Rules for Vanishing

by Kate Alice Marshall

  And we’re out of the dark. Out of that dark, at least, the impossible dark. Back in the night, moonlight gleaming over us. I stagger. Lose Anthony’s hand, fall to one knee, retching. I hold my hands in front of me in the silvery light. Clean. They’re clean, no sign of what I felt beneath them, giving way.

  No sign of the thing that tried to take me.

  “We made it,” Anthony says. “It’s okay. We made it out.”

  I nod. We’re safe. We’re on the other side. It’s gone. We broke a rule, but we escaped the consequences. It’s fine.

  I almost believe it.

  “Where’s everyone else?” I ask.

  “Right behind us,” Anthony says. “Just give them a minute.”

  And so we wait.

  VIDEO EVIDENCE

  Retrieved from the cell phone of Kyle Jeffries

  Recorded April 19, 2017, 12:51 a.m.

  The phone records only flat black. The sound of footsteps and breathing can be heard.

  KYLE: I can’t see anything. I can’t even see the screen.

  TRINA: Just hold on. That’s—that’s—

  KYLE: Twelve. One more. You can do it.

  TRINA: I can do it? Isn’t this hard for you?

  KYLE: I’ve kind of got a lot of practice lately ignoring my brain’s bad ideas.

  Trina laughs, a strangled sound, and then light floods into the camera. Everything is a blur as it adjusts; the forest is dimly lit when it settles, Anthony and Sara barely shadows ahead.

  ANTHONY: Are you guys okay? Did you let go?

  KYLE: Trina kept trying. Nice to finally be better at something than my sister.

  TRINA: Shut up. Crap. I feel like I’m going to puke.

  SARA: Me too. The others—

  As if on cue, Jeremy, Mel, and Miranda stumble out of the wall of darkness. Jeremy pulls free of Mel with a string of curses, and vomits, bending over the side of the stone road. Mel sinks into a crouch, hands over her eyes, and Miranda steps away, pulls into herself.

  Silence falls. Waiting gains a sharp edge. Mel is breathing through her teeth, gaze tipped up toward the stars. Sara wraps her arms around her middle, her hair hanging in front of her face, staring at the wall of dark. Ten seconds pass. Twenty. Thirty.

  ANTHONY: Maybe we should go back in. They might have—you almost got lost, Sara.

  TRINA: What?

  ANTHONY: She let go.

  SARA: I didn’t let go. I don’t think I let go.

  ANTHONY: One of us did. The point is you went out ahead without me.

  Sara swallows, nervous. But Trina’s expression betrays only concern.

  TRINA: Are you okay? What happened?

  SARA: There was something—there was a hand, and I thought it was Anthony’s, but it wasn’t. It tried to lead me off the road. But I got away. I got back to Anthony. We both made it through.

  Nick and Vanessa step out of the darkness. Nick lets out a groan of relief.

  SARA: There you are. Everyone made it, then. We’re all fine.

  JEREMY: Hold on. We need to talk about this. You two let go. The rules said not to do that.

  SARA: Maybe—maybe something was going to happen, but it didn’t because I got away.

  JEREMY: Or we’re all going to get hook-massacred because you couldn’t follow a simple rule.

  ANTHONY: Lay off. We’re safe. That’s what matters.

  The camera has been focused tightly on the three of them. Now it swings around to capture the rest of the group. Mel has gotten to her feet, though she still looks queasy. Miranda has moved farther out ahead of the group, looking down the dark road ahead. Nick and Vanessa stand with their heads together, hands linked. Vanessa is whispering something, and Nick nods.

  KYLE: You guys okay?

  Nick takes a breath, looking indecisive.

  VANESSA: Hm? Yeah. We’re fine. That was terrifying, though. I tripped and almost let go. And I lost my stupid glasses.

  She squeezes Nick’s hand, smiles at him. He gives her a shallow nod.

  TRINA: Are you going to be all right without them?

  VANESSA: I’m not totally blind without them. I can tell where everything is, it’s just super blurry. I mean, don’t ask me to read anything, but I’m not going to walk into a tree.

