Hunt Me Softly

Chapter 1

They found a dead girl at the base of the West Belltower.

Students clustered around the fog-drenched quad like specters in the mist, speaking in whispers, wide-eyed and shifty as the truth spread over the university with the virulence of a plague.

A girl, one of their peers, had died under unknown circumstances.

Her body plastered on the pavement as obscenely as a doe split wide open and pulverized on the highway.

Not exactly the best way to start the fall semester, but I supposed it lent some morbid excitement to the student body.

There was a macabre fascination with the deceased that humanity couldn’t seem to resist.

The tension threaded through the unseasonably cold bite in the air.

Summer had croaked a dying breath under the early rush of a frigid autumn.

Gold and crimson leaves clung to the trees surrounding Kilbride University, and a heavy gray sky served as the backdrop to the rows of diverse architecture jutting toward the sky in historic towers and modern learning complexes, all in various shades of brown-red brick.

Many of the buildings were over a century old, serving as a beacon of higher knowledge among the best of the best of Ivy League schools.

It was odd to be there, serving my final year of college at a different school.

The bulk of the transfer had gone as smoothly as possible over the late summer months, which hadn’t been the saving grace I’d hoped for.

Leaving Oxford and the beauty of England had rankled at the old, poetic soul nestled deep in the crevices of my ribs.

Returning to Massachusetts after four years overseas was a strained ordeal I hadn’t asked for.

It was a long flight with small, uncomfortable seats that left my body aching and jet-lagged, only to come to a halt with the knowledge a student had died. Either pushed or jumped—no one could say for sure—the night before my arrival.

I rushed across the dew-kissed lawn, skirting around the gossiping groups of my fellow students as I left the administrative office.

Their voices curled around me, filled to the brim with speculation and concern.

I hadn’t returned to Massachusetts for anything so vulgar, and it made me sick to my stomach to linger in the same vicinity as the authorities who were still questioning students and faculty.

I didn’t want any part of it.

The deluge of fear and anxiety slipped away after I got in my car and veered away from the university.

A collar of wariness had latched onto my throat through the several hours I’d spent on campus settling the details of my transfer.

The knot in my stomach from the horrible news loosened the further away I got.

A barrier of red maple, white pine, and eastern hemlock rose in the rearview mirror, cutting me off from the school.

It was only a short drive to the holiday home of my youth, my father’s inheritance from my late grandfather.

A house passed down through the Ashcroft family since the town’s founding.

Slightly set apart from the rest of the neighborhood, a two-story Colonial Revival style home emerged from behind a wall of russet and amber dappled trees.

My mother had loved this house and its decorative elements of the Victorian era.

I could admit to a soft spot for the house as well. There was something elegant and charming about the maroon-colored exterior, gabled roof, wrap-around porch nearly hidden behind overgrown bushes, and the detailed moldings that enhanced the large windows.

My car rolled to a stop at the end of the long driveway, and I thumped my head on the steering wheel.

Stomach churning, and heart pounding, I considered reversing and going back the other way.

Memories of almost every Christmas of my life flashed behind my eyes.

All of them took place in that house until five years ago.

Sparkling, brilliant days when the holidays still felt magical and promising.

And the last time I saw my parents in the same room tolerating one another with smiles instead of glares.

They had encouraged me to go to Oxford when I expressed interest, happily shipping me overseas in the name of higher education and potential opportunities.

And that was where I was when I saw on the news that Dad had been spotted in public having an affair.

Which was a big no-no for a widely known CEO.

There was a joke to be made about CEOs and their secretaries, but I was too exhausted to make it after the day’s turmoil.

Jetlag, cranky office assistants, and dead girls being scraped off concrete weren’t conducive to proper brain usage.

With an appropriately beleaguered sigh, I hauled my duffel bag from the trunk and made the short walk to the stairs.

A rustling in the closest trees and a croak from the creeping shadows made me stumble.

My head snapped up in time to see an owl settling onto a lower branch facing the house.

Large yellow eyes watched me, intent and bright with keen intelligence.

It hooted, and a chill ripped up my spine.

I hurriedly shoved my long-unused key into the lock.

Bitterness crept in when the door swung open.

White cloth draped over furniture, and dust motes tumbling through the stale air greeted me.

Grim dusk light slanted through the windows, casting the foyer and entry hall in a foreboding atmosphere.

My skin prickled from the chill almost as if I’d stepped into a haunted house and something was watching me.

The ghosts of the past most likely.

I could almost feel them as I turned the corner into the kitchen, where once I smelled sugar cookies and cinnamon, watched my dad pour morning coffee while wearing his favorite robe or mom finishing the final touches on Christmas dinner, and now I found a used glass in the sink with wine dried at the bottom and several empty bottles abandoned in the trash.

“Of course, she drank all the good wine.” I wouldn’t touch Dad’s unopened bottles of aged, expensive whiskey no matter how desperately I needed a drink.

