Chapter 8 Salem
CHAPTER 8
SALEM
The next morning, sharp at 9:45, Salem waited outside the library building for Aditi. After a night of restless sleep, seeing dreams that left wisps for memories and almost zero recollection, she felt awful. Her eyes seemed to be burning and her glasses felt heavy on her face. Her body felt like it had run a marathon and all she wanted was to sleep in some more, like most students were probably doing. That was why the campus was almost deserted, just a few stragglers roaming about, a handful in the library.
Salem watched a boy with hangover-reddened eyes walk into the library using his student card, and looked up at the sky. It was a bright, sunny day, completely unlike her disposition, and she wished clouds would cover it.
“You look like you need this.” Aditi’s voice made her look down at the extended hand holding a takeaway mug with the BBC logo on the side.
“It’s not drugged, is it?” Salem asked semi-seriously after the fiasco of the previous night.
Aditi’s tinkling laugh was loud. “You’re funny. I stopped at the café to grab us some pick-me-ups. If your night has been anything like mine, you’ll need it.”
Salem took a sip and almost groaned at the hazelnut and coffee flavors bursting on her tongue. “Thank you,” she sincerely told the girl at her side.
“You’re welcome.” Aditi smiled, taking a sip of her own beverage. “I checked in on Melissa too, by the way. She’s doing okay, but she’ll probably sleep the day away.”
Salem was amazed at how much people skill Aditi had. It had never even occurred to her to check on Melissa. Was that something she should have done? Making a note of it to consider later, she joined the other girl as they walked to the library.
“So, why here?” Salem asked as they used their student IDs and entered the building.
The Mortimer University library was said to be one of the most well-stocked, extensive academic libraries in the world. There wasn’t a book, a journal, or a paper published in any academic field that could not be found there physically or digitally.
The building itself had a long history. It was rumored to once have been a prison, where they kept prisoners of war or hostages. Many a person had taken their last breaths between these walls, and though it was said to be the most haunted building on the entire campus, Salem wondered where they had buried the bodies, if they had buried them at all. They could have been burned or thrown into the sea for all she knew. But the idea that they were all walking over unmarked graves of unknown people from the past sent a small chill down her body.
The building had of course been built upon and renovated to house the library when the university had taken over, until it was three stories tall and covered hundreds of thousands of square feet. It was close enough to the academic towers, both the original and the more recent buildings, but far enough not to be considered a part of the main structures.
“No one really comes here on Saturdays,” Aditi explained as they went deeper.
The librarian was reading a racy bodice-ripper behind the large counter opposite the entrance. Two doors on either side of the wall behind her led into a long, open hall-like area with the highest ceiling, from which beautiful chandeliers hung, glinting in the sunlight streaming in through the tall windows on both sides. Long wooden tables and chairs took up the majority of the space in the hall, with a few computers, printers, and copy machines at the far end. On the left and the right walls were tall glass and iron windows, letting in natural light. Small doors on the sides led up to the different floors with different subject sections labelled clearly on a map beside each door.
It was truly an incredible space for study and research. Aditi headed for the computer station, where modern, sleek monitors waited in sleep mode. Salem followed, wondering what exactly Aditi was doing, curious to take her lead for now.
Aditi took a seat in one of the surprisingly comfortable chairs and pulled another one in for Salem. Salem sat down.
“I know this is strange,” Aditi acknowledged. “But just go with it. I have a notebook in my bag. Just take it out and leave it open.”
Salem did as asked, watching as Aditi typed something in the search engine so it changed to a purple browser.
“What are you doing?”
Aditi glanced at her. “This is the only place on campus they don’t track your data,” she explained. “Since it’s a public space and there is too much to go through, they just monitor for any illegal or banned words, and let the rest slip. Anything else you search on your phone or laptop using the university Wi-Fi? They can track.”
“And why exactly do we need to not be tracked?” Salem asked, looking at the blinking cursor in the purple browser she hadn’t even known existed.
“Just as a precaution,” Aditi reassured her. “I’ve heard some funny things and you can never be too safe.”
Salem turned to her fully, appreciative of her smarts. Aditi’s happy, docile facade clearly hid a sharply intelligent, observant girl. “Are you a tech genius on the side? How do you even know this?”
She saw a flush cover the other girl’s face, the same flush she’d seen the previous night. Aditi brushed it off. “I wish. A tech savvy friend told me about it some time ago.”
Salem let it go. It was clear the girl was uncomfortable.
“So, have you heard anything about the body at the beach?” she asked, coming back to the topic.
“Yeah.” Aditi went somber. “Well, she was pregnant.”
Salem felt her eyes widen slightly at the news.
That is unexpected.
She tried to remember the girl from that night. Her stomach really hadn’t been visible in the dark and with the way she’d been positioned. She must not have been very far along. But this was something new.
“Are you sure?” she asked to confirm.
Aditi nodded. “Pretty sure. A local cop came into BBC a few nights ago. I had a late shift to cover for one of the other girls who’d had an emergency. Long story. Anyway, you know the area to the side where the equipment is?”
Salem gave a nod, silently indicating for her to go on.
“Well, he moved to that side to take a phone call, thinking it was empty. I was the only one there, so I got behind the machine to make the drink and I overheard him talking about it.”
