The following is Chapter Ten from the novel, “Hunting For Witches — Salem’s Burning”
Flashes of the city of flesh and bone assaulted Ashton’s senses until he wrestled himself awake. A waxing moon was shining through the window, and Tyler was sitting at the hotel room table, listening to hour after hour of audio from the static night-vision camera they left in the attic.
Tyler noticed Ashton sitting up and removed his headphones.
“What time is it?” Ashton asked in a daze.
“Almost 10,” Tyler said. “Pm. You slept for over twenty-four hours.”
Ashton looked shocked and confused. He checked his cell phone on the nightstand only to discover the battery was dead.
“I have to meet up with Ada. Plug this in for me?”
He tossed his phone to Tyler and started stripping off his shirt, making a beeline to the bathroom while his fellow ghost hunter frowned with concern.
Ashton had only been up for a handful of moments, but he wasn’t thinking at all about his loyal amigo. Or their paranormal YouTube channel. Or what Tyler had been up to while he was sleeping. Or why they had come to Little Salem in the first place.
For some reason, after sleeping the entire day away, his thoughts immediately went to the spirited young woman he recently met—a minor detail that should have been a huge red flag that something was amiss. Ashton didn’t seem to think much about this. Not until he started musing about his girlfriend who he still had yet to contact since arriving in Little Salem.
While standing underneath the showerhead, his thoughts drifted to recent memories of his devoted sweetheart. The intimate times he spent with her, her silky black hair and chocolate skin.
Mercy was an underclassman he’d been dating for close to a year—a stone-cold fox who drove his heart crazy. While he was thinking of her, the steamy images suddenly turned to those of Ada, with her dark, tangled hair and piercing, blue-violet stare. The intrusion of this fascinating creature into his casual thoughts and fantasies startled him more than a little. So much so that when he left the shower and was drying off, he was still feeling rather unnerved by the experience.
When Ashton descended the staircase with his camera bag slung over his shoulder, he found Ada standing in the center of the lobby, smiling up at him with her token impish grin. She was dressed similarly from the first night he ran into her, in a gray hoodie, white tank top, pleated miniskirt, stockings, and combat boots. This time the skirt she wore was a blue plaid pattern to match her eye color, and her stockings were ripped and tattered, rocketing her defiant riot grrrl aesthetic to a whole new level.
“Hi,” Ashton said as he approached her.
“Hello,” Ada answered. “Looking forward to exploring the graveyard?”
“Totally. I just gotta call my girlfriend back home.”
Ada nodded politely and he wandered several feet from her, his body turning rigid when Mercy answered his call in a panic.
“Ashton! What’s going on? Are you OK?”
“Sure, babe. Is something wrong? My phone’s been off, so I haven’t—”
Mercy interrupted him, her voice shaking. “Ashton, listen to me. I think you’re in danger. A lot of strange things have been happening, and… Have you met anybody new recently?
“New? Sure, what do you—?”
The line suddenly turned to static.
“Hello? Babe, you’re breaking up!”
Ashton ended the call in frustration, thinking the crappy reception in Little Salem must have had something to do it. He completely missed the sight of Ada standing behind him, casting a piercing glare at the phone pressed against his ear.
“That’s odd,” he noted. “Guess I’ll have to try later.”
“The graveyard’s not far,” Ada told him. “OK if we walk?”
“Yeah, that’s cool. Hope it doesn’t rain.”
The Wisteria Grove Cemetery was only a short stroll from the hotel. When Ashton and Ada arrived, they found it closed, with a heavy lock chained to the front gates. Ada was somehow able to pull away the lock with ease, but Ashton didn't think much of this. Soon they were walking side by side along the winding asphalt paths that stretched across the grassy scenery like giant serpents.
While traversing the premises, Ashton aimed his camcorder at the shadowy graves that surrounded them. It was no surprise Ada would think he’d get a kick out of the place. The general creepiness made it feel like something could jump out at any moment.
Ada was unusually quiet while they were exploring the lonely setting. She never even mentioned the events of the previous day, which, for Ashton, remained blurry. He didn’t know her well enough to know if this quietness was a characteristic of her. Despite their riddled conversations about the history of witches and other spooky topics of interest, Ada had the habit of keeping much in the way of her own history relatively secret. Whether this reluctance to talk openly about herself was because she was being modest or for reasons that were much more severe, he could only imagine. This was why he was somewhat surprised when she smiled nostalgically and started talking about her family, of all things.
