You didn't stop running until your lungs felt like they were coated in sandpaper and stitches flared in your sides like hot pokers. You burst out of the Old Canal Quarter's narrow, oppressive streets and onto a wider avenue bustling with the dissonant energy of late afternoon traffic. The sudden normality–horns honking, people chatting on phones, the smell of exhaust fumes and street food–was jarring, like surfacing too quickly from deep, dark water.

  But the perceived safety was paper-thin. Every tall, thin person glimpsed out of the corner of your eye sent a jolt of adrenaline through you. Every rhythmic click–a faulty traffic signal, someone's hard-soled shoes on the pavement, the rattle of a shopping cart–made your head snap around, searching for a parchment-pale figure unfolding from the shadows. The creature from the library, the tender of the Still-Bloom, was seared into your memory, a benchmark for impossible horror.

  You ducked into the first anonymous coffee shop you saw, needing a moment, needing caffeine, needing the illusion of sanctuary provided by overpriced lattes and bland corporate decor. You ordered a large black coffee, your hand trembling slightly as you paid. You found a booth in the back corner, facing the door, back against the wall. Basic survival instinct kicking in.

  You pulled out the drawing the old man had left. The grotesque, long-fingered hand holding the ornate skeleton key.

  PENVARNON.

  Okay. Deep breath. Think. Ignore the phantom clicking sounds that seemed to echo in the cafe's ambient chatter. Ignore the way the foam on that woman's cappuccino seemed to form a brief, unsettlingly fractal pattern before dissolving. Focus.

  Arthur Penvarnon. Your missing, potentially Bloom-infested colleague. This key was connected to him. The old man, creepy and cryptic as he was, wouldn't have left this specific clue otherwise. Especially not at a Still-Bloom site, right before that thing showed up. It felt like a deliberate hand-off, albeit one delivered with maximum creep factor.

  Where would Arthur keep something locked with an old skeleton key? His office was a bust–unlocked, trashed, and potentially housing its own pet Bloom. That left… his home? It made sense. People keep important, private things at home. Diaries, old family heirlooms, potentially research notes too sensitive or crazy even for his disaster zone of an office.

  Problem: You didn't know where Arthur lived. He was a private guy, intensely focused on work, not one for office socializing. You didn't have his home address, his personal number. You had his work extension, his work email, neither of which were currently helpful.

  Could you access city personnel files? Your Community Engagement Officer login gave you access to certain databases–resident feedback systems, project management tools, maybe basic contact directories used for outreach. But full HR records? Probably not without raising serious red flags. Especially now, when you felt like every keystroke might be monitored by whatever sent that goddamn text message. Using city systems felt like sticking your head in the lion's mouth.

  What about less official channels? Public records? White pages? Social media? Arthur didn't strike you as a social media guy. Too meticulous, too private.

  You tried a quick search on your phone–Stillwater Creek public records, property ownership database. Searching 'Penvarnon, Arthur' yielded a few potential matches, cross-referenced with approximate age. One address kept popping up, linked to tax records and voter registration: 14 Hawthorn Lane.

  Hawthorn Lane… You vaguely recognized the name. An older residential street over in the west end, near the university. Quiet, tree-lined, respectable. Seemed plausible for Arthur. Not some hidden bunker, just… a house.

  Could it be that simple? Find the house, find the lock, use the key (if you could even find the physical key depicted in the drawing), uncover Arthur's secrets, and figure out what the hell was going on? It felt too straightforward, too neat for the kind of spiraling madness you'd fallen into. There had to be a catch.

  The key itself was still just a drawing. Where was the actual object? Did the drawing mean the key was at Arthur's house? Or was it hidden somewhere else? Maybe the old man had the physical key? Shit. You should have asked him, should have pressed him, despite the creepy portrait and cryptic warnings.

  You stared at the drawing again. The long-fingered, claw-tipped hand… it wasn't just holding the key. It was presenting it. Offering it. But the hand itself looked like something dead, or transformed. Like the patient in the photo. Was the key in the possession of one of those… Thoughtless Gardens? Or hidden near one? Maybe at Arthur's house? Had Arthur… reached that stage? The thought made your stomach churn.

  Your coffee arrived, bitter and scalding. You took a gulp, hoping the heat would burn away the cold dread coalescing in your chest.

  It didn't work.

