2026 Tales from the Hill

By Trevor Pier ’30

“Stupid Keith, stupid bet. Making me break into the Yager library to steal some book…”

Ryan grumbled angrily to himself as he walked downstairs into the dark archives. He wrinkled his nose, the scent of old paper with a ting of dust, enough to make him cough. And the cold, it
was so, so cold.

Ryan joined Hartwick because he needed to turn his life around. His gambling addiction had caught him in a rough spot. So with the last of his money, he applied to get a degree, mathematics, science. Hell, he’d be a babysitter if that’s all he could get. Anything butbeing a street bum who dosed on needles and powder to keep himself sane…or a fast food worker. He genuinely didn’t know which was worse

One night though, he made a bet with his dormmate. Win a game of Gin Runny, a game Ryan knew inside and out, all the tricks to. He was confident he would win.

Then he lost. Terribly.

And as part of the bet; he now had to go steal a book from the Yager Library at afterhours. A particular grimoire about alcoholic woodchucks that supposedly belonged to a student who died years back in an accident after some pipes in the ceiling leaked water onto the hydraulic shelve’s gears and made them close on the poor fellow.

Ryan had to do this, or else his gambling secret would be at risk of being made public knowledge, and his chances for success be gone.

The expanse of the second floor was near pitch black, every step he took was slow and careful. His roommates had allowed him to take a light source with him; an old flashlight that flickered occasionally unless he held it still.

The first couple of shelves had nothing but old novels and dated fantasy books. It was until his foot collided with a book tray, he angrily kicked it aside and it crashed into one of the shelves with a tremendous noise. He didn’t care if someone caught him.

Ryan paused to look down, there was some water shimmering where the cart had sat, he spotted a trail of liquid leading from one of the sliding shelves and a strong iron stench with it.

Cautious, he unwound the shelf and peers around the corner of the opening and was rewarded with an odd scene; The shelves were soaking wet, water cascaded down them like miniature waterfalls, the remains of some soggy books smashed between the shelving lay on the ground in a sorry heap. Not wanting it pooling out into the main room next, Ryan looks around for where the liquid was coming from, maybe a leak in the ceiling from a pipe. When he could not find the source, he closed the shelf, and noticed frantic, jagged claw marks lining the edges.

Eerily, there didn’t appear to be any trace of the water spreading outside of the shelf area, it stayed within the area until Ryan closed it.

Ryan promptly left the wet shelves behind and pushed in deeper into the archive feeling a bit more unnerved than he already was…

Along the way, the flashlight started to flicker out before it finally died, leaving him in the dark. He shook his light but it refused to turn back on, he couldn’t see ahead of him, nor did he remember which way was back.

“Fucking shit…”

The only option he had was to keep walking the way he was now. The walk in the pitch black was tense, but his eyes were starting to adjust to the dark, he could see strange shapes starting to form around him, some looked like they were floating, others hung over the shelves around him.

He didn’t dare to turn from the path ahead. It was bad enough being in the dark.

He paused when he heard something ahead of him move, footsteps… he squinted and attempted to see through the dim lighting; and there was something else here, in front of him a short distance away.

Ryan froze and panicked, thinking he’d been caught, but when the other figure didn’t move, he took a moment to check more closely. Darkness made it difficult to make out what or who it was from where he stood. It looked like a person at least, similar body shape, clothing, hair and all.

It looked similar, too similar…

He called out to the person. “Hello?”

“Hello?” The person echoed, the resemblance was startling.

Against his better judgement, he approached the other ‘him’. It started walking towards him in response, mimicking his steps perfectly. As they got closer to each other, Ryan started to notice more figures in the dark around them, all frozen in place. There was something awfully unsettling about this one being the only one moving, how this copy mimicked his gait, his posture, even the way his hands curled inwards naturally.

He waved at it to see if it would copy him, it waved back and they continued to walk to one another. He thought he could see something moving around in the darkness around the figure. They were only a few feet away when his food caught on a book and tripped him up, dropping the flashlight on the ground. The figure also stopped moving as the light source came back to life and it rolled around until its beam was shining directly on other ‘Ryan’…

And a ghostly visage, only inches away from his face, whispering one word to him; “Run.”

Ryan ran.

He ran away, both hands to his face. Doing so he bumped into something else in the way, he hastily shoved it away and didn’t stop. His eyes may have been tricking him, but he thought he could see the dormant figures begin to stir…some turning to look at him, rising from the floors. Water poured from the ceiling like an indoor rainstorm, a few hands brushed against his body as he ran by. Hundreds of them all coming to life all at once. Something sopping wet grabbed at his neck and he felt a burning sensation, but kept running. Hushed voices swirled around him.

All those empty, soulless eyes.

All looking at him. Whispering…

And a sound of stones grinding against the floor, a low crunching, *kachunk, kachunk, kachunk*

He didn’t want to look back; it was still following him he was sure…the slow, unbothered footsteps behind him encouraged him to pick up the pace until he made it to the fourth floor of Yager and out the doors, ignoring the alarmed yells of security…

When Ryan finally returned to his dorm, the clock had passed twelve to one, he rushed by a groggy and irate Keith waiting for him. “Dude, where the hell have you been?”

Whatever answer Keith was expecting was muffled by the slamming of the bathroom door. Annoyed, Keith gave up and went back to sleep.

Ryan did not leave the bathroom for the rest of the night…He did not dare move, in fear of the thing that wore his identity like clothes, spoke with his voice, and its water-like body.

There was the quiet dripping of water from the sink.

And he swore, with each drop, he could still hear it; the slow, cold whisper…

By Conor Barry ’29

Will groggily cracked an eyelid as his alarm blared, only to be hit in the face by a ray of golden sun.

“Will, for the love of god,” groaned the pile that was Mike, popping his head above the covers for a moment to shoot a look at Will while he struggled with the alarm.

Once silence had reclaimed the room, Will sighed and laid his head back on his pillow, wishing he had just ten more minutes to snooze. He found that after the routine of school settled in, it became more and more difficult to wake up for accounting class. Most business majors didn’t bother with attendance anymore by November, and Will considered joining them just for
one day.

The thought was quickly shut down when Will felt his phone buzz. It was Sarah, Will’s high school friend, asking if he wanted to meet in comms before class. Will sighed and swung his legs over the side of the bed before reluctantly making his way to the bathroom to get ready.

As Will came back from the bathroom, he was greeted by the faint sound of Mario Kart from inside the room. “No accounting today, huh, Mike?” he asked jokingly.

Mike stuck his middle finger up and wiggled it back and forth a few times before quickly returning his hand to the controller. “Bro, screw accounting. You need to help me win this stupid championship,” Mike quipped back. “Why on earth is King Boo impossible to beat?”

“I’m going to comms with Sarah first,” Will replied, stuffing his laptop into his backpack. “I’ll be a goon with you later.”

Will wished he had worn a heavier hoodie as he walked into Campbell, waiting for the elevator to come for several minutes before realizing it was broken. At least the five flights of stairs would help to warm him up.

Will strolled into a mostly empty comms, spotting Sarah sitting alone in the fishbowl with a spread of papers before her.

“It’s already 8:45. We’re going to be late,” she said without looking up as Will slid into the seat across from her.

“We’re going to show up. We’re already ahead of the game,” Will retorted before leaving to go get something that loosely resembled food.

“Did you even do the homework?” Sarah asked as Will sat back down. Will grimaced as he realized the various pages on the table were all homework he was supposed to have done.

“I had to help Mike. He’s trash at Mario.”

“Will, be serious. We are supposed to turn in three homework assignments by tomorrow, including this project, which you need to do or you’re actually going to fail the class. It’s worth 15% of your grade,” Sarah replied in a serious tone.

“I’ll do it during the lecture. She’s just going to read slides off her laptop the whole class anyway,” Will said dismissively. Sarah shot him a glare but didn’t respond.

