“We should have investigated more,” Kyle says. “Gone in the houses, or—”
“No!” I say, in unison with Trina and Anthony. We all exchange a half-amused, half-horrified look. “We don’t leave the road,” I finish.
Kyle’s cheeks redden. “Right. Dumb idea. But it’s still four times through and all we’ve seen is some graffiti that doesn’t make any sense. Hey, Miranda. When we were all hypnotized, or whatever happened, you said Dahut. How did you know that would snap us out of it?”
I’ve almost forgotten she’s there—I’m half-convinced that she wasn’t, that she’s here now because we’ve remembered she is, but that doesn’t make any sense. “I didn’t,” Miranda says. “It was just the first thing I thought of.”
“Why does it matter if sunrise comes?” I ask.
“Does it?” Miranda replies.
“Didn’t you say something about . . . ?” I shake my head. We’re getting distracted. “Never mind. Okay. We’re going. And no one’s paying any toll. Agreed?”
Vanessa huffs loudly, but no one objects. When I set out, the others follow—but I can feel their nervousness behind me. Fear is beginning to truly set in. And we have a long way to go yet.
INTERVIEW
MELANIE WHITTAKER
May 9, 2017
Melanie Whittaker sits with her hands pressed together in her lap, leaning forward. Where the other room appears to be a converted storage room, this was clearly an office, a window on one wall overlooking what appears to be a warehouse interior, and a desk shoved in the corner. Mel sits in a faded blue swivel chair, the cushion split and fraying.
Mel jumps when the door opens. Abigail Ryder enters. She wears black gloves and carries a file folder under one arm, thick with papers.
ABBY: Sorry about that. I had to help Dr. Ashford with something.
She takes a seat across from Mel.
MEL: It’s fine. You’re talking to Sara, right? She’s here?
ABBY: Yeah. You can talk to her when we’re done, if you want.
MEL: I don’t know if that’s a good idea.
ABBY: It’s your call. But for now we should keep going.
MEL: You want to know about Miranda, right?
Abby hesitates. Then she shakes her head.
ABBY: We’ll get to that. Right now we should talk about the town.
MEL: I don’t know if I should talk about this part.
ABBY: Because of the situation with the Jeffries family? I don’t think anything you tell me is going to matter, honestly.
MEL: Should I—should I talk to a lawyer first, or . . . ?
ABBY: Look. No one is going to ask us about any of this. Dr. Ashford’s been stripped of tenure and no university will even look at his résumé. They think he’s crazy. So even if the police or anyone else did bother to ask us, they wouldn’t believe us.
Abby sits back a bit. She glances at the camera, frowns.
ABBY: We don’t have to record this part. If it would make you feel more comfortable. Less . . .
MEL: Disloyal?
Mel’s voice is a whisper. She thinks, then shakes her head slowly.
MEL: Maybe it would be a good thing, if the truth got out there.
ABBY: That’s more or less Dr. Ashford’s philosophy in a nutshell.
MEL: Not yours?
ABBY: I’m a little less attached to the moral high ground than he is. Personally, I would have picked the tenure over the lifelong quest to prove the unprovable.
Mel laughs a little, starting to relax. Abby leans in.
ABBY: Now. We’d gotten to your fifth visit to the town.
MEL: Right. We were still in the Sinner’s Gate, and it was starting to feel like we’d never get out.
11
THE FLOWERS HAVE spread when we get to the sign. They are no longer contained in tidy beds; they thrust up from the grass and the weeds, spilling in every direction, even pushing their way between the stones of the road. I crush one beneath my foot as I walk, and a smell like spices and cut grass fills the air—but with something else beneath it. Something rotten, like meat just beginning to turn.
When we come in sight of the town, Jeremy lets loose a long, quiet string of swearing, and I don’t blame him.
The people are still here, still facing away from us. They are near the road, all of them, standing with an orderly quiet that makes you expect to find them lined up neatly in rows, but they’re more scattered than that. As if they were all walking in a crowd, jostling each other, some walking together, some striking out on their own. And they all just suddenly stopped. Their hands don’t cover their faces anymore; they hang at their sides, loose and relaxed.
