The road is here, and Becca is waiting.
“No way,” Jeremy says, shifting his weight back from the road. “Have you guys ever watched, like, a single movie? We get on that road and about thirty seconds from now some hook-handed motherfucker is wearing our guts like a scarf.”
Trina’s eyes are fixed on the road, her lips moving—praying. Finally she nods. Smiles. It’s an unsettling smile, off balance, and her eyes are bright and watery. “Okay,” she says.
Mel makes a disbelieving sound, half laugh and half cough. “What about this is okay?” She sounds more offended than afraid, like she’s pissed the world would dare throw something so bizarre at her. I know in that moment she’s with me—she won’t let the road win by scaring her off—and the first tremor of relief goes through me. If I have Mel, at least, I’ll be okay.
“It’s real,” Trina says. “It’s real, and that means that Becca—doesn’t it?” She looks at me. She’s crying now, her tear tracks silvery in the light. I step toward her, not quite off the road, not wanting to leave it in case I’m all that’s anchoring it here. She scrubs her cheeks with the heels of her hands. “I’m fine,” she says, in the same voice I’ve used a hundred times.
The five of us are standing together now, in a loose ring; Vanessa and Kyle and Jeremy and Miranda are farther back, and it’s just us, just the Wildcats.
“This is real,” Anthony says. “I’m just—we all agree, right? This is really happening?”
“It’s happening,” Mel says, rough-voiced. “Becca was right. The road is real.”
I don’t know who’s the first to do it—to reach out. One hand to the next, stepping closer, drawing tighter, but then there we are, linked. On one side I hold Mel’s hand, warm and dry, on the other side Anthony’s, skin cool.
“No one has to come who doesn’t want to,” I say.
“I’m not going back,” Trina says forcefully.
“We’re coming,” Anthony says. “All of us.” His hand squeezes mine. And then drops. We all shift back, our attention drifting to the others, a question in the air.
“Anyone who doesn’t want to come should head back,” I say, realizing as I do that I’m somehow in charge and that no one is objecting to this.
“I’m in,” Kyle says. “I’m already past my curfew. Which means Chris is already going to hit the upper limit of pissed off, so I might as well go for broke, right?” He gives Trina a lopsided grin. Her mouth opens, like she means to say something, but she only shakes her head and makes a sound like a swallowed laugh.
“I’m in, too,” Vanessa agrees, nodding vigorously.
“This is nuts,” Jeremy says. But he doesn’t leave.
No one asks Miranda. This doesn’t seem strange to me, not yet.
“I guess . . . I guess we go, then,” I say, knowing that no one is going to move until I do. I turn. Grip the strap of my duffel hard. And take the first step.
If I expect anything mystical in that first step, it doesn’t happen. I let out a held breath and take another step, and another. But now that the road has arrived, it seems content to exist in a state of absolute reality. The trees lining it stand upright, its stones meet neatly, its surface is firm. Silence lies steadily against the road, and I am glad I do not walk alone.
“‘Even larks and katydids,’” Anthony mutters, a few steps behind me, and I glance back.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just something from a book,” he says.
“You read a book?” I ask in mock surprise, nerves knocking me into our old, joking pattern. “Look at Anthony, shattering the jock stereotype.”
“Hey, watch it, or I’m going to make you repay me for all those Goosebumps books you ‘borrowed’ and never returned.”
“Your mom told me not to give them back because they gave you nightmares. She called you a sensitive child,” I remind him, and he laughs, wincing at the memory. I guess all it takes is breaking the rules of reality to make things feel normal for a moment.
Behind him, the others trail in a ragged line. Jeremy is last, still on the dirt of the forest floor, not yet on the stone. He looks like he is ready to turn, to head back to the street and the cars they arrived in, to decide that this is a dream or a mistake and return to a life where things make sense and roads don’t stitch themselves together out of moonlight.
I wish more than anything that he had.
But his eyes meet mine, and a look like shame flits across his features, stark and clear despite the shadows. And he steps forward. Onto the road. No turning back, I think, knowing instinctively that it’s true. The only way now is forward.
