Out of Salem: Chapters 11–14

They held Hamlet in their lap and were flipping in a perfunctory way through the pages.

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

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.

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.

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.

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”.

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.

There was a smattering of applause.

“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.”

This was one of the first states to implement werewolf-tracking programs and require registration.

Shapeshifters were impounded with a success rate seen in few other places.

“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.”

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.

The crowd hollered its assent. Somewhere within it someone began to clap again, and the clapping spread, a heavy, pounding rhythm.

“Well, how about you all leave a nice little manifesto stapled to my door, then,” Mrs. Dunnigan said.

But the hours dragged on and the smoky night became a mist that shrouded the shrubs around the apartment complex at dawn.

Only an effigy of a werewolf was burned, everyone learned on the news Friday.

They also attacked three transients who were sleeping in the doorway outside a warehouse near City Hall, after proclaiming them to be werewolves.

Tommy swung his head haughtily around—his soft hair flipping—and turned away.

In the hall outside the cafeteria Aysel was carrying her lunch box and grimaced at Tommy’s spattered visage as if it was no better than could be expected.

The girl looked apprehensively at Aysel’s retreating form and then glanced with trepidation toward Z and Tommy before going into a stall.

The man who sat behind the front desk looked up at her sharply with steely eyes and then waved brusquely.

A large family of thin blond children and a mother passed Aysel and watched her reproachfully as she filled her mouth with the sweet.

Z literally smelled like something dead, through the layers of clove oil; the smell was imperceptible to most people but strong to Aysel, with her doglike nose.

Elaine clambered over each row of seats to get to the next, somehow balancing popcorn and cola in her hands as she went.

She felt humiliated and desolate.

After the movie, they hesitated on the periphery of the theater, cautiously watching a cop car drive by on the street, the tires spraying mud up into the air in slow arcs.

All of them were dressed in clothes that had a slightly ragged look—patched jeans and heavy sweatshirts. They still managed to exude a sense of solid confidence and beauty.

The interior of the house was a blatant, unrepentant mess, like one would expect a house of werewolves to be.

The interior of the house was a blatant, unrepentant mess, like one would expect a house of werewolves to be.

At first one’s eyes were overwhelmed by the superficial chaos, but it became clear after a few seconds that there was a method to the spread of objects and scattering of nouns.

It talks about how Archie Pagan did electroshock for people and has just died and so won’t be doing it anymore! For the cops, that’s tantamount to saying we killed him.

High walls of fat pink climbing roses and sweet peas flowered, and bizarre rotund pumpkins and red cabbages nestled in the black earth.

They blinked and raised themselves up painfully onto their elbows, half expecting to find themselves in a prison or strapped to a gurney.

She lifted up the skin again and it flapped forward, toward Z, letting off a warm, musky, salty smell, mixed with the smell of the straw it had been packed in for who knows how many years. It hung there, dead and dire and unfathomable.

She lifted up the skin again and it flapped forward, toward Z, letting off a warm, musky, salty smell, mixed with the smell of the straw it had been packed in for who knows how many years. It hung there, dead and dire and unfathomable.

He was tall and blond in the dark reflection of the window and reminded Aysel of one of the actors who played soldiers in movies. Not the ones who died, because they could look like anything, but the ones who lived, who all had strong jaws and cheekbones and always had light hair and ruddy pale skin.

Her arms flailed above her head and Aysel saw that she was cutting her knuckles on the fence.

Aysel felt a shiver run through her seeing the way Elaine’s face was set. She looked tired and bleak and old.