Rules for Vanishing

by Kate Alice Marshall

  “Something wants us here,” she whispers. Her fingertips spider up my arm, her eyes fixed on my shoulder, on nothing at all. “Something brings us. The road. Or something on it.” Her fingertips pause, set sharp against the hollow of my collarbone. She’s trembling. And then she buries her face against my shoulder, burrowing in. Not crying. Pressing herself against me, as if ravenous for any kind of touch, any contact. It lasts a furious moment, and then she’s dragging me down the hall again. Around one more corner, and—

  “Becca.”

  She stops. Turns back to me, eyes shining. “Let’s go,” she says.

  The hall beyond is dark. Clotted and thick with darkness, impenetrable.

  “We can’t leave,” I say.

  “We can’t stay. I can’t keep you alive in here,” she says.

  “The others—”

  “They’ll find their way out,” she says. “Or they won’t. But we can’t stay.”

  “Becca,” I say gently, but her eyes are feverish.

  “Everything here rots,” she whispers. “Turns to ruin. Turns to hate. I don’t remember half the time why I’m bothering to stay alive. We can’t stay. We can’t.”

  Behind her, something moves at the edge of the darkness, sliding out, pale and sharp. My mind offers up thorn and claw until the length of it brushes both words away, and another long, sharp thing—leg—emerges, the color of bone. It pierces the wall halfway up, spanning the hallway. And then, pushing through the dark, a face. Eyeless, gaping, purpled tongue lolling between split and bleeding lips.

  I hiss a warning. Becca turns, and her whole body goes still, the kind of stillness only the dead achieve.

  The head withdraws. Then the legs, leaving only one needle-thin point protruding from the dark. Becca falls back a step on the balls of her feet. She draws me away. One step. Two. She doesn’t even breathe. She eases open a door, glances inside, and pulls us in. Shuts the door. Opens it.

  A new hallway stretches in front of us. On the wall opposite is an arrow, scratched deep but fading. She frowns and crosses to it, pulling a knife from her jeans pocket to gouge new lines as she mutters to herself.

  “Becca, what was that?” I ask.

  “Spider,” she says. Doesn’t look at me. “I thought that one got out somehow. Died. There’s two. One white, one black. There used to be other things in here, but the spiders killed them. Except the woman. They don’t bother her. Can’t get past the light.” She stops. Lets out a shuddering sigh. “If it’s hiding in the dark, we can’t hurt it with light. Can’t get past it.”

  “We will,” I say. “Let’s find the others. We’ll figure something out. Together.”

  She looks down at her knife blade. Her tongue wets her lips. She rolls her sleeve up, slowly, and I suck in a startled breath.

  There are words inked on her arm. Some dark black, others smeared and faded into illegibility. The letters overlap and spill over one another until the skin beneath looks less real than the ink.

  Don’t speak

  Don’t move

  Listen

  She fumbles in her pockets, muttering, and pulls out a pen. She squints at it, assessing the ink in the clear barrel, throws it aside. Searches again. The actions are manic, so focused she seems to have forgotten I’m there at all. She swears suddenly, dives for the discarded pen, and, kneeling on the floor, sets the tip to her skin, raking it back and forth to coax out a pale gray, broken line of ink.

  “Running out. Last one. Can’t be the last one,” she’s whispering. The pen scratches at her skin. It starts to redden.

  I catch her wrist, catch her eye. It takes a long time before I’m sure it’s my sister looking back at me.

  “We’ll get out of here,” I tell her. I take the pen from her and slide it into my pocket, out of sight.

  Slowly, she nods.

  “How do we find the others?” I ask.

  She touches two fingers to the last word written on her arm. Listen.

  “We need to get my things,” she says. “Then we’ll find them.”

  VIDEO EVIDENCE

  Retrieved from the cell phone of Melanie Whittaker

  Recorded April 19, 2017, 12:52 a.m.

