Chapter 2 Salem
CHAPTER 2
SALEM
“Death has found its way to Mortimer again.”
The news blared loudly on the large flat-screen mounted high on the wall of the café Salem had just walked into. The words caught her attention. She stopped just two steps inside the door, her back stiff as she watched the news reporter share the morning headline.
“We are reporting live from the Mortimer beach, where the body of a female was found early this morning,” the reporter continued, her face a serious mask that matched her tone. “While the body remains unidentified for now, sources have confirmed that it was, in fact, a student from the university campus. As you can see behind us—” The camera panned to the side to show law enforcement taping off the area and some locals watching from behind the yellow tape. “—there is a lot of activity happening. No official statements have yet been released.”
There was a pause as the reporter nodded to someone behind the camera. “This incident reminds us of the lighthouse death two years ago, where the body of an unidentified male was found by the rocks. That case remains unsolved.”
An image of the lighthouse Salem had seen from the cliff flashed on the screen before cutting back to the reporter. “Was this untimely death a tragic accident or something more nefarious? What is happening in the small college town of Mortimer? Stay tuned as we find out the answers and wait for officials to release statements. This is Sam Bailey reporting for Nation News. ”
The logo for the channel rolled on the screen with loud typical music, the beautiful gray coastal view replaced by the stark blue and white studio as reporters moved on to other headlines.
Murmuring broke out through the space around her, bringing her attention back to where she was. The café.
Snap out of it, she chided herself, biting the inside of her cheek again.
The little café had been her first stop after stepping on campus, and it had become her daily morning haunt for the past week. Located off the main street right outside the campus, Big Bookish Café, or BBC as students called it, lived up to its name. Rows of shelves filled with books lined one whole wall on her right, a bar area and beverage counter taking up the wall adjacent to the main entrance. An abundance of windows to the left showed an unhindered view of the main university gates—massive, tall, wrought iron gates painted black with the university crest in silver and gold in the center—while filling the whole space with natural light. Tables—both separated and placed in front of couches—filled the rest of the space, interspersed with plants and lamps. The atmosphere was cozy and inviting, unlike what one would expect in an uber-elite college town.
Olivia had been the one to tell her about it.
Stay in the present.
She made her way to the front where the checkout counter was. Aditi, one of her classmates and a full-ride scholarship student thanks to her insanely genius mind, stood behind the high-top counter with a black apron tied around her long neck. Salem idly wondered if aprons had ever been used as a weapon, maybe for strangulation in a case somewhere. She’d have to look it up.
Aditi turned to her, giving her a warm smile that felt more genuine than all the smiles she had grown up surrounded with.
“Hey, Salem,” the girl greeted her with a light tone. “Your regular?”
Salem nodded, pressing her student card against the machine so it went to her monthly tab. While the whole town didn’t work that way, BBC was one of the most frequented hubs right outside the gates. One of the reasons she’d actually enjoyed coming there early mornings during the last few days was how little traffic it had at the time, most students in bed with the rush of late nights in orientation week. Since she’d found the place, she could take her drink and find a good spot next to a window for a few hours to research or just people-watch.
“So, are you excited for classes to begin tomorrow?” Aditi asked, pulling her out of her thoughts as she waited for the drink to arrive.
Salem nodded. “You?” she asked as was polite.
“Oh yeah,” the girl said with enthusiasm. “I can’t wait to actually attend School of Arts. Like, how cool is it that Mortimer lets us pick our own modules? I don’t think there’s another university that would let me do fine arts with such an option for such varied minors.”
That was one of the really incredible things about Mortimer, Salem had to admit. Students, who usually came from posh families and studied their whole lives with certain goals in mind, were al lowed to create their own curriculum of a maximum of six subjects from a list of modules for the first year of their undergraduate degree. From the second year, they could go into specializations.
Mortimer had four major schools within the vast campus—School of Arts, School of Science, and School of Business and Management for undergrads, and School of Law for the postgrads. There were various subjects in each of the schools, and students were free in their first year to experiment and see which modules worked for them.
“What all have you picked?” Aditi asked her, leaning her elbows on the counter.
“Criminology related subjects, mainly,” Salem replied. “And one psychology module. I want to see if it’s worth minoring in next year.”
Usually, she wouldn’t have used as many words but Aditi was one of the nicer people she had met. They had actually bumped into each other on moving day in their residential block. Aditi’s parents had come to see her off, hanging around the main lobby, and had seen Salem watching them. They had called her over into their little circle, introduced themselves, and left with kind words. It had been a rare, rare interaction, but one that had given her food for thought.
