A Piedmont Lantern Story

Piedmont had blamed a lot of things over the years.

Bad luck. Sour dispositions. Crops that failed for no reason anyone could name. Men who turned mean overnight. Women who withered like something had been taken from the soil beneath them. Folks said it was just the way of things.

The Fagan twins knew better.

Takota kept the tools.
Hattie Ruth kept the names.

They didn’t call what they did witchcraft, not out loud. That word made people careless, and carelessness ruined everything. What they practiced was older and quieter and far more exacting.

They called it settling things.

Every new moon, they went down to the low place by Terrapin Creek where the water slowed and darkened, where the land held onto what it was given whether it wanted to or not. Takota drew the circle with cornmeal and creek mud, careful as a bookkeeper. Hattie Ruth laid out the objects: a button lost in anger, a rusted nail pulled from a house built on spite, a lock of hair given freely and then regretted.

Tonight, there were more objects than usual.

“That many?” Takota asked softly.

Hattie Ruth nodded. “It’s been a bad stretch.”

They lit the candles. Not many. Just enough.

And then they spoke the names.

Not curses. Never curses. The twins had learned early that curses bounce back if they don’t have somewhere proper to land. These were reckonings. Names spoken alongside what had been done and what had been taken.

A beating disguised as discipline.
A lie that cost a good woman her standing.
Money borrowed and never meant to be returned.
A child sent away “for their own good.”

With each name, Takota buried an object. With each burial, the creek stirred, not rising, not threatening. Just listening.

That was when the flashlight snapped on.

“What in God’s name…”

The beam caught the circle. The candles. The objects half-swallowed by earth.

Pearl Albea dropped the light.

Beulah Mae clutched at her chest. “I knew it.”

They weren’t alone, either. Two others hovered behind them, drawn by years of whispered suspicion that had finally found its shape.

Takota didn’t flinch. She stepped forward, calm as a midwife. “Evenin’.”

Hattie Ruth stayed where she was, voice steady. “You’re standin’ in somethin’ unfinished.”

Pearl swallowed hard. “What… what are y’all doin’?”

“Cleanin’ up,” Takota said.

Beulah Mae shook her head violently. “This is wickedness. This explains everything. The accidents. The misfortunes…”

Hattie Ruth looked at her then, real clear. “No ma’am. This explains why they stopped.”

Silence fell thick as humidity.

Pearl found her voice. “Stopped?”

Takota gestured toward the creek. “Things settle when they’re named.”

“And when they’re not?” Pearl asked.

Hattie Ruth’s mouth curved, sad and knowing. “Then they leak. They rot. They show up sideways in other folks’ lives.”

One of the men behind Pearl went pale. He recognized a button at the edge of the circle. He’d wondered for years where it had gone.

“You can’t…” Beulah Mae started.

“We already did,” Takota said gently. “And we’ll keep doin’ it. Town won’t. Somebody’s got to do it.”

Pearl stared at the circle, the candles burning low but steady. At the way the night felt… quieter. Not safer. Balanced.

Finally, she picked up the flashlight and turned it off.

“Y’all didn’t see this,” she said to the others. “And you ain’t gonna talk about it.”

Beulah Mae opened her mouth.

Pearl cut her a look sharp enough to draw blood. “Some things are best left tended to.”

They left without another word.

When the footsteps faded, Hattie Ruth let out a long breath. “That was close.”

Takota nodded. “Closer than I like.”

They finished the work before dawn, hands dirty, shoulders aching, the circle smoothed away until no sign remained.

By morning, Piedmont would wake to small mercies it couldn’t explain. A man’s temper cooling. A debt repaid. A memory loosening its grip just enough to let someone breathe.

And the town would go right on pretending nothing unusual was happening.

Which was fine.

Witchcraft, after all, only frightens people who think power belongs somewhere else.

The Fagan twins knew better.