S1E43 - The Vent at the Sunshine Laundromat, July 1999

July 1999. The Sunshine Laundromat on Route 9 in Hadlow, Ohio, stays open until midnight. I was nineteen, broke, and washing every piece of fabric I owned in a single machine because the apartment complex's basement had flooded. The laundromat was almost empty—just me, an old man reading a newspaper folded into quarters, and the dryers. But there was a vent in the back wall, behind the folding tables, that I swear was not there when I walked in. It started as a draft—a cold, thin stream of air that smelled of damp earth and something metallic. Then I hear...