Slivers of delicate snow fell onto the Westfield grounds nimbly, painting the little town with a milky veneer. The sky was a gray shade of moonstone, the winter sun obscured by lashes of cirrus clouds; a picturesque sight for any admirer of beauty to behold.

Despite sitting a hairsbreadth away from a window through which one could easily observe the scenic opulence outside, Tahlia Meyers' honey eyes were only fixed on her bright, incandescent laptop screen.

Earlier that morning Tahlia had decided to tidy up her room, feeling some winter cleaning was overwhelmingly due for the holiday season.

It was then that she had rediscovered an object which had been pushed away into the corners from her conscious mind. She mentally cursed herself for having almost forgotten all about it, but a part of her reasoned to go easy on herself, reminding that a lot indeed had happened in her life over the weeks since she'd got it.

Jordy Miller's diary.

And in it, scribbled a single obscure word:

silverdoor306agpym

The entire journal was empty from start to finish, except that one meaningless word, if it could be called that.

It ate away at Tahlia, not knowing what it was.

Her conscience nagged at her to go to the police with the information, that their teams and resources would prove to be much more effective than Tahlia's speculation and shots in the dark.

But the devil perched on her shoulder leered at her to think about herself, how this could and would bring out her involvement in all of this.

Therefore, for the last hour and a half, Tahlia had been working on cracking exactly what the letters meant.

At first, she operated with the belief that it was some sort of username Jordy must have used to communicate with Logan via some internet chat room or shady sites. With no feasible results, Tahlia then worked the theory of it being the password to one of his accounts.

Since then, her dive into the cyberworld had yet to open any promising doors.

With over an hour's worth of research proving to be fruitless, a sigh played at her lips, begging for her to look at this from another angle.

Her mind drifted to Jordy's place.

In almost two years of studying criminal profiling, Tahlia had learnt that there was a lot that could be revealed about a person just by taking a look at their living conditions. She hadn't seen a single computer in his house, the only modern electronic devices present in there being a microwave and a DVD player. From what she recalled from her time at the asylum, he used an old flip phone.

The possibility of the fifty something year old man cracking into the dark web to communicate top secret stuff with a serial killer, was wearing thin.

Her chain of thoughts was snapped as the distinct sound of the door swinging open reached her ears.

"Hash browns and peppermint mocha latte."

Dean waggled up the brown paper bag in his hands, offering a charming smile to go with it as he sauntered towards her.

He bent down to press a dainty kiss on her lips as he handed her the food, not noticing how her back stiffened a tiny bit.

It had been almost three weeks that she'd been officially dating Dean Jackson, but every time it came to physical display of affection, a major part of Tahlia remained unused to it, just as awkward and unsure as she had always been all her life.

She did her utmost best to not let it show though, she didn't want Dean to feel that she was unfairly holding back, but most importantly— she didn't want him to see just how broken she was.

She watched him as he plopped down at the end of her bed, proceeding to take his jacket and beanie off, one by one.

Tahlia could see the little flecks of white snow stuck onto his dark eyelashes; parts of his cheeks and nose flushed with rosiness.

The winter blush really did look divine on his mocha brown skin.

3 weeks ago, when Tahlia had knocked his door with the most reckless decision she'd ever made in mind, she had never in a thousand years expected for things to turn out the way they did.

With all the things Jace had told her about Dean being an inconsiderate bad guy, Tahlia was sure that as soon as they were done, he'd start laughing and kick her out; reveal that it was all some sort of sick joke or maybe a bet to get a goodie two shoes in bed or something.

But what she'd never in her wildest dreams expected, was for him to ask her to spend the night over and in the morning, admit he was into her seriously, and that he wanted to continue seeing her.

Even though she was new to the concept of having a boyfriend, given the bouts of self-consciousness and unease she'd feel during sex or gestures of romance, Tahlia had found herself being the happiest she'd ever been in the longest time. With the constant paranoia about Logan and the prodigal memories from her dark childhood that had plagued her life for the past few months, she had to admit, the warm feeling she'd get when she was with Dean was a nice change.

In the span of these three weeks, a relationship was not the only drastic change to have transpired in Tahlia's life.

Finals week was over, which spelled the end of the fall semester of her sophomore year.

On the duller end of things however, her friendship with Jace quite clearly was on the rocks. As if there wasn't enough unconfessed tension brewing between them before, Tahlia's announcement of her dating Dean Jackson had put a bigger strain on their relationship. They had hardly spoken to each other in the last three weeks.

Logan hadn't killed a single person all this while. Whether he was laying low, or if he'd given up on his murder spree, no one knew. Perhaps it was the fact that the citizens of the town were on high alert about the serial killer, maybe it was getting hard for the Westfield Ripper to trick a victim. Maybe the Westfield Ripper escaped to another part of the country.

Bullshit.

Somewhere deep down, Tahlia had this foreboding feeling gnawing at her insides, screaming that it wasn't it.

Especially with her.

He used her to escape, and that could've been the end of it.

But no, he sent her a dead cat out of nowhere, alluding to the fact that he intended to toy with her mind still.

And ergo, she needed to be one step ahead of him, she had to be one step ahead of him before she got whatever it was that he had in store for her.

Taking an invigorating sip of the latte, she got back to her research. This time around, she decided to look up 'Silver Door' by it's own, as it was the only discernable two words of the bunch.

With no conclusive results turning up, she decided to try her luck with 'agpym'.

Nothing.

'What even is agpym?' She thought to herself, her patience growing flimsy.

Maybe it wasn't a random combination of letters, maybe it was an anagram, which would mean rearranging the letters could give her a real name.

"Hey, can you grab me the notepad over there?" She asked Dean who was on his phone intently, gesturing towards the little notepad on the nightstand.

He passed it over to her, a beaming grin on his face that lit up his sable eyes, "The semester's over and you still can't get enough of your work?"

Tahlia cracked a small smile in response, not sure what to tell him.

She then took her pen and wrote 'AGPYM' in bold capital letters on the paper.

How on earth could those letters be arranged to create something meaningful?

MAGPY.

GAPMY

By the third word, Tahlia gave up, realizing how insipidly stupid all of it was.

She closed the laptop in frustration and put the notepad to a side, a groan escaping her mouth.

Dean, who had been laying by the end of her bed, on noticing the little movement, inched towards her seated form.

One of his arms hands snaked around her waist, the other on her shoulder as he almost straddled her.

"You're so tensed T," He whispered into her ear, sultry and deep. "Let me fix that."

She blinked up at him as she gingerly placed a hand on his chest, putting some distance between them, "I- I just have too much on my mind right now."

He ceased his action immediately, respectfully drawing away from her, but his eyes remained full of regard, "Do you wanna talk about it?"

She shook her head, "No, not right now."

She looked up at him, only to notice his face was still glossed with concern. To change the subject, she began,

"I mean, all we do is talk about me. I want to know more about you." She forced herself to smile, dragging her body to lie down beside him.

He raised his brows playfully, visibly eased, "Oh yeah, what do you wanna know?"

Tahlia's gaze fell onto her roommate's empty bed, raising a quintessential question she'd almost forgotten about.

"Why haven't you gone home for the holidays?"

More than half the University was empty, owing it to the fact that almost everyone had gone to see their families in the Christmas break.

Tahlia of course, had no one to go home to. In fact, she knew she didn't even have a home, for that matter.

A deep exhale left Dean's mouth, "My grandma raised me, you know."

He turned his face to look at her,

"I lost my parents when I was young. Gran looked after me all that time. And.." He paused, "I lost her too, last year." His tone was clipped by the end.

Tahlia reached out to caress the side of his face softly, "I'm sorry."

For a brief moment, Tahlia debated whether or not to tell him the truth about her own family. Tell him that she understood loss.

She'd half lied to him about her family, telling him that she had never met her parents.

Listening to him being so earnest, stirred something in her to spill the grisly details of what went down ten years ago.

But she couldn't, she'd never opened up to anyone about that besides the child psychiatrist she'd been sent to at the age of ten.

It was then that he sat up abruptly, reaching for his coat.

"Where are you you going?"

He peered at her, "A buddy of mine is in town. He's in a band and they're playing at Hell's Bells this evening."

"The bar?" Tahlia questioned meekly.

Dean nodded, "Yeah. I'm supposed to catch lunch with him in fifteen minutes.

Actually, that's why I came. I was wondering if you'd wanna go with me tonight?"

Tahlia cringed internally. The sound of a bar made her a little uncomfortable, but then, knowing Dean would be by her side gave her a little solace. "Yes."

"Great." He kissed her again, getting up to leave.

It was then, that something in particular suddenly caught his attention.

"Interesting choice." He said.

"What?" Tahlia mused confusedly.

"The book. I mean it's good, but personally not one of my favs, probably cause I had to do a three thousand word analysis of it in freshman year."

"What book?" The tone of perplexity in her voice grew, as did the look of confusion in her facial features.

Dean was quick to point towards the notepad by her side, specifically the bold letters scribbled on it.

At first her head remained muddled, but her eyes widened in a snap as she realized what he was talking about, grabbing the notepad and flailing it in front of Dean.

"This means something?" She asked pressingly, her voice jumping a few octaves.

"What, A.G. Pym?" Dean spoke casually, motioning towards the 'AGPYM', making Tahlia realize she'd inadvertently left a little space between the G and the P.

"Arthur Gordon Pym right? Told ya, majoring in literature is not easy. Anyway, I gotta bounce."

As he said the words 'see you later', he didn't even notice the look of absolute bewilderment on Tahlia's face.

No sooner had he left, she clutched her laptop with the speed of light, typing 'Arthur Gordon Pym' in the search bar.

And there it was.

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.

The title of Edgar Allan Poe's sole novel.

And just like that, all of a sudden, Tahlia's mind flashed back to the night Logan had quoted Poe to spook her, no doubt.

"The death of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetic topic in the world"

It rung in her head like a blaring siren, leaving the rest of the world tuned out.

If A.G. Pym is a name..

Tahlia decided to try her hand at another search.

Silver Door Westfield

No luck.

She pursed her lips, thinking it through for a minute, before amending her search as an idea struck her.

Silver Door New Jersey

And voila! The very first result to show up was that of a motel named Silver Door in Montclair, a little more than an hour's drive from Westfield.

Tahlia glanced outside the window, peeking a glimpse at the relentless snow. There was no way one could make it to Montclair through the snow in any less than three hours.

But it didn't matter.

She was so close.

✴✴✴