Chapter Nine
NINE
WHEN I’VE GOT MY DORM assignment and box full of uniform supplies, Katherine “Kate” Wheeler, the dorm administrator, introduces me to my student liaison.
Daisy Chang has funky black hair cut into a choppy mullet, eyes expertly lined in deep purple, and a silver piercing shot right through the middle of her bottom lip.
Her uniform is askew, skirt held up by a thick black belt with gunmetal grommets, and her platform Mary Janes still leave her about a head below everyone else in the room.
I’m instantly obsessed with her vibe. She sticks out her hand. “It’s nice to meet you…,” she trails off, eyebrows quirking up expectantly.
“Harper.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Harper.” She nods to my mom. “Harper’s mom.”
She turns on her heel and leads us out of the building.
Saying goodbye to my mom is both easier and harder than I anticipated.
She helps me unload my crap into the holding area of my dorm building’s lobby, but she can’t stay for the tour.
She’s used up all her PTO and has to get back to Pine Grove in time for her shift at the hospital tonight.
Turns out people don’t stop getting sick just because you’re in mourning.
She wraps her arms around me, and for a moment I let myself collapse into them. Soaking in the warmth and love that only a mother can provide, even if it’s never perfect.
She speaks into my hair, “I love you so much, Harper.”
“I know,” I say, laughing as she jokingly pokes me in the ribs for not saying it back. “I love you too.” I loosen my arms, but she doesn’t let go.
There’s a part of me that’s sure we both feel it. That everything is changing. I won’t move back to Pine Grove. She’s lost me to the very place she’s tried, and failed, to keep me from. Earnest has gobbled me up, and I let it.
But dream-Gigi was right: I need to protect Mom from whatever horrible truth might be lurking out here.
When anxiety starts to crawl up my neck, I whine, “Mooooom,” twisting my arms to try to break the embrace. “Mom, seriously?”
She laughs, finally releasing me before tucking my curls behind my ears.
“I’ll be fine,” I say.
She takes a deep breath, and I ignore the way her eyes well up. “I know you will, kiddo.”
When she finally drives away, I’m relieved; and for some reason that makes me sad. Sadder than I already am, I guess.
The campus is more expansive than I realized. Tucked behind Biltmore Hall, stone-pebbled pathways weave between dense crops of tall trees, still summer green, and patches of tightly maintained, perfectly lush grass.
As we walk, admiring the ornate ancillary buildings and the hedge maze bright with multicolor roses, Daisy points to the head of a bronze statue peeking up from the center.
“That’s Cornelius Biltmore, the gem tycoon who started this place.
Or actually it’s a statue of Corny with this big-ass wolf.
He was apparently obsessed with them. Hence the mascot.
” She points at a kid passing us. They’ve got on a gray BMA Mountain Wolves T-shirt.
“It’s a little quirky, but if you rub his paw before finals, you’ll have good luck. ”
I smirk. “I’m not even sure how to process that.”
“Yeah, everything about this school is absurd, you’ll see,” she says, laughing.
“Hm, I guess I always thought I knew this place better than I did.”
“You’re from around here?”
“Nah, not really. I grew up coming to Earnest in the summers to spend time with my grandma. We’d go to Lee Chapel for town hall meetings, and I’d run around the other side of campus. You can actually see parts of the school from the garden of her house.”
“You sound like Malachi and Lucas—they’re the new headmaster’s kids. They act like they grew up on campus and not like they only started staying in the dorms last year.”
My cheeks heat at the mention of their names, but I flatten my expression. For some reason I don’t want her to know I know them. I want to start here with a clean slate.
So I change the subject. “Jesus, I forgot how ginormous this place is,” I say, shielding my eyes against the sun as I tilt my head back to look at the top of Biltmore Hall.
We’ve stopped to sit on a bench. When students pass, their attention lingers on us. Maybe it’s because I’m the new girl, but I know the fact that we look so different from everyone else doesn’t help. Thankfully two drops of blood in the snow are better than one.
“Huge and old and haunted,” she says, nodding.
It’s like someone has jabbed a white-hot poker into the center of my belly.
“Haunted?”
“You grew up here, and you don’t know it’s haunted?”
I shrug. “I’ve heard… things. But it’s all nonsense. Scary kid stories.”
She gnaws on the corner of her thumbnail, smoky eyes staring straight into my soul.
“Come on,” she says, sliding off the bench and grabbing my hand.
