Novels by Aira Writes

Six months after Alan Crowe vanished, Miller’s Creek forgot how to talk about him. The town learned to wrap its silence in routine, to replace unease with habit. The station buzzed again, but the air carried something brittle, as if one wrong word could shatter it. People moved like they were pretending not to remember. They pretended well.Lee stopped pretending the day she found his notebook. It was buried beneath a drawer in the evidence room, between old case files and dust. No name on the cover, only a single mark, an ink line drawn straight through the center. She didn’t open it right away. She placed it on her desk and stared at it for hours, waiting for courage or forgiveness, whichever arrived first. Neither did.The bureau had closed the Crowe file two months earlier. Official record: Missing, presumed dead. The divers had searched the lake twice. No body. No footprints beyond the pier. His car engine was cold when they found it, keys still in the ignition, badge resting on

They started calling it “The Crowe Case” on the news the kind of irony that only small towns and gossip could twist into legend.By the time the reporters arrived at the station, I was already gone.No one saw me leave. No one stopped me.The last thing they had of me on record was a keycard swipe at 8:47 p.m., the night Lee turned in her report to Internal Affairs.She had done what she promised: told the truth.I sat in my car at the edge of Miller’s Creek, engine off, watching the reflection of the courthouse lights shimmer across the black water.The night was colder than usual, the kind that seeped into the bones and refused to leave. A storm was coming, the clouds low and bruised, pressing down on the earth.Inside the glove compartment sat the letter. My confession. Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was just another version of the truth, written to sound like remorse.I’d written it three times and torn it up twice.What do you even say when the person you’ve been chasing your whole

The first thing I noticed when I walked into the precinct that morning was the silence. Not the usual kind, this one was heavy, deliberate. Conversations stopped when I passed. Papers shuffled louder than necessary. Someone had been talking about me.I set my coffee down on my desk and opened my laptop.The Hale case file blinked on the screen, the same one I thought I’d buried beneath a mountain of other reports. But it had been reopened. A new tag sat on the header in bold red: “Independent Review: Active.”Lee’s desk was empty, but her jacket hung on the chair. She was here somewhere.The sound of footsteps came from behind me, Chief Donnelly, flanked by two people I didn’t recognize. Suits. Not locals.“Crowe,” he said, his voice carefully neutral. “This is Agent Rosner and Inspector Hale from Internal Affairs. They’ll be going through our open and closed casework this week.”“Internal Affairs?” I forced a half-smile. “Didn’t know we were that interesting.”Rosner didn’t smile bac

The courthouse in Miller’s Creek was older than the town itself, stone walls, heavy doors, and the faint smell of damp wood that never left no matter the season.When Marcus Hale walked in that morning, the air shifted. He looked thinner, quieter, like someone who’d aged a lifetime behind bars. He didn’t meet my eyes, but I felt the weight of his silence.His lawyer, a sharp-eyed man from the city, placed a thick folder on the judge’s desk. “Your honor,” he began, “new forensic analysis raises serious doubts about the original investigation.”Lee sat beside me, her pen motionless above her notes.The lawyer continued. “The fabric evidence, the so-called ‘key link’ between Mr. Hale and the victim, has been proven contaminated. Chain of custody errors, improper labeling, and most importantly, missing timestamps on the original data logs.”The judge frowned. “Are you implying the evidence was tampered with?”“I’m saying,” the lawyer replied, “that it was handled carelessly. And my client

The morning fog clung to the station like a ghost that refused to leave.When I stepped out of my car, Lee was already by the front steps, a coffee in hand and that look in her eyes — the one that meant she’d found something she shouldn’t have.“Morning,” I said.“Alan,” she replied flatly. “We need to talk.”Inside, she led me to the briefing room. The blinds were drawn, light thin and gray across the table. She laid a file down between us.“Remember the evidence log you signed the night Lydia’s phone came in?” she asked.I nodded slowly.“The timestamp doesn’t match your shift records,” she said. “It’s off by nearly two hours.”“That’s a system glitch,” I said. “It happens all the time.”“Maybe.” She tilted her head. “But I checked the CCTV footage from that night. You were still at the house when the entry was logged. Which means someone else signed it under your name, or you returned later without logging it.”The air between us went still. I forced my tone calm. “What exactly are

The days that followed blurred into one another. The town moved on, but the echoes hadn’t faded. Every café, every corner, every conversation carried Marcus Hale’s name like a whisper.At the station, the energy changed. People smiled when they saw me, pats on the back, quiet congratulations. They called it closure. I called it fragile.Lee was different, though. She didn’t smile much anymore.She came into my office late one afternoon, a file tucked under her arm. The blinds were half-drawn, strips of gray light cutting across the desk.“I’ve been going through the case notes again,” she said.I leaned back in my chair. “Still can’t sleep?”Her lips twitched. “Something like that.”She opened the folder and slid a page toward me, a forensics report. “Look here,” she said, tapping a line with her finger. “The fingerprint match on the window frame, one of them was partial. It’s only a 60% probability match for Marcus.”“That’s still within range,” I said.“It is. But the partial was li

