I look back. She stands where we left her, hand outstretched, eyes tracking nothing.
Behind her, in the mist, something moves.
At first I don’t understand what I’m seeing. A tree, I think, but it looms above the trees. A man, a giant shrouded in mist—but there is something about the shape of it that is wrong, arms too long, fingers too sharp, a tangle of shadows above where its head must be. It’s still lost in the mist, still indistinct, but it’s coming toward us.
In the rear, Jeremy halts. He looks at the thing. And then at the girl.
“What are you doing?” Anthony calls. But Jeremy is already sprinting back, throwing the bag’s strap over his shoulder. He skids to a halt across from the girl, lunges, and grabs her wrist. It almost unbalances him, but then he’s found his footing, pulling her toward him. He stoops to lift her as the giant thing grows closer still.
“Jeremy, run!” I scream, and he finally listens. Anthony grabs my arm, pulling me along. We can’t help. We can only hope he’s fast enough.
“Up ahead,” Mel calls.
A shore trembles indistinctly at the edge of the mist. A shore and a gate, the iron bars solid and black even with the mist curling over them. Three crows perch atop the gate, immune to whatever has flung the others skyward, watching our approach.
We move at a lurching run. Almost to the shore. I don’t look back. I won’t look back.
Kyle skids to a halt in the front, pivots. “There’s a seam at the edge of the road,” he says. “Just a tiny gap, and then there’s another road, but the real one turns. You have to feel your way—” He catches sight of the thing behind us, and his eyes go wide. “What the f—”
“Just go!” I yell, before anyone else can waste time gawking. Jeremy puts his head down and bulls forward, dragged down by the girl’s weight, lagging farther and farther behind. The road slews to the left, then the right, and then we’re barreling straight for the shore. And then we’re on the shore, muddy ground squelching, grasping at our heels. The crows on the gate finally take flight, an eruption of movement. Anthony already has his key out. It scrapes against the lock as he fumbles with it.
I turn. The mist is closer, folding in toward us. And with it comes that thing.
The beast.
I can see the shape of it more clearly now, its long arms, the three hooked claws on each hand. Claws that could carve through a person as easy as tissue paper. The mist blurs its details, but it must be forty feet tall. Fifty. And its head isn’t the head of a person, but triangular, and above it antlers branch and twist and tangle.
It’s the creature from Becca’s notebook.
“Sara,” Anthony says. The gate is open. I’m the only one on this side. Me and Jeremy. His eyes meet mine. Go, he mouths, not sparing the breath to voice it, and I do.
I dash through. Jeremy is still far behind us. Too far.
Anthony hesitates—and then slams the gate shut behind us.
The mist collapses, like the barrier holding it back has given way. In an instant everything behind the gate is shrouded, bleached to gray-white.
“He could still make it,” I whisper. I find myself reaching into my bag, pulling out the camera. Training it on the mist. On the gate. As if by looking through the camera, I can make the scene less terrible, less terrifying.
We wait, breath ragged, to see what comes through.
EXHIBIT H
Photos retrieved from the camera of Becca Donoghue
Anthony Beck, his hands white-knuckled, pale against the gritty black of the gate as he waits to open it again, if his friend should appear.
Trina Jeffries, standing with her arms crossed over the preacher’s book, her head tipped back, eyes shut as if to feel the rain that falls in a light haze. Pinpricks of light, like the sun reflecting off dust motes, hover in the air around her. At the upper corner, a gnarled black tree slashes like a wound across the frame. The tree is out of focus; it is impossible to discern whether the figure at its base is a person, or simply a shadow.
The gate. The mist. A blur to the iron bars, betraying the unsteady hand of the photographer.
Anthony Beck, crouched, fingers laced behind his bowed head. The gate, the mist, the featureless gray.
A shadow in the mist.
Jeremy Polk, stepping out of the mist, a body in his arms. He carries her as if she weighs nothing, as if her substance has been carved away with her flesh. Her eyes are open. One can almost see the faint movement of her lips, the murmur slipping between them.