Aditi grinned at her answer. “That’s so sick. I can totally see you nailing that. You already have a major in mind or you wanna see as you go?”
“Forensics.” Salem crossed her arms, hoping her words didn’t come across as weird, preparing herself for the usual reaction she got when her family’s social circle got to know what she’d opted for.
The other girl just continued smiling. “Nice!”
Salem didn’t know what to think of that, but before she could wonder, her drink arrived. She mumbled a thanks and turned around to leave, not really in the mood to stay since there was already a crowd walking into the space, mostly people who had dragged their asses out of bed to discuss a body being found on the beach in the first week of school.
She could hear them talking, catching words and phrases all around her. It was more the sensationalism of it than the tragedy. People, especially those coming from the families that attended this university, loved their gossip like they loved nothing else. Anything that diverted their attention from their own hollow lives and offered distraction was welcomed.
Bidding goodbye to the peace she’d found in her little window seat over the previous week, she took her hazelnut coffee and walked out into a misty morning, the skies cloudy and gray. From her research, this was the weather for most months of the year, the coastal town moderately cool, lightly rainy, and misty except for the occasional sunny days and a month of light snow in the winters.
As new sessions began close to the fall, it was getting cooler by the day and sunnier days were far less than what they would’ve been in the summers. Hence, the warm drink in her hands felt better than ever.
Students were milling around the cobblestoned street that led right up to the huge wrought iron gates of the university. Some were in large groups already, some in duos and trios, and a few were solo like her. She felt conflicted. In her heart of hearts, she wanted to be one of them and have a friend. But her past experiences had jaded her, enough that she accepted the pang in her heart but stayed alone. Her only friend had been another betrayal and another nail in the coffin of her philosophy about friendship. There was no value to it, not for her. It was just people using her for their benefit, some emotional, some financial, some social. It was transactional, until something happened where it wasn’t convenient anymore. The little pang her heart gave, seeing everyone around her and remembering her faux-friendship, it meant nothing.
Her phone vibrated in her pocket.
She looked down to see her mother’s name flashing, and hesitated. Talking to her mother never did anything for her spirits, especially in the last year since her father’s whole incident, but she couldn’t avoid the woman, not when she was her only blood left.
“Good morning, Mother,” she greeted her politely, tucking herself in a little nook right next to the café beside an older building. Most buildings in this town were old but well maintained.
The entire town was set up to accommodate the university and those who attended it. There were a few cafés, bars, local food joints, one fancy grocery store, and for more options, the closest big city was an hour away.
“How are you doing, Salem?” Her mother’s tone was distant, almost distracted. She knew what the older woman was doing—she was checking in on her only child, the only person left in the world, just to make sure what had happened to her eldest daughter and husband didn’t happen to Salem. Salem could almost commend her for her efforts if only they came from a place of love and concern rather than fear of social backlash and ostracization.
She knew the last two years hadn’t been easy for her mother, they hadn’t been for her either, but while she had gone on a mission to find reasons, her mother had gone on a mission to get back their social standing.
“I’m fine, Mother,” she replied as she did every morning. She was fine. And she would continue to be fine, even if it took everything from her. “You?”
“Good, good,” her mother said. “It’s not too late to leave. Are you sure you want to be there?”
Salem sighed. They’d had this discussion too many times. Well, her mother had discussed and Salem had stubbornly refused to budge.
The older woman, understanding Salem’s silence for what it was, sighed as well. “Fine, I won’t bring it up again. Anyway, I have a meeting with the lawyers today. I’m trying to get one of your father’s properties reevaluated. We are going to discuss selling the villa at Tenebrae Hills and…”
Salem listened to her mother talking with half an ear as her eyes caught sight of something in black amidst the sea of browns and grays. A broad back, a lithe frame, a confident, almost swaggering walk, casually going down the street, away from the university gates and toward the tree line that marked a patch of the woods that separated this town from the next.
“That’s great, Mother,” Salem mumbled, already distracted. “I have to go.”
She heard her mother’s goodbye and hung up, quickly opening her gallery to the image she had snapped last night.
She had looked at the image multiple times over the course of the night—the corpse of the girl, the sea at the back, and him. Him with the voice of the rumbling sea and the raspy smoke. That photo, of him with one hand by his side and the other holding up the notebook to shield his face from the flash, just a sliver of his light-colored eyes visible, along with a dark, strong brow and longish dark hair pushed back from his face, a partial high cheekbone, and a partial glimpse of whatever he had been drawing—something with swirly patterns.
But it was the hand holding the notebook she looked at for confirmation. Tattoos, dark ink she couldn’t make out in the blurry image, covered the back of his hand right up to the knuckles.
The same hand as on the person walking casually down the street.
It was him.
Pocketing her phone, she quickly fell in step behind him, far back enough that he wouldn’t be able to tell her from the crowd but close enough to keep him in sight. No idea why she was doing it, just some deep-rooted instinct telling her to investigate.
He entered the woods, the crowd of students thinning out closer to it, and she made her way behind him, ducking behind tall trees for cover, trying to make as little noise as possible, which was difficult with the leaves and needles fallen on the forest floor.
She tried to make sense of why following him was important. Him being at the scene of the possible crime last night, acting all weird, and then her catching sight of him this morning, seeing him twice in two days when she hadn’t seen him before despite being on campus all week, it just sent alarm bells ringing in her head. Maybe he knew something or could lead her to something which would give her some answers about her sister.
Her loved-by-all, pain-in-the-ass sister.
Stay in the present, she repeated to herself, as she had when preparing herself for coming to the university. It had taken her two years, gap years after high school, to be able to attend Mortimer. The university rarely allowed students with gap years but her file and her family legacy had weighed in her favor. She was pretty sure the board’s pity was a part of it too, but she didn’t care. Whatever it took.
As she ventured deeper into the woods, she observed that there wasn’t much of a path, just a small trail—mostly used by students, she assumed.
He walked down the trail, a pencil in one of his hands, spinning it in between his fingers as he whistled some mindless tune. From the outside, it all looked innocent enough to fool someone. But she could sense there was something there, something darker, deeper, deadlier, under the skin. She had seen enough crime documentaries in her life to pinpoint why he could have been one of the prodigies. She wouldn’t be surprised if he spun around and stabbed her with the pencil. It was a surprisingly effective tool, especially when used in the right spot.
She would’ve thought herself too harsh in her quick judgment had last night not happened, had she not sensed a certain chaos within him as his fingers flew over the paper, his demeanor making one thing clear—it was not the first death he had witnessed, nor would it be the last.
After they walked for a few minutes, the trail ended and he turned at a bend, heading toward an old, seemingly derelict building in a small clearing.
Salem took cover behind a tall tree and peeked out.
The building was all stone, like an old temple or church of some kind, she couldn’t be sure. There were no external symbols marking it as such, but it was a small one-story structure made of dark gray stone with an altar of some kind out front. She could imagine seeing something like this in a historical crime documentary, of one or many more people gathering in the woods and using that altar as a sacrifice to whatever entity they believed in, blurring the line between sacred and sinful. The history of humanity was littered with such stories of sacrilege.
A boy stood next to the altar, mid to late twenties from the looks of him, light hair, blue jeans, white shirt. He was in stark contrast to the guy she had been following, who was all dark. Dark hair, dark clothes, dark soul.
The light boy started talking about something, but she was too far away to make out exactly what. Slowly, carefully, she crouched down and made her way closer, avoiding any twigs and branches that would snap or rustle and alert them to her presence, thankful for her habit of wearing sturdy footwear.
“You wanna tell them that?” The blond’s voice drifted as she took a spot behind yet another tree, the last in the line before the clearing.
High-pitched but nice voice.
“Not yet,” he spoke, and fuck if his voice didn’t have the same effect on her as last night. There was nothing nice about it. Somehow, she’d convinced herself that her reaction to the auditory input had been amplified due to the situation and the adrenaline, and in the light of the day, it wouldn’t affect her the same. She’d been wrong.
His voice, that scratchy, deep tone, scratched a deep itch in her brain. It was what she searched for when listening to ASMR, what they called tingles .
“You think it’ll be soon?” the blond asked.
“Who the fuck knows,” he sighed.
The blond took out a cigarette and brought it to his lips, inhaling deeply before puffing out a plume of smoke, offering it silently to him. He shook his head, spinning the pencil faster between his tattooed fingers, a sight that was almost hypnotic.
“You need to figure shit out before the year ends,” the blond pointed out.
He stayed silent.
“You know I got your back, but if you don’t get it done, it’s not just your neck on the line, it’s mine too. And then I’m out.”
Salem frowned, wondering what they could be talking about but filing it all away to ponder upon later.
“I’ll get it done,” he said, the confidence in his tone making her believe he would though she didn’t even know what it was.
The pencil kept spinning.
“I fucking hope so.” The blond threw the cigarette down, crushing it under his shoe. “Don’t make me regret helping you out. You won’t like that.”
The spinning pencil stopped.
Salem held her breath as he went still.
His body seemed to enlarge before her eyes, his back straightening, his posture becoming rigid, his muscles contracting under his t-shirt. It was a mesmerizing change exactly like it had been in the dark of the night, as if the shift in molecules around him reached the molecules around her in a ripple effect, vibrating against her skin.