The walk back through the tunnel was a funeral march. Each step was heavier than the last, the dank air a pall. Silvera said nothing. She simply turned and led the way, her flashlight beam a cold, guiding star back to damnation. She had known he would come back. She had calculated his grief, his guilt, his brokenness, and found the sum total to be predictable. Reliable.They emerged into the chamber with the window to the white room. The sleeping woman...Vivi...lay unchanged. The steady beep of the heart monitor had been switched on, a rhythmic counterpoint to the chaos in Nel’s soul.“What do I have to do?” His voice was a hollow scrape.“Just be present,” Silvera said, her tone clinical now, all pretense of alliance gone. She entered a code on a keypad beside the window. A section of the glass, no wider than a door, hissed open. “The emotional resonance is passive. Your proximity, your… state of being… is the trigger. Go in. Sit with her.”He looked at her, this woman who had dissec

The truth was a cold, sharp blade sliding between his ribs. It hurt more than the fall, more than the fire. Silvera. Her calm intelligence, her steady presence, the fragile trust he had built in the wreckage of his world...it had all been a performance. She hadn't been studying the poison. She had been perfecting it.The catalyst is here.He was the key to their final experiment. The brother. The emotional resonance they needed to complete… what? To wake her up? To activate her? To turn this sleeping copy of Vivi into whatever weapon or tool they had designed her to be?He watched, paralyzed, as Silvera checked the readings on a hidden panel beside the bed. She wasn't just a botanist. She was a scientist, an architect of this atrocity. Her alliance with him had been a way to monitor him, to guide him, to ensure he was perfectly primed...filled with grief, rage, and a desperate need for closure...when they finally brought him to the threshold.He had to get out. He had to warn someone.

The fall was not long, but it was a plunge into nothing. He tumbled through darkness, striking jagged rock, before landing with a jarring impact on a hard, wet surface. The breath was knocked from his lungs. For a moment, there was only the roar of the fire above and the screaming pain in his ribs.Then, silence.The fire, starved of oxygen in the lower chamber, seemed to die down as quickly as it had ignited. Or perhaps the rock was too thick. The only light was a faint, hellish orange glow from the fissure high above, and it was fading.He was in utter blackness. Trapped.He lay there, broken, the image of the burning eyes and the words from the journal seared into his mind. Her essence will strengthen our line for generations.Vivi was gone. Not just dead. Erased. Assimilated. The finality of it was a weight that crushed what was left of his spirit. He had failed. In the end, he had found only a more profound and terrible truth, and then he had burned it.He didn't know how long he

The world became a tunnel of noise and muzzle flash. Jason fired from behind the steel table, the report of his service weapon a deafening crack in the cavern. A bullet ricocheted off the rock wall near Nel’s head, spraying stone chips into his cheek. He didn’t flinch. He returned fire, the revolver bucking in his hand, the shot going wide but forcing Jason to duck.His mind was clear, a single, focused point: hold them. Give Silvera time.Alex was on the ground, cursing, trying to stem the flow of blood from his shoulder with his good hand. He was out of the fight for now.But Hedge Demmys hadn’t moved. The old man stood by the entrance, a statue of cold fury, his knuckles white on the head of his cane. He wasn't a physical threat, but his presence was a command, an anchor for his son’s violence.“You’re a dead man, Tait!” Jason shouted, risking a glance over the table.“Then I’ve got nothing left to lose!” Nel yelled back, his voice raw.He fired again. This time, the bullet punched

The world shrank to the cavern, the pulsing fungi, and the three men who held his life in their hands. The revolver in Nel’s grip felt like a child’s toy against Alex’s professional stance and the sheer, immovable power of the Demmys family.“The Cleaner,” Nel said, the words tasting like ash. “It was you.”Alex gave a slight, mocking bow of his head. “A necessary role. I tidy up the messes. Like Golda. Like you.” His gaze flicked to Silvera, who stood frozen by Golda’s cot. “And the botanist. An unexpected bonus.”Jason stepped forward, his sheriff’s authority a palpable force even here, in this nightmare garden. “Drop the gun, Nel. There’s nowhere to run. This is the end of the line.”Hedge Demmys remained by the entrance, a silent, ancient vulture observing the final moments of his prey. His presence was the true cage.Nel’s mind raced, a frantic animal looking for any way out. The recorder. He still had Golda’s recorder in his breast pocket. If he could keep them talking…“You kil

The world had snapped into a different, harsher focus. The rain wasn't just rain anymore, it was a solvent, washing away the lies to reveal the ugly truth beneath. Nel walked back to the inn, the photograph a burning brand in his pocket. His father's face, that look of tortured complicity, was seared onto the back of his eyelids.He found Silvera in her room, bent over a microscope set up on the small desk. Various plant specimens, pressed and labeled, were laid out beside it. She looked up as he entered, her sharp eyes taking in his disheveled state, the grim set of his jaw.“What happened?” she asked, setting down a pair of tweezers.He didn’t speak. He just pulled the photograph from his pocket and laid it on the desk next to her microscope.Silvera looked down. She was silent for a long moment, her expression unreadable. Then she let out a slow, soft breath. “Oh, Nel.”“He sold her,” Nel said, his voice flat, dead. “My father. He sold my sister to the Demmys for ten thousand dolla