Aditi turned and typed the university portal URL into the browser, quickly going to student login. There was a small sign at the bottom of the page that Salem had never even noticed. She watched in fascination as Aditi clicked on it and led them to a completely new page with the different schools written on it.
“This is a backend student ID page my friend told me about,” she explained, then clicked on School of Arts . A page with different years popped up, the last she could see on screen 1990, older ones probably on the next page. Aditi selected Current Year .
The page loaded and front and center on the page was the first profile, and the photograph of the man who had been consistently, annoyingly on her mind.
Caz van der Waal.
The Painter.
Staring at his unsmiling, rock-cut face, Salem kept her breathing steady as she saw his eyes again. Though she had felt his eyes on her throughout the night before, she hadn’t seen them so vividly, not even when she’d been up close, not with the way shadows from the trees had covered his face in the firelight, and she hadn’t lingered long enough to look.
But she looked now.
Liquid. Metal. Gray. Like an element in a lab she wasn’t meant to touch without protective gear. It was not the gray of the skies over Mortimer most days, but a shimmery gray of mercury poured over steel, darker on the edges and lighter, almost gleaming, closer to the pupils. There was depth there, secrets filled to the brim but never overflowing, a deadness, like mercury eating away at whatever it fell on.
Those eyes were scandals waiting to happen.
“Hot damn, that man is fine.” Aditi whistled, and Salem bit her tongue, moving down to read what was there instead of staring at his face.
Name: Cazimir van der Waal
Age: 24
Degree: Post-graduate master’s, advanced.
Specialization: Oil paint techniques.
Art style: Unknown.
Miscellaneous: Teaching assistant for psychology with Dr. Merlin.
Special notes by supervisor, Dr. Vermont: Extraordinary. Though unconventional, his art is evocative. His mastery of dark and light play is profound, though it can be unsettling, especially with themes of death…
The words cut off leading to the link for his particular page.
Themes of death.
Everything she read and heard about him made Salem just want to dig deeper. She made a mental note to find out more later when she could, just to assuage her own curiosity.
Aditi scrolled down and down until the cursor hovered over the photograph of a smiling girl. The same one she had seen dead on the sand in the light from her phone. She looked down at the information.
Name: Tanya Beauchamp
Age: 21
Degree: Undergraduate, final year.
Specialization: Charcoal.
Miscellaneous: Works with charcoal. Style unspecified.
Special notes: VS interest.
“What’s VS?” Salem asked Aditi.
The other girl shrugged. “No idea. Random question, but do you think they update files when a student, you know, like isn’t here anymore? In case they die like Tanya?”
Salem stared at her for a beat, her brain working overtime at the question. This was a good chance to look into it. “We can check,” she suggested, turning back to the screen.
“How?”
“Check my sister’s profile.”
There was silence for a long second, and she felt Aditi’s eyes on hers. “You sure you wanna do that?”
Salem gave an affirmative nod. She wanted to see if there was anything there that she could add to her board.
Aditi silently went back to the homepage as Salem guided her through her sister’s school and year details. They scrolled the page, going down photo after photo, Salem’s heartbeat increasing with each one, until the page ended.
They both exchanged a look and started from the top again wordlessly, scrolling down slower, looking at each and every photo, until the page ended again and Salem sat back in her chair, feeling like the breath had been knocked out of her.
Her sister’s profile wasn’t there. Nothing. Not a name, not a tag, not a note. It was as though she had never existed in the university portal, her file wiped clean completely.
What the hell?
“Do me a favor.” Salem leaned forward again. “Check another page for me, please.”
Aditi followed as Salem guided her again, going through the Law database from five years ago for another student.
Missing. Another dead student, wiped clean.
Salem sat back and thought about what this meant. It meant the university was somehow erasing these people from their databases like they had never been there in the first place. Was it something on the level of the board or technical administration? Was the board even aware of it, or were they the ones to give directives? Or was it not related to the university at all, but someone hacking into their systems?
A little throbbing headache bloomed behind her eyelids.
“What’s going on?” Aditi asked her, tone hesitant.
Salem looked up at the girl, wondering if she could tell her. Though she seemed nice and had been nothing but helpful, Salem knew better than most how someone could use her without her awareness. She had been na?ve once, but it took a lot more for her trust to be given now. And that was the core of the problem, she didn’t trust anyone.
Not even herself.
Stay in the present.
Salem shook her head just as her phone buzzed. She looked down to see a number she didn’t know, and frowned. It was rare for her to get any phone calls at all other than from her mother, much less from an unknown number.
“Excuse me,” she mumbled to Aditi, glad she was saved from answering her, and picked up the call.
“Hello.”
“Miss Salazar.” Dr. Bayne’s voice on the other end made her shoulders relax.
“Good morning, Dr. Bayne,” she greeted him. “I was not expecting your call.”
The older man chuckled. “I know. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”
“Not at all,” she said, aware of Aditi watching her curiously.
“Well, I could have made an appointment and told you on Monday,” the man began. “But I couldn’t wait. The board had a meeting and finally decided to continue with the awards as per your suggestion, Miss Salazar.”
Salem felt her breath catch.
“The applications will open on Monday. Get ready, Miss Salazar. This will be difficult.”
“I have for the ?rst time found what I can
truly love—I have found you .”
—Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre