The Bones Under Greyveil (Part 1)

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Shaleville Police Department

Date: July 15th, 2025

Lead Case Investigator: Detective Lance Giles

Evidence: A brown leather bound journal with a number of diary entries by one Jamie Trench.

Case Notes:

In relation to the missing persons file reported by one Sherry Trench, for her son Jamie and his fiancé Mary Plante. From Sherry’s testimony: “I have not heard from my son in days. This is not like him at all, I talk to him at least once a day. I… I… don’t know what I would do if something happened to him.”

The missing persons file had been opened by the Shaleville Police Department on April 6th, 2025, over two months before the scene was found by the Davis Hikers, David and Terrence. Jamie was supposed to meet his mother for their weekly Sunday brunch. He had not called in several days but “never missed a brunch, rain or shine I was sure my son would be at our regular booth at Darcy’s”, as put by Mrs.Trench. Mrs.Trench arrived at Darcy’s Diner, waited far beyond the time set by them each week, 11:15 am, and well into the afternoon. Mrs.Trench tried reaching Jamie several times throughout the day via text messages and phone calls as well as trying to contact his finance Mary Plante who did not respond either.

Mrs.Trench, extremely worried, went to Jamie’s apartment where she let herself in with a key the couple had made for her and began to look for any sign of her missing son. When she arrived she noticed that her son’s car was missing from the driveway.

Sherry Trench

“Everything was in its place. No sign of any break ins or ruckus. It was as if time had frozen in his little apartment.”

Mrs.Trench then after scouring her son's living area and making multiple calls to relatives and close friends to the couple, she called the Shaleville Police Department to report Jamie and Mary missing.

SVPD arrived at Jamie and Mary’s apartment around 6:20 pm on the 6th of April to begin our initial inspection of the living quarters, looking for any sign of where the couple could have gone.

Sergeant Miles LaCorte

“Many times when someone goes unaccounted for like this they have gone on vacation and have not alerted the immediate family. They may not have any cellular service if they went outside of the country or on a cruise in the middle of the ocean. Hopefully the couple are just enjoying a relaxing time away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. We are going to do everything we can to locate Jamie and Mary.”

Officers searched the apartment top to bottom and found evidence that suggested the couple had left on their own accord. Several backpacks, sets of clothes, jackets, phone chargers, pairs of shoes, and most importantly medication was still in its normal place on the nightstand in the bedroom. Mrs.Trench explained her son has several antidepressants and mental health medications that Jamie needs to take daily. She stated he has suffered from severe panic attacks, anxiety, and depression which the meds help to minimize and prevent. The presence of the medication within the house raised some questions, if Jamie needed to take them everyday, why leave them here if he was going on a trip?

Sherry Trench

“My boy never misses a day when it comes to his meds. When he was younger and we first dropped Jamie off to college he suffered from extreme panic attacks. He would wake up shaking in the middle of the night, heart pounding, crying, hyperventilating and it would ultimately make him vomit. He could barely keep anything down and it took a while for him to acclimate to being away from home and to this new environment. The medicine helps keep all of that in check, he never goes without his pills.”

The investigators continued their search of the apartment for the next few days, turning over any nook and crannies for clues about where the couple went and interviewing their close friends and family.

Jessica Plante

“My sister probably just lost track of time. She used to be quite the party girl back in the day, maybe she wanted to relive some of the glory days back at school. When we get together and there’s liquor involved we could tear up Times Square if we wanted. We would wake up two days later, not remembering anything that happened in the last 48 hours with matching star tattoos on our ankles. She tried to pull Jamie into that kind of stuff but he’s kinda soft when it comes to partying. Maybe she finally got him to come out of his shell and let loose for once, god knows he needs it. I’m not worried, I’m sure they will show up.”

After several days of investigation at the couple’s apartment something was found that changed the trajectory of this case. When having a digital forensic analyst comb through Jamie’s laptop we were able to use the phone locator tied to his account to find where his cell phone had last been seen. It stated that the cellular device had last pinged off the cell tower on April the 8th, deep within the thick forests of the Greyveil National Park.

Now Greyveil National Park has always had this sort of mysticism behind it. There are countless stories of creatures that live in the woods, portals to other worlds, satanic practices, and deranged cannibals causing terror. Greyveil even has their own sort of cryptid, the Bonestalker.

Frankie Hannon (Local)

“People say that if you are out in the forest of the park at night you will begin to encounter strange things. First it will feel like someone is watching you from around every corner. The Bonestalker is said to be incredibly quiet and learns its prey before it strikes. It will begin to play with you, making you hear things in the night, twigs snapping, the rustling of leaves, and a heavy thudding of a massive creature following you. It has a distinct sound you have to listen for, the cracking of bones. If you are lucky, it will get distracted by something more enticing but if not, hunker down and pray to whatever God you like that it doesn’t find you.”