Will picked at his cardboard food for a bit before digging through his backpack and pulling out his slightly crumpled ledger project. He leaned over Sarah’s page to try and see her answers, but it was quickly snatched away.

“I don’t think so,” Sarah firmly asserted. “Even if I wanted to let you copy, she would find out easily if we got the same numbers wrong.”

“When was the last time you had numbers wrong?” Will argued.

“When was the last time you had them all right?” Sarah chuckled. “You’ll be fine. It’s all calculator math anyway.”

Will flopped into his seat next to Sarah in the back of the classroom and started messing around on his phone. Only a handful of people showed up to class, including the professor. Will quietly pulled out his project and lazily began scribbling in answers.

After the better part of an hour, he had at least gotten a number written in all the spaces. He spotted Sarah glancing at his project with a disapproving look on her face, but chose to ignore it and turn his attention back to wasting time.

Will glanced around the room. None of the students, except Sarah, were paying attention to the professor as she droned on about the slides. One girl sat alone in the middle of the room, gaze fixed on the window, and few people sat in the front, playing games on their laptops.

The only other person in the back row was a guy slouched in his seat, hiding his phone under the desk and only stopping to glance up at the slides every few minutes. At one point in the class, he looked toward Will and shot him a quick, friendly nod before going back to his phone.

Will nodded back a moment too late. He looked familiar, as if Will knew him from somewhere, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. He had almost no distinctive features and dressed casually. Will imagined it would be easy for him to get lost in a crowd.

As the professor’s droning finally came to an end, the class began to pack up.

“You’re lucky it’s not due until tomorrow. Go look at the textbook and do it right before you turn that in,” Sarah told Will. “I have another class I need to run to, but if you really need help with it, I’ll be free later.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever, I’ll do it,” Will said. “Don’t make yourself late worrying about me.”

Sarah looked exasperated but hurried off to her class. Will threw his backpack over his shoulder and started walking back toward the freshman dorms. As he was walking along Founders Way, the guy from class casually walked up beside him.

“Hey, man, did you happen to do that project yet?” the stranger asked. “I saw you working on it in class, and honestly, I haven’t started working on it either.”

“Well, I did it in class, but based on how my friend Sarah just talked to me, I’m guessing it looks pretty rough,” Will replied.

“It sounds like we’re in the same boat on that one, then,” said the guy. “I’m Chris, by the way.”

“Will.”

“If you’re interested, you can come to a study group with me and a few friends later, and we can try to figure this mess out together.”

Will considered Chris’s offer for a moment, but he remembered that his only real friends on campus so far were Sarah and Mike. “Sure, that sounds cool,” Will responded.

After exchanging contact information, Chris waved and headed off toward the library, promising to text him the details.

Will walked back to his dorm, the November chill biting at him through his hoodie. He found Mike exactly where he had left him that morning.

“Will, I’m serious, help me, bro,” Mike begged as soon as Will walked into the room.

Will’s mind flashed to the mountain of homework he had coming up, but after the morning he was in no mood to be productive. “Fine, I’ll win you one championship, but I have work to do today,” he said.

Before long, they had reached the last lap of the last race. Will groaned as he got knocked out of first place in the final stretch and crossed the finish line in third.

“How are you mad right now?” Mike asked as Will continued to complain. “You got first place three times in a row and one third place.”

“I wanted the perfect game,” Will grumbled. “I’ve been playing this since I was five. Winning the championship isn’t even a challenge.”

Will glanced at the clock, then stood up and gathered his things.

“Wait, there’s one more championship I haven’t won,” Mike protested.

“I’ll win it tomorrow,” Will said. “I have another class and lots of homework. I’m going to a study group later too.”

“Nerd!” Mike called out as Will closed the door behind him.

In the evening, Will followed Chris’s text to the bottom floor of the library, an area he had never been to before. The lower floors had dim yellow lighting and smelled like mildew. Will reached the door to the room and stopped for a moment. All he could hear was the low buzz of fluorescent lights.