Jeremy Polk, through the gate, lowering the girl to the ground. Her extremities blur, break apart, dissolve, the undoing already reaching her wrists, her ankles.
Jeremy Polk, the gate closed behind him, leaning close to the vanishing girl, as if she is whispering in his ear.
Jeremy Polk, his jacket discarded before him, no sign that the young woman was ever there.
The gate. The mist. And in the mist, the beast, four amber eyes glowing, ink-slash antlers branching up to impossible heights. Crows wheel around its antlers, like bits of its shadow fraying free, wheeling, diving back to merge again. It stands oddly. Swaybacked, as if it must lean backward to balance.
The beast, one long, long arm stretched out. The hand ends in craggy, matte-black spikes, not proper claws but more like burnt wood hacked into points, that tear free of the mist. It’s pointing—like the girl pointed—straight at Jeremy. As if it knows him. As if it is not done with him.
The beast, turning away. The crows dive and swoop in its wake, and the mist follows, seething back from the shore, the water, the dark and lonely trees.
The gate. The mist. And nothing else at all.
14
JEREMY KNEELS WHERE he set the woman down, his hand braced against the stone. His jaw is clenched in anger, but the anger isn’t directed at anyone. At the road, maybe, the thing that has devoured her—made her vanish into a cloud of black ash, into nothing.
“What did she say?” I ask. He blinks, looks up at me. I repeat it so he can see my lips, and he shakes his head.
“I couldn’t hear,” he says. He stands, rubbing the palm of his hand with his opposite thumb as if to clean it, though no ash remains. “She was too quiet. I couldn’t hear.”
“That was stupid,” Anthony says loudly, standing a few feet back still. Nearer the gate.
“I couldn’t let her wander out there forever,” Jeremy says.
“What happened to following the rules?” Anthony demands. He strides forward and shoves Jeremy in the chest. Jeremy stumbles back a step, then snarls and shoves Anthony right back.
“Back off,” he says. “I knew what I was doing.”
“How?” Anthony demands. His palms find Jeremy’s shoulders again, a staccato impact that sends them both stumbling another step away from the gate. “How the fuck do you know what you’re doing when none of us know a fucking thing about what we’re doing?” Another shove. This time Jeremy doesn’t raise his hand, doesn’t defend himself at all, just falls back under the blow.
The rest of us pull back to the edge of the road, Mel casting me a helpless look, Trina just setting her jaw, eyes bright with anger.
“How do you just—do that”—two more shoves—“when you could have fucking died?” This time Anthony doesn’t shove Jeremy. He grabs him by the shirt and yanks him forward, throwing one arm around his shoulders in a halfway bear hug, a sound like a growl in his chest. “Don’t fucking do that, man!”
“I’m sorry,” Jeremy says. “That was stupid. Worse than stupid. I’m sorry.” He pulls free of Anthony, who scrubs both hands over his scalp and gives a strangled yell of frustration.
I will never understand guys. But it looks like the fight, if that’s what you’d call it, is over. Jeremy’s shaking his head, like he can’t believe
what he did. Or like he can’t believe he survived it.
Anthony’s face is red and he looks like he’s trying to avoid a less masculine display of emotion, so instead of making him feel worse by staring at him, I take stock of the road beyond this gate.
The forest is gone. The land to either side of the road is covered in knee-high grass, summer-gold and whispering as a light rain patters down. The road leads up a hill, and from there it must drop down the other side; the only thing I can make out at the crest is a gnarled old tree with bare branches like needles jabbing up from thicker, twisting limbs, the sort that in any other context would seem spooky.
Here, it’s almost quaint.
The Liar’s Gate, Isaac said, and then the town, and then the marsh. He must have meant the water. Which means the mansion’s next, if Isaac was right, but all I see is the grass, and the tree at the top of the hill. We’ve a ways to go yet. Maybe we’ve got a little room to breathe, here in the shadow of the gate.
