Later that night, once Kelly returned to her apartment, she settled into her room.  She sat curled up in her desk chair and opened up her laptop to check her blog.  She had posted the pictures she’d taken with Kate shortly before they went to Bridgit’s, so she doubted anyone would have responded yet, as her blog was not particularly popular.

 

                She saw the post with the photos had been shared by nineteen different people, but one person left her a message - a user with the handle “Resurrections.”

 

                                Great pics.  Always cool to see anything related to the Salva Family. 

 

                Kelly leaned forward in her chair.  “Salva Family” didn’t sound familiar to her.   She typed a reply.

 

                                tell me more, pls, my friend and i were just sneaking around that spot cuz i heard some stories. 

 

                As she waited for “Resurrections” to reply, she idly opened a new tab in her browser, and typed “Salva Family” into the search bar.  Most of the results were pulpy urban legend sites with inconsistent stories about its origin and how long it had been around; one site said it started in the Northeastern US in the year 2000, another claimed it started in the former Soviet Union during the mid-1980s, and yet another claimed it had existed since ancient times.  The only aspects that remained consistent across accounts were the cult’s extreme insularity and secrecy (even by cult standards) and that it was structured around worship of a female Messiah figure known as "Ren-Marithe".

 

                Kelly leaned back in her chair, resting a cheek in her hand and blinking repeatedly.  She was too tired to read anything thoroughly, particularly not these particular websites which all had white text on dark backgrounds.

 

                She heard a pinging sound from the other tab; another message, this time in the blogging site’s instant chat client.  She clicked – it was from “Resurrections.”

 

                                You’ve never heard of it?  Where do you live?  It’s mostly an East Coast thing, but there are small chapters all over J

 

                                yeah, no, never heard of it til just now, i’m out west tho so maybe that explains it?? i just looked it up, is it even real? my friend thinks its an elaborate urban myth, now i’m starting to think so too, lol 

 

                                Oh, nah, it’s absolutely real.  It started in my area - Ardmore, just outside of Philadelphia.  My uncle used to work for the guy behind it.  It’s based on some real underground mythology about an otherworldly race called "Zeylishema" and how there would be this goddess who came from their world to ours, like a Messiah. So this guy, Richard Salva, weird rich guy into new age bullshit, crystals and shit, he got real serious about it and, from what I understand, just convinced most of his family that his daughter was the goddess from the legends.  That’s who that painting in one of your pics is supposed to be of.  It just sort of spread from there and now all the followers who think his daughter is who he says she is are just called part of the “Salva Family.”  I guess it’s almost like a cult within a cult, haha.

 

                                oh sweet, you live near philly??? i always wanted to go there and check out the graffiti.  that’s really cool. i tried looking some stuff up but you summed it up waaay better. so does this guy’s kid look like the lady in that painting at all??

 

                                I don’t know, I never seen her.  Probably.

 

                                and what about those weird symbols, what do they mean? do you know??

 

                                It spells out "Ren-Marithe".  You know, the name of the goddess.

 

                                cool. i’m gonna go, i’m tired as shit rn but thanks for the info!!

 

                                No problem. J If you wanna know more, I’ll be around.  You sleep well.

 

                Kelly closed her laptop and flopped down onto her messy bed, not even bothering to get under the covers.  As soon as she closed her eyes, she was struck with the sense that she forgot something important.  She opened her eyes and stared up at the ceiling until it came to her – Proteus, the chemical she had vowed to track down mere hours ago.  She reached over to her nightstand and grabbed her pad of sticky notes and a pen, wrote down the name of the drug, and stuck the note onto the wall.  She reclined back onto the bed and closed her eyes once more, drifting off to sleep.

 

Next Chapter.