  The group hunkers in an empty room. The wallpaper is covered in flowers, the same sort that filled the old Briar Glen. Trina sits cross-legged on the floor, idly paging through the preacher’s book, her lips shaping indecipherable words. Kyle leans against the wall; the rest stand uneasily as Grace keeps watch at the door.

  MEL: You said that you could get us out of here. We’ve been wandering around for hours.

  GRACE: The thing you have to know about the road is that it’s not the thing that’s going to kill you. Three rules. Simple. Follow those and you can just work your way along the road, no problem.

  MEL: No problem? I told you, we’ve already lost two people.

  GRACE: You’ve done better than us. By the time I got here, I was the only one left. But the thing is, most of the time it’s not the road that kills you. It’s the things on it.

  MEL: What’s the difference?

  Grace grunts, as if this should be obvious.

  GRACE: They’re not from the road. It doesn’t want them here. It wants people to walk it. That’s what a road needs. Travelers, going from point A to point B. The trouble is, this road’s got no point A. No point B. You kill a person by stopping their heart. You kill a road by stopping its purpose.

  Her voice rasps and rattles as she whispers, the words slushing into each other. Trina looks back at Mel and the camera, mouth pursed a little, uncertain.

  MEL: Okay. Well. We need to find our friend.

  GRACE: Right. Six of you. Two by two by two. That’s the way through. Here’s the thing—as long as you follow the rules, the road’s not that dangerous. Breaking the rules hurts it. It’s like a cut. A cut can get infected. Bacteria. Parasites. They want to feed. Break the rules, and you let them in. Let them in, and they can hurt you.

  MEL: Solid advice. But again, we need to find our friend. Sara. And Becca—she was here, too.

  Grace gives her a flat, unreadable look.

  GRACE: Becca? No. No, I don’t know anyone named Becca. No one in here. Listen, you won’t find your friend. Safer to go. We have the numbers. Two and two and two.

  JEREMY: She has a point. We have to be smart about this.

  Grace grunts again, this time amused.

  GRACE: Smart? You’ve been careless. Let the beast get your scent. You think the gates will protect you, but the beast strides between. Step one inch out of line and it’ll find you in a blink. Cut you to ribbons.

  Jeremy swallows, eyes wide.

  ANTHONY: Look, we’re not leaving without Sara. Right?

  MEL: Right.

  They look at Trina. It takes her a moment to realize they’re waiting for her to speak. She looks up from the book. There is something strange about the light against her eyes.

  TRINA: What? Right. Sara. No, we can’t leave without Sara.

  Grace is silent for several seconds, then she nods.

  GRACE: Right. Loyalty. That’s good, that’s a good thing. All right. We’ll look for her. Don’t worry, I’ve been here a long time. I know the tricks. You’re safe with me.

  Mel drops back from Grace. She mutters under her breath.

  MEL: Yeah, I definitely feel safe . . .

  ANTHONY: Just stick close to each other. We’ll be fine.

  He doesn’t sound convinced.

  19

  BECCA LEADS ME through what feels like an endless sequence of corridors before we find the room she’s looking for. The smell reaches me first. Decay and rot, but not the unpleasant, sour stink of putrefying flesh. It’s earthy. Wood and leaves collapsing into soil; wet, dark places traced over with the delicate script of beetle tracks and lacy roots. Th
e smell does not belong to these walls, but it seeps from behind a door like any other. The door hangs open a crack. Something has been stuffed into the frame to keep it from closing.

  “Good,” Becca whispers. She braces the fingertips of one hand against the door. “The house tries to shut it. Move it. When it can. I try to keep track of it.” She pushes the door open lightly. It swings inward with a not-quite silence like a bow settling against the strings of a violin. The body lies in the middle of the floor.

  I met Zachary once, and I have looked at his picture a hundred times and more, but still I wouldn’t recognize him if I didn’t know he died here. All that is left of his face is one eye, a bare inch of cheekbone, a stretch of brow I could cover with one cupped hand. The rest is covered in roots, thin milk-white things that weave a net over him. A quintet of bell-capped mushrooms grow elegantly from the roof of his mouth. Thick, flat plates of fungus sprout in layers like ridges down his neck, shoulder, ribs. His torso is a constellation of tiny white mushrooms, flecked here and there at the extremities—hips, collarbone— but clustering closer and closer together, framing the wound that lays him open above the navel.

