Page 70 of Bound By Fury

Doubt settles like lead in my belly. As each page passes without mention of a coven, or witches, or anything more interesting than tobacco, weather, and the occasional petty crime, I begin to seriously question why I’m here.

But that doesn’t feel right. I know what I saw in my dream. I know what I feel when I’m in Earnest. What I’ve always felt. I know somewhere deep inside me that there is more to all this.

I’ve noticed my power builds faster now, crests the tips of my fingers so quickly that I’ve started to become afraid of touching people. I’m scared that if I don’t figure out what’s going on, I’m going to hurt someone besides Sam.

I worry that I’ll accidentally self-immolate before all is said and done.

Still, sixteen years in my mother’s house—where magic is nothing more than the delusions of crazy people—taunts me. In the middle of the night, in the halls of my dorm, I sometimes catch an unsettling, haunting wail floating from one of the rooms, and the whispers I’ve been hearing are growing in frequency and volume. Add that to the pale bone-fingers of the ghost woman clawing around every corner, or the shadows slithering like sentient beings… and I sometimes wonder if I’m losing it.

Has Gigi’s death sent me over the edge? If nothing comes of this, if there is no coven, if there is nowhere else to turn, if everything I believe to be real isn’t, then I will ask for help. I can’t keep feeling this way—so out of control—because I fear there’s only one end to this. With a cryptic note and nothing more than a handful of memories.

If I go, will I find my father there?

Refocusing my blurry eyes, I continue to scroll. When the mouse clicks through to the next set of articles, my brain only processes a few words before my head is swimming.

My hands tremble as I zoom in. There, in small print at the bottom of the page:

LOCAL COLORED-WOMEN’S CULT ACCUSED OF ACTS AGAINST GOD

Well, I guess this explains why the word “witches” wasn’t getting me any results.

Colored-Women’s Cult? Acts Against God? I check the date—1926. Well before my grandmother was even born.

There is so much involved in being a Black woman in this country, least of all carrying the burden of our trauma. Shoving it deep down, even when it feels impossible. For so long we have been nothing more than objects in the eyes of the people who run this country, even though we built it with our bare hands. We raised the children who would grow to become the men who keep their boots on our necks, and the women who hide behind them.

That’s an enduring pain. It’s not something we can erase. It embeds in us. In our DNA. It burdens our daughters. It feeds the seeds of us as we grow and imbues us with a knowing. I don’t need to read more than the title to know.

After reports of mysterious happenings around Earnest, North Carolina, a number of colored women have been questioned and will potentially face charges in relation to what some are referring to as “Acts Against God.”

Members of the community have reported the women, accusing them of things such as demonic possession and unusual forces of power. A source told us their family has been tracking this group for over a decade, noting atypical weather patterns and a curious number of unsolved white deaths. Coincidentally our sources tell us that one woman is being investigated for murder.

On Tuesday some took to the yard of the Beaumont Clark School in protest of the colored presence in Earnest. The Beaumont Clark School is the only colored school west of the Triad. A stronghold in the negro community, the school began as a sort of church and still holds these mysterious, female-centric services every Sunday.

These accusations come after years of tension between the colored folk and the Biltmore family, who purchased the surrounding land and wish to move the school at no cost.

Sheriff Bob Miller of Buncombe County has stated that they’re “investigating the situation closely and will protect the local community at all costs.”

I reread the article. And then I read it again. And again. Is it possible that this is the spark that ignited the legend that still stalks the halls of this school? Is it possible that these “unusual forces of power” and “acts against God” were something more akin to magic? To static? Did they have the same thrumming in their veins that I feel in mine?

Or is the article lying? Was this just an excuse to round up Black women? Where does the truth and the history I know diverge?

If the legend is true, then this wasn’t just some coven of witches, it was a group of Black women who were being accused of the impossible. Witches? Or women who didn’t aspire to humble themselves at the foot of the white man?

A steady ache forms behind my eyes. The fear and pain that these women must have felt. The isolation they must have fought against, wanting nothing more than to be free and safe in a community that clearly did not want them to exist.

The allegations in the article could very well be false, though I can’t help but think back to Dawson’s, to the cafeteria, to the woods, to Willow Estate, to the whispers that have infiltrated my mind, to my dream and the blazing fire, the chanting in the face of men on a witch hunt. For what feels like the millionth time, I’ve sought out answers only to be filled with an endless sea of questions.

Lifting my phone, I snap a picture of the article before searching for more information.

Five pages later, twelve brown women of varying shades, black sacks over their heads, hang from trees illuminated by the light of an inferno, Beaumont Clark burning behind them, executed without trial.

And on each sack, in stark white:

A symbol.

Exactly like the one hanging around my neck.

PART THREE INTO EACH LIFE SOME RAIN MUST FALL