Out of Salem

by Hal Schrieve

  “No,” Tommy said, swallowing hard again. “I’m not a werewolf.”

  11

  The students gathered outside the school on Thursday as soon as the bell rang, shoulder to shoulder in the basketball court. People pushed past Aysel and Z as they went out. Aysel and Z watched from the library window as the school emptied out. The teachers stood in a ring around the group of teenagers, looking interested and nervous at the same time. After about ten minutes of confusion, Charley Salt emerged from the group and climbed onto a chair, and began speaking to those assembled on the cement.

  “What do you think he’s saying?” Z asked. They tried to sound nonchalant. They held Hamlet in their lap and were flipping in a perfunctory way through the pages.

  Aysel crossed her arms over her chest. “Probably talking about how terrible werewolves are or whatever.” She let out a little laugh.

  “Let’s open a window. Try to hear what they’re saying.”

  It took some time to pry the window open, and by the time Aysel had wrenched the pane up and propped it in place with a book, Charley was concluding his speech.

  “. . . a new future, with hope and unity, where none of us must live in fear,” he shouted through the megaphone.

  The students applauded. At the edge of the crowd, Aysel and Z could see Mr. Holmes clapping with a hysterical gusto.

  “God, can you believe that guy?” Aysel said, pointing. “Look at the bald spot on the back of his head.”

  “He’s pathetic,” Z agreed.

  “We need to brace ourselves for the storm ahead,” Charley finished. “Whether or not we have magic, we can stand together against the dark, and keep this town safe for its citizens. Just because we are young does not mean we are blind, or defenseless. Let’s show the people of Salem that we know what must be done!”

  Out on the basketball courts, students cheered again. Aysel leaned out the window so her arms dangled out over the rhododendron bushes, and rested her head on the sill, scrutinizing the scene below. Z sat on the bookshelf next to her. Down on the ground, Charley smiled out at his audience through the applause and shrugged his shoulders humbly. He got down from the chair and raised a fist in the air—met with cheers— and then began to march toward the gates of the school. Other students followed him. As they filed out onto the sidewalk that led to the center of town, the teachers remaining in the parking lot looked after them. There was an eerie silence. Then the teachers, too, got in their cars and drove away, or returned to the building. The chair where Charley had stood was left standing in the middle of the parking lot, as if none of the teachers wanted to be the one to move it back inside.

  “I feel like we should go and watch the rally,” Aysel said. “Especially since we know all these idiots will be there.”

  “That sounds incredibly dangerous,” Z said, smiling a little to show they were kind of joking. They picked instinctively at a scab on the side of their face.

  Aysel shrugged. “Better than not knowing what’s going on. And we’ll take suspicion off ourselves by being there. Do you really think it’ll be dangerous?”

  “It might be.”

  “It’ll probably just be some people with signs and stuff, don’t you think? Nothing, like”—Aysel paused and took the book from under the windowpane, which shut with an enormous noise—“Nothing, like, violent. Right?”

  “You tell me,” Z said. They stood up and turned from side to side, listening to their muscles and bones pop with the movement. They felt much stronger than they had yesterday, but an immense soreness had crept through them. Every twist of their wrist or turn of their head was painful. It was better, Z supposed, than creeping numbness, but it didn’t go very far toward convincing you that you were all right.

  When the bus came, its doors opened with a hiss. Z and Aysel sat next to each other, looking out the window at the street names passing by. Aysel reached out and quietly took hold of Z’s hand on the seat. Z froze for a moment, and then uncomfortably drew it away. Their hand was paper-dry and still had a weird greenish cast to it and they felt like it was repugnant against Aysel’s soft, living warmth.

