Chapter 1

A few months ago, I (32M) moved to a small town in Nebraska. I won't lie and say that it's a glamorous place to live, but the community here has been welcoming, and there's great beauty to be found in my area's many canyons, caves, and prairies.

My eight-year-old Westie, Francis Crozier, immediately took a liking to the place. We've only been here for half a year, but I've already taken him on all sorts of adventures, from Toadstool to Chimney Rock. People don't generally think of West Highland Terriers as great adventure dogs, but they're an intelligent and tough little breed, and Francis is as brave as they come.

Last weekend, I took Francis to explore a new walking path: a dirt trail at the southern edge of our town, bordered on one side by a quiet road and on the other by wide open grasslands. We went early in the morning to beat the heat. Francis walked off leash, as he usually does. I admired the sight of the prairie as we made our way down the trail, how the greenery extended as far as the eye could see and met the blue sky in a neat line.

After walking for twenty minutes, the short grass beside us abruptly gave way to a dense stretch of big bluestem, rising eight-feet high in a broad sweep—maybe twenty yards across and fifty deep. The perimeter was so cleanly defined that I wondered if it had been established by human hands. Francis and I walked beside the tall grass for a few steps, and then my companion abruptly stopped.

I paused, waiting for him to either do his business or investigate whatever had caught his eye, but Francis remained stock-still. He had his hackles raised and his tail held parallel to the ground. He wasn't growling nor whimpering, but there was a tension in his posture that made me nervous. I quickly reached down to attach his leash on the off chance that he was about to bolt, then tried to follow the line of his gaze into the field beside us.

The grass was tall enough to obscure most animals smaller than a bison. Francis could have smelled either a critter like a meerkat or a predator like a fox. Deciding not to take my chances with the latter, I bent down to scoop Francis into my arms.

"Sorry, cap'n." I told him. I hate carrying him; it's an undignified experience for the both of us, but getting eaten is arguably much more embarrassing. He acquiesced at first, but the second I continued down the path, Francis started fighting me, thrashing around and gnashing his teeth.

"Alright, damn! We'll go home then."

I turned and began walking back the way we came. Sure enough, he quieted down immediately. Clearly, there was something in the field that he didn't like, but every time I looked over my shoulder, the grass was still. Whatever Francis had picked up on, I neither saw nor heard any hint of it.

Days later, I had my neighbor Connor over. He and his deaf golden retriever, Beethoven, are two of the best friends I've made since moving here. After dinner, Connor often walks over to drink beer on my porch and watch the sunset while our dogs race each other around my front yard. It's become a ritual I look forward to daily, especially now in the easy warmth of early summer.

Connor adopted Beethoven from a shelter not long after I met him. She (yes, he named his deaf, female dog "Beethoven") is a sweet-tempered dog, but she's skittish as all Hell, probably as a result of poor treatment by her former owners. Living with Connor seems to have helped, but she still has her occasional bouts of panic. That evening, a gentle gust of wind blew a twig into her hind leg. I watched from the porch as she tucked her tail, whipped around, and barked fearfully at nothing until Connor beckoned her. She came bounding over to the porch, and as she calmed down in her owner's lap like a dog one-quarter of her size, I was reminded of Francis' uncharacteristic terror during our walk. I told Connor about it, thinking that he, as the local between us, might have some insight.

"I know the exact field you're talking about," he told me once I'd finished. "It's been a local mystery for a few months now. A buncha people say they've tried to walk their dogs past that field, but something in the grass freaks them out."

"Do you think there's an animal living in there? That grass is definitely tall enough to hide a coyote or something."

"I used to think so, but just a few weeks ago, I took my one-year-old niece on that trail in a baby jogger. Once we got to that crop of bluestem, she started screaming her head off, completely unprompted. I can understand a dog sensing a predator nearby, but a baby? I dunno. It was weird."

He went silent for a minute, patting Beethoven contemplatively before an idea seemed to strike him.