Will pulled the heavy wooden door open and walked in. The room was significantly more comfortable than the rest of the library. A long table ran the length of the room, with a small group gathered at the end closer to the door. Among them was Chris, who quickly lit up and got out of his seat when Will stepped in.

“Everyone, I’d like you to meet Will. I met him in accounting class earlier,” Chris announced. “Will, this is Martin, Jason, Cindy, Lucy, and Andrew.”

Will greeted the group and gave a small wave before sitting down next to Chris, across from Lucy, whom he had never met before. He dug in his backpack for his project and turned to Chris, who had an oddly new-looking accounting textbook and his wrinkled project with him.

As the pair worked, Will kept catching Lucy stealing looks at him around her laptop. At one point they made awkward eye contact. Lucy chuckled nervously.

“Sorry, I just feel like I recognize you from somewhere,” Lucy hesitated. “Are you friends with a girl named Sarah?”

“Sarah Smith?” Will asked.

“Yes! I thought so. You must be the guy she knew in high school,” Lucy confirmed. “I sit next to her in stats class. She’s a genius.”

“Yeah,” Will grumbled. “I wish she would have let me copy her answers for this stupid project.”

Lucy offered a smile before turning her attention back to her laptop. Will returned to the project. Chris was still poring over the textbook, trying to figure out what the last steps in the project were. Finally he got it, and they quickly scribbled in their final answers. As Will and Chris stood to head back to the dorms, Martin rose with them.

“You heading out too, Martin?” asked Chris.

“Yes, but I’m going the other way,” he replied, pausing to turn toward Will. His gaze was steady and unhurried, and Will could feel the intensity. “It was good having you. I hope you decide to join our study group,” Martin said evenly as he pulled on a long gray coat. He offered a final nod to the room and quickly disappeared into the library.

Over the next two months, Will went to study sessions with the group more and more. Whenever he needed somewhere to be, he seemed to find himself on the bottom floor of the library. Will, Chris, and Andrew made frequent trips to get food together, Lucy helped Will convince Sarah to let him copy one of her homework assignments, and Will even learned to appreciate Martin for the intense character he was.

Of course, there was also Mike, who was increasingly frustrated with the last Mario Kart championship he could never win and would constantly text Will, asking where he was and when he would be back at a reasonable hour to win the race.

Meanwhile, Sarah had noticed Will’s absence as well. Their comms runs had all but stopped completely, and Sarah was starting to worry. Lucy was always friendly in stats, but somehow every conversation ended up back on Will, and Sarah couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off about his new friends. She had even texted him, complaining that she felt uneasy about his friends, and that he never made time for her, but his replies were always short answers that came hours late.

One Thursday, after the others had slipped out, Chris told Will to follow him. He led him past the last study room to a janitor’s closet at the end of the hall, where Martin stood waiting beside a rack of mops. Without a word, Martin pressed his palm to the back wall, and a section of it swung inward.

Will stood stupefied for a moment. Behind the wall was a narrow tunnel sloping down into the dirt beneath the library. Warm air drifted up, smelling of wet soil and something Will couldn’t quite place.

Martin silently led the way down the passage, which was lit by a string of dim yellow bulbs. Will hesitated, and Chris gave him a firm nod to follow. Will stepped into the tunnel, amazed that such a thing could exist on campus, and Chris followed, closing the door behind them.

Eventually the passage opened into a larger circular room lined with candles. The rest of the group was already inside, looking deadly serious, unlike at the usual study sessions.

As Will inspected the room, he realized that almost every surface was decorated with carvings and figures of groundhogs in all sizes. Some were carved directly into the rock, while others were sculpted separately.

“Okay, what the heck is this?” Will whispered as he took in the scene.

“Older than this building,” Martin replied calmly. “Older than the school, too. We have kept this place for a very long time.” His gaze remained unwavering, and his tone never faltered. “Every year we honor what lives below,” he continued. “It is a tradition as old as time. Most
laymen call it Groundhog Day, but to us it is much more. This tradition keeps the school standing. If we stopped, it would be a catastrophe.”