  Okay. Plan. Go to 14 Hawthorn Lane. Scope it out. Look for anything unusual. Look for a lock that might fit an old skeleton key–a gate, a shed, an old chest visible through a window? Maybe even look for the key itself hidden somewhere obvious, following the drawing's clue.

  You finished your coffee in three more gulps, the bitterness doing little to sharpen your frayed nerves. Outside, the afternoon was sliding towards evening, the grey sky deepening, streetlights beginning to hum to life. The shadows stretched longer, darker, full of potential horrors.

  Be cautious. Be quiet. Don't assume anything. And if you hear clicking, run.

  Getting to Hawthorn Lane required navigating the city's unreliable bus system or calling a ride-share. Public transport felt safer, more anonymous. Less chance of a specific car being tracked. You found the right bus route, paid with cash, and slumped into a seat near the back, pulling your hood up slightly, watching the reflection of other passengers in the darkening window.

  Did that person across the aisle just mouth the word 'Weft'? Was the static crackling over the bus radio forming patterns? You squeezed your eyes shut for a moment. Stop it. Paranoia. But the feeling of being watched hadn't lessened. It felt diffuse now, woven into the fabric of the city itself.

  The bus rumbled through familiar streets that now felt subtly alien. Storefronts seemed distorted in the periphery. Faces looked subtly wrong–expressions held too long, eyes not quite tracking.

  Was the city always this… off? Or were you just finally noticing the cracks, the Still-Blooms growing in the collective consciousness?

  Hawthorn Lane was exactly as you'd pictured it: quiet, lined with mature trees whose leaves rustled in the slight evening breeze, casting deep shadows across well-kept lawns and older, solid-looking houses. It felt miles away from the decay of the Canal Quarter or the industrial blight of District 7. A bastion of fragile normalcy.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Number 14 was a modest, two-story brick house, probably built in the 50s or 60s. Dark green shutters flanked the windows. The lawn was neatly trimmed, though perhaps a little long. A sensible sedan, likely Arthur's, sat parked in the driveway. Lights were off inside. No flickering glow of a TV, no warm lamplight. The place looked… dormant. Silent.

  You exited the bus a block away and approached cautiously on foot, staying on the opposite side of the street, using the trees for cover. You scanned the property. Tidy flowerbeds (no obvious signs of pale, crystalline growths, thank fuck). A detached garage at the back. A small wooden gate leading to the backyard. No obvious, old-fashioned keyholes visible from this distance.

  Where would you hide a key, or where would an old lock be? The front door looked modern, likely a standard pin tumbler lock. The garage might have an older padlock. The gate? Maybe. Or perhaps something inside? An old desk? A locked room?

  You circled around the block, ending up in the alleyway that ran behind the houses. From here, you could see Arthur's backyard. Still neat, a small patio, a bird bath. Nothing overtly sinister. But the stillness of the place felt… uneasy. Not peaceful. Expectant. Like the silence in the library before the clicking started.

  You needed a closer look. Waiting until full dark felt riskier, easier to be surprised. Now, in the deep twilight, you still had some visibility, but shadows offered cover. Heart pounding, you slipped through the wooden gate into Arthur's backyard. It wasn't locked.

  The air here felt colder, just like near the Still-Blooms. You scanned the yard quickly. Nothing immediately obvious. You crept towards the back door. Also modern. You peered through the kitchen window. Clean, orderly, stacks of neatly labelled containers visible on the counter. Disturbingly normal.

  Then you saw it. On the small patio table, next to a ceramic pot containing a dead fern, sat a small, ornately carved wooden box. About the size of a shoebox. It looked old, dark wood, intricate carvings that seemed to writhe slightly in the dim light. And on the front, clear as day, was a small, dark metal keyhole. The perfect size and shape for an old skeleton key.

  Bingo. Or maybe… trap?

  Was the key inside the box? Or was the box the lock the drawn key was meant for? The drawing showed the hand holding the key. It didn't show it unlocking anything. Where was the physical key?

  You scanned the immediate area around the patio table. Under the dead fern's pot? Taped beneath the table? Nothing. You looked up. Was it hanging from the porch light? Tucked into a gutter? Still nothing.

  Frustration gnawed at you. The old man’s clue felt incomplete. A picture of the key, Arthur’s name… but not the key itself. Unless… unless the drawing was the key, somehow? No, that was insane. Wasn’t it?

