Chapter 2: A Legacy in a Box

The world had bleached into a grayscale of funeral arrangements and sympathetic platitudes. For days, Alex felt like he was moving through water, every action slow and detached. The horrifying image of his grandmother in her chair was a constant, looping reel behind his eyes, the twin spirals seared into his memory.

The official explanation came from a tired-looking detective named Miles, a man whose patience seemed as worn as the elbows of his tweed jacket. He delivered the verdict in their living room, his voice a monotone drone that barely cut through the fog of their grief.

“Bizarre suicide,” he’d said, flipping through his notepad. “The coroner confirms cause of death as cardiac arrest brought on by extreme dehydration and malnutrition. She… hadn’t eaten or had a drink in days, Mrs. Miller. The medical examiner believes the carvings were self-inflicted during a state of advanced psychosis.”

Alex’s mother, Helen, just nodded numbly, clutching a framed photo of her own mother from happier times. But Alex couldn’t let it go.

“Psychosis?” Alex’s voice was hoarse. “She carved perfect, identical spirals into her own face? And where was the blood, Detective? The crime scene photos… the report said there was no blood. None. How is that possible?”

Detective Miles sighed, a weary sound of a man who had seen too much strangeness to be surprised by any of it. “We don’t have all the answers, son. People do strange things when their minds break. As for the blood, the coroner speculates the wounds were cauterized somehow. A heated piece of wire, maybe. We didn’t find the instrument, but with the door chained from the inside… all evidence points to her being alone.”

The words were a neat, tidy box, meant to contain the horror and file it away. But Alex knew it was a lie. He had stood in that room. He had smelled the air, thick with ozone and a sweetness that had nothing to do with death and everything to do with… something else. Something wrong. Cauterized? The lines were too fine, too precise. It was an artist’s work, not a madwoman’s frantic self-mutilation. The official story felt hollow, a flimsy sheet thrown over a gaping, monstrous hole.

A week later, they returned to the apartment. The police tape was gone, and a professional cleaning service had scrubbed the place clean, replacing the unholy smell with the sterile, chemical scent of lemon and bleach. But it was just a mask. Alex could still feel the phantom odor clinging to the air, a ghost on his tongue.

The wingback chair was gone, leaving a pale, clean square on the faded carpet. Helen stood in the doorway of the bedroom, her arms wrapped around herself, and shook her head. “I can’t. Alex, I can’t go in there.” Her voice broke. “The closet… can you just… start with the closet? Bag up her clothes for donation. The personal things… just box them up for now.”

“Of course, Mom,” he said, grateful for the task. It was something physical, something he could focus on instead of the screaming emptiness of the room.

The closet was a time capsule, smelling of mothballs and old perfume. He worked methodically, taking down dresses she hadn't worn in decades, folding sensible cardigans, and bagging up worn-out slippers. He was on autopilot, his mind blessedly blank, until his fingers brushed against a shoebox tucked away on the top shelf, behind a stack of yellowed linens.

It was an old Keds shoebox from the 60s, the cardboard softened with age. Unlike the other dusty containers, this one was sealed shut with a thick layer of brittle, yellowed tape. It was deliberately hidden. A secret.

His heart began to beat a little faster. He carried the box into the living room and sat on the floor, using his keys to carefully slit the ancient tape. The lid came off with a soft hiss, releasing a puff of dry, papery air.

It wasn't a collection of random keepsakes. Everything inside seemed to belong to a single, specific narrative. There were black-and-white photos of two teenage girls, arms slung around each other, laughing into the camera. One was his grandmother, Brittney, her smile bright and hopeful. The other girl was a stranger. There was a pressed, faded wildflower, a small silver locket tarnished with age, and a bundle of letters tied with a frayed silk ribbon.

He carefully untied the ribbon and picked up the top envelope. The handwriting was a looping, feminine cursive. The address was his grandmother’s childhood home. The sender’s name was written in the corner: Caroline Davis.

The name meant nothing to him. A childhood friend, maybe. One his grandmother, in her fortress of solitude, had never spoken of. He set the letters aside, his curiosity piqued, and continued to sift through the contents of the box. At the very bottom, beneath a final photograph of the two girls standing by a large, hand-painted sign that read “Welcome to Malarial Werwolf National Park,” was a single sheet of thick drawing paper, folded into a neat square.

It was heavier than the letters, the texture familiar under his artist’s fingertips. He unfolded it with a strange sense of reverence and dread.

It was a charcoal drawing. The style was amateurish but filled with a raw, frantic energy. It depicted a figure, impossibly tall and gaunt, standing amidst what looked like scorched trees. Its limbs were long and bent at awkward, unnatural angles. From its lower back sprouted frail, bat-like wings, and from its upper back, a pair of sharp, serrated limbs, like those of a praying mantis. It was a thing of pure nightmare, the kind of creature Alex himself might have tried to sketch in a fit of dark inspiration.

But it was the face that made the air leave his lungs in a rush.

The face was a complete blank. A featureless, terrifying void.

Except for the eyes.

Where the eyes should have been, the artist had drawn two mesmerizing, perfectly rendered spirals. They glowed on the page, dark and hypnotic, pulling inward to an endless center. They were the exact same spirals that had been carved into his grandmother’s cheeks.

Alex’s hands began to shake. He dropped the paper as if it had burned him. It fluttered to the floor, the monstrous figure staring up at him from the faded carpet.

This wasn’t a product of psychosis. This wasn’t a random pattern.

This was a portrait.

The neat, tidy box of the police report shattered completely. The flimsy sheet was ripped away. And in the gaping, monstrous hole beneath, something was stirring. He had found a piece of his grandmother’s secret life, a fifty-year-old drawing of a monster that had, just over a week ago, become terrifyingly, impossibly real. And now he had its name. Not the monster’s name, but the name of the girl who had apparently seen it with his grandmother: Caroline Davis.