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“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 whatreallyhappened 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.”
He keeps going, prompting students to supply other ghost stories and urban legends, coming up with ideas for how to track down their origins.
I hardly hear it. All I hear are the last words my sister spoke, muttering into her phone. On April 18, one year ago.
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.
And then she turned and saw me. Slammed her bedroom door closed.
The next morning she was gone, and she never came home.
EXHIBIT B
“The Legend of Lucy Gallows”
Excerpted fromLocal Lore:
Stories of Briar Glenby Jason Sweet
It was a Sunday—April 19, 1953—and Lucy Gallows’s sister was getting married on a sprawling property at the edge of the Briar Glen Woods. Little Lucy, age twelve, was the flower girl. But following an argument with her mother, she ran away into the woods in her crisp white dress with its blue ribbon around the waist. Everyone expected she’d be back in a minute or two, as soon as she calmed down, but ten minutes later she hadn’t returned—and then twenty minutes, and then half an hour.
Lucy’s brother, Billy, was sent to fetch his sister. He walked into the woods. The only way forward was a narrow track, a deer trail through the trees. He called her name—Lucy! Lucy!—but received no answer except the calling of crows.
And then he saw it: the road. There were roads here and there in the woods, the remnants of the original settlement of Briar Glen, which had burned downin 1863. These roads were now often nothing more than a stretch of trees planted in too straight a line to spring from nature, or one stone pressed up against another where all the rest had long since been knocked astray. At first this road was like that, a dimple in the underbrush and a few scattered stones marked with the tools of men. But as Billy chased it, the road widened, and the stones knocked up against each other, beginning to form a smooth path through the thick forest.
He was certain that Lucy had followed the road, though he couldn’t explain the strength of the conviction to anyone who had asked afterward. And yet for all that conviction, every step he took seemed to be more difficult than the one before. As the road grew easier, his way grew harder, as if he was laboring against an invisible force.
His feet got heavier and heavier. The air seemed to push against him. It became almost unbearable, and then—there was Lucy. He could see her ahead of him, around a slight bend in the road. She was talking to someone—a man in a patchy brown suit and a wide-brimmed hat. Billy called her name. She didn’t turn. The man bent slightly to talk to her, smiling. He put out his hand.
Billy screamed his sister’s name and thrashed toward her. But Lucy didn’t seem to hear him. She took the stranger’s hand, and together they walked down the road. They moved swiftly, not burdened as Billywas, and the road seemed to follow, vanishing beneath Billy’s feet. In moments the road and the man and little Lucy Gallows were gone.