"Hey, you walked up on it from the East, right? Let's go down there tomorrow and approach it from the West. See when Francis starts to get nervous from that side."

I accepted Connor's proposal, though I made sure to bring my Ruger with me the following morning. I didn't think I'd have to use it, but I figured better safe than sorry.

I drove out to the edge of town and met Connor on the Western trailhead. It took us a little longer to get to the field from this side, maybe half an hour, but eventually that tall grass came into view and Connor and I both went silent to watch Francis. He trotted along, happy as ever, until the start of the bluestem, at which point he stopped. His posture shifted, head turning slowly toward the grass. The thin green strands waved slightly in the modest breeze, but again I could see no indication of an animal making its way through the stalks, nor did I hear anything that resembled footsteps.

"Interesting." Connor remarked. He squinted down toward the end of the field, trying to estimate the remaining distance. "This is a lot bigger than I remember. How far would you say that is? 20 yards?"

"Seems about right."

After a minute, Connor gave me a conspiratorial glance, his mouth widening into a grin. Suddenly, he leapt off of the path, the thick grass swallowing him up instantly, leaving only slivers of his red shirt and his black hair visible through all those strands of green and brown grass. Francis began to growl and I started, despite myself.

"You good?"

Connor extended his arms and parted the grass, forming a little window through which I could see his unimpressed expression.

"It's a field, man, not the needle pit from Saw."

I felt my shoulders relax. I'm not sure what I expected—maybe for Connor to spontaneously combust the second he stepped over the threshold. The fact that he had forayed into this strange field without consequence thrust the situation back into mundanity.

At least, for a moment.

Just as I was about to reassert a wild animal as the cause of Francis' distress, I saw my friend's expression change into one of surprise.

"Holy shit," he said, staring at the bluestem bunched in his fist. "This is fake."

"What?"

I reached forward to grab the nearest stem and found a strange, rubbery texture between my fingers. I pinched the stalk between the nails of my thumb and forefinger, but it didn't split open. I then tried to bend the stalk at a sharp ninety-degree angle, but instead of snapping, it bowed into a smooth curve. Lastly I dug my boots into the soil, grabbed the base of the cluster, and yanked upward. The ground let go with a dry, hollow pop. Visually, the root ball was flawless—a tangled nest of fine, dirt-caked tendrils that looked exactly like the subterranean heart of a prairie weed. But when I rubbed the soil away, the roots didn't fray or break. They smelled faintly of a brand-new car interior.

Connor looked as perturbed as I was, though he made no motion to step out of the grass. He gave a nervous chuckle.

"Okay. I bet you this is a land management thing. You know—anti-erosion, water runoff control stuff."

"Runoff control?" I gestured to the utter flatness of the earth around us. "Here?"

"Hey, what do you know about water management anyway? Where're you from again?"

"Los Angeles."

"Oh. Well, still." Connor thought for a moment, and then an idea seemed to strike him. He stepped backwards, letting the curtain of greenery between us snap closed. I heard his voice rising over the rustling of his body against the synthetic bluestem.

"If this is a land management thing, I bet you they've got some ultrasonic repellers in the field. That would explain why dogs and babies get so upset—they're hearing something we can't."

I doubted the pertinence of "runoff control," but sonic yard guards was a theory I could get behind. I called out, suggesting we bring Connor's deaf dog by the field and see how she react. My friend didn't respond. The field wasn't so large that he could have gotten lost in it already, but I figured my voice might have been drowned out by the wind stirring the bluestem.

I looked down at the bunch in my hand, specifically at the intricate roots of the fake plant. There was no chance these things were being used for water management. I grew up in dry, desert hills where synthetic turf mats were sometimes used to reinforce the integrity of steep slopes. On flat land, gravity isn't pulling the mud anywhere after heavy rainfall, making a deep anchor system of synthetic roots completely useless. Planting native seeds would manage flood water infinitely better and would likely come at a fraction of the cost.