  KYLE: Oh, shit. Look.

  The camera focuses on the landscape behind Nick and Vanessa. The phone’s flashlight barely pierces the darkness, but beyond it they can see the formless black is gone, and the teens stand just on the other side of the iron gate, at a distance of perhaps a dozen steps. No more.

  Trina laughs, a high, nervous sound.

  TRINA: Are we sure it’s too late to go back?

  Behind them, farther down the road, someone screams.

  8

  THE SCREAM COMES again. We bunch up. I look for Mel first, instinctively checking that she’s okay, and catch her eye for an instant before I notice the others’ reactions—who stands in front of whom, who hangs back, who lurches forward to investigate or help or stand guard. Jeremy out front, stepping twice toward the sound before halting. Vanessa fading back. Anthony moving in front of the others like a shield. Trina putting herself in front of Kyle, Mel a few feet apart, the most alone of any of us except for Miranda—Miranda, who stands farther out than even Jeremy, but makes no move toward the sound or away from it, listening, her hands lax at her sides.

  “What do we do?” Trina asks.

  “It sounds like a girl,” Anthony says.

  “Is she saying something?” Jeremy asks. His hearing isn’t good at a distance.

  “I don’t think so,” Anthony says.

  “We can’t just stand here,” I say. “If someone’s in danger, we have to help.”

  “It isn’t Becca,” Anthony says.

  “I know.” I know her voice. It wasn’t her. “We still have to help.”

  “I’ll go,” Jeremy says immediately.

  “We all go,” I say, firm. “We’re not splitting up.”

  “Never split the party,” Kyle says softly, like a half-quoted joke.

  We move forward cautiously. It’s silent now. The stone road continues out ahead, our flashlights fading long before it does in the distance. The trees stand thick around us; mostly evergreens now, the ground littered with dry needles, bleached of color. I’ve never been this deep in Briar Glen Woods. If we’re even in Briar Glen anymore.

  “Do you hear anything?” Jeremy asks. “Is she still there?”

  “I can’t tell,” I say. I try to speak loudly enough for him to understand easily, but it’s hard with the night pressing back, a threat that makes my voice thin as paper.

  “I don’t like this,” Mel says.

  “Shh,” Miranda says, holding up a hand. “Listen.”

  The scream comes again. We all jump. Mel screams, too, cutting it off with a hand clamped over her mouth, and our flashlight beams leap toward the sound, scrambling over roots and branches, and then mine finds it, pinned by the light where it crouches, hunching its black wings up toward its blunt blade of a beak. A solitary crow.

  “Is that . . . ?” Anthony says.

  “It was just a bird?” Trina says.

  The crow screams again. We cinch together. There’s a moment—a stutter, like a skipped frame, my stomach suddenly tight and sour, a desperate sensation tilting through me like there’s something I’ve forgotten.

  “Oh God,” comes the voice from the crow’s beak, distorted, raspy. “Oh God, what is that?” And then the scream again, as the crow flaps its wings, and the scream shatters into a broken caw. It flings itself into the air, into the night, too fast for our lights to follow. For a moment the beams rake at the trees in scattered confusion before falling, one by one, to stillness at our feet again.

  I’m not sure how l
ong it is before one of us speaks again. “This is fucked up,” Mel says. “Just so we’re clear.”

  “It was just a bird,” Vanessa says, pushing up her glasses.

  “A deeply fucked-up bird,” Mel emphasizes.

  I look down. I’m not holding my flashlight anymore; it’s tucked into my bag, which is unzipped. I have Becca’s camera in my hand. It’s on, the pinprick lights steady. I don’t remember taking it out. I lift it, focusing on the dark outline of Miranda, up ahead. She half turns to look at me as I snap the picture, the flash strobing once. The camera shows the shot for a few seconds. The flash flattens her against the dark background. All around her the light distorts, as if splashed across mist, though the air is clear. There is something odd about the image, though on the tiny screen, it’s hard to tell. A discoloration to her skin, strange shadows.