The pencil that he had been spinning, the one she had thought could be an effective weapon, was suddenly against the blond’s eye, an inch away as both men went quiet.
“I will happily use your blood as paint if you ever threaten me again,” he warned, his tone casual but sharp, and dear lord, she had never heard something more beautiful than a foreshadowing of death with that sound, the imagery of blood being used as paint morbid. “Make you a part of my masterpiece in ways you don’t want, do you understand?” Damn.
The blond’s jaw tensed but he gave a nod.
The Painter. That’s what she was calling him in her head now.
The Painter withdrew from the other man and began spinning the pencil again, flipping a switch on and off, like the last few minutes hadn’t happened.
“Let’s just put a hurry on it,” the blond sighed, running his fingers through his hair. It was interesting seeing the contrast of one boy’s fidgeting and the other’s deliberate movements.
When The Painter didn’t say anything, the light-haired boy exhaled loudly. “Alright. This meeting never happened.” With that, he walked off to the opposite side of the altar.
The Painter stood at the same spot for a few seconds.
Silence descended, broken by the occasional sounds of the birds in the woods.
“Did you enjoy the show?”
Salem stilled, looking around to see who he was talking to. There was no one in the clearing.
He turned his neck slowly, his eyes coming to where she was crouched on the ground, and her heart began to thump loudly in her ears. He knew. He’d known she was there, that she’d followed him, and he’d let her.
She straightened, taking a step back, only to see him take one forward, his face hidden in the shadows of the trees. There was a good distance between them, and yet, it was too close. His presence was too close. The way he was watching her was too close.
Before she could understand why or how, her body was in motion, spinning and running back to the path she’d come from. The moist leaves became slippery under her feet, twigs and needles crunching under her boots, her breaths loud in her ears, making her unaware of any other noise.
That was probably why she didn’t realize how close he had come behind her, why she stepped on a pile of leaves in her haste and felt herself fall, why the solid arm coming around her surprised her.
Heart pounding, pulsing throughout her body, Salem stayed frozen in place, bent forward mid-fall, a muscular arm wrapped around her front. It took her a moment to process that the arm was pressing over her breasts, that his body was pressing into her back, and that the way she was bent was pressing something solid against her ass.
She straightened and he lowered his arm, pushing it around her waist.
“Are you scared?”
The words moved over the top of her head.
No, she wasn’t scared. She was angry. Mildly aroused, which was disturbing in its own way, but not scared.
“Do you accost girls like this often?” she asked nonchalantly, like she wasn’t counting every inhale and exhale and processing.
He chuckled. “Only the ones that poorly stalk me after mildly threatening me the night before.”
Salem rolled her eyes and squirmed, trying to get out of his hold. “Can you let me go?”
His arm stayed solid. “Can I? Yes. Will I? Depends. Why were you following me?”
His words, in that voice that she was realizing had some kind of influence on her, gave her pause. Why did she follow him? It was absurd and she didn’t do absurd things.
“I got curious.”
Damn curiosity.
His hand, the large, tattooed hand she could now see up close, still shrouded in the shadows of the trees, spanned over her stomach. She watched as the hand moved in circles over the fabric, almost hypnotic in its motion, as his mouth lined up next to her ear, his words shooting straight into her veins.
“This one is a free pass,” he murmured softly, seductively, his voice making her thighs clench together. “Get curious with me again and it will cost you.”
Salem gazed unseeingly at the trees before her, the line breaking to reveal the campus a few feet away, the idea of him making her pay doing things to her insides.
“Cost me what?” she whispered. Curiosity was her catnip, mystery her narcotic.
She felt him go still for a second at her breathy voice. “Is this turning you on, little asp?”
She opened her mouth to say no, wanted to say no, but it would have been a lie. Her pulse was warm, her nipples were hard, her core was moist.
She shook her head.
“Fuck,” he almost growled, and the sound sent shivers over her spine, pooling deliciously between her legs. Teeth nipped at her earlobe, sending a sharp sensation through her body. “Stay away from me, for your own good.”
And suddenly, she was free. Disoriented at the loss of the support behind her, she balanced herself and watched as he headed toward the campus, whistling the same tune he had before, the pencil still spinning in his fingers, like he hadn’t threatened to gouge out a man’s eye with it just minutes ago, like that hand hadn’t been all up in her business moments ago, like he hadn’t just subtly threatened and turned her on seconds ago.
And much to her misery, Salem was hooked.
‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—
—Emily Dickinson, “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers”