Deep Below

When a drilling operation in rural Ohio breaks through something it was never meant to reach, the first sign is not fire, collapse, or gas. It is a sound. A wrong sound. A breath rising through the bore from more than a mile beneath the earth, as if something ancient has been sealed in the dark for ages beyond memory and has finally found a way to exhale. What comes up from that hole is not simply fear. It is presence. It is influence. And it is hungry.

As engineers, priests, and ordinary f...