We pass the sports complex and the arts building as she talks.
“In the late 1800s, the Biltmore family, having drained the piedmont of gold, came to the mountains with new ventures in mind.
The Blue Ridge is rich with other precious gems and metals, and textiles had begun to boom in North Carolina.
Looking for an estate through which to funnel their massive wealth, the Biltmore family decided this was the perfect place to do it.
“Problem was, there were already people here. A small Black community. In an effort to show good faith, the Biltmores offered the men jobs unloading train cars or in the picking rooms down at the cotton mill. But then the family wanted to buy the locals out of their land so they could keep building their estate, and the community wouldn’t budge. ”
“Small town drama,” I say wryly. “Spooky.”
She chuckles. “Well, this drama caused a lot of issues and tension, especially because the Biltmores wanted to knock down this historically Black school… but it was also the home of the Lee Valley Witches.”
Groaning, I stop and cross my arms over my chest. “Really?”
“What?” she says, her voice tinkling like wind chimes.
“The Lee Valley Witches is the oldest, dumbest legend in this town. I thought you were gonna tell me something new.”
This time she laughs for real. “If you already know everything, why’d you let me prattle on like that?”
“Well, you said the school was haunted. Last I checked, ghosts and witches are two separate things.”
“Are they?” Daisy asks.
I quirk my eyebrow at her.
“Forgive me for trying to add a little pizzazz to the story! But along with the witches—which I’ll come back to in a second—we can’t forget about the numerous people who lost their lives during the construction of the campus, or those that died in the last hundred years of its operation.
Or…,” she trails off, her expression going a bit soft.
“Or the people who have disappeared altogether.”
Her words hang in the air around us as visions of the missing-person posters flash in my mind and my mouth goes dry.
When we circle back around to the front of Biltmore Hall, Lee Chapel’s bell rings out from down the hill, marking the turn of the hour.
This time when Daisy speaks, the humor in her voice is gone. “Maybe over time the legend has morphed and taken on a life of its own, but they say that when the old schoolhouse burned down, there were women there…”
I can see them as clear as day from my dream, and I close my eyes and call the image into focus.
“Some say they were witches, that they’re the ones who burned the school to get rid of evidence of their craft. That when it was all said and done, they jumped from the rock jutting out from the cliffside to avoid persecution.
“Others say the witches were burned along with the school. But most say they were lynched right here on these trees, their bodies buried where they fell, and the chapel built over their bones…”
I crane my neck at the towering poplar trees and shiver.
Such beauty disguising unimaginable horror.
“But whatever actually happened, everyone says they haunt the school—”
A breeze sweeps through, and I gulp.
“—and the woods surrounding it. On nights with a full moon, their screams can be heard through the trees. You can feel their agony. They stalk the forest, looking for souls to eat. If you hear them, then you’ll see them. And if you see them, you’ll never leave this campus alive.”
A low buzzing vibrates at the base of my skull.
“That’s…”
“Insane?” she laughs, bumping her shoulder into my bicep.
“Yeah, it’s totally batshit, but last year when I snuck out of my room in the middle of the night to see my girlfriend, it was so bizarre.
Like something was watching me. Like the school is alive and the walls have eyes.
It’s all that history, low-key gives it a sinister energy. Gets into your head.”
She sounds kinda like she believes in the ghosts more than she’s letting on.
As if she’s read my mind, she says, “I don’t know if the legend is true or not, but it’s probably fine, lol.” And she says it just like that, lol and all.
“I don’t know,” I say, “all legends have to come from somewhere.”
We’re perched against the edge of the three-tiered fountain in front of Biltmore when dark gray clouds begin to layer in front of the sun. The cooling air is a nice reprieve from the relentless heat.
In the distance, the growing purr of an engine undercuts our conversation, and we both turn our heads and watch as a black-on-red motorcycle curves around the chapel and up through the driveway that circles the quad.
There’s a slash of white spray paint across the body of the bike, and the rider is wearing black cargo pants and a black hoodie and black gloves with a black helmet to match.
“Who the—” I start, but I don’t have to finish my question because the rider lifts the helmet off their head, and it must be happening in slow motion because it feels like ages before the scarlet hair is flopping over his forehead and he’s tucking the helmet beneath his arm as he ascends the stone stairs at the entrance of the building.
His gait is a bit offset, the prosthesis giving him a particular kind of swagger.