Chapter 2 The Apartment

Lena Crowe's apartment smelled like ink, bourbon, and a kind of obsession that seeps into the walls.

It was on the fourth floor of an old brick building downtown, no elevator, cracked windows, a lock you could pop with a credit card. Vex stood in the doorway, letting the silence crawl around him like smoke. Rain streaked the glass behind him, smearing the skyline into a watercolor bruise.

The place was a wreck, but not from struggle. It was a chaos of intent.

Stacks of paper towered on every surface, marked-up court transcripts, news clippings, photos with red circles and slashes, Post-its like confetti with fragments of thought scrawled in Sharpie.

A bulletin board dominated the living room wall, veins of red string connecting names and places, some circled, others crossed out like condemned souls. At the center of the board, in black marker:

BLACK VALE KNOWS. BUT WHO'S WATCHING WHO?

Lena's handwriting was jagged, desperate. Vex felt a strange twist in his gut, admiration? Guilt? He wasn't sure. He lit a cigarette to kill the feeling.

His eyes scanned the board.

Emily Vex was there (his wife). Her face, a photo from their wedding day, had been pinned beside a death certificate. Suicide. 2015.

Beside her: a blurry security camera still of Emily talking to a man outside a building Vex didn't recognize. Lena had written "THE VAULT?" next to it.

He moved closer. The other photos were a parade of the forgotten. Women, mostly. Missing, dead, or officially erased by accident or illness. All of them from Black Vale. All within the last 20 years.

One name jumped out.

Tessa Grange. Age seventeen. Missing: 1996.

Same last name as the girl who ran into the woods last night.

Bella Grange.

Coincidence?

Black Vale didn't believe in those.

Vex moved into the bedroom. The bed was unmade. A glass of whiskey still sat on the nightstand, half full. Her laptop was open, humming faintly. He knelt beside it, ignoring the crime scene tape stretched across the closet door like a weak warning.

The screen was still unlocked. A file was open, unfinished:

VALECORP: UNSAFE AT ANY DEPTH

"There's something beneath Black Vale. Not metaphor, literal. I've found land purchase records that don't match city zoning. Entire acres bought in cash by shell companies. And every time someone gets close to finding out what they're hiding down there, they die. Or vanish."

Next to the laptop was a voice recorder.

Vex pressed play.

Lena's voice came through, rough, frantic.

"If you're hearing this, I'm either dead or too close. I know it's tied to Emily Vex. She was asking the same questions I am. There's something in the ivy. Something old. It's not a plant... it's a parasite. And it feeds on silence. If I disappear, don't trust..."

The recording cut off.

Vex stared at the recorder.

Then at the red ivy plant growing in a cracked pot by the window.

It was the same color as the stuff in the field.

And it was moving.

Later that night, Vex sat in his car outside the Black Vale Police Department, rain pelting the windshield like angry fingers. He stared down at the small vial he'd taken from Lena's plant just a tiny clipping of red ivy sealed in evidence glass.

It pulsed.

Almost microscopically.

As if it were breathing.

His phone buzzed.

It was Rourke.

"You need to come back to the field. We found something. Or someone."

"Who?" he asked.

"Bella Grange, or at least what's left of her."