I spent a while pondering different explanations before a passing car—the only car I'd seen on the road behind us all day—jolted me back into awareness. Connor was still nowhere to be found, and I didn't want to make poor Francis stand in front of that field all day. I called out my friend's name and still didn't receive an answer.

The wind was picking up. The whole field swayed together when it gusted, rippling like water. I thought it was beautiful until I remembered that it wasn't actually alive, and then the sight just made me uncomfortable. I couldn't fathom what purpose all of it served.

I planted one foot on the edge of the field, half-expecting the ground to give way or some alarm to start shrieking, and when nothing happened at all, I almost felt disappointed.

"Con—"

I didn't get the rest of his name out before something sharp clamped down on my calf. I staggered backwards with a yell, certain that some horrible creature from the field had just emerged to attack me. It took a few seconds to process that the thing biting my leg was not the animal that had so upset my dog, but instead it was Francis himself. He let go almost as suddenly as he'd lunged, retreating a few yards down the path. When he turned to look at me there was something apologetic in his face, like he hadn't really wanted to bite me. I crouched down and pulled up my pant leg and grimaced at the broken skin and thin trickle of blood. He had gotten me good.

Just then, Connor reemerged from the field, expression somewhat bewildered. He looked between me and Francis.

"What the hell happened?"

"Nothing. It was my own fault for making him stand there for so long, especially if there's something hurting his ears. C'mon."

I turned and started walking back to my car, feeling oddly defeated. My leg hurt like hell but I couldn't bring myself to be angry with Francis, who maintained his nervous, guilty energy all the way back home. As I walked, I asked Connor what, if anything, he had found while looking for sonic repellers. At first, he brushed off the question, saying that he had found nothing at all. But then as we neared the parking lot, he said:

"You know, I think I might've been imagining things, but for a minute there, I could've sworn I heard people talking. I think maybe it was a recording because I kept hearing the same word over and over again: 'don't.' That was all I heard. 'Don't, don't, don't.'"

I drove Connor home and we parted ways with no concrete plans. We were both a little unsettled, I think, but so too were we overwhelmed with curiosity. My theory, at that point, was that the city was testing out a new kind of sonic pest repeller. That would explain the animals' aversion to the field. It could also explain the so-called voices that Connor heard, as prolonged exposure to strong, high-frequency pitches can sometimes induce auditory pareidolia. However, I still didn't have a good explanation for the synthetic grass.

That evening, I dressed the puncture wound in my calf. Francis had mostly returned back to normal, though he still seemed more skittish than usual, and I considered taking him to the vet if this change in his personality persisted. Before bed, I emailed our local representative to ask about the field, sending her a picture and coordinates. In the reply that I received a few days later, she said that the city did not have any agricultural projects in the area and that it was likely some kind of prank. She made a vague promise to have someone check out the field for me, but she probably thought I was losing it.

All throughout that night, and for every night afterward, I dreamed of walking through the field. The bluestem was twice the height in my dream, and as I picked my way through the dense cluster of plastic stems, I heard dozens of overlapping voices. Don't, they said, over and over again, their voices low and desperate. The dream ended the same way every time: after walking for what felt like hours, the grass would abruptly thin. Suddenly, I would find myself at the edge of a giant abyss, like a sinkhole had opened up under the field. I would stare into that hole in the earth for so long that I would wake with the impression of a perfect circle burned into the backs of my eyelids.

This morning, I decided that I'd had enough with all the waiting and wondering. Connor and I both had the day off of work, so I went next door and asked if he'd come along for a final investigation. We took our guns just in case there was something (or someone) dangerous in the field, and we took Beethoven, hoping to use her to confirm a sonic disturbance. As we descended Connor's porch steps, I couldn't help but notice hundreds of ants cutting across his driveway in an unbroken line.