At their feet, a thousand flowers bloom.
“Just . . . try not to touch them.” I know that no one else will move until I do, so I stride forward.
The moment I reach the first of them, a woman with long, dark hair, the whispering begins. She turns her face to me. Her eyes—I don’t have to tell you, do I? Their eyes are all like the preacher’s.
“Don’t leave the road,” she whispers, and it passes through the townspeople like a fever, repeated until the sounds dissolve into formless rustling.
“When it’s dark, don’t let go,” whispers a girl no older than nine, and this, too, dissolves among the crowd like ink into water.
“There are other roads. Don’t follow them,” whispers the girl’s mother.
I know, I want to tell them. Tell me something I haven’t heard yet. But I remember the notebook. Don’t talk to them.
I keep my mouth shut. I look at the others quickly, making sure they do the same, and catch Mel’s eye. Her lips are clamped shut, her eyes wide. We hold each other’s gaze for a moment, steadying each other, until she nods once and I turn my focus back to the path in front of me.
The whispers start to blend together. I try to pick them out as we inch along, try to move slowly, but it’s hard not to hurry. Not to run.
the sea rushes in her lover rushes in the sea rushes—
He’s gone to meet the bramble man
You’re going to the gallows, girl
The gates are open
I smell the blood on you.
I whip around. It’s the man, the bearded man the crow attacked. His shirt is clean, no sign of blood. Where the crow’s beak ripped its hole, a curl of vine grows, grasping its way along his throat, spade-like leaves lying flat against his skin. He isn’t looking at me. He’s looking at Trina, and she is transfixed.
“I smell the blood on you, girl,” he whispers. “And so will he.”
“The toll is blood,” they whisper, until the sentence shreds apart. “The wicked among you must pay. I smell the blood on you.”
Trina’s eyes are wide. She takes a step toward the man, toward the edge of the road, and she starts to open her mouth. I lunge, but Jeremy is faster. His hand is over her mouth before she can make a sound.
“Don’t talk to them,” he hisses. “And don’t listen to them, either. Come on.”
He lets her go, but takes her hand instead, and she follows mutely, footsteps stumbling. Kyle watches her go, a puzzled expression on his face. Like he’s almost begun to realize something, but he hasn’t figured out what yet.
The whispers swell. There are more people than the last time through the town, hundreds of them, and they are crowded close together at the center of the town, making the whispers an impossible rush of sound, as incomprehensible as wind through long grass.
The words around the well have devolved into chaos even more immune to interpretation. Letters layered on top of letters in the same white chalk, so that only the frayed edge, three feet out from the well, can be read.
the gate of sin lies shut until the wicked are bled they bleed the wicked they take them they are given the toll is blood DAHUT OPENS THE GATE
S THE SEA RUSHES IN
And that’s all I can make out. The wind-in-rushes sound around me rises in a cacophony. And then every whisper turns to silence, like they’ve been gathered in one fist and cut through with a knife.
The preacher is walking toward us. He carries the book against his chest. With every second step he raises his other hand and it strikes the leather cover—thump. One step, another, thump. The ribbons in the book are fat and fleshy like the petals of the flowers. He stops at the edge of the town square, in the middle of the road we have to follow.
“The toll is blood,” he says. “And the wicked must pay. It is your choice which of the wicked bleed, but bleed they must. Sunrise is nearly come, and the light lays bare many truths.” He stands, his hands folded over the thick book.
Their ranks close behind him. Fingers graze my wrist—a boy, maybe seven years old, reaching for me. I yank away. The crowd doesn’t move, but they seem closer than before.
“We push through,” I say.
“We’ll never make it,” Vanessa says. “They want one of us. One of us must have done something. One of us must be wicked, or they wouldn’t be asking.” Her voice is high and fearful, and I can feel that fear infecting the others, skittering over them. Trina’s eyes are wide, her whole body tensed.
