Chapter Fifteen Malcolm Davenport
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Malcolm Davenport
Dear Emma,
Philadelphia was restless this afternoon, or maybe it’s me.
I couldn’t stop thinking about your letters.
When the battle training gets tough, just picture your grandma wearing a silly clown costume with big red dots.
It will make her throwing those punches a lot more entertaining.
Also, I’ve decided that we are more than allies.
We are knights in shining armor—or, in my case, vintage Jordans and a fly collection of magic suits.
We are ready to ride into battle against this curse so we can save ourselves and protect others in our families from being Tethered in the future.
That’s some warrior shit. You’re a soldier now.
Think about that when you need to fend off the battle-training blues.
Trust me … combat training is hard on everybody.
My sister Jayla can be ruthless as hell when she thinks she’s making me a better fighter.
She watches me with those cat-eye glasses a lot lately.
Maybe she wants to know whose letters I’ve been getting that make me grin like a Kardashian with new makeup.
Don’t worry … I hide the notes. She won’t figure out that you’re the reason for all this Black-boy joy that I’ve found.
She can never know … She’d be pissed, and then she’d tell Big-Mama, and I’d rather fight the Devil than deal with Big-Mama when she’s mad.
But even if working with you could make my whole family upset, I’m open to facing some of their rage to protect them.
I’m doing this for their own good. And for us.
Your mention of Grace’s diary excites me.
Keep trying to figure out her codes. Maybe she knew something that could help us end the Tether.
I’ve been reading old books that Pop-Pop had and looking into the history of the family and the curse here too.
I’m going to visit one of my ancestors to find out what they know, right after I mail this.
We’ll figure out all the mysteries of the past and build a better future for everyone we love.
See you in my thoughts … until our paths cross again,
Malcolm
I spent all day searching for clues at home, but I didn’t find anything useful.
So I mailed Emma another update. I keep feeling like I haven’t said enough.
I want to share everything with her. It’s strange because I barely know her.
And she’s a Baldwin. But it feels like we’ve known each other for ages.
We’re so cool and comfortable in our letters.
When I saw her in person, the curse and the bloodlust made things awkward and hard. But our writing feels more natural.
As much as I hate to, I push the thoughts of her out of my mind.
I’m on a mission and I need to focus. My arm has finally healed up enough to remove the sling, but it still aches if I’m too rough.
The heart-thumping chill of the damp air ain’t helping it much.
I stand on Alcatraz, an island caged under a ghostly haze.
The guardhouse looms ahead. Its concrete walls are weathered and scarred by years and time.
Each crack and chip in the paint tells the story of the jail’s dark history, the days when this place incarcerated broken souls before becoming a museum of misery.
I walk through the rusted metal gate and take a shaky breath, steadying myself for what’s to come.
I head into the ragged guardhouse. With a quaking voice, I call, “Billy Lollis Davenport!” Mist swirls around, and a silhouette emerges.
It shuffles forward and steps into the light, where it melts into a lanky young man with skin the color of Mama’s cornbread and a crooked smile like mine.
My heart leaps at the sight of him, and I get the happy feeling that you get at birthday parties with family.
His face looks like the one in Big-Mama’s black-and-white pictures. I smile, thrilled to see a piece of my family’s history that I can reach out and touch.
“Great-grandpa!” I blurt, my voice breaking.
His eyes shine in the flickering lantern light, scanning me with a curious suspicion.
The glow highlights his youthful appearance; he must be about my age.
He’s dressed like a park ranger from the 1970s: a sturdy olive-green jacket with lots of pockets over a khaki shirt and matching pants.
A wide-brimmed, dark green hat rests atop his head, shading his narrowing eyes, as he speaks. “Who are you?”
His badge glints in the lantern light, pinned beside the park service patch on his jacket sleeve.
“It’s really me, Malcolm,” I insist. “Malcolm Davenport. I’m your descendant from the future.” I remember the code words that we have passed down through our family for moments like this. “I’m one of Biggie’s little ones.”
“Oh yeah.” He smiles, fog swirling low on the ground by his boots. “Grands? I don’t even have kids.”
“Yet.” I can’t read his response to know if he believes me even though I used the code words, but I gotta convince him if he has any doubts, because I’m gonna need his help. “But your wife Vivian is pregnant,” I say. “It’s gonna be a girl, by the way.”
“This time-travel stuff is wild,” he says. “We just found out she’s expecting today.”
“Did you ever think about traveling? Seeing the future?”
He shakes his head. “Keeping up with the present is hard enough.”
Billy studies me like I’m a walking miracle.
I share a few stories that have been passed down for generations.
Some of them he knows, some came after he passed away.
I include details about him and our family that only a Davenport would know, like the way he prays every morning.
And how he’ll sing songs and play his red guitar for his daughter before she goes to sleep. “I got a red guitar too.” I beam.
I watch his smile grow brighter. “I bought mine a few weeks ago. Great, God! Glad to hear I’ll make good use of it,” he says.
His lamp highlights the glimmer of hope and joy sparking in his eyes.
Yes!
His happiness and belief mean everything to me.
“Great, God!” he repeats.
I smirk. “Nah. I’m not him.”
We walk, our footsteps echoing in a matching rhythm.