“Walking through graveyards always reminds me of my mother,” Ada said.
“Your mother?”
“Story my mother once told me. An ancestor of mine was burned at the stake.”
As if on cue, thunder started rumbling in the distance.
Ashton found her comments surprising, but he remained silent. Ada opening up to him was a new experience considering how tight-lipped she was about herself. Still, this should have been of no real consequence since he’d come to the conclusion that not getting to know her too well was probably for the best. He already had a loving girlfriend in Boston who was everything he wanted in a relationship. He was in Little Salem to look for ghosts and other spooky types of phenomena—that was it. Not to become closer to a strange and ethereal young creature that was the weirdest thing he had encountered on his vacation so far.
And yet, those earlier visions of Ada still bothered him considerably, and the revelation about her ancestor aroused his curiosity in a way that was unexpected. Secretly, he found himself hoping Ada would continue opening up to him and reveal more about herself.
“Are you close to your family?” she asked him.
“Not really,” he answered reluctantly. “I only see my father on birthdays. Had a really bizarro dream about him last night.”
Ada smiled coyly. “You should talk to Agatha. She’s good at interpreting people’s dreams.”
“Nah. The less I think about my father, the better.”
Ashton’s body stiffened, noticing his camera seemed to be picking up something in the distance: the faint twinkling of tiny golden balls of light. “Do you see that?”
Ada turned her bright, oversized eyes to where his camera was aimed, and he started racing forward. Once she caught up with him, the lights seemed to have disappeared.
“What am I supposed to be seeing?”
“They’re called cemetery lights. Weird lights that only appear—”
“—in cemeteries?”
Ashton turned his camera on Ada as she started laughing uncontrollably, amused and delighted beyond words at her companion’s eagerness to assign a supernatural explanation for everything.
Ashton didn’t mind. Ada’s laughter was something he found quite stimulating, and it had a curiously intoxicating effect.
“I think it was just fireflies,” he grumbled. “Dammit.”
Ada glanced away from him, wearing a mischievous smirk. “Do you think your obsession with the unknown has to do with your father? How he remained so unknown to you while growing up?”
“Do you think your obsession with witches has to do with your ancestor being burned as one?”
Ada continued smiling, shrugging ambivalently.
“Obsession runs in the family.”
Thunderclap!
Right on cue, the rain started pouring down in buckets, and the race was on to locate shelter from the sudden storm. It was strange—black storm clouds had been hanging over their heads all evening, but the massive downpour seemed curiously abrupt.
Once the rain started, Ada grabbed him by the hand, and the pair took off running like mad. While sprinting through the graveyard, Ashton noticed her grip had an unnatural strength to it. Ada was of small pixieish stature and thin as a reed, so this seemed to contradict the laws of physics.
Spying sanctuary up ahead, he pulled her toward a mausoleum, not giving a moment’s thought to whose timeless sleep they might be disturbing while nestled in the concrete doorway.
“C’mon. We’ll be dry here.”
As he hustled toward their chosen place of refuge, she suddenly broke free from him, shedding her baggy gray hoodie and tossing it to the ground.
“Ada! What are you doing? You’ll freeze!”
Curiously, Ada remained perfectly still as she stood underneath the heavy downpour, her eyes closed and her face turned up to the heavens. She was breathing deep, heaving breaths, feeling the fall of the rain on her eyelids. “No, I love it. I love it.”
Thunderclap!
Ashton found himself mesmerized by the sight, gazing at his unusual guide as she stood underneath the endless showers that were soaking through her top and drenching her skirt, her stockings, her black combat boots. Despite the hostile conditions, Ada remained entirely still, as if caught up in the midst of a sacred ceremony—or a divine ritual that had been long forgotten.
Unable to resist the chance to document such an intriguing spectacle, Ashton clicked the Record button on his video camera and aimed the lens in her direction, right as she started to speak.
“They were burning witches in Germany at the time,” Ada said. “My ancestor wasn’t so much a witch herself, but she was…sympathetic to them. So she was tortured, thrown into prison, and condemned to burn with the others.”