Beethoven was thrilled to explore a new route. She trotted ahead of Connor with her nose to the ground, tail swishing happily, oblivious to whatever it was that had reduced Francis to a trembling mess. We walked the quiet road in companionable silence, guns weighing heavy and a little absurd at our hips, until the bluestem came into view up ahead. I noticed it straight away—the field stretched further down the road than it had before, the far edge sitting a few yards past where it should have ended. I mentioned this to my neighbor, half-expecting him to tell me I was misremembering, but he squinted down the length of it and nodded in agreement. We walked Beethoven the whole length of the field, watching her closely the entire time, but she didn't so much as glance at the grass. She trotted along sniffing at gopher holes and the occasional clump of real prairie grass, happy as a clam. We stopped at the edge of the field where the bluestem finally gave way back to blue grama.

"Well." I said. "I guess that's one mystery solved."

I suggested to Connor that we walk the perimeter of the field, just to see if we could find any cameras, repellers, or anything else that might tell us who was responsible for the field. The more I thought about it, the stranger it seemed that there was no sign of construction anywhere. To plant this much fake grass across this much ground would have taken serious time and manpower, yet there was nothing to suggest anyone had ever been out here at all.

Just as we started walking, two cars appeared on the road behind us, coming from opposite directions, both going faster than they should have on the narrow, curving road. One sounded its horn and the other swerved hard to avoid it, tires cutting onto the dirt path where Connor and I were standing. We jumped back out of the way. The car never came close enough to actually hit us, but it was enough to startle all three of us, Beethoven most of all. She let out a sharp yelp at the sight of the car bearing down on her and bolted before either of us could react, the leash tearing clean out of Connor's hand. She ran into the field at full tilt, and Connor took off after her, cursing the whole way.

I hesitated at the edge of the field. There was a jittery feeling running through my hands, down into my fingers. Part of me wanted to keep standing there, but I only managed a few seconds of deliberation before I gave up and went in after them.

It was harder to move through the field than I expected. The stalks were packed dense enough that I had to shoulder through them, one arm raised to keep them out of my face, and within a few steps I'd lost any sense of the line I'd meant to run in. Something moved up ahead, low to the ground and fast, and I was pretty sure it was Beethoven. I could hear Connor somewhere in front of me, his voice carrying over the rustle of plastic stems, and once or twice I caught a glimpse of the back of his head bobbing through gaps in the grass. I picked up my pace to follow him. Then I heard him say "oh shit," sharp and startled, and his head dropped out of view all at once, like he'd tripped over something.

Before I heard Connor hit the ground, the strangest thing happened: for a few seconds, I couldn't hear a thing. I don't just mean that it was quiet in the field—I mean that I was rendered utterly deaf. I couldn't hear the grass rustling nor my own footsteps nor Beethoven's frightened barks. It was silence as I had never experienced before, and then it was over. All the sound returned in a rush, as though someone had turned my hearing off and on again with the flip of a switch.

I slowed to a cautious walk, both out of confusion and out of fear that I would trip over whatever had taken Connor down. I reached the spot where I thought Connor landed and saw something colorful on the ground. At first I took it for a scrap of fabric, a torn piece of flannel that had gotten snagged off of someone's shirt and left behind. I leaned over to get a better look, reaching out to pick it up, but then pulling my arm back the instant I understood what I was looking at.

Because it wasn't a scrap of fabric, but an entire shirt. And that shirt was being worn by a person—an adult man, around the same age as myself, who was laying on the floor of the field. He laid with his face up, his eyes wide open and staring unfocused up at the sky. His mouth moved, but no sound came out.

I stood up and stumbled back a step, and that was when I saw the shoes. They were just above the man's head, so close they were almost brushing against his hair—a worn pair of sneakers, attached to legs that led to an older woman. She was laid out just as rigidly as the man, face up, eyes open, her lips working around words I couldn't hear. I kept walking, and the human chain kept going. There were more people on the floor, stretching ahead of me through the grass in a perfect line, each one laid flat on their back with their face to the sky.

