Also by
Kate Alice Marshall
YOUNG ADULT
I Am Still Alive
Rules for Vanishing
MIDDLE GRADE
Thirteens
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, 2021
Copyright © 2021 by Kathleen Marshall
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE.
Ebook ISBN 9780593113639
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Cover photographs courtesy of Shutterstock.com
Cover design by Dana Li
pid_prh_5.6.1_c0_r0
To my mom,
who is brilliant and funny and wise, for all of the love, support, babysitting, cheerleading, and snacks.
Contents
Cover
Also Bykate Alice Marshall
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
The Ashford Files
Part One: The Folly of This Island
Exhibit A: Final Radio Broadcasts of the Landontown Residents
Interview: Sophia Novak
Sophia Novak, Written Testimony: Chapter 1
Exhibit B: Post on Akrou & Bone Video Game Fan Forum, “Off Topic: Urban Legends & Paranormal Activity” Sub-Forum
Chapter 2
Exhibit C: Video Recording Posted to Facebook by Angela Esau
Chapter 3
Video Evidence: Recorded by Liam Kapoor
Chapter 4
Exhibit D: Photograph from the Instagram Account of User @missoulamont_anna
Chapter 5
Interview: Sophia Novak
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Part Two: Something Rich and Strange
Exhibit E: Excerpt from the Article “Lesser-Known Mass Disappearances”
Video Evidence: Recorded by Joy Novak
Video Evidence: Recorded by Joy Novak
Chapter 9
Video Evidence: Recorded by Joy Novak
Chapter 10
Exhibit F: Excerpt of a Letter Sent by Vanya Kapoor to Persephone Dryden
Video Evidence: Recorded by Joy Novak
Chapter 11
Exhibit G: Email Correspondence Between Dr. Vanya Kapoor and Dr. William Hardcastle
Chapter 12
Interview: Sophia Novak
Chapter 13
Video Evidence: Recorded by Joy Novak
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Video Evidence: Recorded by Joy Novak
Chapter 16
Video Evidence: Recorded by Joy Novak
Chapter 17
Exhibit H: Video Recorded by Unknown Landontown Resident
Interview: Dr. Vanya Kapoor
Chapter 18
Part Three: Certain Fathoms in the Earth
Video Evidence: Recorded by Abigail Ryder
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Video Evidence: Recorded by Joy Novak
Chapter 21
Video Evidence: Recorded by Abigail Ryder
Chapter 22
Video Evidence: Recorded by Joy Novak
Chapter 23
Video Evidence: Recorded by Joy Novak
Chapter 24
Video Evidence: Recorded by Joy Novak
Part Four: This Rough Magic
Video Evidence: Recorded by Joy Novak
Chapter 25
Video Evidence: Recorded by Joy Novak
Chapter 26
Video Evidence: Recorded by Abigail Ryder
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Part Five: All Which It Inherit, Shall Dissolve
Video Evidence: Recorded by Sophia Novak
Chapter 30
Video Evidence: Recorded by Sophia Novak
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Video Evidence: Recorded by Abigail Ryder
Chapter 34
Interview: Sophia Novak
Video Evidence: Recorded by Liam Kapoor
Chapter 35
Video Evidence: Recorded by Dr. Vanya Kapoor
Chapter 36
Interview: Sophia Novak
Acknowledgments
About the Author
We have retrieved the following file from Dr. Andrew Ashford. As before, audio and visual content has been transcribed, as original materials could not be removed without raising further suspicion.
Be aware that Dr. Ashford is aware of the interest in his work, though we do not believe that he has identified either you or our agent. Proceed with caution.
THE ASHFORD FILES
File #77
“The Disappearances at Bitter Rock”
Bitter Rock, Alaska
June 2018
PART ONE
THE FOLLY OF THIS ISLAND
EXHIBIT A
Final radio broadcasts of the Landontown residents
From the island of Bitter Rock, Alaska
12:48 PM, SEPTEMBER 9, 1973
UNKNOWN: . . . if anyone’s hearing this. This is [indistinct] of the Landontown Fellowship on Bitter Rock. Our phone is out. The winds and rain are violent. Mist everywhere. Can’t [indistinct] evacuate. Everyone on Belaya Skala has taken shelter in the church. I—
3:45 PM, September 9, 1973
UNKNOWN: Storm is continuing. Flooding is becoming a concern. We don’t know if—
<Transmission cuts out. It resumes a few seconds later.>
UNKNOWN: We thought we were alone, but—
5:34 PM, September 9, 1973
UNKNOWN: There are figures in the mist. They’re everywhere. Can anyone hear me? Is anyone there? You need to come for us.
<A long pause is interrupted by a distant rumbling.>
UNKNOWN: They have our voices.
12:03 AM, September 10, 1973
UNKNOWN: If anyone can hear me, do not come to Bitter Rock. Do not come to Belaya Skala. Do you hear? Don’t come! Don’t—
<Frantic voices shout in the background. There is a loud crack, like splitting wood.>
UNKNOWN: He’s here. God help us. God help us, he’s here!
1:13 AM, September 10, 1973
<At first there is only the sound of static cra
ckling. And then labored breathing. A voice—perhaps the same one, but strained almost beyond recognition, speaks slowly.>
UNKNOWN: There is no salvation.
Note: Landontown was located on the island of Bitter Rock, Alaska. Thirty-one residents were present on September 7, 1973. Only Theresa Landon, wife of founder Cole Landon, was absent. Multiple attempts were made to respond to the final radio calls of the residents, but none of these attempts appear to have succeeded.
All thirty-one residents vanished without a trace. No further communication was received. No bodies were ever recovered.
They were not the first.
They would not be the last.
INTERVIEW
Sophia Novak
SEPTEMBER 2, 2018
The camera is positioned to one side of a study. Bookshelves line the walls; a heavy wooden desk in the center of the room is covered in orderly but prolific stacks of folders, books, and papers. A photograph on the desk shows Dr. Andrew Ashford standing with Miranda and Abigail Ryder, his wards, in front of a sycamore tree.
In the chair in front of the desk sits a young white woman: Sophia Novak. She is blonde, in her late teens. Her features are solemn, her skin sun-weathered. Dr. Ashford appears from behind the camera and sits opposite her, in the chair behind the desk.
ASHFORD: There we go. Ms. Novak, was it? Is it Sophie or Sophia?
SOPHIA: Either one is fine.
ASHFORD: I see. Thank you for coming all this way.
SOPHIA: I thought I should. Abby said—she talked about you a lot.
ASHFORD: The file Ms. Ryder compiled is incomplete. Her notes are fragmentary and I’m having trouble piecing together exactly what occurred. I hoped you could fill in the blanks.
Sophia seems to have expected this. She reaches down to a backpack beside her chair and pulls out a spiral-bound notebook.
SOPHIA: I wrote it all down. