Page 22 of Bound By Fury

“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.

“That’s one of the guys I was talking about earlier. Malachi. He’s the headmaster’s nephew. He inherited, like, an ass-load of money when his parents died last summer. Moved his uncle and cousin into his house and went from normal, shy, hot jock to total depression-era emo with a motorcycle and a new girl clamoring—unsuccessfully—for his attention every week. Honestly I can’t even blame them. If I weren’t a lesbian, I too would fall into his weird little trap. It’s the Edgar Allan Poe-ification of teenage boyhood.”

It’s strange that she doesn’t mention Lexie, and I wonder if the students here know, or if he’s kept some part of the tragedy to himself. If he’s hiding the truth of his pain beneath this change.

Because this isn’t the Malachi I know. The one who read Bridge to Terabithia, cried for two days, and then refused to use the rope swing to cross the creek; the one with ink-stained fingers and little leather-bound notebooks always tucked deep into his pockets. The one that tethered Lucas and me to the earth. The Malachi I knew was serious, sure, and sullen, usually, but he wasn’t this vicious, womanizing, motorcycle-riding, pretentious loser.

I don’t know how to feel about all this new information about him, so I say nothing. My mouth waters with the urge to scream, but I smother it.

The school has two dorm buildings, one for underclassmen and one for upper, with the “genders” separated by floor. Boys on the first two, and girls on the third and fourth. The upperclassmen dorm is called McDowell House, but there’s already a name tag slapped over the plaque by the entrance with “Acheron” scribbled over it, which feels especially appropriate as I wander through the lobby and onto the elevator with my cart full of stuff.