  I thumb the power off and tuck the camera back in my bag.

  “What now?” Anthony asks. They’re looking at me again, like I have answers.

  “We keep going,” I say, shaking off the feeling that I’ve forgotten something.

  “Going where, though?” Trina asks. “Where does this lead?”

  “To Becca,” I say, hoping it’s true.

  “Becca,” Trina echoes with a nod. We don’t know where she is—where we are—but her name is enough of a talisman and a goal. The road leads to her. We only need to follow it.

  The eight of us set out, walking two by two as if on instinct, close enough to catch each other’s hands if the darkness returns.

  We don’t look back.

  INTERVIEW

  SARA DONOGHUE

  May 9, 2017

  The door opens. Abigail “Abby” Ryder steps in. She is a young white woman, her dark hair cropped to chin length, her features sharp and uncomfortably severe. She walks with a slight limp, favoring her right leg, but otherwise appears recovered from the Oregon incident.*

  ABBY: You asked for these.

  She sets a stack of papers on the desk. Ashford flips through them momentarily, nods.

  ASHFORD: Thank you, Abby. That will be all.

  ABBY: Did you ask her about the photos?

  ASHFORD: Thank you, Miss Ryder.

  SARA: Ask me about which photos?

  ASHFORD: We will get to that in due time. Miss Ryder, please see to our other guest.

  Abby gives a curt nod and exits, pulling the door shut behind her with a bang.

  ASHFORD: I’m sorry about that. Miss Ryder’s training is . . . informal. We’re still working on her people skills.

  SARA: What did she mean about the photos?

  Ashford hesitates, indecision in his expression. Then he reaches for the folder containing the photos he showed her earlier.

  ASHFORD: We looked at some of these earlier, but we haven’t had the chance to discuss them in detail yet.

  He sets two on the table. The first is the photo of Nick Dessen. The other he removes from the folder is one he has not shown her before, a photograph of Miranda taken with a flash, mist hanging in the air around her. There is something odd about her skin, and the shadows that lie on it. The viewer can almost imagine that they see the faint lines of the bones beneath her skin. Sara reaches for the photo of Miranda, pulling it toward her across the table.

  SARA: Miranda. I remember taking this.

  ASHFORD: Then Miranda was with you.

  SARA: Yeah. She came with Mel. But you knew that.

  ASHFORD: I did, I only . . . We’ll discuss that later. You haven’t said anything about the other photograph. Earlier, you hardly looked at it.

  SARA: That’s because I’ve never seen it before.

  ASHFORD: You don’t remember taking it?

  SARA: I didn’t.

  ASHFORD: It came from your camera.

  SARA: Becca’s camera.

  ASHFORD: Yes, but it was taken when you were in possession of the camera. And look at the background. The same tree is in both of them. These photos were taken in the same place.

  SARA: That’s not possible.

  ASHFORD: Why not?

  SARA: Because whoever this kid is, he wasn’t with us. And we hadn’t met anyone else on the road yet.

  ASHFORD: Excuse me?

  SARA: We hadn’t met anyone else yet.

  ASHFORD: Yes, but—you said “whoever this kid is.” You don’t recognize Nick Dessen?

  SARA: Who?

  Ashford stares at her for a moment in silence. Then he reaches for the papers that Abby brought in, flipping through once more.

  ASHFORD: In your written statements, you don’t mention that Nick Dessen was with you.

  SARA: I told you, I don’t know who that is.

  ASHFORD: Miss Donoghue, how many people were there when you walked through the gate at the beginning of the road?

  SARA: Me, Anthony, Mel, Miranda, Trina, Kyle, Jeremy, and Vanessa. So eight.

  ASHFORD: But there was an odd number. In your testimony, you state more than once that there were nine of you. And three of you had to go through the darkness as a group as a result.

  SARA: No—I mean, yes. That’s right.

  ASHFORD: But you only listed eight names.

  SARA: There were nine of us, though. You’re right.

  ASHFORD: So who was the ninth?

