Rules For Vanishing

by Kate Alice Marshall

“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?”

We know where the road is. We’ve got the keys. That’s all we need to find her. I’m not backing down now. Not after everything we’ve done to get this close.

So be careful what roads you take, and be careful who you follow down them.

SARA: No. We didn’t find Lucy. ASHFORD: Then— SARA: She found us.

So when she vanished, they looked for her, but not too hard; they didn’t think she wanted to be found.

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.

Creepyyyy I love it

I thought that when you lost someone, you lost the details first, but details are what I still have—the crinkle at the corners of her eyes when she made fun of me, the way she’d chew on her thumbnail when she was really focused. It’s the big things that are slipping away. Her face. Her voice. The way it felt to be around her.

“It’s a city. Or was. It’s where the road goes—used to go. It was destroyed a long time ago by a woman named Dahut. She was a princess, or something. There was a gate in the city that held back the sea, and she left it open, to let her lover sneak in to see her. But she forgot to close it, and the tide came in and drowned the whole city. That’s the story, anyway. And it’s all that death that made the road. If you can get all the way to Ys, you can escape it. But most people get trapped. Lucy did. She’s been stuck on the road for all these years, but she’s found a way to—she sort of whispers. Only to certain people. Sensitive people. And I guess I’m one of them.”

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.