  Downtown, unlike in the neighborhoods around the school, there were cars everywhere. People, too, crowded the streets in numbers Z hadn’t seen since the last Fourth of July. The gray buildings and low brick-fronted shops that normally looked out on fairly deserted thoroughfares now were witness to an immense mass of people—young and old people, hurrying—and cars trying to park along the sides of the roads. Z watched as the bus passed a group of middle-aged men in suits carrying signs. They couldn’t make out the words on the signs. They tried to steal a glance at Aysel to see her reaction, but her face was blank and unreadable. As the bus pulled into the transit center across from the courthouse, Z saw that the front lawns before the building were covered with people. They turned and looked back over their shoulder.

  “Did you see that crowd?” they asked Aysel.

  “Yes,” Aysel said.

  “Do you still want to go to the rally?”

  “I didn’t come downtown for nothing. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. I’d understand.” She stood up and got off the bus. Z followed her, their knees popping.

  The front of the courthouse was overrun with people. The crowd spilled off the lawn and onto the streets, and traffic officers paced helplessly along the sides of the building, trying to keep the crowd out of the road, to no avail. Z and Aysel were surrounded by people as they moved into the crowd. They sat on the lawn or milled around as Z and Aysel were doing, as if they were waiting for something.

  “Look at that stage,” Aysel said abruptly, pointing. “That’s probably for the people who are going to come up and talk. This is really organized.” Z looked and saw that there was indeed a wooden platform that had been erected near the steps of the courthouse. Nobody was on it, but several empty plastic chairs with water bottles beneath them, a set of speakers, and a microphone all seemed to promise that speakers would soon arrive.

  “Where did all of these folks come from?” Z said quietly. “I didn’t even know there were this many people in Salem.”

  A family with five or six children passed them. Aysel moved out of the way to avoid being trampled. A little girl in a stroller craned her neck to look backward at Z, then turned her face up to her mother to say something. Z swallowed and pulled their hood up and over their head.

  As they passed beneath one of the towering oaks that ringed the courthouse lawns, they were driven close to a group of college-age students gathered in a ring.

  “. . . this is why we need looser gun regulations,” one of them, with a huge fluff of blonde hair, was saying. “I was trying to talk to Professor G about it on Monday and he just laughed at me. Now, you know, I’m going to go to class tomorrow and say, Who’s laughing? Look what you get by being lax about these kinds of things.”

  “It’s all this academic stuff that makes them think like this,” another boy said. His hair was cut short in back. “Even with the censorship, all the universities are like this. They all want to be lax on monsters. Back in Texas nobody would have stood for this. Werewolves are practically extinct there. It makes you wonder if that’s why a college town like this is so susceptible to these kinds of attacks. And organizations.”

  “It totally is.”

  Aysel pulled on Z’s arm and Z realized that they had stopped, frozen in place, to listen. They hurried forward away from the college students, looking back over their shoulder.

  There was a tent set up on one corner of the courthouse square with some people underneath it. A clot of people crowded around the tent and moved toward it and away. Some of them were carrying rolled T-shirts.

  “Let’s go see what’s going on over there,” Aysel said. She moved toward the tent with a heavy stride. Z followed her, afraid that if they got too far from her someone would accidentally trample them, or else realize they were undead and stab them on the spot with a wooden stake. It seemed like the kind of thing
this crowd would do. But as they got close to the tent, Aysel disappeared amid a forest of broad and narrow shoulders, and Z lost sight of her altogether. They hugged themselves and stood as still as they could in the middle of the noisy masses of people, feeling the wet grass through their black canvas shoes. It was soggy and uncomfortable. Z looked down at their feet and realized they hadn’t felt any sensation so vividly since the accident.

  Aysel appeared at their shoulder. “I got a T-shirt,” she announced, unrolling one of the white T-shirts that others around the lawn were carrying. It was screen-printed with an image of a ferocious wolf overlaid with something obviously meant to be the crosshairs of a gun’s sights. Beneath the image, emblazoned in green, was the legend “Monsters Want to Destroy Human Civilization”.

  “It was this one or one that said ‘Citizens’ Vigilante Squad,’” Aysel said. “This one was more charming.”

  “I hope you didn’t pay for that,” Z said.

  “Nah.” Aysel grinned.

