Announcments

It was twelve-fifteen on a sweltering Thursday in late August, and the historic town square of Wren’s Crossing was operating at peak, humdrum lunch-hour capacity.

The heavy, humid Indiana air hung thick over the plaza, carrying the sharp, mouth-watering aroma of fried pork chops and sweet tea from the open doors of Maggie’s Diner. Outside on the sidewalk, every metal table was packed with farmers in faded denim overalls, county clerks fanning themselves with paper menus, and shopkeepers taking a quick break from the heat.

Across the manicured central lawn, near the ornate bronze 1890s town fountain, old man Fletcher sat on his usual weathered green bench. He systematically tore a crust of Maggie’s fresh sourdough bread into tiny squares, flicking them toward a flock of expectant pigeons waddling across the sunbaked pavers. It was clearly a well-rehearsed ritual; the birds stood in a neat arc around him, as rapt as an audience at a theater performance.

On the grand limestone steps of the county courthouse, newly elected Commissioner Wesley Vance was standing under a portable, navy-blue canvas awning, holding court like a peacock in a poultry yard. He was resplendent in a cream-colored western blazer with genuine dark-brown leather piping across the shoulders, an oversized silver belt buckle shaped like the state of Indiana gleaming beneath his prominent, well-fed belly.

Wesley held a battery-powered megaphone in one hand and a half-eaten maple bar from the bakery in the other, his voice booming out over the square in a theatrical, syrupy drawl as he gave an unsolicited campaign update regarding his proposed county road-paving budget.

Inside the cool, high-ceilinged newsroom of the Wren’s Crossing Gazette, Nate Brooks leaned over Helen’s desk, reviewing the layout proofs for Friday’s edition. The overhead ceiling fans whirred lazily, casting rhythmic shadows over the oak desks. The brass desk lamps, and the framed vintage front pages lined the exposed-brick walls.

“If Wesley mentions his paving budget one more time,” Helen said, adjusting her wire-rimmed glasses and dryly dipping her red pen onto a classified proof, “I’m going to personally walk across the street and hand him a shovel.”

Nate chuckled, taking a slow sip of his black coffee. “Let him talk, Helen. It keeps him occupied so the county road crew can actually—”

The rest of his sentence was swallowed whole.

Without warning, the air pressure inside the newsroom plummeted sharply, popping Nate’s ears. A low, guttural vibration groaned through the hundred-year-old floorboards—not from the sky, but rising straight up from deep beneath the bedrock. On Helen’s desk, her ceramic coffee mug began to chatter violently against its wooden coaster, and the glass globes of the overhead lights swayed like pendulums.

Outside, old man Fletcher’s pigeons took flight in a sudden, frantic cloud of gray wings.

Before anyone could move, a sickening, metallic CRACK exploded across the plaza, sounding like a dynamite charge detonating in an empty limestone quarry.

Nate and Gid Vance—who had just stepped out from the back pressroom wiping ink from his calloused thumbs—rushed straight out onto the covered front porch.

Right in the dead center of the square, between the Gazette’s front porch and the bronze fountain, a thirty-foot section of historic red brickwork sheer-fractured. The ground buckled upward for a fraction of a second, spewing pulverized mortar and century-old dust into the air, and then violently collapsed downward into a yawning, pitch-black subterranean void.

A two-inch municipal water main ruptured near the fountain with a deafening, high-pressure hiss, blasting a thirty-foot geyser of brown, muddy water straight up into the summer sky. A heavy iron park bench tipped backward, its wooden slats splintering loud as a gunshot before it vanished completely into the dark abyss.

Pure, unadulterated hysteria erupted across the square.

“The whole town’s sinking!” Martha Higgins shrieked from the bakery porch, dropping a heavy aluminum tray of fresh cinnamon rolls directly onto the sidewalk. The pastries rolled across the concrete as she scrambled backward, clutching her floral apron to her throat.

Dozens of townspeople scattered in every direction. Merchants scrambled over sidewalk display racks, mothers grabbed their children by the arms, and two county deputies instinctively ducked behind a parked pickup truck. At the diner, Maggie sprinted out onto the pavement with a wooden broom clutched like a bayonet, her eyes wide as she watched the central bronze fountain slowly tilt three degrees to the left, its masonry base cracking like eggshell.