“No,” I say. “We make a break for it and—”
“Seven times. That’s two more. And it’s getting worse every time,” Vanessa presses. She looks around between us, panicky. “Which of you is it? Which of you does he want? They’re going to kill all of us if you don’t—”
“Stop,” I say, at the same instant as Trina stumbles back a step. Away from Vanessa and what she’s saying.
Vanessa’s eyes snap to her. “Trina?” she says softly. Around us is the silence of a still forest. A silence of waiting.
“No,” Trina says. “No.”
“What did you do?” Vanessa asks. She steps forward. So do the townspeople, crowding us. Jeremy snarls as one gets too close.
“I didn’t—I don’t—” Trina’s voice is barely a whisper.
“Stop,” I say. They’re all watching her. Listening intently. “Trina, don’t say anything.” I look at Anthony, but he looks lost. We have to run. We have to make everyone run.
“They want you,” Vanessa says softly. “Don’t they?”
“Why would they want you?” asks Mel.
“Trina, don’t—” I say, but it’s too late.
“Chris,” she says.
“What are you talking about?” Kyle asks, panicky.
“Your stepdad?” I ask, bafflement in my voice as fresh whispers swell and break and swell around us.
“What did you do?” Kyle asks, his voice rising.
“Can we not talk about this here?” Jeremy says.
“It’s only going to get worse,” Vanessa says. “If we keep going, it will get worse.”
“No, stop, we’ll be fine,” I say. I’ll say anything to quiet the panic in Trina’s eyes. I did this, I think, not knowing what part of this I mean. “None of them have hurt us. We don’t have to—”
“He tried to stop me,” Trina says. Vanessa lets out a sharp hiss of breath between her teeth. “He tried to stop me from going.”
“Trina, what are you talking about?” Anthony demands.
“They smell the blood on her,” Vanessa says. “They smell the blood. What did you do, Trina?”
“I think I killed him,” she whispers.
A hundred bodies surge. Kyle screams. Jeremy grabs him around the waist to hold him back from his sister as hands seize her, handing her to the next person and the next so that she’s carried away from us like being snatched by a riptide.
I thrash my way forward. They won’t die for me. They came for me, for Becca, and I won’t let any of them die for it. It burns in me, bright, a brilliant truth that I believe utterly, with the whole of my being. I must save them. I can. I will.
I do not understand yet that I am so small, next to the thing that has swallowed us. I do not understand yet how much we will lose.
They have brought her to the edge of town. The flowers have grown over the road, bursting greedily between the cracks in the stones, thrusting their fleshy petals high on nodding stalks. Our feet trample them as we race to get to Trina, and the air is filled with their spice-grass-rot scent.
They push her to her knees, her hands behind her back. The preacher stands in front of her, thumb thumping the cover of his leather-bound book. Trina struggles, teeth bared in terror. She lunges forward, one arm breaking free, but the preacher closes a hand around her throat. She claws at him, her nails scraping across the book in his other hand.
I try to push my way to her, but there are endless bodies between us, and they have all the give and mercy of stone. Jeremy still grapples with Kyle, trying to hold him back from charging after his sister to help her, but Miranda and Mel and Vanessa are here. Vanessa is breathless, eyes wide, watching the scene with an expression I can’t read. Mel has her hands pressed against her mouth.
I struggle to force myself between two women, but they don’t budge. I fall back a step. I can’t get to Trina. I can’t stop them. I can’t save her. I am going to watch her die. I look around frantically, searching for some way through the crowd, and instead I see Miranda. She’s staring at the horizon as it bleeds light with the coming dawn. There is something odd about the shadows on her skin. Something too deep in the blacks of her eyes.
“They’ll take their toll,” she says. Tension streaks her voice. “Sara, listen. They’ll take their toll. There’s no way around it now. They want the wicked, but Sara—Sara, who was holding Vanessa’s hand?”
Vanessa’s gaze turns toward Miranda, and her expression is clotted up with such hatred, such venom, such raw rage that I flinch away.