  Suddenly there was the screech of speakers turning on and the loud sound of a microphone changing frequencies.

  “It looks like the show is about to start,” Aysel said, suddenly scowling. “Let’s get somewhere we can see.” She marched off through the crowd again, and it was everything Z could do to keep up with her. The crowd moved forward and pressed close to the stage, making Z feel claustrophobic. Eventually Aysel stopped at the foot of a tall maple tree with a fork in it close to the ground. She scrambled up and offered a hand to Z.

  “I’m fine down here,” Z said.

  “You won’t be able to see.”

  “Being in the tree makes me feel like they could set fire to it or something if a mob formed, you know? I’d rather not.” Z didn’t say that their arms were suddenly aching and they had a headache which they were fairly sure would increase a hundredfold if they did anything as remotely strenuous as climbing a few feet up a tree.

  “Suit yourself,” Aysel said.

  Back onstage, someone was stepping up to the microphone. He was a short, broad man with a narrow face and sideburns. Z couldn’t see him very well over the heads of the crowd. He was dressed in a suit. As he took hold of the microphone and tapped it, a few people clapped, and this sent a chain reaction of applause across the lawns until the whole audience—with the exception of a few bystanders like Z and Aysel—was pounding their palms together.

  “Welcome,” the man said. The applause was hushed. “I want to thank everyone who has come here today, whether you are local or have driven here to show your support. I see a lot of Washington and California license plates on the cars. If you’ve come a long way, I just want to say that we genuinely appreciate that time and energy. Let’s give a hand to our out-of-state supporters.”

  There was a smattering of applause.

  “We’ve come here today,” said the narrow-faced man seriously, “to discuss the problem facing Salem.” He paused and looked out at the crowd, his eyebrows lowering with concern over his deep-set eyes. “The things this town has been through recently has shocked the nation. We have seen,” he said more loudly, “an unprecedented rise in the rates of werewolf attacks this winter.” A few people in the crowd yelled their assent. The man raised a fat hand to silence them. “The police,” he continued, “have attempted to respond to this problem, but their efforts have been unsuccessful. Each month, we find that yet another monster has done violence to Salem’s citizens.” The man made a gesture as if he were pounding a podium, though there was no podium. “This cannot go on.”

  “I just realized,” Aysel whispered down to Z from her perch in the tree as the crowd responded noisily to this statement, “I’ve seen that guy before. I think he’s Charley Salt’s dad.”

  “Makes sense,” Z said, looking up at Aysel.

  “Probably where Charley gets it,” Aysel scowled. She looked worried. Z crossed their arms and squinted at the stage.

  “And yet,” the man—Mr. Salt—said, onstage, more softly, “This is not the first time we have seen this occur.” He moved the microphone closer to his mouth. “Those of you who, like myself, have lived in Salem your whole lives will remember older horrors. It is only recently that this town has been able to shed a little of its reputation as a site for dangerous and illegal magic, as a haven for monsters. What we are seeing now is a resurgence.” He paused again. The crowd was silent. “The dark forces are testing us. They want to see if we really have the defenses against them that we say we do. They are coming to our gates. The police may be doing their best to stop them. I do not know. What I do know is that what is happening now is not enough. So here today we are organizing—the people of Salem—to collectively call for a needed change.” He stepped back from the microphone and bowed, and then quickly bent to grab a water bottle from under one of the chairs. He paused and coughed into his elbow. “There are, of course, many solutions. This was one of the first states to implement werewolf-tracking programs and require registration. The fey regulations advocated in the 1980s were put into place here right alongside the establishment of institutions to house rehabilitated shapeshifters. Shapeshifters were impounded with a success rate seen in few other places. The citizens of this state have voted for decades to put more money into these programs wherever the opportunity arises, with the hope that the government and all the shades of bureaucracy could protect them from monsters, without the panic and violence earlier generations witnessed. Many times, programs tested in New York and then further developed on the West Coast have gone on to be models for nationwide institutions. You all have been at the forefront. You should be proud.”

