Out of Salem

by Hal Schrieve

  2

  Aysel’s glasses had gotten broken again during gym class, so she went to the art room between classes to get tape. She carried the pieces of her glasses in one hand and held the other over her nose, in case it hadn’t stopped bleeding.

  “What happened, dear?” Mrs. Hall asked when Aysel marched smartly in and asked if she could get into the supply cabinet. Aysel’s nose had dried blood crusted underneath it and she suspected her hair had mud in it from when she hit the ground.

  “Charley Salt kicked a soccer ball at my face,” Aysel said.

  “Oh no!” Mrs. Hall blinked several times.

  “Yeah.”

  “He must feel terrible,” Mrs. Hall said hopefully, standing up and getting the keys to the supply cabinet. In addition to crumbs, her smock had paint stains in an array of different colors all down the front.

  Aysel pulled a chair out from a table with a loud screech and sat down in it heavily with the two halves of her glasses, a roll of purple duct tape, and a pair of scissors. She set about cutting a narrow strip of purple tape and affixing one half of the frames to the other half. Her hair fell in black frizzy strands across her face. She spat and brushed them out of her face in annoyance.

  “You’d think,” Aysel said after a minute, interrupting the silence, “that if someone kicked a soccer ball at your face, they’d be sorry about it. But you know how it is. The big fat girl gets hit with a ball and falls over, it’s funny.”

  “Oh dear,” Mrs. Hall said. She looked fretfully at Aysel from her perch on a stool behind the desk.

  “Like when a roly-poly bug rolls over.” Aysel stared down at her glasses. There was a crack across one of the lenses; she knew it would distract her for the rest of the day. “You wouldn’t happen to know a spell for mending glass, would you?” Aysel asked.

  “Are the lenses broken, too?”

  “Just one. It’s not a big deal.” Aysel scraped at the dried blood on her upper lip.

  “I’m not much of a witch. Spaced out in those classes when I was in school. Maybe try Ms. Glock. You have her for Woodshop, don’t you? She may know something.”

  “No, she hates me.” Aysel shrugged. “It’s okay, I can cope. Thanks for letting me use the tape.” She put her glasses back onto her nose. They dug into the spot where the ball had hit. Aysel knew she would have a mark there until her mother could do something about it.

  “Have you been to the nurse?”

  “My mom will fix my nose when she gets home from work. She’s pretty good with that kind of thing.”

  “Okay,” Mrs. Hall said, looking doubtful. “Maybe get a washcloth from the infirmary, though, and clean off the blood. You don’t want it to get infected.” She looked so genuinely, comically worried, her large watery yellow eyes round as golf balls, that Aysel nearly laughed aloud, despite how horribly everything was going.

  “Thanks, Mrs. Hall. I’m fine. I think I am just having a bad day. I’ll go.”

  “See you later, Aysel. I hope, er. Have a good day.”

  The first-floor girls’ bathroom always smelled of bleach and bile. Aysel took off her haphazardly mended glasses, leaned over the sink, and splashed water on her face. She dried herself with a paper towel. Her face still looked blotchy when she was done, but it no longer looked like she had been crying, which was good enough.

  Charley Salt was in Aysel’s English class. When Aysel came in, he looked at her and grinned at his friends.

  “Sorry for PE, Tay-her.” he said.

  “It’s Tahir,” Aysel said.

  “Oh, I see. I’m sorry for PE, Ms. Tahiiiir,” Charley said, drawing the word out slowly and lifting the syllables into his nose, which made the name sound ridiculous.

  “Fuck you, Charley,” Aysel said. She felt like spitting on someone. A witch’s spit can give someone bad luck for seven years, and she thought Charley probably deserved this.

  Charley laughed and looked at his friends, who all looked surprised. Other students who had overheard Aysel looked up in shock. A few began to laugh.

  “What’s her problem?” Aysel heard a girl say quietly to the person next to her.

  “It was just an accident, Jesus,” Charley said. He was still smiling.

  “You meant it and you know it,” Aysel said, but she realized the more she talked, the more everyone hated her.

  “You’re crazy.” Charley laughed.