“Okay,” Billy says. “Great-grandson.” His hand that clutches the lantern trembles. Sweat bubbles on his brow. “Why are you here?” His face twists with worry. “What do you need?”
I take a deep breath. “I need to learn about the Tether,” I whisper, breathless. “Our family is still struggling with the curse in the future.”
Billy leans against a cold wall; his head droops. He sighs. “You’ve been Tethered.”
“How’d you know?” I ask, my blood rushing with fear and hope.
“Because,” he says in a voice thick with sympathy, “it’s the only reason you’d travel back to ask me about that.”
“You survived your Tether … How?” I plead. Before he answers, I add, “Is there a way to end it? To break free of this for good?” In a voice so desperate I barely recognize it as my own, I blurt, “Tell me everything you know.”
“Survival costs,” he murmurs. His eyes dart away from me.
“Still paying and praying for forgiveness.” After a pause, he says, “Some things will be burned in my mind forever. Like the cane fields. The smell of sugar and dirt on that plantation. The black-and-white checkerboard floor of her punishment room. And Sabine’s bloody smile…
” His voice wobbles as he adds, “Slaves—no, people who entered that room had a way of not coming out.”
“But why does she do all of this?”
“The witch behind the Tether thinks she’s a guardian of balance.”
Anger and frustration flare. “She’s no guardian!” Bitterness boils inside of me. “A guardian protects life; she forces us to kill.”
We walk down the long, dim hallway toward cells with steel bars looming high and casting dark shadows on the floor before us.
“Family lore says that Sabine and her husband owned our families during slavery,” Billy says.
“Believe it or not, they say that Sabine sees herself as an ally, a savior of sorts. She believes that she saved our family from enslavement by giving us power we could use to travel through time and escape it. She doesn’t see that the Tether is an invisible chain around our necks and a real gold shackle on your ankle.
” His eyes seem distant, lost in memory.
“She believes freedom has a price and that we should happily pay her for the magical gifts she’s given. The Tether is her fee.”
“Wow.” I huff, amazed at what I’m hearing. “So instead of forty acres and a mule and more unfulfilled promises of reparations for slavery and for building generational wealth on the backs of Black people, Sabine feels entitled to compensation for cursing us? That’s crazy,” I mutter.
“A lot of slave owners thought they should be compensated for the loss of their human ‘property’ when slavery ended. Many of them got that compensation from the government too … even when most formerly enslaved people weren’t given a dime for the blood, sweat, and tears they put into building this nation.
” Billy sulks, his voice echoing raw truth.
“Profit and power. That’s the American dream, right?
It’s what the Tether means to her. She doesn’t hate Black people.
If anything, she needs us to be willing pawns in her twisted games. ”
I reach out to touch the bars of the cell in front of me with trembling fingers. They are solid, cold to the touch, as brutal as the curse that haunts our family. I shiver. “Why?”
“That you’d have to ask her.”
Billy draws up next to me in the narrow corridor, adding, “My mother always says, ‘Black folks have been through storms, but we’re the descendants of those who bang drums like thunder and dance in the rain.’”
I smile, even as the frigid air cuts through my jacket and slices into my skin.
My fingers go inside my jacket, rubbing at my ribs, trying to create warmth or comfort myself against the thought of mass incarceration making anyone spend every day in places this awful.
It must be depressing for Billy, walking these halls daily while working here.
We stare ahead at the jail cell, its floor-to-ceiling iron bars like skeletal cages.
A sliver of light filters in through a high window, casting a very thin beam on the grimy walls.
Ravens flutter outside the window. Inside the cell, a skinny cot rests against a wall, its thin mattress stained with yellow circles that echo nights soaked in despair.
A rusted metal basin sitting on a cracked sink reflects the buzzing glow of the ugly fluorescent light overhead.
“Why would you want to work here? Wanna stay in a place like this?” I ask.
“The thing about the Tether is,” Billy says, “even if you survive, you’re never free.
Sabine’s plantation … The trauma cages your mind.
” He sighs. “Screaming nightmares make sleep hard.” His eyes fill.
“I still feel that gold shackle, still feel blood oozing between my fingers.” His body visibly shakes at the memory.
“And I still feel Sabine’s magical claws reaching inside and toying with my mind.
” He sighs again. “I’m disgusted by what I had to do because of her, but I had no choice,” he chokes out through tears.
“She would have killed my wife. I pray every morning that God will forgive me. But I’ll never forgive myself. ”
I nod, knowing the desire to protect what you love. I’ve been doing that all my life. I take a deep breath. “I don’t want to fight. How do I end the Tether? Stop Sabine?”
He shakes his head and laughs bitterly. “There’s no way out but through. You’re shackled. If you want to live, you have to win the game.”
His words squeeze my heart in a vise.
“My advice to you?” Billy whispers. “Don’t trust anyone or anything during the Tether, not even your own eyes or instincts. Not even your own feelings. Be alert. Be ready to kill or be killed.”
“No,” I protest. “I want a normal life. Want to have a wife and kids one day. A family like yours,” I say desperately, hoping he’ll give me a spark of hope to cling to.
I look at the cold cell bars and see another raven fly by the window.
I’m more determined than ever to end the Tether before it starts. I want my happily ever after, I think.
“Choose love,” Billy says softly. “But first, win the game. Killing is the only way you’ll survive long enough to find a love worth dying for.”