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BECCA: What more do you need to know?
ASHFORD: A great deal, actually. But for now, let’s talk about why you emailed me. Often when people call me, what they’re looking for is confirmation. Someone who can tell them that what they saw was real. That they aren’t crazy.
BECCA: I don’t need anyone to tell me it was real.
ASHFORD: No, you said you needed help. What sort of help?
Becca hesitates. Someone drops a plate and swears in the background. Then something shifts in her tone; she has come to a decision, decided on a course of action.
BECCA: There’s something wrong with my sister.
ASHFORD: Wrong how?
BECCA: She did something to her.
ASHFORD: Who did something to your sister, Becca?
BECCA: Lucy.
ASHFORD: Lucy Callow? The girl who disappeared in the fifties?
BECCA: We shouldn’t have trusted her. But it was the only way to get home. And now Sara is...
She takes a shuddering breath, her voice trembling at the edge of tears.
BECCA: You have to help her. Please. You have to save her.
ASHFORD: Miss Donoghue, I promise you that we are going to do everything we can.
SUPPLEMENT B
Email from Andrew Ashford to Abigail Ryder
May 5, 2017—Four days before interviews
To: Abigail Ryder
From: Andrew Ashford
Subject: Briar Glen Setup
Abby,
We are going to need a secure location. At least two rooms to use for interviews, with sturdy locks. Soundproof, or at least in an area we are unlikely to alarm any neighbors.
Please approach this as a standard interview. We want the subjects to be comfortable and to trust us. We will collect standard written statements from all of the survivors who have agreed to talk to us. Given the police involvement in this case, we need to tread cautiously, though it appears that the usual effect is in place and the matter is being mysteriously overlooked and forgotten by the authorities. Convenient enough for us, I suppose. It isn’t as if they would be able to help in these circumstances.
I want everything recorded. Multiple angles in the interviews, if possible, and I want you to review all of the material that Miss Donoghue has supplied and make copies for our records. Pay attention to every detail.
One of them is lying.
—Andrew
25
HERE IS WHATLucy tells us.
She came this far with John, all those years ago. She had an easier time of it than most, and John already had a great deal of experience by then. They got this far, and could go no farther because John couldn’t leave the road, but he assured her that once he shepherded another lone traveler here, they could hazard the journey to the end. He had sent others that way, but did not know if any of them had made it.
