Chapter Twenty-Five
TWENTY-FIVE
ICE COATS THE TIPS OF my fingers as I zoom in on the photo of the twelve hanging women.
There’s a scream stuck in my throat. It’s a monster with vicious claws that scrape the tender flesh to ribbons.
There’s something burning through the tissue in my lungs.
The symbol. On every. Single. Woman. Painted like a Hail Mary, like a war cry, like a message meant just for me.
A triangle devoid of a bottom with a dot in the middle. On every sack that covers the head of a dead woman. Strange fruit for the crows to pluck come morning.
The cardinal zodiac symbol everywhere I turn—on the sacks, in the eyes of the wolves welded into the front gates of the school, on the necklace gifted to me by my dead grandmother. What was she trying to tell me? I grip the gold at my throat and squeeze my eyes shut.
I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.
VIGILANTE JUSTICE
Following the blazing fire that erupted at the Beaumont Clark School last night, twelve colored women have been found hanged outside the burnt remains.
This comes after numerous complaints waged against the negro members of the local community and a years-long legal battle with gem tycoon Theodore Biltmore, son of the esteemed Cornelius Biltmore, and his ever-expanding estate and tourism project.
The people responsible for the hangings have yet to be identified.
Bob Miller, Buncombe County sheriff, declined to comment on whether they will pursue those responsible.
In response to the accusations held against the women—unnatural occurrences, suspicious disappearances, and possible satanic activity—some have claimed the women met a just end. A righteous act by an almighty God.
One tiny article at the bottom of the page.
That’s what these women, accused and murdered, were afforded.
Four measly paragraphs to describe a mass lynching that the police at the time didn’t feel the need to investigate.
It seems impossible. An unlikely rumor about witches, spun for one hundred years, reduced to a spooky story told when the lights go out.
So why does a knot form in my stomach and spread upward until my chest constricts and my fingertips bloom white against the pressure of the table?
I’ve known it all along, and yet the confirmation burns right through me.
Somehow I am connected to these women. Alongside Fiona, maybe.
It’s like the echo of their pain is etched into my bones, like it’s a road map I’m compelled to follow, forced along a path I cannot see.
I feel it even now, coiled tightly in my core, unwieldly and dangerous. Forbidden.
These women had to feel it too.
Not for the first time, I wonder about the note from my dad.
This is the only way to save her.
What did he know? Where did he go? What was he trying to save me from?
And why does it feel like he failed? Like I am hurtling toward annihilation?
Spreading like a fissure through a frozen stream, the pain of loss shoots through me twice over. My father and Gigi. The loneliness of knowing there’s nowhere to turn.
If I’m going to survive whatever doom awaits me, then I’ll have to save myself.
I’m all I’ve got.
Sighing, I take out my phone with trembling hands and once again snap a picture of what I’ve found, but this isn’t enough. I’m itchy with unspent energy, my leg bouncing wildly beneath the desk. I’m searching before I even know what I’m looking for.
I go back, back, back in the archives, desperate to make everything connect perfectly, but I can’t find anything prior to 1905, and after the articles about the women, they’re never mentioned again.
The news cycle moves swiftly toward documenting the expansion of what would become Black Mountain Academy. Almost as if the women, and their school, never existed in the first place.
I was hoping there’d be more information about what happened to Beaumont Clark and why it was burned, to figure out if there were some way I could more solidly connect that to the witches, too. To these twelve women, to Gigi, to me, and to Fiona.
To the letter from my grandmother, and to the story about the so-called Mother.
But I find nothing. And I am drained. And sad and scared and tired. So tired, I ache with it.
Powering down the computer, I stand on gelatinous legs and climb back up the winding stairs, weaving through the now-empty library, and out into the starlit night.
My footsteps are the only sound echoing through the desolate quad.
Towering streetlamps cast periodic beams that flicker along the brick pathway, a few buzzing with a keening that grates like nails on a chalkboard.
The stone fountain gurgles as I pass. Three red birds sit along the edge. Their eyes like onyx beads.
They are uncanny, creepy creatures, and I slow, the bite of power piercing my fingers as I watch them watch me.
In the distance a faint scuffle sends my feet skidding to a halt. Turning, I inspect the courtyard for shadows or people or translucent ghosts in floor-length skirts and bones where their flesh should be. I peer through the beams of honey-yellow light that shine down in uneven patches.
Absently I grasp the pendant at my neck, rubbing against the engraving as I scan the forest’s edge.
Gasping, I inch forward without thinking, squinting to bring the image into focus.
Two glowing red eyes studying me from between the trees.
… An animal, surely.
I stare, hypnotized by their unusual, unblinking color. Something tickles my nose, and I cover my face and sneeze. When I look again, the animal is gone, and I’m left trembling. As I turn and jog up the stairs and through the doors, the undeniable scent of smoke follows me across the threshold.
Once inside my room I grab my shower caddy and head toward the communal bathroom.
On top of everything, I’ve skipped wash day one too many times, and if I don’t get in there and deep condition and detangle my hair, I’m going to lose half of it in the comb and seriously contemplate buzzing it instead of fighting the knots.
Besides, a hot shower seems like the perfect way to release some of the never-ending tension that’s been building between my shoulder blades.
Thankfully the late hour means I can decompress in peace.
When my skin has pruned and the water runs cooler than before, I pull on my fluffy white robe and run leave-in conditioner and curl cream through my hair.
Once I’m in my room I’ll finger coil and diffuse my curls before tucking them into my bonnet, but first: skin care.
I return to the sinks to brush my teeth, busy balancing my products and shower caddy as I pack up. Steam still clouds the room, and as I lift my hand to wipe away the coating on the wide mirror, my mouth falls open.
Someone else has been in here.
And they’ve left me a message.
Crudely written against the glass, water dripping from the bottom of each letter like blood, another layer to the mystery.
RUN