  The crowd clapped again.

  “But it is not enough,” Mr. Salt said, glowering suddenly. He pounded a soft hand on the invisible podium, too lightly. In compensation, he raised his voice, which went up an octave. “You have seen that the government programs have failed to control monsters to the degree you require. You want security. But what do we see? Werewolf attacks, these last few months. Unregistered werewolves under our noses, being given inadequate treatments. A golem attack last year. Rumors of shapeshifters and the undead. Books on dangerous magic missing. You want security—you have not gotten it.”

  A few of the college students began to raise their fists and banners and cheer loudly. The rest of the audience looked more interested in what Mr. Salt was saying.

  “What we need is discipline, not negotiation. No longer can these programs that you have put your trust in be said to protect you. A crackdown is needed. We must strike back with none of the ambiguity of current practices. Monsters do not deserve due process. Monsters are not citizens.”

  The crowd murmured at this, a positive kind of mumble, growing in volume. Aysel and Z looked uneasily at each other.

  Mr. Salt continued. “In New York,” he said, “the police force deal with this very simply. In all areas, monster misbehavior is not tolerated. New York has a big population to protect. I’ll give you an example. Werewolves not confined to institutions have to observe a curfew on nights adjacent to the full moon and must remain inside for a full twentyfour-hour period on the day of the full moon itself. Many do this, as they recognize that in wolf form they pose a public menace. The ones who do not observe curfew on nights where they do not transform are taken into custody. If they fail to observe a curfew more than once, they are burned. Meanwhile, any werewolf out in wolf form is shot.” He paused to let this sink in. “Now,” he said after a moment, laughing with a small grin that looked obscene and creepy on his bald-catlike face, “I am not saying that this solution will sound good to everyone. Certainly it is a little brutal, particularly in New York, where there have been no werewolf attacks since 1986. But then we must ask—why have there been no attacks since 1986? Could it be that this approach sends, for once, a strong and definite message, one that actually sinks in?”

  “God,” Aysel muttered weakly, somewhere above Z, as scattered clapping broke out.

  He sank back and rocked on his heels. “Today
I am announcing my candidacy for the position of Chief of Regulations at the Salem Police Department. Our current Chief of Regulations, Samuel Warring, is a good friend of mine, and he has done his best for the eight years he has held the position. He has been held back on all sides by—let me say this politely—a kind of bumbling, good-natured bureaucracy and an apathetic or fearful populace who do not believe in the power of police. If I am elected, I hope you will all stand with me in demanding change, and moving our police department into a new era.”

  The crowd hollered its assent. Somewhere within it someone began to clap again, and the clapping spread, a heavy, pounding rhythm. It went on too long, increasing in intensity until at last Mr. Salt bowed and smiled and stepped away from the platform to chug deeply from a bottle of water.

  At the front of the crowd, someone suddenly shouted, “Burn the wolves!”

  Aysel dropped down from the tree next to Z. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go. I don’t want to watch any more of this.”

  “I thought you were all excited to see what they were about,” Z said sarcastically. They faltered as they saw that Aysel looked as if she was about to cry.

  Aysel and Z walked together away from City Hall and down a side road. The blare of the speakers and the noise of the crowd could still be heard distantly as they went down a side street. Aysel was rubbing her eyes behind her glasses, swallowing hard every few breaths. Z wasn’t sure how to comfort her.

  “Let’s get something to eat,” Aysel said eventually. She grabbed Z’s hand and began to walk faster down the sidewalk. The streets farther away from the courthouse were less full of people, and the gray sky above seemed to muffle the noise of the crowds behind them. Aysel began to breathe easier. After a couple of blocks Aysel towed Z into a coffee shop. The bell jangled noisily as they entered. The woman behind the counter was watching the news on a tiny television perched on a shelf, her arms crossed over her chest. She looked around when the bell rang. There were only a couple of other customers in the shop. Aysel ordered herself and Z cups of coffee and two muffins, and they sat down near a window looking out into the afternoon street.