  Aysel stalked to her seat and sat down. The chair was too small for her. She felt her hair begin to fluff up around her with static electricity. Something bad was going to happen if she got any angrier, she knew.

  Mr. Bell finally entered. “Who has read the article I assigned?” he asked.

  Everyone went quiet at once.

  Aysel closed her eyes and breathed deeply. The light above her head stopped flickering. She rummaged in her bag for a notepad.

  Mr. Bell’s class was not so bad, when he was teaching. About halfway through the lesson, he went down the hall to print something out, and everyone began, once again, to talk.

  “Everyone knows she just acts up because she’s mad she’s a dyke and nobody wants to get near her big smelly ass. It’s sad, really,” Charley said to one of his friends across the room.

  “God, she does smell. She’s got BO that smells like . . . what’s that Vietnamese soup with all the fish in it?”

  “It’s ‘cause her legs rub together all day.”

  Aysel gritted her teeth and closed her eyes.

  Eventually the day ended. It was drizzling. A fog had come down after noon, and now settled in between cars in the parking lot, blurring the lines of items more than fifteen or so feet away. After her last class was dismissed, Aysel waited at her desk until the rest of the students had left the room before she slowly stood up. At her locker, Aysel unloaded her books carefully. The inside of her locker was neat and orderly; all Aysel’s books were borrowed from the school library, and she didn’t want to damage them. Aysel pulled on her raincoat, tugging her hood over her long soft hair and stuffing loose strands behind her ears. She knew her raincoat made her look like a gnome. It was purple and bulky and had a ridiculous peaked hood. To compensate, Aysel scrunched her face up into a severe scowl as she made her way toward the doors and braced herself for a walk to the bus in the cold afternoon.

  As she walked through the parking lot to get to the sidewalk, Aysel heard a hushed commotion. A small group of students was clustered near the door of the school, talking. As she approached, she saw Ginger Lewis in the middle of the group. Aysel stomped solidly through the mud. The group did not get any quieter as Aysel approached, which was good, Aysel thought. It indicated that the talk was not about her. The rain tapped at her hood as she got close enough to the group to hear what Ginger was saying.

  “. . . and Cecil told me that in class Mr. Holmes was acting weird around her, too, and he tried to tell the class by assigning something to do with zombies.”

  “So the teachers know,” someone said.

  “Yes. But they probably aren’t allowed to tell the rest of us directly.” Cecil, his name having been included in the canonical account of events, felt obligated to speak up. “Mr. Holmes was trying his best to work within whatever magical contract the teachers were made to agree to. He probably can’t directly accuse her outright or even suggest directly that we suspect her of anything. So he had us learn about a zombie massacre in Portland and made her read about it.”

  “Crap, Mr. Holmes is a hero,” Sam said. There was a general murmur of agreement.

  Ginger shrugged. “Yes, I guess so.” She was miffed that Cecil had center stage. “Anyway, just be on the lookout I guess. And if she does anything weird—”

  “Who are we talking about?” Aysel asked. Several people turned to look at her, and Aysel felt defensive. Usually when people looked at her, she felt the need to protect herself or snarl at them. At the moment, however, nobody seemed to particularly care about Aysel’s unpopularity. Every person was eager to spread the news.

&n
bsp; “Do you know Susan Chilworth?” Ginger asked Aysel. “Mrs. Chilworth’s daughter?”

  “The one who only wears the blue sweatshirt all the time?”

  “Yes. Well, she came back to school today.” Ginger exchanged a knowing glance with the group. Everyone basked in the honor of being looked at and appreciated as a fellow conspirator. “She’s . . . different.”

  Aysel began to be annoyed. “Well, her mom died.” As she said this, someone giggled. Aysel remembered why she hated everyone. “Her whole family died. I don’t see what’s surprising.”

  “Well, yes.” Ginger smiled at everyone deviously. She paused and drew a deep, suspenseful breath. Aysel realized that the presence of a naïve audience was exciting the other students. “The thing is, we think that Susan is dead too.”