“We all made it through,” I say. “And nothing’s coming at us. So we should rest. Anyone hungry?” I start to unzip my bag, but everyone’s shaking their heads. “Me neither,” I say. Nerves? No, I don’t think so. Because I’m not tired, either. Oh, there’s a kind of exhaustion in me, the kind that lies in your bones and works its way outward, but the thought of sleep is foreign. “Okay. Maybe just . . . maybe just a break,” I say.
“We should look in the bag,” Mel says. She juts her chin toward the wet messenger bag, which Jeremy has picked up again. “You risked your life for it. And probably the rest of our lives, too. So let’s find out if it was worth it.”
Jeremy looks down as if he’s forgotten what he’s carrying. Then he nods and sinks into a crouch. He fumbles with the buckles on the bag for a moment, but it comes open. He sits the bag on its side and jiggles it until the contents slide free. I suppose I wouldn’t want to reach inside blindly, either.
A pair of ballpoint pens roll out, along with a spiral notebook so waterlogged it’s falling apart. A few granola bars, a water bottle, two containers of prescription pills, the labels unreadable, a wallet—and a video camera, sealed in a plastic bag.
I expect Jeremy to reach for the camera first, but he flips open the wallet and prys out a driver’s license. “Zoe Alcott,” he reads. “It’s her.” I’m standing closest, and I’m the one he hands the ID to. Our eyes meet for a moment, and his lips go thin before his gaze drops.
I busy myself with the ID. It’s definitely the same girl. In the photo she’s smiling, looking a little embarrassed, like she knows that the photo’s going to look terrible before it’s taken. It’s a Virginia license. Her address is in Roanoke. She’s twenty-six years old.
Was twenty-six years old? Or was she younger when she died, and . . . ? I shake my head. There’s no point chasing that logic down. It’s someone else’s tragedy.
Jeremy pulls the camera out of the bag. There’s a bit of condensation on it, but it doesn’t look damaged. He tries the power button. Nothing happens. “Batteries, maybe?” he mutters, flipping it over. He opens the battery compartment and shakes out two AAs. “Don’t suppose anyone brought spares,” he says.
“Sure we did,” I say. “In the flashlights. Here.”
We crack three flashlights open before we find one with AAs. Eager now, Jeremy swaps out the batteries and tries the power button again. It lights up.
“All right. Let’s see what’s on this thing,” he says.
“I’m not sure I want to know,” Trina says, but she leans in with the rest of us as he opens the viewfinder and toggles to recorded video.
“Most recent first?” he asks. I grunt an affirmative, leaning so close that my hair brushes the side of his head. He doesn’t seem to notice as he presses play.
VIDEO EVIDENCE
Retrieved from the camera of Zoe Alcott
Time and date unknown
ZOE: Oh shit. Oh shit. Okay. Camera’s on, here’s—
The camera swings up, the view clarifying from an indistinct mass of shadows to an expanse of brackish water, so murky it’s nearly black. Gnarled trees hunch here and there, damp and rotting leaves clinging to their branches. The view is limited, shrouded in mist.
ZOE: Okay. So. The others—the others are gone. I only stopped for a minute and when I looked up, they—and so I kept going, and now I’m here all by myself, and that thing is—
She takes a deep breath and gives a desperate kind of laugh. The shape in the fog lets out a sound, a mix between a deep lowing and the crash of rocks. It strides to the right of the camera’s field of view. It’s close enough that the water at Zoe’s feet ripples with the wake of it.
ZOE: None of this was supposed to be real.
Just through the mist, voices sound.
GRACE: Zoe! Zoe!*
ISAAC: I only turned around for a moment.
Zoe pauses, but she doesn’t call to them.
ZOE: I thought . . . I thought I heard something, but the sound’s all weird here. Everything’s weird here. Even my thoughts seem like they’re echoing. Like the inside of me is hollow. I think . . .
Zoe hums softly, and then she begins to speak in an odd, distant tone.
