#blackfiction

The Dark Thirty is a collection of supernatural stories by Patricia C. McKissack based on Black history and folklore. With eerie, atmospheric scratch-board illustrations by Brian Pinkney.

The tales combine ghosts, curses, monsters, and other paranormal happenings with the real life horrors of slavery, lynching, and racism.

You can get a copy on Indiebound:

https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780679890065

This summer I got a chance to go to Camp Lanier. A summer camp that focused on bringing kids back to nature. I hate nature, I would have been happy playing video games all summer, but my mom is a single parent and camps are the best babysitters for me. So, I was shipped off to camp bug bite and lined up on a dock, waiting to learn to swim.

“This is a satanic sacrifice, they’re tossing us into the abyss,” Someone whispered in my ear, I could tell by the sound of pure terror in his voice, that it was Maxwell, he had been very adamant at lunch about the moral and legal injustices of forcing someone to learn how to swim against their wishes.

“You’re gonna be fine, Max.” I replied.

Maxwell crossed his arms over his chest, “Fine? People die like this all the time. Who lines people up and makes them jump into dangerous waters? Pirates, that’s who!” Maxwell hissed.

“So, you think a camp of Pirates is plotting to teach kids how to swim?” I asked.

“When you say it like that, it sounds crazy,” Maxwell mumbled.

“It sounds crazy no matter how I say it,” I replied. We shuffled behind the other kids as we listened to the splashing and giggles from up ahead.

“He’s not wrong,” A soft voice came from the girl’s line beside us. I looked over to see a set of hazel eyes and a dark puffy Afro staring at me.

“You think this is a Pirate camp?” I asked.

“No...but that would be cool. He’s right about the lake, it is dangerous.” She replied. Her statement grabbed the ears of most the kids as we shuffled along the wet wooden dock, “Before there was a camp, there was a lake and before that...there was a town. My grandpa told me that this whole lake was once a thriving Black town. People called it Little Atlanta” the girl said.

“So, this used to be a town?” Maxwell asked.

“Yeah, the KKK didn’t like a town of black citizens thriving, so one night they came in and murdered everyone. Grandpa said blood stained the streets when it was all said and done.” The girl grabbed her big puffy Afro and held it tightly as she removed the green band from her wrist and wrapped it around her hair making a tight smaller puff on her head. “They tried to burn the town after. They lined the bodies up in the church and set them ablaze, but only the bodies burned.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. I wasn’t buying it. Things like this didn’t happen.

“They tried setting the church on fire but it wouldn’t burn, the flames would just crawl along the wood like little glowing worms and then die out. Same with all the other buildings. Nothing would burn that night or any other time they returned with or without their hoods.” She replied.

“Creepy,” Maxwell said.

“What’s creepy is what the state did after,” She said.

“What did they do?” I asked.

“I don’t wanna go in there!” A boy screamed. Our eyes were pulled to the confrontation as the boy and our counselor, Adam, were arguing at the very edge of the dock.

“Kid, get in the water,” Adam said.

“We shouldn’t, you know that!” The boy turned his head toward us...no, toward me. Our gazes were locked. Sweat poured down his skin just as fast as my heart was banging against my chest, “They know that!” He screamed.

“Okay, enough!” Adam shouted and his hands slammed into the boy’s chest, catapulting him into the dark waters of the lake. The boy’s screams echoed through my head until...silence, “Next!” Adam shouted.

“Next? He needs help, he’s drowning!” I shouted.

“Everyone is,” Maxwell whispered.

And as if nothing happened, she continued, “They wanted to demolish the town and hide what they did.They brought in bulldozers and dynamite, but it all failed.” The girl looked over at me, “So, they drowned it. The state turned Little Atlanta into a nice sweet lake... except nothing’s sweet about this place.” We looked forward and the line that once felt miles long, was now at its end. We were next, “There’s blood all over that town. In the soil, in the walls and in the water.”

“Next!” Adam shouted.

“There’s blood in the water,” she whispered.

“I said you’re next, boy!” A deep demonic southern accent came out of Adam’s mouth.

I turned toward him and his eyes were a dark blood red. I frantically backed up bumping into the ice cold skin of the girl, “If you know all this, why would you come here?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t,” she said. When I spun around, everyone was gone. Maxwell, Adam, the girl, even the sun. I stood alone in the cool darkness of the night, the water was smacking against the dock.

I inhaled the night air. I saw the cabin lights in the distance. I could even hear faint laughter. My sweaty hands ran over my face and I sighed into them. I turned toward the water and stared at it’s cool ripples. I cautiously inched forward to the dock’s edge. I felt like I was on fire, sweat poured freely. I got on my knees, “I hate camp,” I said as I pushed my hand below the water’s surface. I pulled the cool liquid up to my face and shut my eyes, splashing the heat away. They opened to see a set of blood red eyes staring back at me, through my rippled reflection.

Wifey’s MagnifiqueNoir was featured in this article as one of the top 10 Black science fiction/fantasy works Netflix should consider adapting! You can read it here!

Legendborn | Tracy Deonn | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Synopsis: Bree Matthews is ready to make a change. She leaves her father, family home, and hometown with a goodbye to attend school at an in-state College Campus, UCC Chapel Hill. What Bree's not expecting is to be caught in the middle of legendary and ancient war that may or may not have something to do with the untimely death of her mother.

My thoughts: I read Legendborn on Christmas day of 2020, as I had just started my book of the month subscription that December. Legendborn was the first book that i had read cover to cover in a looong time.

While the high-school drama is somewhat trite and cliche, I didn't find that it was stuffy and stale. I love the dichotomy between the "this is in every teenage romance series uwu" and "Bree is black, therefore she is going to experience and be perceived differently than a white girl in her situation." Every situation is turned on it's head, and there is real palpable frustration from a reader's perspective that Bree has to endure this shit™️ even when she's the heroine of our tale.

The crux of the book and it's lore is centered around Arthurian legend, and I'll admit that the final twist at the end even took me by surprise. The author does an excellent job of crafting expectations and perceptions only to flip them around at back at you. This definitely has a few standard "new fiction author who dis" mistakes, but I would say that I really look forward anything Tracy Deonn has to publish in the future.