  From the body, the roots and fungi spread and splay, spilling to the walls, up them. A chandelier of gilled mushrooms and twining stalks hangs above us—off-white, bone-white, shot through with veins of scarlet and blue.

  You would think my shock would be used up by now, but I stand with my knuckles crushing my lips to my teeth, holding back a moan. “How long?” I ask. I feel like I am dredging my voice up my throat. “How long has he been—”

  “Dead?” she asks. “A while. It was early. I don’t think we were in here more than a day or two. She said that it was the spider. It killed him. But . . .”

  “Who?” I ask. “Who else was here?”

  “Grace,” she says. She worries at her bottom lip with her teeth. “We met her here, in the house. She was the last survivor in her group. She couldn’t get out of the mansion on her own. The only exit is through the darkness. She said she’d help us, but then . . .”

  She steps across the floor. Practiced steps on the tips of her toes, picking her way between the roots. She bends at the waist, hair falling in front of her face. One fingertip touches the belled cap of a mushroom, and the net of roots seizes, a ripple of movement that turns into a rustle that turns into a whisper, emanating from the fungal growths themselves.

  When it fades, I find my teeth clenched, anger in me like a lash of thorns. I take out my phone. I’ve kept it off. No point draining the battery. Now I turn it on as Becca watches me, head cocked.

  “What are you doing?” she asks.

  “Recording it. So there’s proof,” I say.

  “Proof?” She makes an odd gesture, her hand turning over, thumb pressing to middle finger. “For—for when we get back.”

  “Exactly,” I say.

  “You think we’re going to get back,” she says. Like she hasn’t considered it. Not really.

  “Of course,” I say. “That’s why we came. To find you. And get home. Don’t you—you were talking about getting out. I thought . . .”

  “Out of this house,” she says. “I don’t know. I guess I haven’t thought about what comes after that for a long time. It’s easier not to. Safer. And all of that . . . Home? The world we came from? It feels less real than this place. It was easier, knowing that I would always be here.”

  “But if you were always going to be stuck here, why stay alive?” I ask. “Why survive so long?”

  She laughs. Quiet, like everything she does now, a flat spiral of sound. “Because I wanted to outlive that bitch,” she says, and that hard glint in her eye is the first I’ve really seen of my sister since I found her. “Make the recording. People should know. Whatever happens.”

  VIDEO EVIDENCE

  Retrieved from the cell phone of Sara Donoghue

  Recorded April 19, 2017, 12:49 a.m.

  The phone’s light casts the scene in harsh, blue-tinged tones. Becca, hair a tangle, somehow gaunt though she is not one ounce lighter than when she stepped onto the road, waits for confirmation. She makes a soft sound, tongue against the back of her teeth, and bends again, this time her fingertips skimming the bared curve of Zachary’s brow before a fingernail flicks once, lightly, against a mushroom cap.

  The whispers spin themselves together like spider silk. The voices are distorted but recognizable as Zachary Kent and Grace Winters.

  ZACH: . . . get back to Becca.

  GRACE: We need to think this through.

  ZACH: What’s to think through? Separating is a bad idea. We don’t know what’s in this place. That spider—

  GRACE: Zach. You’re a smart kid. Smart enough to divide by two. There’s three of us. That leaves a spare. Someone with no way out.

  ZACH: We’ll find a way.

  GRACE: Two of us are leaving here. And it will be easier if we make the decision now.

  ZACH: You think you should be one of them.

  GRACE: An organism strives first for self-preservation. Understanding that is the key to understanding everything else, don’t you see? There isn’t room for morality in survival. The road wants to survive. That’s why it calls us here. And we want to survive.

