Rules for Vanishing Read online

  Viking

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  First published in the United States of America by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2019.

  Copyright © 2019 by Kathleen Marshall

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  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE

  Ebook ISBN 9781984837028

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  To the No Name Writing Group, for walking the road with me.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Introduction

  File #74

  Part I: The GameInterview: Sara Donoghue

  Exhibit A

  Sara Donoghue: Written Testimony

  Exhibit B

  Interview: Sara Donoghue

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Exhibit C

  Chapter 4

  Exhibit D

  Video Evidence: Retrieved from the Cell Phone of Kyle Jeffries

  Video Evidence: Retrieved from the Cell Phone of Sophia Henry

  Chapter 5

  Video Evidence: Retrieved from the Cell Phone of Kyle Jeffries

  Interview: Sara Donoghue

  Part II: The RoadExhibit E

  Chapter 6

  Video Evidence: Retrieved from the Cell Phone of Kyle Jeffries

  Chapter 7

  Video Evidence: Retrieved from the Cell Phone of Kyle Jeffries

  Chapter 8

  Interview: Sara Donoghue

  Chapter 9

  Exhibit F

  Chapter 10

  Interview: Melanie Whittaker

  Chapter 11

  Part III: The BeastExhibit G

  Chapter 12

  Interview: Sara Donoghue

  Video Evidence: Retrieved from the Cell Phone of Kyle Jeffries

  Interview: Sara Donoghue

  Chapter 13

  Exhibit H

  Chapter 14

  Video Evidence: Retrieved from the Camera of Zoe Alcott

  Chapter 15

  Interview: Sara Donoghue

  Chapter 16

  Video Evidence: Retrieved from the Cell Phone of Melanie Whittaker

  Chapter 17

  Interview: Melanie Whittaker

  Video Evidence: Retrieved from the Cell Phone of Melanie Whittaker

  Chapter 18

  Video Evidence: Retrieved from the Cell Phone of Melanie Whittaker

  Chapter 19

  Video Evidence: Retrieved from the Cell Phone of Sara Donoghue

  Video Evidence: Retrieved from the Cell Phone of Melanie Whittaker

  Chapter 20

  Exhibit I

  Interview: Sara Donoghue

  Chapter 21

  Interview: Sara Donoghue

  Exhibit J

  Part IV: The GirlExhibit K

  Chapter 22

  Supplement A

  Interview: Melanie Whittaker

  Chapter 23

  Exhibit L

  Chapter 24

  Exhibit M

  Interview: Rebecca Donoghue

  Supplement B

  Chapter 25

  Interview: Sara Donoghue

  Chapter 26

  Interview: Sara Donoghue

  Part V: The TruthExhibit N

  Interview: Sara Donoghue

  Chapter 27

  Interview: Sara Donoghue

  Exhibit O

  Interview: Sara Donoghue

  Chapter 28

  Video Evidence: Retrieved from the Camera of Becca Donoghue

  Chapter 29

  Interview: Sara Donoghue

  Supplement C

  Video Evidence: Recorded by Abigail Ryder

  Interview: Sara Donoghue

  Video Evidence: Retrieved from the Cell Phone of Anthony Beck

  Exhibit P

  Exhibit Q

  Exhibit R

  Exhibit S

  Exhibit T

  Final Interview: Sara Donoghue

  Video Evidence: Donoghue Exorcism

  Additional MaterialsSupplement D

  Supplement E

  Supplement F

  Supplement G

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  As requested, we have obtained access to the files of Dr. Andrew Ashford, specifically those concerning the incident in Briar Glen, Massachusetts.

  We were unable to remove primary documents and materials from Dr. Ashford’s possession without detection, but we have provided transcripts and descriptions of the file’s contents, as well as a number of supplemental items not included in the file, which you may find helpful in providing context.

  To our knowledge, Dr. Ashford remains unaware of your interest.

  THE ASHFORD FILES

  File #74

  “THE MASSACHUSETTS GHOST ROAD”

  Briar Glen, Massachusetts

  April–May 2017

  PART I

  THE GAME

  INTERVIEW

  SARA DONOGHUE

  May 9, 2017

  ASHFORD: I’m starting the recording now. This is the first interview with Sara Donoghue concerning the disappearances in Briar Glen, Massachusetts. Today is May 9, 2017. Present are Sara Donoghue and myself, Dr. Andrew Ashford. Thank you for joining us today, Miss Donoghue.

  SARA: You’re welcome. I guess. I don’t know what you expect me to tell you.

  ASHFORD: The truth, Miss Donoghue. I think you’ll find we are some of the few people who are willing to hear it.

  SARA: So you believe me, then?

  ASHFORD: Is there a reason I shouldn’t?

