CHAPTER ONE — The Wall That Shouldn’t Exist part 3
1297 Words
A strange reaction for someone supposedly so in control.
Mara noticed it too. “You said you hadn’t renovated this floor in months.”
“I haven’t,” Yara said quickly. Too quickly. “Absolutely not. I would never allow work of—” she gestured vaguely at the cavity, “—that quality.”
Mara’s voice softened in a way that wasn’t actually soft. “Anyone else have access to the building?”
Yara hesitated.
It was infinitesimal, but it was there.
Finally she said, “Just the tenants. And my evening custodian. But he’s been with me for years.”
“Name?” Mara asked.
Yara hesitated again. “Elias.”
Mara jotted it down.
Quinn filed the moment away like a shard of pottery with a telling flaw.
Something about Yara’s reaction wasn’t matching the elegance of her presentation.
A forensics tech crouched near the opening in the wall, shining a high-powered light into the cavity. Another brushed plaster fragments into a labeled container. A third sifted through dust with delicate tweezers.
Quinn watched from the edge of the caution tape, pulse slow and focused again.
“Detective,” one of the techs called. “You need to see this.”
Mara strode over. Quinn followed until Mara’s hand shot out in a silent don’t even think about it.
The tech passed Mara a sealed evidence packet.
Inside was the small metallic object Quinn had glimpsed earlier — now visible under the bright lamp.
It was a ring.
But not jewelry.
A keyring tag.
Flat. Aluminum. Etched with a small pattern.
A symbol.
Quinn’s brain hummed — recognition tugging at the edge of consciousness. The shape was familiar. An abstract design she’d seen before. Somewhere in the building. No, near the building. No… on something.
She mentally combed her memories like flipping tiles over on a table.
Yara’s office door?
The freight elevator?
A sculpture?
A delivery crate?
The tech spoke again. “It’s clean. No fingerprints. But look at this.”
He turned the tag under the light.
A smear of the same unnatural green substance streaked the edge.
The room seemed to tighten.
Mara’s jaw flexed. “Where exactly was this?”
The tech pointed. “Inside the cavity. Wedged behind the wooden support beam. Whoever sealed the wall didn’t mean for this to fall forward.”
Quinn exhaled, soft and involuntary, as her mind locked onto a possibility:
the design on the tag looked eerily like a stylized fern… or leaf…
but geometric. Industrialized.
Not something organic.
Something branded.
Mara shot Quinn a look. “What?”
Quinn swallowed. “I’ve seen that symbol before.”
Yara’s head snapped toward her. “Where?”
Quinn lifted her eyes. “I’m not sure yet.”
But she would be.
Her brain was already tracing lines, shapes, and memories like a sculptor smoothing wireframe armatures.
The pattern would reveal itself.
Patterns always did.
And this one — whatever it belonged to — had been close.
Too close.
The sirens faded first.
Then the footsteps.
Then the low rumble of police radios as officers filed out one by one, packing up their cases, their lights, their muttered theories.
Soon only Mara, Quinn, and the crime scene tape remained.
Theo hovered in the doorway, wringing his ceramic ring until it threatened to snap. “Do you… want me to stay tonight?” he asked Quinn gently. “You know. In case, um. Something.”
Quinn blinked at him. “Something what?”
Theo looked horrified. “I don’t know! A ghost? A murderer? The structural integrity of the building collapsing into the fiery pits of hell?”
Quinn considered this, head tilted. “Ghosts aren’t real. The murderer is probably long gone. And the building is concrete reinforced with steel beams, so the pits of hell scenario is unlikely.”
Theo stared at her, wounded. “You could just say yes or no, Quinn.”
She opened her mouth to attempt an apology—a rare, delicate creature—but Mara cut in.
“She’s fine,” the detective said. “Forensics cleared the space. Nothing suggests an active threat.”
Theo glanced between them. “She found a corpse in her wall.”
“Yes,” Mara said calmly. “And now she has police presence patrolling the block.”
Quinn wasn’t sure if that made her feel protected or surveilled.
Theo sighed dramatically, but stepped back. “Okay. But if you hear any weird noises, call me. Even if it’s two in the morning.”
“I won’t,” Quinn said.
“I know,” he replied sadly, then trudged off into the hallway.
Mara lingered, arms folded, eyes tracking Quinn in that unsettling, analyzing way. Quinn felt like a sculpture under critique—one Mara hadn’t decided to love or destroy yet.
“Do you want to stay here?” Mara asked quietly.
Quinn looked around her studio:
the half-finished sculptures,
the dust settling on old tools,
the broken cavity in the wall where the body had been.
It didn’t feel like home.
But it also didn’t feel like something she could walk away from.
“I have work to do,” she said.
Mara’s brow creased a millimeter. Concern or annoyance—hard to tell. “Lock your door. And if anything else… unusual happens, call me immediately.”
Quinn nodded.
Mara hesitated like she wanted to say something else, then turned and left, her boots echoing through the hallway until the sound faded completely.
Silence descended.
Quinn stood alone in her studio, the neon signs outside painting long streaks of color over the concrete floor. Her hair had fully escaped its knot, falling in long wavy tendrils around her shoulders. She ran a hand through it absently.
Her attention drifted—inevitably—back to the cavity.
It gaped like an empty mouth now. Cleaned, measured, photographed. But still wrong. Still hungry.
She stepped closer, carefully avoiding rubble and tape. The air here felt heavier. Not supernatural—Quinn didn’t do supernatural—but weighted with something left behind.
Her gaze snagged on the faint geometric tattoo on the victim’s wrist.
Forensics had left the wall open, but the body was gone.
Still, Quinn could picture it perfectly.
Too perfectly.
The green residue.
The dried skin.
The unnatural preservation.
Her mind spun patterns, weaving fragments into shapes.
What kind of plant makes that color?
What kind of process could dehydrate someone that cleanly?
What kind of person would choose this method… and why here?
Her studio felt colder.
She turned away from the cavity.
Then she froze.
A sound came from behind the wall.
Soft.
Subtle.
Like a shift.
A settling.
A… scrape?
Quinn didn’t move.
Her pulse didn’t spike; her breath didn’t quicken. She simply listened.
The sound came again.
A faint dragging.
Inside the wall.
Exactly like what she had heard the night before.
The building was silent otherwise.
Quinn stepped back, slowly, gripping her chisel without realizing she’d picked it up.
Then—
nothing.
Just the rain.
Just the neon.
Just her own heartbeat filling the space.
She exhaled and lowered the chisel, annoyed at herself. Buildings made noises. Walls shifted. Pipes expanded and contracted. The forensics team had probably disturbed something structural.
She turned to shut off the lights.
That’s when she saw it:
A small smear of bright green on the floor, near her workbench.
Almost invisible against the gray.
Almost.
Not from the cavity.
Not from plaster.
Fresh.
Quinn crouched, staring at it.
It wasn’t paint.
It wasn’t from her materials.
And it hadn’t been there before.
Somewhere deep in the building, a floorboard creaked.
Quinn straightened slowly, eyes narrowing.
Patterns always revealed themselves.
But sometimes…
they revealed things she wasn’t ready to see.
- Writer
