The Weight of Blood (4)
“How could she have an Afro like that?”
“Wait, is she Black?”
Mrs. Morgan, trying to regain control of the rowdy class, noticed the lukewarm coffee in her mug on the table ripple, as if a strong breeze had blown by.
Suddenly, Wendy cussed under her breath with a wince, covering her ears with both hands.
“What the hell?” she gasped, exchanging a frantic look with Charlotte, sitting wide-eyed. She felt it too. Their ears were on fire.
Something pinched behind Maddy’s eyes, her muscles clenching as she muttered, “Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.”
“Bro, is she?”
“Yo! Maddy is a . . .”
“STOP IT!”
In an instant, every desk and chair lifted four feet in the air as if snatched up by rope. Wendy gasped at the sensation, similar to that of a carnival ride moments before it plummets back to earth. Then, the desks slammed onto the floor, metal legs shrieking. Windows cracked and overhead lights burst, raining shards of glass down on the screaming students. The ground bucked beneath Mrs. Morgan, bringing her to her knees. Her head popped up in time to see students grabbing their belongings, running for the door.
All except for Maddy, who somehow, was in the back corner of the room, curled into a ball.
Two
MADDY DID IT
EPISODE 1, CONT.
Michael Stewart: “‘It all started with the rain.’ That’s what the people of Springville say whenever asked about the fatal Prom Night that occurred over a decade ago, leaving a town in complete ruins.”
This is the opening line of author David Portman’s book Springville Massacre: The Legend of Maddy Washington. It examines the events leading up to what he refers to as “the Bloody Prom,” when a girl named Madison Abigail Washington nearly burned down her entire town, killing two hundred people, including the majority of her senior class, at their first racially integrated prom. The opening line, along with the testimony we played at the beginning of this program, has haunted me with more questions than answers. But if you ask anyone from Springville, or at least anyone still alive, what happened that fateful night, they all say the same as Cole Lecter—“Maddy did it.” How? Well, that’s still up for debate. The survivors of that night witnessed the horror unfold firsthand, so why doesn’t anyone believe them?
Hello. My name is Michael Stewart. I’m a producer here at NPR radio, and before we go any further, I want to introduce my lovely, albeit unconventional, cohost for this series, Ms. Tanya King.
Tanya King: Hello, hello!
Michael: How about you tell us a little about yourself, Tanya?
Tanya: Sure. I’m an anthropologist and professor at the University of Sydney.
Michael: Okay, so full disclosure: Tanya and I met at a bar a little over six months ago.
Tanya: Translation, he was hitting on me.
Michael: laughs Okay, fair enough. Well, I was striking up a convo about what I do for a living.
Tanya: Which is?
Michael: I investigate true crimes. And I had just gotten a break in a case that I’d been obsessed with since my freshman year in college. So I was kinda excited and told her about it.
Tanya: To which I replied that I had never heard of the Springville Massacre.
Michael: Then I promptly said, “What rock have you been living under? Were you too busy fighting off giant spiders and kangaroos down under?”
Tanya: The date ended quickly after that. But he did hold my attention for a bit with his passionate babble about some girl who could move furniture with her mind.
Michael: Honestly, I thought the entire world had heard of the massacre. Especially given all the conspiracy theories surrounding it.
Tanya: And that’s probably why I hadn’t. Because it just sounds crazy. I pride myself on being a realist.
Michael: So, I thought this would make a great social experiment. I mean, what better way to approach this case with a fresh pair of eyes than by presenting it to an extreme skeptic who has absolutely no tainted knowledge of the massacre? For the next few weeks, we’re going to retrace the events leading up to Prom Night, turning over old leads, maybe even dig up new evidence, and let you and our listeners be the judge.
Tanya: I mean really, it all sounds like a fantastic urban legend. But I am curious about these conspiracy theories you mentioned. Can I hear some?
Michael: Well, for starters, consider the way the entire town went up in flames. It just couldn’t have been the work of one teen girl with quote “magical powers.” That’s what people have a hard time processing. Hence the state investigation, the interrogation, the burying of facts. The high school was already under a lot of heat as it was, which we’ll dive into later, so in the general public’s eyes, Maddy had to have had some help destroying the place.
Tanya: Did they consider it a domestic terrorist attack of sorts?
Michael: Something like that. You also have the conservative swamp believing Black Lives Black Pride, or BLBP, had something to do with it, given all the protests that took place in the weeks prior to Prom Night. Then there are people who believe that it never happened at all. That it was all Hollywood effects and crisis actors, which is just disgusting.
Tanya: I believe kids died. I believe they existed. I just don’t believe the cause of their death.
Michael: Yeah, neither did the state of Georgia. Neither did most of America, which is why Portman’s book went virtually unnoticed. But I do have one theory to add to the mix.