That’s right—Ada said that graveyards reminded her of her family, Ashton recalled. Was this why she was telling him this story right now, of all times and places? And in the pouring rain on top of it?
Before he could question her, he noticed her slinking seductively in his direction, her eyes staring right at him—practically staring straight through him.
“They discovered my ancestor was pregnant,” Ada said, “so her execution was temporarily postponed. But since she was destined for the fire, she was marked with the sign of the consecrated. A flower with thirteen petals. Burnt onto her flesh with a hot iron just below the left breast. Right here.”
Ada pointed her black-nailed finger to where the spot would have been on her own person as a violent clap of thunder boomed directly above them.
Thunderclap!
Staring silently at where she pointed, Ashton observed the visible outline of a black bra worn underneath her thin white cotton tank top that was now soaking wet. But the top wasn’t sheer enough to see any further, leaving the one significant and pressing question relating to her story left unanswered.
“She gave birth to the baby,” Ada said, once again turning away from him, allowing the rain to drench her fragile figure. “A little baby girl. Three weeks later she was burned alive, along with sixty others.”
Ashton felt a discomforting lump in the back of his throat.
“What happened to the kid?”
Ada directed her eyes to the heavens, wrapping her arms around herself before answering. “The child was taken into the care of a French army commander, who discovered shortly afterward that the mother’s stigma had mysteriously been passed on to the child. The red flower. Right here.”
She pointed once again to just underneath her left breast before glancing at him and smiling impishly. “And to this day, all of the women in my ancestor’s bloodline are born with the same cursed mark. The very same.”
With that, it appeared that her story had reached its conclusion, and she shook the heavy sea of raindrops from her damp and unruly mane. Her whole body was soaked and shivering, but Ada’s riveting performance wasn’t quite finished. Spellbound, Ashton watched her approach him, wearing a crooked smile upon her lips.
“And do you know what is also said?” she asked him. “That every woman in my family will love once, and only once will she find true love within her lifetime. And that the man who loves her back will be doomed to suffer an early death.”
Ashton paled at the grim suggestion. “So your father is—”
Thunderclap!
Ada nodded. “Dead. My mother’s dead to me as well.”
Her face became warmer, her smile more playful and natural.
“There,” she stated matter-of-factly. “Are you impressed?”
It was curious. Ada had revealed some of her past after all—or something like it. And the story had left his mysterious acquaintance appearing more unusual and fascinating than ever.
One question was left unanswered.
“What about…the mark? Do you have it?”
Ada’s smile widened, her rain-soaked body still shivering. She slowly leaned into him and pressed her slippery form against his muscular torso.
“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” Ada said.
Thunderclap!
Ashton gazed into her eyes, watching as she leaned in for a kiss while slowly pulling up her soaked shirt. He felt himself being drawn to her. His eyes closed, and his lips parted…
Buzz. Buzz.
Just like that, the spell was broken. At the sound of the vibrating cell phone, he pulled back, watching as Ada, suddenly looking very irritated, resecured her soggy tank top and answered the call.
“Yes, yes—hello?”
A panicked voice was on the other end.
“Ada! Something went wrong! The asylum! I can’t find Izzy!”
Ashton recognized the call was from Rudy and watched Ada’s eyes fill with distress, her cool confidence and acerbic wit disappearing in an instant. The transformation was quite a stunning sight to witness, as this was the first time he’d seen her looking so rattled and off-balance.
“I’ll call you back.” Ada terminated the call and turned to her confused companion, searching for what to say. “I have to go. I need to find my brother.”
Ada grabbed her soaking wet hoodie from the soggy, flooded ground, and started on her way. Still in a daze, Ashton felt a string of words burst forth from his lips.
“Can I see you tomorrow?”
She stopped with her back to him, her body stiff, looking torn.
“Perhaps. I just really need to find my brother.”
Once these words left her lips, she was off like a shot, her black boots stomping through the murky puddles now swallowing the asphalt path.
Ashton called after her and discovered that, despite any logical explanation for it, his body was now frozen to where he stood.
“Ada! Wait!”
There was no answer.
Ada had disappeared, leaving Ashton to stare after her in quiet bewilderment while the red light of his camera continued blinking methodically, the rain pouring down on the dreary headstones as the mysterious beauty that had so effortlessly captivated him during the short time he’d known her became lost in the bitter darkness of the unrelenting storm.