  Sara begins to laugh, a low sound that croaks in the back of her throat.

  ASHFORD: Miss Donoghue—

  Sara’s laughter continues, her shoulders shaking. Her hands cover her face.

  ??: Pay attention.*

 

  EXHIBIT A

  Text message received by all Briar Glen High School students on Monday, April 17, 2017


  DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHERE LUCY WENT?

  SHE WENT TO PLAY THE GAME.

  YOU CAN PLAY, TOO.

  FIND A PARTNER.

  FIND A KEY.

  FIND THE ROAD.

  YOU HAVE TWO DAYS.

  SARA DONOGHUE

  WRITTEN TESTIMONY

  1

  THE MESSAGE ARRIVES overnight, and by Monday morning it’s all anyone is talking about. People cluster around their phones, as if by reading the text again, comparing the identical messages, they might reveal some new clue about who sent them.

  “Hey, Sara! Do you want to play the game?” Tyler Martinez asks, lunging toward me as I walk inside, the first bell ringing. He waggles his eyebrows at me and swings away, laughing at his own joke. I cross my arms over my ribs and lean forward, as if pushing against a current.

  Whispers of Lucy are everywhere. And the game. People in clots, heads leaned together.

  I’ve timed things so that I arrive just before the bell, and the hallway is emptying out as the threat of tardy slips overwhelms the urge to gossip. A few stragglers give me odd looks. Odder than usual. I bet she sent it, I imagine them whispering. She’s obsessed.

  The game. Lucy Gallows. And Wednesday is the anniversary. It doesn’t take a genius. I’d probably blame me, too.

  I slide into first period and take my seat, as close to the back corner as I can get.

  “Hey. Sara.” Trina sits at the group table in front of mine, and she has to twist around in her seat and lean to talk to me. Her blue eyes are piercing in their exquisite concern, her blonde hair swept up in a casual ponytail that looks more glamorous than anything I’ve managed since the days when she would sit behind me for hours, coercing my mousy hair into french braids and fishtails. “How are you doing?”

  “Fine,” I mutter. I can’t look her in the eye. Her expression is too painfully sympathetic. It would be one thing if it was a performance, but it’s genuine. And it’s there every time she looks at me, like she’s worried that I’m going to crumple under the strain of my personal tragedies at any moment.

  “I don’t think you did it,” she says, leaning closer. Which means that people are already saying that I did.

  “I didn’t.”

  She nods slowly. “Don’t let anyone give you crap for it,” she says.

  “How do you suggest I stop them?” I ask. She flinches back a little, but she’s spared the need to answer by the second bell, marking the beginning of class. She straightens in her seat. I slouch down as Mr. Vincent launches into his daily preamble, complete with the terrible joke he inflicts on us every day.

  “—and he says, ‘Me? I’m a giant heavy metal fan.’” He wraps up just as the door opens. Anthony Beck steps into the room to the sound of groans, and slaps a hand to his forehead.

  “I missed the joke of the day?” he asks in exaggerated despair. He flashes a smile, his dimples deep, his brown eyes bright and half-hidden by his wavy black hair. Back when we were younger, when we were friends, he was skinny as a rail, all elbows and knees, his smile too big for his body. The last year or two he’s started to add muscle, and the nerd who’d tripped over his own feet is co-captain of the lacrosse and soccer teams, an athletic scholarship waiting for him at Northeastern. He got his ear pierced over break, and the silver stud winks.

  “I hope you have a good reason for missing out on my effervescent wit,” Mr. Vincent says.

  “It took me all morning to text the entire school. My thumbs are cramping like you wouldn’t believe,” Anthony says with a joker’s grin. “Sorry, Mr. V. Won’t happen again.” His gaze roves around the room, and his grin wobbles a moment when he sees me. We’re assigned to the same small group for our current project, which means we’ve been sitting together for the past couple of weeks, but we’ve managed not to exchange more than a dozen words. He’s been responsible for eleven of them.

  He slings himself into the chair beside me. It’s much too cramped for his tall frame, and I shrink farther back into the corner, away from him. Mr. Vincent shakes his head.

  Anthony sneaks a glance at me. I duck over my notebook, trying to ignore him. It isn’t easy.

  Anthony Beck and Trina Jeffries used to be two of my best friends. There were six of us—seven when we let Trina’s little brother, Kyle, hang out—a roving gang of miscreants who stuck together from first grade until high school. We even had a stupid group name. The Wildcats. It was the Unicorn Wildcats until fifth grade, a compromise that Trina had worked out when the vote was split down the middle—my sister, Becca, and I on opposite sides of the debate, as usual. I was pulling for the Unicorns, of course. Back then my aesthetic was 70 percent glitter, before the severe color allergy I developed in middle school. Becca, though? She was fierce from the start.