  It was obvious Ginger wanted Aysel to ask more questions, to hang on her every word. Instead, Aysel blinked, angry and befuddled. The air around her was chilly, but her coat made her torso too hot and a prickle of sweat had turned into a little uncomfortable dribble down her stomach. “Whatever.” She turned and began to march away across the grass.

  The buses rarely ran exactly on time. Aysel jogged to the bus stop and found that she had missed the bus by a few minutes. It would be another half hour before the next one pulled up to the sidewalk, so Aysel decided to walk home. She set off with her hood pulled down around her nose and her hair spilling out in little fluffs to blow across her face. The sidewalk was covered in dying earthworms which Aysel tried not to step on as she walked. Cars’ wheels spun through puddles and splashed her intermittently with muddy water. Halfway home she pulled her hood back and tugged her hair back into a bun so that it would stay restrained.

  When Aysel reached her house, she stepped through the wet garden gingerly. There was a path to the door, but it had been overgrown with squash plants and kale and the branches of Japanese maples. She let herself in with her mother’s key. She took off her coat just inside the door and dropped it beneath the blue and white nazar bead that hung just inside the door. Aysel and her mother had lived in many houses through the years, but the nazar always hung in the same place. It was meant to ward off cin and other demons. Aysel wore another around her neck under her shirt. The blue glass bead had not guarded her particularly well, but it was always possible that things would be even worse without it. Aysel pulled the bun out of her hair, and the dark frizzy mass floated across her line of vision. The mail was lying on the table where her mother had set it down before going to work. Aysel crossed into the kitchen and put the kettle on. She examined her nose in the mirror that hung over the little table where her mother always left her purse. It was decidedly askew, she thought. It hurt a lot and was probably going to get all weird as the swelling around it continued.

  She went and sat down on the couch and turned on the television. It was an infomercial for a special kind of cake pan. Without deciding to, she closed her eyes and fell asleep.

  When she woke up again, it was almost seven in the evening, and the streets outside were dark, the lamplight shining on the puddles. Her mother was still not home. Her nose hurt, but a little less so. The television had been murmuring quietly as Aysel napped, and now she sat up and looked at it. The news was on.

  “. . . last thought to be in Los Angeles, has now been sighted in Salem, Oregon. Police this morning advised citizens to stay home after dark and not to walk outside alone. The search is ongoing and will concentrate on the areas where detectives say Morris is likely to hide, like here, in Silver Falls Forest.”

  It was a story about someone on the run from the police, Aysel realized sleepily as the park ranger came on and began to talk cautiously to the camera. As the story continued, Aysel began to sense something odd about the familiarity of the forest behind the park ranger. She realized with a jolt that the man the police were chasing was not far from Salem. She sat up and watched the television, blinking blearily. Photos appeared on the screen of large paw prints in the dirt—dated to the previous month— and a mug shot of a pale man with a broad nose, thick, fluffy brown hair, and very wide eyes, staring in a startled way first at the camera and then off to the side. These photos were labeled: Timothy Morris. Confirmed Werewolf. Arsonist and Suspected Murderer. Aysel’s throat suddenly went dry; she felt her stomach get heavier inside her. Her lunch seemed to be trying to escape from her throat.

  A heavyset red-faced policeman with a roundish nose appeared on the screen. “Morris was last seen at a truck stop south of Salem. He may be in the area. We don’t know if he is armed, but it is suspected that he is. Morris is a dangerous werewolf arsonist and has been seen in the company of gang members. Police are doing our best to secure the perimeters of forests and other places he may be hiding or planning on spending the night.”

  A reporter in a studio appeared onscreen, folding her hands in front of her awkwardly. “That was Sergeant Ford from the Salem Municipal Police at a press conference this morning. Since then, police have been patrolling the interstate and back roads. The search will continue tonight, even as the full moon makes it more dangerous for the officers involved. Meanwhile, many citizens wonder about why and how Morris managed to get from Southern California, where he was last seen, up into Salem, or why he is here. But it may be that he has been here longer than anyone believed.” The reporter pressed her thin lips together in a line. “We go to Alisha Spencer to hear more on how Morris may be associated with another unsolved murder—this one here in Salem— after the break.”