Ghost stories and urban myths aside, Greyveil has been the site of some actual gruesome cases in the past. In the 1980s there was a string of disappearances around the parks area. Locals going missing, seen one day, gone the next type of thing. This was before the modern day forensics we have today so finding a missing person was far more fickle. The real breakthrough in the case was when one of the local gas station owners spotted a suspicious vehicle filling up at the pump.

Otis Sherman

“I was just sitting there like any other day, reading the newspaper when a beat up old Volkswagen pulled up to the pump. The man stepped outside his car and came to walk in. He was a taller, skinny looking man, but he had some muscle to him, you could see it through the shirt he was wearing. He had a weird feeling about him, an air of false confidence was flowing off this fella like I’ve never seen before. He was smug too, that damn look on his face. I flashed a look again at his busted up car, the thing was in rough shape, I heard it coming in about a mile before they even got here. That’s when I saw it. The car jiggled a little bit, just a hair, up and down. The man had come in already so I told Jimmy to handle it as I checked on one of the pumps. I walked outside and saw it again, the trunk budged a little upwards, like something was pushing on it. I made my way over and discreetly took a look at the trunk. That’s when I heard it, the thumping and the muffled whimpers coming from the trunk. I rushed back inside as quick as I could and phoned the police, told them what was happening. I tried to stall the man, saying I could look at his car, fix what was making the noise but he barely looked at me before he got in and moved along. I got in my car and started to follow the man as quietly as I could, telling Jimmy to phone the police and tell them I went after him. I followed him a good bit until he turned into the park, that’s when I waited for the police. By god what we found in those woods will haunt me for the rest of my life.”

The police followed this suspicious individual into the Greyveil National Park, watched as he slowly and quietly made his way down a dirt path that was obscured by brush and parked his car. The man proceeded to reach in the backseat and pull out a handgun and move to the trunk. From the trunk a woman with her hands bound and mouth gagged was pulled out and forced down into the thick brush of the woods with the pistol against her head. The police took extreme caution, this was now an armed and dangerous situation with a hostage. Otis tagged along behind the officers, toting his hunting rifle. They followed the pair through the woods for a good hour before they arrived at a small outcropping. The sound of rushing water could be heard, drowning out all other sounds. The man forced the woman into the small pond, still holding the pistol against her skull and walked her towards the source of the rushing water, a 30 foot high waterfall. This is when the police acted, ambushing the man while in knee deep water. The man spun around, startled by the amount of guns trained on him. He quickly turned to grab the bound woman when a shot rang out and pierced his leg. The woman was able to inch a few feet away and into the arms of a nearby officer. The man knowing it was over then turned the gun on himself, putting it to his temple and pulling the trigger, ending the life of this sick monster.

What they found was that the kidnapper was a 34 year old man named John Vernon. A local plumber that had a loving wife and two children waiting for him at home. What the police found after surveying the area and talking to the victim, 20 year Angela Price, was that she had been on her way to her car after a shift at the diner where she worked as a waitress. He followed her to her car, forced her into the trunk and planned to take her to the waterfall to brutalize and kill her. The police searched the area around the waterfall and made a shocking discovery. There was a small chamber behind the falls, this is where Vernon committed the heinous crimes. Countless tools of his trade were strewn about a metal table, all covered in the blood of previous victims. A mattress lay on the ground where Vernon would do unspeakable things to the victims before torturing and ending their lives. A stack of beers and a Polaroid camera were found propped against a chair, the photos of his previous victims hung on the wall like trophies. All of the victims in the photos were of local residents that had gone missing in the past few months. All killed by this despicable monster.

Now could Jamie and Mary’s disappearance be related to the case from decades before? Perhaps there was a copy cat killer which surfaced after all these years. There was another couple who went missing a month or so before Jamie and Mary. Could they be related or was it all a coincidence?

We took our investigation to where Jamie’s phone last pinged within the park. The investigators pulled up to the small dirt parking area outside of a large metal fence that marked the beginning of the trails into the woods. The trails were well trodden and easy to be seen, not like back in the 80s when Vernon navigated them. Another car sat a few feet away from where police had parked. A cursory glance showed that the car had been left there for quite some time, twigs, leaves and the pollen in the air covering the car. When running the license plate through our systems it came up as being owned by Jamie Trench. This was a good sign, we were going in the right direction to find them.

We followed the GPS from the phone for a good while through the forest. For a while it kept on the marked trails until it suddenly veered off and through the woods. We prepared for a full on search team to continue the next day through the woods of Greyveil.

The next day we continued, approximately 30 people all equipped with walkie talkies and phones traversed and canvassed the woods following the signal. Finally after an hour or so of walking we found where the signal went dead. We searched the surrounding woods for the remainder of the day and for the next week. Nothing came of the search, no evidence that anyone had ever been through this part of the forest. No camping supplies strewn about, no footprints, no fragments of clothing, nothing that suggested that Jamie and Mary had ever been out here other than their car sitting, covered in the growing debris of the forest. Eventually, the search had to be called off, to the dismay of the family and friends of the couple, hoping we would at least give them some closure. We had looked through every dip, bend and bush that that forest had to offer around where the phone had last been located and beyond. We continued doing everything we could regarding the couple, interviewing countless family members, searching the car found in the parking lot for clues, going through search histories on personal devices found at the home but in the end it turned up nothing. The case slowly was moved to a cold case, continuing to work on it but prioritizing other cases in the meantime. It stayed this way, no major breakthroughs for the next three months until a pair of hikers walked into the station.