  ZACH: I’m not leaving Becca behind. And she won’t leave me behind.

  GRACE: Are you sure about that, Zach?

  ZACH: Yeah. I’m sure.

  GRACE: You know she doesn’t feel about you the way you feel about her. I’ve seen the way you look at her. You’re in love with her. She’s got none of that in her eyes for you.

  ZACH: That’s not—

  GRACE: I know more about this road than anyone. If you want to survive, I’m your best bet. Or you can risk your neck for the girl who will leave you the moment she gets off the road. You don’t think she will?

  ZACH: I don’t care.

  GRACE: Of course you do. And you should.

  ZACH: If Becca doesn’t want to be with me . . . I’m not going to leave her to die just because she might break up with me. How psycho would I have to be to—

  Zach grunts. Surprise and pain mingle. Judging by the location of the wound on the corpse, it is likely the blade has struck his lung, which explains why he makes little other sound. The edges of the wound are sloppy. One imagines the hand holding the knife working it up and down, sawing at the vulnerable cavity below the ribs, inexpertly wreaking damage. The whispers do not capture this, their silence merciful. They offer instead the sound of a body striking the floor, and the panting breath of the killer.

  GRACE: Lost him. I don’t know what happened. He was right next to me. He was right next to me. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know where Zach is. He was right next to me. No—she’ll want to look for him. The spider. The spider took him. I don’t know what happened. One minute he was right next to me, and the next second the spider was there.

  The rehearsal grows more precise with repetition. Grace takes a long breath.

  GRACE: There. It’s better this way. Two of us now. No reason not to go.

  The whispers fade.

  VIDEO EVIDENCE

  Retrieved from the cell phone of Melanie Whittaker

  Recorded April 19, 2017, 12:52 a.m.

  The camera trains on Grace, moving purposefully down the dim hallway. She mutters to herself as she moves, counting turns. Anthony and Mel walk in the back of the group, the others shuffling along ahead.

  MEL: I feel like she’s leading us in circles.

  ANTHONY: How would we know if she was? We can’t even tell what hall we’re in. There’s no guarantee a hall is the same every time you look at it. [Pause] Is it just me, or is she . . .

  MEL: Kind of nuts? Sure, but after God knows how long in a place like this, you’d have to be. Why, you don’t trust her?

  ANTHONY: I did
n’t say that.

  MEL: Because I sure as shit don’t.

  ANTHONY: So it’s not just me.

  MEL: No, and I . . . Hold on. I know things keep shifting—okay, this sounds weird, but I’m really good with spatial stuff, right? And I think we’re not just following a route, we’re making it by making certain turns. I think the changes are predictable. And I think she knows it, too.

  ANTHONY: Meaning what, exactly?

  MEL: I can’t be sure. But I think the way we’ve been turning, it’s making the house into almost a loop. If she turns up there . . . Yeah. If she turns right, we’ll walk right up behind ourselves.

  ANTHONY: Is that possible?

  MEL: Here?

  ANTHONY: Good point. What does that mean?

  MEL: I don’t know. Except—

  Grace halts. The others follow suit, confusion and alarm evident. Grace stands just past a dark hallway—deeply dark, a dark immune to light. Kyle stands right behind her, a frown creasing his features.

  Grace stomps on the ground twice.

  It’s like knocking on a door, and the answer comes quickly. The spider erupts from the dark: milk-pale, legs like blades. Eyeless face twisting, jaw working side to side as the tongue lashes. It dives for Grace and Kyle, but she grabs hold of Kyle and freezes, and Jeremy doesn’t, the others don’t, stumbling back on instinct.

  The spider moves in stutter-step, joints clicking, clattering into the hall and dividing Grace and Kyle from the others. It turns on the older teens. They do the only thing they can—they run.

  20

  I STOP THE recording and turn the phone off, not yet willing to break the silence the whispers have left in their wake. “She’s still in here. Grace,” Becca says. “She’s still trying to find someone to leave with her, because I wouldn’t. She’s dangerous.”