  You cautiously approached the wooden box. It looked ancient, the carvings intricate and vaguely unsettling–not geometric, more organic, like tangled roots or neural pathways. You reached out, hesitated, then gently tried the lid. Locked. Solid.

  You ran your fingers around the box, searching for hidden catches, compartments. Nothing. Just solid, unnervingly cold wood. You leaned closer, peering at the keyhole. Deep, dark, waiting.

  Where was the goddamn key? Did you have to break the box open? Risk making noise?

  You stared at the drawing again, desperately seeking more information in the charcoal lines under the fading twilight.

  The hand holding the key… pale, long fingers, sharp tips… It looked unsettlingly like the hand from the archive photo, the hand of a Thoughtless Garden. But was there something else in the drawing? You squinted, holding the cold paper closer. Yes–maybe?

  Faint shading, subtle textural lines sketched around the base of the wrist, just visible where the hand emerged into the drawing's frame. Lines that suggested… what? Roughness? Texture? Almost like… like the hand wasn't just floating there, but was depicted as pushing up through something? Emerging from earth? Mulch?

  Emerging from the ground. The image clicked, disturbing but potentially crucial. Arthur’s symbolism was getting increasingly fucking weird, bordering on the outright Gnostic ramblings from his notebook. Planting season, the old man had said. Planting the key? Where would Arthur, in his meticulous, pattern-obsessed, Bloom-infected state of mind, symbolically 'plant' a key associated with a hand 'growing' from the earth?

  Your gaze swept the immediate surroundings of the house again, no longer just looking for obvious hiding spots, but for places associated with earth, with growth, with things hidden beneath the surface yet accessible. The concrete patio? No. Under the porch steps? Checked, nothing. The lawn itself? Too open, too shallow.

  Then… the flowerbeds. Lining the walkway near the front porch. Neat, contained rectangles of earth, deliberately cultivated, a place where things are planted and expected to grow. A place where something small could be hidden beneath the surface, nestled amongst roots, obscured by flowers, yet still part of the property, close to the entrance. It fit the unsettling symbolism of the drawing–the Bloom-like hand emerging from the soil to offer the key. It felt like exactly the kind of overly elaborate, thematically resonant hiding place Arthur’s unraveling mind might devise.

  Okay, you crazy bastard, you thought, a surge of adrenaline cutting through the despair. Let's see if your garden holds any secrets.

  You crept back around the side of the house, heart pounding a frantic rhythm against your ribs. Crouching low, moving with excruciating care to avoid disturbing the neat suburban order, you examined the flowerbed near the front porch more closely this time. Marigolds drooped slightly in the cooling air, their cheerful orange a jarring contrast to the encroaching dread. Struggling petunias huddled near the brick foundation. Damp earth, dark mulch. You gently pushed aside leaves, probed the soil with your fingers near the base of the largest marigold clump, feeling for anything hard, unnatural. Nothing but dirt and roots.

  You moved along the bed, checking near the struggling petunias, closer to the brick foundation. Your fingers brushed against something small, hard, and unnervingly smooth buried just beneath the layer of dark mulch, almost perfectly camouflaged. You carefully scraped the mulch away.

  And then you saw it. Partially obscured by soil and the roots of a dying petunia, nestled deep near the brick foundation, was something small and pale white. Not a Bloom, not exactly; it lacked the facets. It was smaller, smoother, shaped almost unnervingly like… a single, detached skeletal finger bone, sticking partially out of the earth. And resting directly on top of this pseudo-bone, catching a faint gleam of the last twilight, was a small, ornate, slightly rusted skeleton key.

  Just like the one in the drawing. Resting symbolically upon the 'hand' emerging from the earth.

  He actually did it. The crazy, meticulous bastard.

  With trembling fingers, you reached down, pushing aside the flower petals. The key felt cold, unnaturally so, like the Blooms. You snatched it up, the metal heavy and real in your hand.

  You had it. The key to Arthur’s box. The next piece of the puzzle.

  Now you just had to get back to the box without being seen, unlock it, and pray that whatever was inside gave you answers, not just more questions or a one-way ticket to becoming a Thoughtless Garden yourself.

  The street was quiet again. The neighbor's light stayed off. Taking a deep breath, you slipped back towards the rear of the house, the cold metal of the key a heavy weight of dread and desperate hope in your palm. Time to see what secrets Arthur Penvarnon had locked away.