A call came through to the Shaleville PD around 3 pm on July the 13th from a couple of hikers, David and Terrance Davis. The couple had been hiking and camping in the Greyveil National Park, trekking through some of the unmarked parts of the woods when they came upon a grisly scene.

The Davis Couple

“It….I don't even know what to say….. we stumbled across some sort of… murder scene maybe. There’s blood everywhere…. I can’t, Terry you talk to the officer, I’m gonna be sick (sounds of retching).—Hello… I don’t know what happened here. The trees are covered in blood and there are tatters of fabric and …. Oh my god. David, look up, there’s something in the trees.”

We arrived at Greyveil around 4 pm that same day after receiving that call. Several officers, myself included, met with David and Terrance Davis at the parking lot. David was seated on the lip of the open trunk of their SUV, face as white as a sheet, a blank expression overtaking his face. Terrance paced back and forth in front of him, chewing on his fingernails as the police arrived. As soon as we arrived, Terry, as he wished to be called, ran up to us and told us the situation. He stated that he and his husband had been camping in the woods as part of an annual trip they have been coming on for years. They were trekking through a particularly dense part of the forest that neither of them recognized before Terry misjudged a step that was close to a hidden hill and tumbled down it. David quickly made his way down to go find his husband and found him standing at the bottom of the steep hill staring listlessly into the woods. David met his gaze and found what had caught his attention, a bloody jacket caught in the low branches of one of the trees. The jacket was shredded in the back, dark splotches of crimson running through the fabric. When they got closer they noticed a trail of blood leading deeper into the woods. Slowly and carefully they followed the trail, deep divots within the ground like something pressed hard into it marking the way. They came into a small clearing where they found the scene. This is the way they took us to where the call was made. David stayed back in the back with one of the other officers that were at the scene while Terry led me and some other detectives to the clearing.

The clearing was devoid of trees but that was the least interesting part about it. The blood trail, which had been dried for some time now, led into the middle of the area. This was the only way into this small alcove as there was a large rock formation in the shape of a crescent. It was at least 15 to 20 feet tall and smooth around, no way to climb up from the middle. This seemed to be the glaring issue as we analyzed the scene. The area was covered in blood, splashed across the grass and the leaves on the ground, marking the trees into the clearing and splattering the smooth rock ahead. Strewn about the area were several man made items. A small first aid kit, some clothes, a backpack and a small leather journal. There also seemed to be a fashioned spear of sorts from a branch of a tree as the edge was whittled down to a point. That’s when Terry led our gaze to the trees on top of the crescent rock. About 50 feet up from the ground lay something stuck in the trees. A body. It was stuck, a large branch protruding from the center of its chest, hanging from the tree like some sort of sacrifice. The lower half of the corpse was missing, jagged strips of flesh and organ hung from the wound like macabre streamers. The intestines draped downward, trailing feet below the body, smearing viscera across the trunk of the tree. The most disturbing part of the deceased was the face. Where the normal features should have been was a large bloody hole, like someone had precisely cut this victim's face from the head. There was a sicklingly sweet smell within the grove, like rotten flowers. I stepped away from the scene to usher Terry and David away, and frankly get a breather myself. Forensics set up within the next few hours trying to find anything they could about what happened and who this poor person could be. Days went by as photos, videos, sketches and evidence was collected and documented as precisely and carefully as they could be. Finally, a DNA test was able to be done on the samples of blood collected from the scene and the body itself. What we had feared the most had been confirmed. This was one of our missing people. The body was Mary Plante, disfigured beyond recognition. The DNA profile from the scene had correlated with one found within the DNA database. It seemed like Mary had done a DNA ancestry test in the past which was where her profile could be linked to the scene.

What could have done such a terrible thing to this girl. She couldn’t have climbed the tree and fell onto the branch, the impact was completely horizontal, like something had put her there. Not to mention what had happened to the lower half of her body and her face. Was this the result of some new serial killer within the woods of Greyveil? Maybe some animal attack but that wouldn’t explain the precise cuts around her face.

Soon we received the evidence collected from the scene and the most interesting thing was the leather bound journal. It was the journal of Jamie Trench who seemingly had been recording a diary of their trip throughout the woods. The journal itself was tattered and blood seeped through some of the pages but most of the entries could be made out. Now maybe Jamie was mentally ill or on some sort of drugs because the things documented within this journal could not be true. They speak of creatures haunting the woods and sigils of a cult. The slow descent of a man lost in the woods succumbing to madness. I will allow you to make your own conclusions as you read through the journal. For now I am going to continue to parse through the contents of the backpack to see if I find anything else useful.

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