Page 13 of Girl, Unseen

The beam revealed markings carved into the rock face. Not the usual graffiti – no crude initials or declarations of teenage love. These were precise, geometrical shapes. Triangles nested within circles. Spirals that disappeared into nowhere. And something else, something that made Ella's skin crawl – symbols she'd never seen before, but which her mind insisted on reading as words. Like letters from an alphabet she'd seen in dreams.

‘Are those… carvings?’

‘Looks like it. Geological survey marks?’

Ella traced one of the symbols with her finger, and something electric shot through her nervous system. Her stomach clenched like she'd swallowed ice water – that instinctive reaction towrongthat had kept humans alive since they first huddled in caves.

These weren't survey marks. They reminded her of something, but the connection danced just out of reach.

The hair on her neck stood up. She'd seen enough scenes to know when something felt off, and this whole setup was triggering every alarm in her head.

She and Luca ran their flashlights across the carvings, then their combined beams revealed what the darkness had been hiding.

A hole in the quarry floor.

Perfectly circular, about three feet across.

It hadn't been blasted or eroded. The edges were too clean. Like something had simply decided to exist where solid rock should be.

‘That's new,’ Luca said.

Ella approached the hole carefully, testing each step. The rock around it looked sturdy enough, but something about the perfect geometry of it worried her. They positioned themselves on opposite sides with lights aimed down into the darkness. The beam disappeared into nothing. The hole was deeper than their lights could reach.

‘I don't like this,’ Luca said.

‘Neither do I.’ Ella reached into her pocket and pulled out a quarter. ‘Want to see how deep it goes?’

She dropped the coin before Luca could answer. One second passed. Two. Three. Four.

The impact echoed up from the depths.

‘Jesus, that’s a big drop,’ Luca said.

Ella adjusted her light and tried to pierce the darkness below. For a moment, there was nothing but shadow. Then something caught the beam – a flash of pale skin, a tangle of darker shapes that might have been clothing.

‘Hawkins,’ she breathed. ‘Tell me that's not what I think it is.’

She didn't answer. Couldn't. Because the light had revealed more details now, and her brain was cataloging them with ruthless efficiency.

A hand, fingers twisted into claws. The sleeve of what had once been an expensive jacket, now torn and stained dark.

And beneath that, glimpses of something that had stopped being Marcus Thornton about three days ago.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Dawn crept over Bedford Quarry like a thief, stealing shadows one by one. Ella watched from the hood of her car as a procession of vehicles wound their way up the access road. Police cruisers, forensics vans, and the massive crane they'd need to recover what was left of Marcus Thornton.

It had been nearly eight hours since they’d found the body, but it had taken that long for police to work out the logistics of unearthing a corpse that was sixty feet underground. She and Luca had spent what remained of the night in her SUV, catching fragments of sleep between bouts of restless thinking. They'd had to drive half a mile down Barrett Road just to get enough signal to call it in, then when they’d come back, Ella had half-expected to return and find everything gone – the symbols, the hole, Marcus's body. Like the quarry might swallow its secrets whole.

But everything remained exactly as they'd left it, which somehow felt even worse.

Now, the morning sun did nothing to warm the November air. If anything, daylight only emphasized how deep the quarry walls went, how far a body might fall.

‘Walk me through it again.’ Luca paced beside the car, clearly too wired to sit still. ‘Guy drives out here on a Saturday afternoon. Parks his perfectly good Mustang three levels up – which makes no sense by the way. Why not drive to the top if you're planning to do research?’

‘Maybe the road was blocked.’ Ella rubbed her eyes. Sleep deprivation made everything feel slightly unreal. ‘Or he didn’t know what he was looking for, so he aimed for the middle.’

‘Okay, fine. So he parks mid-level, climbs to the top of the quarry with his rock hammer. And what? Just happens to fall down a perfectly round hole?’

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