I don’t know how long we walk. A few minutes or an hour. None of us say a word, not until we reach the first gate. Anthony and I have dropped back a bit, Mel charging out ahead, flashlight swiping furiously back and forth ahead of her, legs pumping like she’s trying to escape something. Or maybe she’s just trying to sober up. She gets far enough ahead of us that she goes around a bend and out of sight, a screen of scraggly-limbed trees blocking her from view.
When we come around the curve, she’s stopped dead. She holds the flashlight up like a pointer, aiming it straight ahead, toward a wrought-iron gate that blocks the way. It’s eight feet tall, spanning the whole road, but there’s nothing but a low, crumbled wall to either side. You could just step around it. None of us ever suggest it. Some rules you don’t need to be told.
“What’s up?” Anthony asks as we reach Mel. “Is it locked?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “But look.”
“What am I looking for?”
“Just look,” she says again, and hands him the flashlight. He lifts it, squinting. Swears. And then I see it too.
The light from the flashlight hits the iron bars and it should appear beyond them. Turn the night gray, illuminate some stray mote of dust. Instead, it stops, as if it has struck a black wall, but there’s nothing there. Only darkness, the utter absence of light.
“What do we do?” Anthony asks.
When it’s dark, don’t let go, I remember. “I think—” I pause. Everyone has reached us now. I look back at them and find myself taking a head count even though I don’t see how anyone could have gotten lost. “Becca left a notebook. It has—I think they’re rules,” I say.
“What rules?” Trina asks.
“Don’t leave the road,” I say. “When it’s dark, don’t let go. And there are other roads—don’t follow them.”
“Don’t let go?” Trina asks. “Don’t let go of what?”
“L-like the game,” Vanessa says. “That’s why you need a partner, right? H-hold on to each other’s hands.”
“That makes sense,” I say, halfway between a statement and a question.
Kyle’s up at the gate. He shakes it. “It is locked,” he says. “Do you think we can force it open?”
“You brought a key, didn’t you?” Miranda asks softly.
“Just my house key,” he says.
“Use it,” she insists.
He laughs a little. Like it’s any crazier than what we’ve already seen. “Okay,” he says. He digs in his pocket until he finds it, and we all stare at him. Watching. “You guys are giving me the creeps,” he informs us, but he turns and slides the key into the lock on the gate. It shouldn’t fit. It’s an old-fashioned lock, the kind shaped like a cartoon keyhole, a circle overlapping the top of a narrow triangle. But it clicks in and turns, and Kyle pulls the gate open with a groan that sounds like something dying.
Someone hums the theme from The Twilight Zone.
“Shut up,” Mel says, but without it the whole thing would have been too much. The black still looms, and nothing stands between it and us now. Empty air, and that’s no protection. It has a kind of pull to it. Like we can’t help but lean forward on the balls of our feet. Like one of us is going to plunge in soon, whethe
r we mean to or not.
“We could still turn back,” I say.
“Can we?” Anthony asks.
“I don’t know,” I admit. But no one’s going to anyway. We’ve all made our decisions. Even Jeremy.
“So we pair up,” Mel says.
“There’s j-just one problem,” Vanessa says. “There are nine of us. We’ve g-got too many.”
“Or too few,” Trina says.
Vanessa nods. “Either way, it’s a problem.”
VIDEO EVIDENCE
Retrieved from the cell phone of Kyle Jeffries
Recorded April 19, 2017, 12:46 a.m.
The teens stand in a loose clump. Occasionally one of them rubs their eyes, or glances back the way they came, as if waiting for sense to reassert itself. The road remains. They remain. The darkness stands, unyielding.
ANTHONY: Okay. Nine of us. Odd man out. What do we do?
TRINA: Someone will have to go alone. I can do it.
SARA: No. No way. No one goes alone.
TRINA: Then what?
NICK: A group of three. That’s safer. There’s nothing that actually says you can’t have two partners.
MEL: Careful there, Nicky. Not sure Vanessa’s down for the monogamish thing.