Mom had won the holiday house in the divorce despite it being part of the Ashcroft legacy, and I had only returned to the states to be by her side during the mess.

A united front against my dad, who deserved a kick between the pockets.

I wouldn’t blame Mom for the drunken late-night calls begging me to return when the news broke, but skipping town before my plane landed left a sore spot in my chest—a feeling of abandonment I wasn’t used to.

Instead of a parent in need of consoling or a warm welcome, there I was stepping into the gaping carcass of my childhood. I’d seemingly returned for no reason since Mom decided to head off on a global vacation with the pool boy from our Florida summer home.

Once I had my degree in hand, I refused to stay here a moment longer.

I ambled down the hall to my bedroom nestled in the back of the house.

Most of the bedrooms were upstairs, but child-me had begged and pleaded for the old drawing room with the bay window overlooking the garden and the trees standing sentinel at the edge of the yard.

A larger room since it wasn’t intended as a bedroom, with my own fireplace I intended on lighting up immediately.

The moody green wallpaper and wooden accents welcomed me, enveloping me like an embrace from a dusk-drenched forest. I dumped my duffel bag on the four-poster bed, watching it flop over on a white comforter stitched with daisies.

All my attention narrowed on the bookcases built into the walls surrounding the fireplace, where I skimmed my fingers over cool leather-bound spines.

It was Sunday night, and I’d expected to attend classes the next morning.

During the entire flight back into the country, I anticipated Mom picking me up, joining me at Kilbride as I finalized my course schedule, and then dinner for our first opportunity to talk face to face since her marriage fell apart.

But with a dead student on campus, things were delayed.

Classes had been pushed back a few days, giving me ample time to adjust my sleep schedule and try to collect the jumbled pieces of my life.

Dead girls didn’t have to attend classes or worry about their divorced parents.

They didn’t have to think about the reporters plastering their cheating dad’s face all over the internet or writing gossip articles about all the money their mom, rightfully, took him for.

Dead girls didn’t have to scramble to learn a new university layout, attune to new environments, students, or professors.

They simply got to have their brains scrubbed off the sidewalk and neatly tucked into a comfortably cushioned coffin.

It should have struck me as odd that I found myself envious of the recently deceased, but there was something morbidly alluring about the idea of eternal rest right now.

I was just so, so tired.

Worn down from the emotional whiplash of my family falling apart, exhausted from my course load at Oxford and soon to be new classes for my final year, and squished under the heel of loneliness, I moved through the motions as stiff and slow as a robot with a low battery.

I unpacked my bag, folding my things into the dresser and the closet full of old items that likely no longer fit after four years in another country.

The years of stuffing my face at greasy chip shops had helped fill out my flat chest and ass into something resembling curves, and for that I was thankful. I couldn’t resist a plate of fish and chips. Any sort of steaming hot potato was my personal kryptonite.

Dead girls didn’t get to eat french fries.

Okay, get it together, Ophelia.

I shook my head and tried to stop imagining what that dead girl might have looked like.

Who she was or what she had been studying.

It hardly mattered now that she was gone.

A ghost in the memory of students who would return to classes without her.

The lecture halls would never feel her presence again.

I couldn’t concern myself by wondering if she’d had friends or people who loved her.

As much as I sympathized with the tragedy, I didn’t know her, and my own life was enough of a mess.

With a fire started, I grabbed my things and went to the bathroom down the hall.

Normally I would have taken advantage of the vintage claw-foot tub, but with exhaustion dripping from my pores I opted for a quick shower to scrub the grime of a long flight and the day’s bizarre energy from my skin.

Once freshened up and wrapped in a luxuriously soft towel, I made my way back to my room.

A tap tap tapping on a hall window made my step falter.

I clutched the towel tighter, peering out the window at the now pitch-dark world.

A hazy landscape painted in the hues of night stared back.

Nothing more than a lingering fog dragged itself across the lawn, and stars twinkled in the inky sky.

A whistling wind rustled the bushes, and an overgrown branch reached out like a skeletal arm, scratching against the windowpane with each gust, not unlike nails on a chalkboard.

An exhale rushed from me, and the odd tension in my shoulders released.

The fresh warmth in my room from the crackling fire helped to drape a blanket of comfort and security over me.

I dressed in an oversized old t-shirt stolen from some boyfriend ages ago, then proceeded to pluck up the thick binder on the bed about my upcoming courses.

With nothing more than starlight and the golden-orange flames dancing on the walls, I curled up on the cushioned seat in the bay window piled high with pillows.

Cradled in a plush embrace, I flipped through the syllabus, planning to get a head start on my final courses.

Silence settled on the house, only broken up by the gentle crackling of logs burning in the fireplace.

A gentle wind blew past, howling in the dark of the night.

And I was so focused on unraveling the details of my new university before sleep stole me away that I didn’t notice the yellow eyes glowing from the tree line. Watching.

Watching.

Watching.