Seduction of the Mind

Under the Roses

The highway ran like a pale ribbon between flat stretches of farmland, its silence broken only by the low hum of tires and the occasional blur of a passing semi. Ethan’s hands rested on the steering wheel at ten and two, knuckles pale against black leather, though his grip wasn’t tight—it was deliberate, like the whole act of driving was a ritual to keep his mind from slipping sideways.

Two hours behind him. Another town blooming on the horizon like an old photograph: a handful of brick façades, the steeple of a church stabbing the gray sky, gas stations squatting at opposite ends like sentries.

He had asked himself a dozen times during the drive why he was doing this. Why he’d called ahead to the county coroner, why he’d arranged a meeting on a Saturday morning when his calendar was already cracking with chaos.

There was no answer that sounded sane.

But something in Vivienne’s voice—something quiet and curved, something about under the roses—had curled into his spine and stayed there like a thorn.

When he finally turned off the main road and pulled into the squat, square building with COUNTY MEDICAL EXAMINER stenciled on its glass door, the sky had dulled to a pewter lid. Rain threatened.

Ethan killed the engine and sat for a beat, watching his own reflection in the windshield. Professional. Controlled. A man running an errand, nothing more. He told himself the lie twice, then opened the door and let the cold bite his lungs.

Inside, the air was refrigerated and faintly sweet with the sterile scent of antiseptic layered over something metallic and old—memory’s residue. The hallways were painted a green too pale to be comforting, lit by strips that hummed like nervous teeth.

The man who stepped out of the double doors at the corridor’s end looked exactly as Ethan had imagined: mid-sixties, thinning gray hair combed with soldierly precision, eyes bleached pale by too many winters over too many bodies. He wore a lab coat that had seen better starch.

“Doctor Hale?” the man said, his voice gravel smoothed by habit.

“Yes.” Ethan extended a hand. “Thank you for meeting me.”

“Loren Yates,” the coroner replied, gripping briefly before releasing. “Come on. My office is warmer.”

They walked side by side past cold doors, each marked with silent numbers. Ethan’s shoes made no sound on the linoleum; the coroner’s clicked like a metronome.

Inside the office—a room crowded with file cabinets and the stale smell of old paper—Yates gestured to a chair that groaned as Ethan sat. The coroner settled behind a desk littered with folders and a chipped mug ringed with coffee stains.

“You called about the Davis boy.” It wasn’t a question. Yates pulled open a drawer, rummaged, and produced a folder bloated with time-softened sheets. “Haven’t seen this in years.”

The man flipped pages, his voice a steady drone that clung to clinical detachment. “Nothing remarkable, as cases go. Male, twenty, sophomore at the college. Reported missing spring semester. Remains discovered during grounds work—what, five years later? Under ornamental shrubs by the old garden.” He looked up briefly. “Roses, right?”

Ethan’s throat felt tight. “That’s what I heard.”

Yates nodded, eyes back on the file. “Body was badly decomposed. Soil acidity and time didn’t do us any favors. But the bones told enough. Primary injury: penetrating trauma to the chest cavity. Blade wound. Left of the sternum, angled down.” He traced an invisible line across his own ribs, almost absent. “Messy. Untrained hand.”

Ethan’s pen hovered over his notebook though he hadn’t written a word yet. “Messy,” he repeated.

“Real sloppy,” Yates said, flipping another page. “Not your movie-style precision. Whoever did it wanted him dead but didn’t know the map. One puncture like that won’t always finish the job. So maybe more than one, but by the time we found him, all we had was a story written in cracks.”

Ethan felt the hum under his skin deepen. “And that killed him? The blade?”

“Eventually,” Yates said. “But that’s not what stayed in my head.” His finger tapped the paper once, twice. “Corrosive residue. Acid. Postmortem application. Liberally applied.”

The room tilted an inch before righting itself. “Acid,” Ethan said slowly.

“Yep. Eats soft tissue. Eats evidence. But again—messy. Half the job done, half botched.” Yates leaned back, chair creaking like bones. “If you’re picturing some Hannibal Lecter prodigy, forget it. This was amateur hour. Cruel, yeah. Careful? No.”

The words clanged against everything Ethan thought he knew—or feared he knew—about Vivienne Lancaster. She was many things. Amateur wasn’t one of them.

“And… personal effects?” Ethan asked, voice even through the grit in it. “Anything missing?”

Yates scratched his jaw, the rasp loud in the hush. “Now you mention it… his mother swore he had a bracelet. Silver, nothing flashy, with some old family glass in the setting. She cried about that damn thing more than the boy.” His mouth thinned, like he hated remembering that. “Never recovered.”

A bracelet. Not a chain. A tiny, irrational flicker of relief pulsed in Ethan’s chest before logic slammed it down. Different tokens. Different years. People change trophies like hunters change rifles.

He set his pen down. “Do you know why I’m asking?”

Yates snorted softly. “Hell no. And I don’t need to. But my money says therapy’s involved. They always call from the city when they get some patient with a nightmare they want fact-checked.” He gave a thin grin. “Am I warm?”

“Warm,” Ethan admitted. “Patient’s memories orbit this case. I needed clarity.”

“Clarity’s overrated,” Yates said, folding the file shut with a dull smack. “You want my advice? When the insides tell you the story, don’t go looking for poetry in the dirt. People kill for stupid reasons. Or none. Either way, the hole looks the same when you fall in.”

Ethan managed something like a smile, though it felt cut from cardboard. “Sound wisdom.”

“Wisdom’s free,” Yates said, levering up from his chair. “Coffee, though—I charge extra.”

They shook hands at the door, a brief clasp of flesh and age and secrets. Yates’ eyes crinkled faintly, but the weight behind them was permanent. “Drive safe, Doc. Roads back get lonely.”

Ethan stepped out into the brittle daylight, the air cold enough to sting his lungs. The clouds had thickened, dragging long gray skirts across the horizon. He stood by his car for a long moment, breathing, staring at the reflection of his own face in the dark glass.

Frank Davis. Messy stabbing. Acid bath. A bracelet gone.

And a girl in a quiet office, drawing swings and trees with the ghost of a blade in her hand.

Ethan slid behind the wheel, turned the key, and let the engine growl to life. The drive back would be long, and the questions would only get louder in the dark.