  SARA: I—No, I must be wrong. Me. Anthony and Jeremy. Mel and Miranda. Trina and Kyle. Vanessa. That’s eight. So there were eight of us.

  ASHFORD: Then why did you need a group of three?

  SARA: I don’t know!

  She shoves herself up to her feet, stumbling back from the table. Her hands cover her face. Her left sleeve rides a little lower than the right; inked letters on her wrist appear to form the tail end of a word in spiky script, though not enough is visible to determine what it might say.

  ASHFORD: It’s all right, Miss Donoghue. We don’t need to talk about this right now. We can return to the subject later.

  He sweeps the photographs together and slides them back into the folder, resting his hand on it as if to reassure her that it won’t spring open of its own accord.

  ASHFORD: Miss Donoghue?

  Her hands drop. Reluctantly, she creeps back to her seat, sinking into it. Her eyes fix on the folder, and she chews on one thumbnail.

  ASHFORD: You were telling me about the crow. That was before you found Becca, correct?

  SARA: Yeah. Yeah, it was still early.

  ASHFORD: When you described the gate, you called it the first gate. Can you explain that?

  SARA: Yeah. Um. There are supposed to be seven gates. That was the first.

  ASHFORD: What was the second?

  SARA: You said there was another guest. Someone else is here? Who is it?

  ASHFORD: Melanie Whittaker.

  Sara nods, as if she expected this answer.

  SARA: What has she told you? About the second gate?

  ASHFORD: I would rather hear it in your own words.

  SARA: The second gate was where things went wrong. Or where we realized how wrong they already were. The second gate was where we realized we weren’t the only ones on the road.

  9

  WE WALK MOSTLY in silence for the next stretch. I find myself walking next to Mel, toward the back of the group. She’s sipping from Trina’s water bottle, tiny sips that barely seem enough to wet her lips.

  “I wasn’t going to come,” Mel says after a while. Her eyes lift to mine, then cut away.

  “It’s okay. It’s not like any of us knew this was real.” It isn’t okay. I have held this bitter anger between my teeth so long the enamel has been eaten away, and no matter how undeserved it is, I’ve forgotten how to let it go.

  “You knew. Anthony knew.”

  “It’s not that I knew it was real
,” I say. “It’s that it didn’t matter if it was real. I had to be here either way.”

  She screws the cap back on the water bottle. Half of it still sloshes back and forth. I have extra bottles in my bag. I don’t think anyone else brought anything to eat or drink, but I hope we won’t be on the road long enough to need it.

  “I’m glad Sophia didn’t come,” Mel says.

  “Who?”

  “Oh. Yeah, she left before you showed. She was my date,” Mel says with an awkward sort-of laugh. “I told her we’d go make out in the woods.”

  “I didn’t know you were seeing anyone.” I try to sound like it’s an intellectual point of curiosity—and I mostly succeed. I got a lot of practice at it, before we stopped talking.

  “No reason you would.”

  I bite my lip. Once upon a time, I was the first person Mel came out to. We were sitting in my room drinking lemonade that had gone watery, playing a game she’d invented on the spot. Trading a secret for an M&M. Little things. Thirteen-year-old things. The lip gloss I stole from Becca. The time Mel snuck out and then couldn’t think of anything to do and so just sat in front of her house until she got cold. When Becca and I stole Mom’s gin and got silly drunk off a few sips and decided it was a good idea to go belt out Christmas carols in the park at midnight. But the point of all of it was the last secret.

  Who do you have a crush on?

  I’d shrugged. Couldn’t say Anthony, because he was our friend and that was weird and embarrassing and I wasn’t sure it was a crush anyway. Mel probably assumed Anthony anyway, the way I always hung around him. I’d picked a name almost at random. I can’t even remember who it was, now. And then she said, Now you ask me.

  So I asked, and she answered—Nicole from English class—and she waited, and it was awkward and stilted but I said the right things I guess and we went back to M&M’s and lemonade, and six months later she was stapling a pride flag to the back of her sweatshirt until a horrified Trina confiscated it and stitched it on properly.