Nick gives her a flat look and deadpans.
NICK: Ha ha. Your attempts at humor have absolutely put me at ease. I’m no longer terrified. Well done.
MEL: I live to serve.
ANTHONY: So it’s Vanessa and Nick, Miranda and Mel, Trina and Kyle, and then Sara can come with me and Jeremy.
Sara looks quickly at Mel, then away, a touch of pink creeping into her cheeks.
SARA: Yeah. That makes sense.
ANTHONY: So everyone . . . hold hands, I guess?
The group shuffles as people move to stand next to their partners. Vanessa and Nick clasp each other’s hands readily. Trina sticks her hand out, palm up, and gives the camera, and her brother behind it, an encouraging grin. He grabs hold, palm slapping against hers, still holding the phone in his opposite hand. It swings away from the group for a moment, then back, as he shifts his grip. Sara and Anthony are together at the head of the group, but Jeremy stands with his hand in Mel’s. Both of them look vaguely startled, like they can’t figure out how they ended up that way. Mel glances at Miranda, who holds her other hand, as if checking to see if she objects.
MIRANDA: It’s fine. Let’s get moving.
Anthony shrugs. He and Sara turn. Their shoulders bump against each other, and then their hands stray together, seeming to link one finger at a time, like the teeth of a key fitting against the pins of a lock.
Together, they step forward. One step. Then two. Then they are at the darkness. They look at each other, and each instinctively draws a breath, as if they are about to plunge into water.
They step forward. And vanish.
7
I’M SURE YOU want to know what it feels like, stepping into pure darkness. Have you ever stepped off a dock or a pier—not jumped off—stepped, one foot out and then the rest belonging to gravity? Even that isn’t right, because there’s a border between the air and the water, a surface to sink through, and it isn’t like that with the darkness. You are simply on one side of it, and then the other. And there is no sensation of cold and wet to warn you not to take a breath. Gasp. Drag it into your lungs. It fills you. You don’t choke, and somehow that makes it worse. You can keep breathing, keep pulling more and more of it inside of you.
That’s the first step. There are thirteen. Each one is harder than the last.
We stop after the first. Hands clasped, breath ragged, not yet realizing that with every breath we take, we’re making it harder to map where we end and the dark begins.
I look back, but all I can see is black. “Can you hear us?” I call.
“Yeah,” Mel says. “But you’re all echoey. Like you’re in a tunnel.”
“Maybe we are,” Anthony says. How could we tell? I spread my fingers out on the opposite side from him, and I can feel him doing the same, through the way his grip shifts. My hand touches only air.
“Thirteen steps,” Vanessa reminds us. “That’s the g-game. Thirteen steps.”
“And don’t leave the road,” Trina adds.
“I can’t see the road, how are we supposed to stay on it?” Anthony asks.
“The stones,” I say. “It’s a stone road. You can feel them when you step on them.”
Silence. Then, “Yeah. Sorry, I just nodded, but obviously you can’t see that.”
“It’s okay. Twelve steps to go, right? Or have we taken the first one yet?”
“I guess there’s only one way to find out,” he says. “Count them?”
“Sure. So this is two,” I say, and we step together, lurching. He’s taking big steps, like he’s trying to cover as much ground as possible, and I’m inching along, feeling for the stones beneath us. Our hands jerk against each other, and my grip spasms around his, frantic.
“Sorry. Sorry,” Anthony says. “Just walk normally?”
“Okay. Three,” I say, and we take another step, this time more or less in sync. But still there’s a tug, his hand against mine. Not because of the step, but because we’re tugging at each other, pulling, twitching. Like we’re trying to let go. “Hold on,” I say.
“I know,” he says. “It’s just—”
It’s just that I want to let go. The faint niggle of a desire, like a fingernail pressed against the nape of my neck, twisting back and forth.
“Four,” I say. We take a step. My skin crawls. I don’t want him touching me. Don’t want anyone touching me. “Five,” I say. Another step, and I want to fling his hand away. I swallow.
“Hold on. Hold on,” he says.
“I’m trying,” I say.
