The numbers station had been broadcasting on the same obscure shortwave frequency for as long as radio hobbyist Boone Achterberg had been monitoring it, an anonymous voice reciting strings of digits at irregular intervals that he’d always assumed, like most Read more…

The tattoo had cost graphic designer Nadia Okafor considerably less than her artist’s usual rate, a small, intricate spiral pattern she’d chosen on impulse during a difficult week, and it took exactly three days before she noticed the design had Read more…

Ashwood Funeral Home had served Millbrook for three generations before mortician Costa Reyes inherited the family business from his recently deceased father, and it took only his second week managing the embalming room alone before he began noticing that certain Read more…

The abandoned mine outside Millbrook had been sealed for safety reasons decades before geology graduate student Priya Anand received special permission to conduct research inside its outer tunnels, and it was her second day of sample collection when her equipment Read more…

The photograph had been sitting in a box of estate sale finds for nearly a month before genealogy researcher Sana Kessler finally got around to scanning it into her digital archive, and it was only during the scanning process that Read more…

The ferry to Kestrel Island ran twice weekly, and marine biologist Ines Farrokh had arranged her research trip carefully around its limited schedule, expecting six days of solitary field work documenting the island’s unusual tide pool ecosystem before the return Read more…

Physics graduate student Dario Kwan first noticed the discrepancy on a Tuesday, or what he believed was a Tuesday, waking to find his apartment exactly as he’d left it the previous morning, down to the precise angle of his coffee Read more…

The Ashgrove Apartments had a considerably lower vacancy rate than any comparable building in the city, a fact that struck new resident Priya Iyer as reassuring right up until her third week, when she noticed her downstairs neighbor’s apartment number, Read more…

The taxi driver who picked up graduate student Costa Reyes outside the university library at exactly midnight seemed ordinary enough, an older man with a weathered face who introduced himself simply as Farrow, until Costa noticed, several minutes into their Read more…

The cornfield maze outside Millbrook had operated safely for fifteen consecutive Halloween seasons before park ranger Delia Vance received the frantic call reporting that a group of six teenagers had entered after closing and hadn’t emerged by the time their Read more…