  Ticker tape announcing the new Dow Jones Industrial Average slid across the bottom of the screen, and then disappeared as a commercial for a new brand of decongestant began. Aysel watched it, mesmerized, swallowing painfully. She dry-heaved and gagged on her tongue as the commercials continued noisily.

  The news returned. The screen switched over to a blonde reporter in a pink raincoat who wore a sad expression.

  “On the full moon last month,” said the reporter in pink, “Archie Pagan went for a run and never returned. His death has, until now, been ruled a freak accident. However, since Morris has been sighted in the area, inspectors have reason to believe that it was foul play. Before Pagan retired to the West Coast, he worked with werewolves in a reschooling center in southern Virginia, where Morris was born. Detectives believe there may be a connection—and that a murder once thought to be a freak accident could have been an act of revenge. Members of Pagan’s family are not reachable for comment.”

  The camera cut to more photographs of Archie Pagan, with the newscaster’s voice playing over them. “With the enhanced Werewolf Restrictions, werewolves have been prevented from easily moving around the countryside. They can’t leave their state of residence legally without filling out paperwork and agreeing to be monitored at all times by an agent of Monster Affairs. No werewolves have been allowed into Oregon in the last four years. Morris may have been here illegally.

  “Police are stationed across the national parks and are, they say, prepared to search the forest throughout the night until Morris is found. For now,” the waterproofed reporter said in a tinny grim voice, looking meaningfully out at the woods behind her and back into the camera, “the residents of Salem will have to be on their guard.” She pronounced this last sentence with the finality of all newscasters, pressing on the last four words and making them sound serious and important. “We will continue updates on this story as the night goes on. And now, traffic.”

  Aysel glanced at the phone. Should she phone her mother? That was childish, and it wasn’t as if her mother would know what to do anyway.

  Azra Tahir arrived home thirty minutes later, looking frazzled, a sheaf of damp manila folders in one hand, her hair frizzing out in all directions from her ponytail. She muttered the first few words of the ayet-el kürsi under her breath and hummed the rest as she moved into the kitchen. Like the nazar beads, the verse was a protection charm—a passage from the Quran that was supposed to scare away evil. Azra made fun of herself for her superstition, but Ay
sel knew her mother believed that it genuinely protected them. For all she knew, it might. Most unregistered werewolves were discovered by the authorities quickly, but in the four years since her first transformation, Aysel hadn’t attracted the attention of the police.

  “Aysel, your nose is broken,” Azra said. She took off her coat and moved briskly toward the kettle. Azra was skinny and small, and had been full of a constant, unceasing phys-ical energy as far back as Aysel could remember. She was moving constantly, her hands fluttering at her sides when they had nothing to do. Azra’s entry into a room gave the impression of a whirlwind when all she had done was taken a few steps and shut a door.

  “Mom,” Aysel said, not wanting to waste time, “did you hear about the news story?”

  Azra froze and turned. “In passing. Timothy Morris, the man who crashed that car into the police station in Los Angeles. Now they are saying he is behind the animal attack last month.” She looked at Aysel very hard, and the bags under her eyes suddenly seemed very dark. She looked old.

  “They definitely seem to think it was werewolves,” Aysel said. “And it looks like it was. Those tracks were huge. It was probably an adult, maybe a guy in his twenties. And the police are all over. I don’t know if there’s any in Salem, but they’re at Silver Falls. Everyone’s freaking out.”

  “Yes. The people at my office, they were all talking about how dangerous he is. The police are going to shoot him.”

  “Do you think they’ll get him? Could he get away?”

  Azra looked at Aysel and shrugged helplessly, looking pained. “I don’t know, Ayselcim.”

  Aysel felt a pang of shame. “I’m sorry,” she said at once, without anything to apologize for.

  “Things like this happen. And keep happening. The world is like that. It always will make me worried.”

  “Do you think it’s safe for me to even be out there tonight?”

  “Obviously you have to. Maybe you can get far enough away from town.” Azra put the kettle on automatically and took two mugs down. “We don’t have much time before the moon rises.”