The Silas Creek Murders

By P.P. Jayalath

A dead girl's final message on a cassette tape unspools a conspiracy at an elite academy,

And she's chosen the one person who can expose it all

• Language: English
• Publisher: P.P. Jayalath
• Release date: Oct 13, 2025
• ISBN: 9798232981457

P.P. Jayalath

Poornima Jayalath is a versatile author with a deep love for storytelling. She writes across a range of genres—including romance, psychological thrillers, historical fiction, and children's books—captivating readers with heartfelt emotion, mystery, and imagination. 

Book preview

The Silas Creek Murders

A dead girl's final message on a cassette tape unspools a conspiracy at an elite academy,

And she's chosen the one person who can expose it all

by

P.P. Jayalath

All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to real persons or events is coincidental

Copyright © 2025 by P.P. Jayalath

[e-mail]

Chapter 1:

The fog was a liar. It rolled over the manicured lawns of Blackwood Academy like a soft, white blanket, promising peace. It muffled the morning bell, softened the hard edges of the Gothic spires, and hid the rot that festered underneath. I’d learned in my three years here that the prettiest things at Blackwood were always the most dangerous.

I was what the administration generously called a student of circumstance. My mother cleaned the homes of people like the parents who paid my classmates' tuition. I was the charity case, the scholarship kid, the ghost haunting the edges of their gilded world. My survival depended on being invisible, on watching and learning the intricate social rules without ever participating. I was a professional observer, and Blackwood was a predator's paradise.

The apex predator, of course, was Hannah Choi.

Hannah was a masterpiece of genetic and financial engineering. She had hair like spun silk, a laugh that sounded like wind chimes, and the kind of effortless grace that made you want to either worship her or set her on fire. She was the sun around which our small, miserable planet of a school revolved. And this morning, that sun had been extinguished.

I heard the news not from a teacher or an announcement, but from the shrieks that ripped through the fog outside my dorm window. A girl named Madison, one of Hannah’s inner-circle acolytes, was screaming a single, ragged word over and over: No... No... No...

Drawn by the morbid gravity of it all, I joined the dozens of students gathering at the edge of the North Woods. The fog was thinner here, clinging to the ground in wisps. Red and blue lights pulsed silently, strobing across the pale, horrified faces of my classmates. They were all staring at the same spot: the base of the Hangman’s Oak.

It was an ancient, sprawling tree whose branches twisted toward the sky like arthritic fingers. Local legend claimed it was where they had hanged Silas-Creek’s last accused witch back in the 1800s. It was a place students avoided, a stain on the school’s pristine map.

And at its base, crumpled like a discarded doll, was Hannah Choi.

Even from a distance, I could tell something was terribly wrong. It wasn't just that she was dead. It was the way she was arranged. Her arms were laid out at her sides, palms up. Her head, tilted at an unnatural angle, was adorned with a crudely woven crown of twigs and thorns. The air, thick with the smell of damp earth and decay, carried the faint, coppery tang of blood. On the thick trunk of the oak above her, someone had painted a series of stark, black symbols in what looked like tar. A spiral, a crescent moon, an eye.

A wave of nausea hit me, cold and sharp. This wasn't a tragic accident. It wasn't a slip and fall on a morning jog. This was a performance. A ritual.

It's the curse, a boy next to me whispered, his voice trembling. The Silas-Creek Witch. She takes one every fifty years. It's been fifty years.

Murmurs rippled through the crowd. Phones were out, but not to call for help. To record. To consume the tragedy like it was just another piece of gossip. I felt a surge of disgust so profound it almost choked me. These people, who had claimed to love Hannah, were already turning her death into a story, a thrilling new chapter in Blackwood's haunted history.

I backed away from the spectacle, my stomach churning. I didn't believe in curses. I believed in people. I believed in the casual cruelty I saw in the hallways every day, in the jealousies that simmered beneath fake smiles and expensive sweaters. Curses were just an excuse for the evil that people do.

My retreat took me along the less-traveled path that skirted the woods. My gaze was fixed on the scene, on the grim tableau under the oak tree. The police were starting to push the students back, their voices sharp and urgent.

That's when I saw it. Tucked in the mud near a cluster of ferns, just off the path and a dozen yards from where Hannah lay. It was small and glinted in the flashing lights. A silver locket, heart-shaped, tarnished with age. It must have fallen from her, or from whoever had left her there. The police hadn't cordoned off this far yet. They hadn't seen it.

My heart hammered against my ribs. Leave it, my brain screamed. Walk away. Be invisible.

But I couldn't. Some morbid, reckless impulse took over. With a quick glance back at the crowd, I ducked off the path, my sneakers sinking into the wet soil. I snatched the locket from the ground, its metal cold against my skin. I didn't open it. I shoved it deep into the pocket of my jacket and walked away, my posture deliberately casual, my insides screaming.

Back in my dorm room, the silence was a physical weight. I locked the door, my breathing shallow. My roommate was still outside, gossiping with the ghouls. I pulled the locket from my pocket. It was surprisingly heavy. My fingers, slick with nervous sweat, fumbled with the clasp.

It sprang open.

But it didn't hold a picture. There was no tiny, smiling photo of Hannah's parents or her equally handsome boyfriend.

Inside, nestled in the velvet lining, was a tiny, tightly folded square of paper. My hands shook as I unfolded it. It was a list of names. Five of them.

Julian Croft Mr. Kade Madison Lane Ben Carter

My blood ran cold when I read the last name on the list. Because the last name was mine.

Elara Vance.

Why? Why was my name in a locket belonging to a dead girl I barely knew? A dead girl who had been murdered in some kind of twisted ritual.

The fog outside the window suddenly didn't seem so peaceful anymore. It felt like a shroud, wrapping itself around the school, around me. The Hangman's Oak was out there, patient and silent. And I was no longer just an observer. I was part of the story. And I had a terrifying feeling that I was the next chapter.

Chapter 2: The First Tape

MY FIRST INSTINCT WAS to burn the paper. My second was to throw the locket into the deepest part of Silas Creek. But I did neither. I sat on the edge of my bed, the tiny list of names a toxic secret in my palm, my mind a frantic mess of unanswerable questions. Why me? How did Hannah Choi even know enough about me to have an opinion, let alone put my name on a list like this?

The school went into lockdown before I could decide what to do. An official email, cold and sterile, informed us that all classes were canceled and students were to remain in their dormitories. The campus gates were locked. No one was coming in, and no one was leaving. Blackwood Academy had officially become a cage.

The hours that followed were a unique form of psychological torture. Whispers turned into wild theories in group chats. The Silas-Creek Witch went from a silly ghost story to a plausible suspect. Every student became a detective, and every student became a suspect. I watched from my window as grim-faced detectives in ill-fitting suits moved across the lawn, their presence an ugly stain on the school's perfect facade.

They interviewed us one by one in the dorm's common room. When it was my turn, I sat across from a tired-looking detective with a coffee-stained tie. He asked the standard questions: Where was I this morning? What was my relationship with Hannah Choi? Did she have any enemies?

I gave the standard answers. I was in my room. I didn't really know her. Everyone loved her. The lies felt like stones in my throat. I kept my hands clenched in my lap, convinced the detective could somehow sense the locket hidden in my sock drawer, or see the list of names seared onto the back of my eyelids. He couldn't. He just saw another scared student, another dead end. He dismissed me with a weary sigh.

The rest of the day bled away in a fog of anxiety.