“The others—”
I nod, remember he can’t see. “Hey!” I yell back. “It’s hard to hold on. It makes you want to let go.” My voice echoes back at me. There’s no answer. Five steps, but I have the disorienting feeling we’ve gone farther. Much farther.
“Six?” Anthony asks.
“Six,” I say. Then, whispering, clutching each other so tight our bones creak, “Seven.”
I don’t know who lets go. Maybe me. By then the urge to do it is so strong it’s a physical ache, pain through my wrist and shooting up to my elbow. It makes my teeth hurt, and I clamp them hard over the urge, but it isn’t enough. Or maybe it’s Anthony whose fingers slip away from mine. Maybe it’s both of us. It doesn’t matter. We start to take the step and by the time my foot comes down, my hand grasps nothing but air.
It lasts a second. Half a second. An instant of sweet relief, overpowering, and then panic sweeps over me, and I flail for his hand again. He catches mine, a moment of awkward grappling for each other before our fingers fit together again, and I let out a shuddering breath. I grip his hand with both of mine, getting my bearings.
“Sorry,” I whisper. “Okay. Seven—no, this is eight.”
We step forward. Faint vertigo makes me unsteady; I stumble. Anthony’s grip keeps me on my feet. I never want to let go.
“Nine,” I say. I take another step, Anthony slightly out ahead, guiding me. My foot lands strangely, on the edge of a stone, tilting toward bare dirt that compresses under the edge of my sneaker. “Hold on,” I say. “I think we’re—the road curves or something.”
Anthony doesn’t answer. And then I hear my name.
“Sara!”
Anthony’s voice. Behind me. Far behind me.
“Sara, where are you? Where did you go?”
I can’t breathe. There’s something in my throat as solid as a stone.
Whose hand am I holding?
“Anthony?” I say. Barely a whisper. Louder, “Anthony?”
“Sara? I can hear you, barely.
Where are you?”
I make a sound like a sob. The hand in mine doesn’t let go. Doesn’t tighten. Doesn’t do anything. I tug. It holds fast. “Let me go,” I whisper. “Let me go. Let me go. Let me go.” I pull. I twist my hand.
It holds fast. And slowly, slowly, starts to pull toward the edge of the road.
“Let me go!” I yell and strike out at where Anthony should be. Where it should be. My hand hits something. It tears under my fingers, sinewy but thin, warm and wet and shredding, filling the gaps between my fingers, like putting your hand through rotten fruit.
I scream. I rake at the hand in mine, my fingernails scraping over my own skin, digging painful furrows across my wrist and palm. The hand shreds, pulps beneath mine, still tugging me toward the edge of the road—and then there’s not enough of it left to hold me, and I fling myself away. Back toward Anthony’s voice.
“Sara! I’m coming!”
“No! Stay there! Just—just keep calling,” I say, struggling to form words around the sob still lodged in my throat.
“I’m here.” Closer now. But still farther, so much farther, than two steps. He talks to me as I creep closer and closer, my breath coming back to some kind of regular order, my feet shuffling, feeling for the edge of the road that doesn’t come, doesn’t come, doesn’t come—and then his voice is right in front of me, and my hands creep up, cautious, finding him. His arm. His chest. His face, my fingertips testing the shape of him. “Sara?” he says.
I find his hand.
“What happened?” he asks.
It tried to—I want to say, but I don’t know how it ends. Trick me. Steal me. Kill me. It wanted me to leave the road, to break the rules, but I don’t know what it was.
I don’t know if it’s enough, that I escaped. Or if letting go means I’ve already lost.
“I’ll tell you when we’re out of here,” I say. “Nine?”
“Eight,” he reminds me.
“Eight,” I echo, and we take another step. I want to let go. I want to let go more than anything in the world and that is the most comforting thing I have ever felt, and the more I want to let go, the tighter I hold, through nine and ten and eleven and twelve, and then, our fingers digging into each other so hard I’m sure I’ll feel the trickle of blood down my hand any second, thirteen.
Rules for Vanishing Page 6