At the end of the line, I found Connor. He must have just laid down because he was still adjusting his position by the time I got to him, working to align himself with the others on the ground. Careful not to cross the threshold made by the bodies, I waved my hand slowly in front of his open mouth. I felt breath, faint but steady across my fingers. Relieved, I reached forward and took a hold of his arm, the one closest to me, and pulled him clear of the line, dragging him a few yards back. Once we were clear of the others, I hooked both my arms under his and hauled him the rest of the way, stumbling backward through the bluestem until we broke out onto the dirt path. Beethoven appeared beside me as I dragged her owner through the field, whimpering and fearful, but alive and uninjured as far as I could tell. She stayed close to my legs the whole way out of the field. My hands were shaking so badly it took me three tries to unlock my phone and dial 911.

They arrived faster than I expected, two cruisers and an ambulance. I explained to them what I had found inside, and they took some readings before any of the EMTs went in to investigate, probably making sure there wasn't some kind of gas or toxin in the field. Eventually I sat on the edge of the path with Beethoven and watched them carry people out one at a time, laid flat on stretchers. They pulled ten bodies out of the grass in total.

I was numbly watching the stretchers when I saw someone crouch down next to Connor and pull a sheet up over his face. I was on my feet in a second. I hurried over to the EMT, asking her what she was doing. She looked up at me, expression vaguely pitying before it shifted into something cool and professional. "I'm sorry, sir. He didn't make it."

"What? What the fuck are you talking about, 'didn't make it'? He's just in shock or paralyzed or something. I just felt his pulse ten minutes ago."

"I understand, sir—I'm not accusing you of seeing things or making things up. It'll be a while before we have all of the details, but it's very possible that he passed between when you last checked and when we arrived."

I couldn't believe it. Despite her protests, I kneeled down next to my neighbor and pulled the sheet back from his face. His eyes had taken on a glassy look, and I felt neither pulse nor breath. Completely stunned, I hovered next to him until a police officer gently guided me away. He asked me a few questions, most of which I couldn't answer, and I came to learn that it wasn't just Connor who hadn't made it out of the field alive: every person they pulled out of the bluestem was deceased.

Eventually there was nothing left to do but take Beethoven home. We walked back to the parking lot together, and the sight of Connor's truck sitting there next to my own made me feel sick all over again. I got Beethoven into my back seat and sat for a long minute before I trusted myself to drive.

I'm still in shock, I think. I haven't figured out who I'm supposed to call—I don't know if the police have already reached out to Connor's family. I don't know what happens to Beethoven long-term either. For tonight, she's staying with me. As I type this, she's hanging off of Francis' too-small dog bed as he sleeps next to her. They've always gotten along well, but both have been usually quiet since I brought Beethoven home. It's like they share some awful secret now.

I've spent most of the night online instead of sleeping, scrolling through old posts from people across the Great Plains describing encounters with the same phenomena: strange patches of fake grass turning up in isolated areas, nobody able to say who put them there or why. One girl in Iowa posted a TikTok months ago about her brother wandering into one and having a so-called heart attack inside. Despite finding similar incidents, I haven't found anything at such a large scale, nor any record of another synthetic field claiming so many victims at once.

An hour ago I drove back out to the trail one last time, just to look at the field from a distance. There's caution tape strung up around the whole area now, but the field itself is gone. No grass, fake or otherwise—just bare dirt, rife with shallow depressions where the plastic root balls must have been torn out of the earth. I guess it's possible that the city cleared it right after the last ambulances left, but I'm skeptical that they could remove a swath that large in a matter of hours. I can't help but wonder if whatever put the grass there in the first place is the same thing that took it away.

I keep thinking about that word. The one Connor heard in the field, the one I've been hearing in my dreams every night since. Don't. I remember grabbing Connor's arm and pulling him out of the field, how I broke the human chain without thinking. In the moment, I thought that was the right thing to do, but now I'm not so certain. Now, I think that "don't" was a message for me all along: a threat not to meddle in matters beyond my comprehension, and a warning as to what would happen to that long thread of life when I decided to sever the line.