“What tradition?” Will asked nervously.

“We must appease what lives below,” Martin said. “You will learn all you need to know on the day of the ceremony, but first we need to know if you’re one of us or not.”

“What do you mean by one of you?” Will asked, his voice quivering. “And what happens if I say no?”

“Nobody has ever been forced, but we would love for you to join us for our ceremony on appeasement day,” Martin said, cracking a smile. “Though I will admit, we would be a bit disappointed if you said no. We’ve been waiting a while, you know.”

Will hesitated for a moment before looking around the room at everyone he had made friends with recently. “And if I say yes?”

Martin pressed a small metal groundhog into Will’s hand and smiled. “Then you’ll be a part of our ceremony in two days.”

Will closed his fingers around the figure and glanced back at Chris. “I guess I’ll do it, then,” he replied.

The next day, Will finally decided to go to comms and catch up with Sarah, who intercepted him before he even got into Campbell.

“Where on earth have you been for two months?” Sarah asked before Will could even register her presence.

Will decided not to tell her about the odd ceremony he had agreed to be a part of and made a lame excuse about homework. Sarah didn’t seem to believe it, but she headed for the stairs.

“Come on, Will. There’s something I need to tell you,” Sarah said.

Will’s heart dropped. He followed her silently up the stairs to comms and sat down across from her with his plate of cardboard.

“Lucy said something really weird to me the other day in stats,” Sarah started. “People were talking about that girl Anna who disappeared last year, and she told me Anna went to the great one, whatever that means.”

“The great one?” Will asked.

“She wouldn’t elaborate at all. I feel like she may have told me by accident.”

“Yeah, that’s a little odd. Maybe it’s just her religion,” Will replied, trying not to think about the creepy groundhog dungeon he had just been shown.

“I get a really bad vibe from this new friend group of yours,” Sarah said. “They give me the creeps.”

Will sat up. “They’re all really good people if you get to know them,” he said firmly. “And you would know that if you had gotten to know more of them instead of just texting me about them all day.” He grabbed his half-eaten plate of slop, dumped it into the utensil bin, and
stormed out of comms.

The next evening, Will was determined to prove to Sarah that his new friends were good people, so he showed up to the study room for the ceremony just as Martin had instructed. The room was darker than usual, and the only people inside were Andrew and Jason.

“What’s going on?” Will asked.

“They already went down. We were just waiting for you,” Jason replied.

Fear welled up in Will. He was starting to understand what Sarah had been talking about, but it was too late to turn back. Jason and Andrew followed close behind as Will led the way to the janitor’s closet.

Once inside, Will faced the secret door fearfully and hesitated for a long moment. As he reached out to push it open, he felt a brutal impact on his collarbone that crumpled him to the ground.

Will looked back in shock to see Andrew holding a sledgehammer, with Jason standing beside him.

“Sorry, Will,” Andrew said sincerely. “It’s the only way.”

Searing pain shot through his shattered collarbone as he struggled to get past them and back into the library, only to be kicked hard in the gut. Will hunched over and began to vomit as the two restrained him. He was still vomiting as they carried him down the tunnel.

Will struggled to collect himself as he was carried into the chamber. This time the large space was mostly filled by a groundhog the size of a mail truck. A musky smell hung in the air, like wet fur and old soil, and the floor trembled faintly with every slow breath it took. Dirt sifted from the ceiling. Will finally understood the carvings on the walls, because every one of them faced it. It stared silently at Will, its gaze meeting his with a terrifying burn that reminded him of Martin, who stood off to the side. Its eyes were small and black and utterly patient, with no hatred in them, only the look of something that had waited a very long time. The weight of that stare pressed into his skull until every thought he had went silent. Will tried to scream, but nothing came out. “Welcome, Will,” Martin said with a grin. “I’d like you to meet the Great Groundhog.”