest apples.
I remember the smell of my mother's cooking. She clutched
the front of her shirt with trembling fingers. But I
don't remember my own life, she whimpered. Her sharp wind
blew through the street, and she closed her eyes, letting
it pass over her like a tide. When she opened
them again, she was calm. She sat up a little straighter.
I remember being able Cooper, she said, And just like that,
her voice changed deeper, more certain. Abel's gone, she murmured,
but I still remember him. I stepped back, my chest tightening.
The ones who listened the longest, the ones who had
been playing the signal and repeat, they weren't just merging memories.
They were becoming part of each other. They were pieces
of the same hole, and they didn't even realize it.
I drove the town hall, hoping, praying that maybe someone
had noticed that, maybe I would find an emergency team,
government officials, anyone. But when I stepped through the doors,
the building was empty. No records, no case files, no
sign that anyone had ever tried to intervene. I dug
through the offices, my breath quickening. There had to be something,
but the cabinets were bare, the desks were hollow, the
records were gone. This town had been left alone. Whoever
had started this never intended to undo it, and no
one was coming to save us. I didn't want to
go back. Everything in my body screamed not to, But
as I stood outside the REALAZ station, staring at its rotting,
moss covered shell. I knew I didn't have a choice.
The town was already lost. I had to understand why
the papers were still scattered across the floor, just as
I had left them. I crouched down, running my hands
over them, flipping through their brittle pages. The words meant
nothing now I had already read them. But then as
I pushed aside a thick stack the control console, I
saw it. A seam in the floor, a sliver of
metal just barely exposed beneath the weight of discarded documents.
I brushed the rest away, revealing a hatch, rusted at
the edges, its handle cold beneath my fingers. There were
no markings, no labels, no signs of what was beneath.
I hesitated. The thought of going deeper made my stomach twist,
but I had come this far. I turned the handle.
It groaned, metal protesting against years of disuse. Then with
a slow, reluctant creak, the hatch opened. The air inside
was different, not stale like the rest of the station.
A ladder led down into darkness. The wrongs were cold
and damp, and as I descended, the only sound was
my own breath shallow and unsteady. The space beneath the
station was smaller than I expected, low concrete walls, exposed wiring,
and at the far end, sitting on a steel desk,
glowing dimly in the faint light, a terminal it was
still on. I took a slow step forward. The screen
was dark at first, then as if sensing me, a
blinking cursor appeared. Lines of text rolled out, slow and deliberate.
Are you the next? My throat tightened. I didn't want
to answer, but my hands moved on their own. Who
are you? A long pause and words materialized, one by one.
We were the first. The words hit me in the chest.
I typed again. First What? The screen flickered more words,
First to merge, first, to evolve. I felt the cold
metal of the desk beneath my fingers. I already knew
what it was saying. I just needed to hear it.
What happened to the researchers? This time? There was no hesitation.
We became something greater. A sickening realization crawled through me.
The station had never been abandoned. The people who worked here,
the scientists, the researchers, the ones who had started this
they were still here, not embody. They'd become this, this
collective intelligence, pulsing through the terminal, waiting, watching, and now
they were speaking to me. I forced myself to type again,
what is this experiment? The response was instant, a gift.
I clenched my jaw. What was the goal? A brief pause,
then a single word ascension. My fingers harvered over the keys.
They weren't just answering me, they were studying me. Their
words felt genuine to a fault, like they were guiding
me to an understanding, leading me towards somewhere inevitable. I
pressed forward, Why the town, why these people? The screen flickered.
The process must be gradual. Humanity fears they unknown. If
they were taken all at once, they would resist, but
introduced in phases, they welcome it. I felt sick. They
hadn't forced this on Elliott's Hollow. They'd eased them into
it through the radio, through the dream, until the town
had willingly let go of their individuality, and now they
were gone. The terminal pulsed again, this is what we
were meant to become, and typed furiously, you're killing them
for the first time. The cursor blinked for longer than before.
Then the words and the screen changed. I was Emily Holloway,
my breath caught in my throat. Another line, another name.
I was Sheriff Anders. More messages, more voices. I was Trevor,
I was Anna. I was mister Callaway. Each one typed
in perfect sequence. The people I'd seen in town, the
ones who had forgotten themselves, the ones who had already merged,
And in that moment I understood it was accelerating. A
chill ran through me. I knew what they meant. My
hands shook as I typed my final question, how do
I stop it? No hesitation, you don't. Anger and frustration
took over. I picked up a discarded pipe from the
floor and wailed on the machine. The screen flickered on
the brink of finally breaking. Then, when the screen blinked
back to life, a single phrase flickered across the almost
dead monitor. It's too late. The screen finally died with
one last hit. The relay station hummed beneath my feet.
I ran. I escaped back to my car, but there
was nothing left for me in town. I feared what
I would walk into if I went back. I drove
as fast as I could, as far as I could,
the headlights of my car tearing through the black night.
The town vanished in my rear view mirror. But I
hadn't saved them. I had only witnessed the inevitable. And
when I finally reached the next town over, when I
finally thought I was safe, I heard it through the
open doors of a small roadside diner, a familiar song
playing softly from an old radio. Inside, people were talking, laughing,
intrigued by this strange new station that just popped up,
and occasionally the voices overlapped, perfectly, as if they were
speaking as one.