One of the townspeople is stepping forward. A child. A girl. A red ribbon is tied at the end of each of her braids, and she’s humming a song I almost recognize. She holds a knife in her hand. A kitchen knife, with a wooden handle and a spot of rust near the edge. The sort of knife you use to cut onions.
“I was with Anthony. Trina was with Kyle. Jeremy was with Mel and Miranda,” I say. “Who were you with, Vanessa?”
Vanessa looks at me, and if I hadn’t seen her face when she turned toward Miranda, I would believe the confusion, the fear in it now. “What?”
“You don’t stutter anymore,” I say.
“I d-don’t know what y-you’re talking about,” she says.
“You’ve done it a couple times. Like you had to remember,” I say. “And you were ashamed. You apologized. I’ve known Vanessa almost my whole life. She doesn’t apologize for stuttering. She’s got no reason to.”
“Y-you’re scaring me,” she says. Shrinking back, in a way I’ve never seen Vanessa shrink from anything.
The girl lifts the knife. Kyle is screaming his sister’s name. Trina shuts her eyes. The whispers swell.
Her lover rushes in
The sea rushes in
The gates are open
The moment is suspended. Unformed and undecided, but that decision is rapidly being made without me. I see it as clearly as if it were labeled and laid out neatly in front of me. The toll is blood. And someone has to pay.
I step forward, and lift my hands, and shove Vanessa in the chest.
Her arms pinwheel. For an instant she is balanced, her body a slash canted away from me, mouth open in an O of surprise. The light of the sunrise slashes down and glints on the blade of the knife, and Vanessa loses her balance. She falls back. Into the crowd, which is already turning to meet her. To seize her. To bear her down.
I see the knife flash twice more, above the press of bodies. The first time it is silver. The second time it is crimson. Jeremy is trying to fight his way through—to Vanessa, to Trina, I can’t tell. Anthony is grabbing me, shaki
ng me, demanding to know what I’ve done.
And then the people seethe back, like water withdrawing from a shore. Trina kneels at the place where the dirt road of the town turns back to stone. She is whole. She is breathing.
Vanessa is gone. Where I saw her fall, the ground is covered in a thick carpet of flowers, their petals purple pulsed with red, their centers bright and yellow as the sun washes over them. The preacher stands beside Trina, the book in his left hand, his right tight on Trina’s shoulder.
“The toll is paid,” he says. “The gate is open. The road wends on. To Ys. To the sea.”
Trina screams, a sound of rage and fear and relief all at once, and springs to her feet. She whips around to face the preacher, but he only smiles at her. He whispers something, too softly to hear, and presses the book into her hands. I step forward, not sure what I intend to do—and then Jeremy shouts.
“Guys!” he cries, and points behind us.
The sea rushes in, the whispers say, but it isn’t the sea rushing in behind us. It’s the darkness.
Anthony seizes my hand. We run.
PART III
THE BEAST
EXHIBIT G
Post on Akrou & Bone video game fan forum
“Off Topic: Urban Legends & Paranormal Activity” sub-forum
March 22, 2014
Subject: Lucy Gallows and the Ghost Road—Primary Docs?
Things have been a little quiet on the Lucy front lately, but I stumbled across an interesting account in an old paranormal zine (found somewhere very bad for my asthma and let’s leave it at that). This guy claims that he and his wife traveled a “ghost road” and he mentions Lucy Gallows. This account is from the 1970s (!!) which makes it one of the earlier first-person accounts we’ve found (if it’s true, of course).
The zine had a bunch of water damage and it’s totally falling apart, but I did manage to scan this part before it turned to brown mush:
to the end, barely. What we experienced along that road would fill volumes, and I don’t know if I can bring myself to write about much of it. We found evidence that we weren’t the first to travel along it. Eventually, we reached the end—or an end, at least. And there we met a girl. She said her name was Lucy. She asked us for help. She said she’d been stuck on the road for some time and couldn’t escape on her own. I was eager to find a way to help her. At that point, any other human contact was welcome. But my wife became distressed.
Rules for Vanishing Page 10
