Pine Grove Mall

The Pine Grove Mall was a boring little strip mall right off of Route 90. Did solid business, had a decent amount of variety to its stores, but was just otherwise unremarkable in an unremarkable town. In the course of a single day, that would all change.

--

Below the mall, a crew was working on the storm drains. It was a hard day of clearing up minor clogs and cleaning out trash before it turned into a problem. Their work was soon interrupted by a beeping sound coming from a worker's watch.

"Hey guys," the man shouted. "5 o'clock! Quitting time!"

"Thank god," another exclaimed. "I can smell this shit through my mask."

As the crew turned off their equipment and prepared to climb out the manhole to the surface, one noticed a small crack in the concrete wall. Upon further inspection, there was an incredibly bright light emitting from the crack.

"Someone get me a probe, this looks like trouble!"

Begrudgingly, the crew inserted a small remote probe into the crack. Instead of seeing the basement of a storefront, the crew was surprised to find nothing but the intense light. Unable to make anything out, they withdrew the probe and prepared to seal the crack when suddenly it began to rapidly expand. The crack tore through the wall, spilling out a light the crew recognized as brighter than the sun, but for some reason it didn't burn their vision at all. A pushed the men back into the opposite wall as the light transformed into several bright orbs, slipping through the ceiling of the tunnel as if it wasn't there. To add to the workers confusion, the large crack began to patch itself back up. Within moments, it was as if the tunnel was brand new.

"What the hell was that?" One of the workers asked. "Do we...do we report it?"

"I honestly don't know how to report it. We'll just...go back up to the surface and head home. If there's a problem, we'll figure it out then."

"Yeah. Home sounds good right now."

--

Meanwhile, the orbs of light hovered just out of sight in front of the Pine Grove Mall. It was 5 PM on a Friday, so each of the stores were much busier than usual. The orbs split up, each passing into a different store. And thus, one of the strangest events in this desolate stretch of road began.