ZOE: Where does the road lead? Down to the shore, but there’s nothing there anymore. She let her lover in, and then the ocean drowned her. She opened the gate, and now all of us are salt and bone, are coral deep. Still the road leads. Still the road needs. Travelers and wanderers. Salt and bone.
The camera slowly dips, as if her arm is growing weary but she doesn’t quite notice it. She begins to walk, the water shushing at her ankles. The light shines down between the trees, through the mist, and for a moment flings back the dark reflection of Zoe Alcott.
Little detail can be discerned in the shadowed image. It’s mostly silhouette, but that silhouette is wrong. Torn. Flesh is simply missing in great gashes from the side of her ribs, her back. The shape of her skull is deformed where it meets her neck.
ZOE: I’m so tired. I think I’ll keep . . . I . . .
A shadow falls across the water, obliterating her reflection. The water rises in a wave, then settles, leaving her soaked to the knees. Something massive is breathing, a hollow sound like wind between rocks. She hums again.
ZOE: The road is—the gate is—I see it now. Grace was wrong. I have to tell her. It isn’t about the city, it’s what’s beyond. I . . . I’m so tired . . . I should . . . I should put the camera away . . .
15
I TAKE THE camera from Jeremy and watch the recording twice more. What Isaac said makes more sense now. The water was a marsh—at least when Zoe and the others were in it. Which means that the road isn’t the same for us as it was for them. Not exactly the same.
“She’s dead,” Mel says. “But she sounds—she’s practically lucid. Does that mean . . .” Mel swallows. “What about Miranda? Is she still out there?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know.” No one mentions Vanessa. But I know we’re all wondering. Did she die? Can you die, out here, or is everyone trapped, like Zoe? Like Isaac?
Jeremy’s jaw is set. He rubs the skin behind his hearing aid.
“You did everything you could,” I say.
“I know,” he says angrily.
I tuck Zoe’s camera into my bag. I itch to watch the rest of the videos, but I want to know what’s up ahead first. “It was brave, Jeremy. It’s good she’s not lost out there. If it was Becca—”
“Yeah. Whatever,” Jeremy says. His voice holds a vicious edge that sends me a step back on instinct, alarm in the deep recesses of my mind. I try to tame it. I’ve always thought Jeremy was a jerk. And okay, he is—no getting around that. But he just put himself into danger to put a lost girl to rest, and you can grow out of dumb jokes but it’s a lot harder to grow into that kind of courage. “What’s next?”
he asks me, quieter now, as if he’s realized how angry he sounded.
“The mansion,” I say. I pull Becca’s notebook from my bag. “That’s what Isaac said, right? They got to the mansion and Zoe was missing, so he went back for her. So that must be what’s next.” I flip through. So many fragments, notes that don’t make any sense, others that seem to have snapped into focus, nestling in among the strands of warped logic in this place.
In the house in the town in the woods on the road are the halls that breathe. The singing will lure you the smoke will infest you the words will unmake you the woman will hate you.
The spiral of words catches my eye. The spiral trails outward, the last of the words reaching the edge of the page. I flip it over. The handwriting is different on this page. Sloppy, careening over the lines, letters crammed together or tumbling apart. Watch for her light. Stay to the shadows. Listen for the spider’s singing. Step softly when it comes. Keep on the move. The words are a weapon. If things look wrong, THEY ARE.
“That’s a lot,” Anthony says as I read it out loud. “Watch for the light? Listen for its singing?”
“I guess we’ll know what it means soon enough,” I say. “We should pick partners. Make sure nobody gets left behind.” Again, I don’t say, Miranda’s name a prickle across my skin.
I guess I’m not surprised when Anthony nods to Jeremy. They bump fists. Bro version of kiss and make up, I guess.
“Mel?” Kyle says.
“I got you, kid,” Mel says, and that leaves me with Trina, who is distracted, flipping through the pages of the preacher’s book again. I clear my throat. She looks up, startled, and sees Kyle with Mel. A faint frown traces her lips before she steps close to me.
Rules for Vanishing Page 13