Salem

Salem Gardner Montgomery sat at her desk staring out the window into a driving rainstorm.  The branches of a one-hundred-year-old oak gently grazed the ancient glass panes in the familiar rhythmic fashion she had known her entire life.  Whenever she awakened from a bad dream or couldn't fall asleep, she had always preferred the soothing lullaby of the branches to any other form of comfort.  The moon used to shine brightly through a second window over her bed, providing her with a peaceful lunar glow at night, but now that it was boarded up, she had only the view of her beloved old tree. When she wasn't at school, the attic bedroom was where Salem spent nearly all her time these days.  It had been the setting for virtually every important moment of her sixteen years, beginning with her violent entry into the world.  In fact, the old oaken floorboards still bore evidence of Salem's untimely birth in the form of a large, faded blood stain.  Her mother, Ophelia, tried in vain to remove the mark for several months after her arrival, but her efforts had been unsuccessful, and eventually, she gave up, deciding that it might make for a good story one day.  The old wood had soaked up the blood like a sponge and refused to relinquish it despite any amount of elbow grease expended against it.  Over the years, the discoloration had faded to a dull carmine hue, and as her mother had foretold, become part of the family's folklore.  For the first several years of Salem's life, those deemed worthy would be paraded upstairs to view Ophelia's badge of honor. When Salem was old enough to understand the genesis of the stain, she became upset, more precisely, embarrassed to the point of covering it with a rug.  Lookie-loos were scorned, and eventually, the pale crimson blotch was all but forgotten.  After Ophelia died, Salem removed the rug.  She felt her mother's presence when she stared at the ruddy smear. Her lifelong disdain for it had morphed into a fear that it would fade now that it was exposed all the time. She missed her mother.  It had been just the two of them for Salem's entire life until three weeks ago when Ophelia died unexpectedly.  The coroner had questioned Salem about the circumstances of her mother's death, and she knew that her answers hadn't been helpful.  One thing she was certain of, however, was that Ophelia's departure from this world was unnatural, and because of this, Salem had kept several startling facts about the heinous ordeal to herself.  She instinctively knew that revealing everything would make her more vulnerable to the unholy forces that had taken her mom's life. Odd things had been happening for several weeks prior to her mother falling ill.  For starters, Ophelia became prepossessed with the idea of leaving Danvers.  She was strangely tight-lipped about her all-consuming desire to relocate, flatly refusing to divulge her reasons for it to her daughter.  This behavior was markedly uncharacteristic and deeply troubling to Salem.  They shared everything with each other, so her mother's secretiveness left Salem feeling hurt and confused.  Ophelia remained fixated on her quest to move until the rapid onset of her illness, which, within two days, had taken her life.