Chapter 3 Buried In The Roots

Detective Callum Vex returned to the ivy-choked field before dawn, the sky a bruised purple. His boots sank into the sodden earth, ankle-deep in clotted mud and greasy, crimson-stained vines. Rain still slashed through the mist, but the floodlights had gone dead, leaving only the sickly beam of Vex's torch wobbling through the gloom.

Near the spot where Lena Crowe's body had lain, Deputy Rourke knelt with a battered spade. Her jaw was tight, eyes glassy from the smell of wet decay.

"We found her glove," Rourke said, voice low. She scraped away sodden ivy to reveal a tiny, blood-caked finger bone tangled in roots. "Bella's."

Vex's stomach rolled. "Where's the rest?"

Rourke tapped the ground with her toe. "Down there." She shoved her spade into the mud. The blade struck something solid. She heaved, uprooting a twisted tangle of ivy vines that coiled around a rotted boot and a blackened sock. With a final grunt, she flipped the soil exposing Bella Grange's lower legs and severed torso. The stump of her spine was slick with mud, roots snaking into the exposed vertebrae like parasitic tendrils.

Bella's face was pressed into the mud, one eye gouged out and lodging a smear of gray earth in the socket. Her tongue lolled from between cracked lips, knotted with ivy strands. Blood had pooled in her ear, coagulating into a church-like red candle.

Vex gagged and covered his mouth. A dead crow's feather drifted down onto Bella's shoulder, carried by the shifting mist.

Rourke swallowed and backed away. "I-I didn't expect.."

"Get the hell out," Vex hissed. She retreated, radio in hand.

He knelt beside Bella's remains. The vines here weren't limp they pulsed, as though feeding. He touched one gingerly. It writhed into his gloved hand, sticky with gore. He flinched and dropped it.

A dull ache bloomed in his chest. Memories, a whisper of Bella's terrified scream, her manic laugh in the dark crashed through him. He looked up at the rotten metal box Rourke had dug free. Its tarnished brass lid lay beside it, roots breaking through the latch.

He pried it open again, revealing the Polaroid of Bella alive, mouth frozen in silent horror, a black feather pressed to her temple. Now that feather was slick with blood in the mud beside her.

Vex snarled, stomping a boot down on the Polaroid. The image smudged, colors bleeding like a wound.

He turned back to the hole. Bella's severed torso, her ribs crushed inward, organs sucked out by the roots, seemed to twitch as ivy tendrils slithered along her spine. He shivered in the night chill.

"Bring the coroner," he growled into his radio. "And hazmat. This... thing isn't natural."

By midmorning, the coroner arrived, face pale as congealed fat. The muddy grave sat open, a chasm of earth and writhing ivy vines. The coffin lid lay warped and cracked.

As they lifted Lena Crowe's body free, Vex watched in horrified fascination. Though she'd been underground for hours, her flesh was pristine-pale as porcelain-with no odor of decay. The ivy had woven itself into the coffin wood, its red roots burrowing through every seam.

The coroner cut into her abdomen. Hot, foul-smelling fluid welled up-half-blood, half-plant sap. It hissed on the scalpel. He recoiled, dropping the blade.

"Enzyme XJ-9," he muttered, dabbing the fluid with a swab. "Accelerates cell regeneration... and plant growth."

Vex peered over his shoulder. The wound edges were knitting closed, skin fusing as though time itself had reversed. A recent gash at her wrist, too small to note earlier had already scabbed and shriveled.

The coroner fought nausea. "Her throat incision... it's healing too."

Vex felt bile rise. "Healing?"

The coroner nodded, voice hollow. "At a cellular level. This plant... it's rewriting biology."

He collected samples as Lena's body lay unnaturally intact, vines curled around her like a lover's embrace.

That night, Vex sat in the fluorescent glare of the crime lab, surrounded by humming centrifuges and bubbling test tubes. He tapped the vial of red ivy clipping-its sap glistening like fresh blood.

On the screen, the coroner's preliminary report glowed:

"Enzyme XJ-9: Derived from red ivy; promotes extreme tissue regeneration and plant integration. Exposure induces both necrosis and rapid cellular regrowth."

He opened Bella's autopsy images. Her torso: half-digested organs interwoven with ivy roots, tissue both decayed and newly sprouted. Eyelashes had regrown; nails extended beyond knuckles. Her mockery of life in death.

A message pinged on his phone from an unknown number:

"THE ROOTS CANNOT BE UPROOTED."

He hurled the phone across the room. It shattered, screen splintering like bone.

His flashlight flickered. In that moment of darkness, he heard it: a soft, wet rustle-like leaves eating flesh.

He grabbed the ivy clipping and pressed it to his face. Almost inhaled the scent of sweat, blood, and something green and alive.

A whisper crawled through his skull:

"TELL THEM WHAT YOU SAW."

The words burned behind his eyes, Lena's final plea. He stumbled out into the hall, heart hammering.

Rain pounded on the windows. In the corridor, he passed a dead potted plant its leaves blackened, roots crawling across the soil like worms.

Black Vale hungered. Its ivy had awakened. And it would not stop until it fed on every secret buried in its soil.