  We all linked hands, crossing our arms to grab the person on the opposite side, and shook on it. We are the Unicorn Wildcats. Friends forever and ever. No matter what.

  To a bunch of first graders, it felt like an unbreakable bond. Forever felt possible. It felt inevitable. But now Becca is gone, and I haven’t spoken to any of them about more than the Cold War or sine and cosine for almost a year.

  Mr. Vincent is starting to outline the day’s agenda when a hand shoots up in the second row. He pauses, rhythm disrupted. The corner of his mouth tightens, but that’s the only sign of irritation. “Vanessa. If you need help with your current project, we can talk during check-in.”

  “It’s not about my w-work,” Vanessa says. “It’s about the t-t-text message we all g-got.”

  “Yes. I saw that. And obviously, it’s intriguing,” Mr. Vincent says. He settles back against his desk. “But I’m not sure how it’s relevant to the Industrial Revolution.”

  “But it’s r-relevant to history. Local history,” Vanessa says, pushing her round glasses up her nose.

  From my angle I can only see the curve of her cheek and the back of her head, but like most of the people in the room, I’ve known Vanessa Han since kindergarten, and I can imagine the familiar expression of intense interest she must have fixed on Mr. Vincent. She wears thick-framed glasses and leggings with wild, colorful patterns, a look both bold and self-assuredly nerdy, much like Vanessa herself.

  “Local history,” Mr. Vincent echoes. “You mean the reference to Lucy? Meaning Lucy Gallows.” He rubs his chin. “All right. It has nothing to do with nineteenth-century methods of production and their impact on the idea of the nuclear family, but what the hell. All right, who can tell me the story of Lucy Gallows?”

  Half a dozen hands go up. He points. Jenny Stewart speaks up first. “Wasn’t she, like, this girl from a hundred years ago? Her brother killed her and buried her body in the woods, and now the woods are haunted.”

  Vanessa gives her a withering look. “Th-that’s not—” The next word tangles itself up in her mouth, and she falls silent for a beat before continuing in a firm, steady tone. “That’s not true.”

  “Now, that’s an interesting thought,” Mr. Vincent says. “What’s true, and what isn’t? And how do we determine the difference? Let’s set aside the supernatural for the moment. Whether or not there’s a ghost in the woods of Briar Glen, it’s part of local legend, and it must have come from somewhere. So was that somewhere a complete fiction, concocted by some creative soul and embellished over the years? Or does it have a seed of truth?”

  I shut my eyes. No one knows what really happened to her. Which is probably why she’s stuck around in the town’s memory for so long.

  “Sara.”

  My eyes snap open. Mr. Vincent is looking at me.

  “Last semester, when we were doing the project on assessing unusual historical sources, you used the legend of Lucy Gallows for your paper, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t—” My mouth is dry. I lick my lips. I was hoping he wouldn’t remember. Not that anyone is likely to have forgotten, when
I spent months burying myself in stories of Lucy and making no attempt to hide it. “Yes,” I say.

  “And what did you find out?”

  All eyes are on me, heads swiveling, bodies turning in their cramped seats. Except for Anthony, looking off into the distance conspicuously. Trina catches my eye and smiles a little, encouraging. I clear my throat. If there’s anyone left who doesn’t suspect me already, they will now. “There wasn’t a girl named Lucy Gallows. But there was a girl named Lucy Callow, and she did go missing in the forest,” I say haltingly.

  “And her ghost kidnapped your sister, right?” Jeremy Polk says. Attention snaps to him. Anthony makes a sound in the back of his throat a little like a growl, glaring daggers at his best friend and co-captain. Jeremy’s smile flicks off like a light. “Sorry,” he mutters.

  “What the fuck, Jeremy?” Anthony says.

  Mr. Vincent pushes off from the desk, his voice pitched low and level. “Jeremy, I know that you’re aware that’s an inappropriate comment. We’ll talk about it after class. And, Anthony? Let’s all try to keep things civil.”

  Jeremy ducks his head, muttering another apology and rubbing his neck just under where one of his hearing aids sits, a habit he’s had as long as I’ve known him. My heart pounds in my chest, my mouth dry as the surface of Mars. Do you want to know where Lucy went?

  Yes.

  Because Becca went there, too.

  “Sara is right,” Mr. Vincent says, redirecting with hardly a hitch. “Lucy Callow was fifteen in April of 1953, when she went missing. The name change came later, as the ghost story evolved. In cases like this, it’s important to go back to official, contemporary records as much as possible. With Lucy Callow, there’s still a great deal we don’t know, but many of the popular stories are easily disproved. But even if those stories aren’t factually true, they can help teach us about the people who told them. What was important to them, what scared them. Ghost stories are a vibrant, essential part of local culture.”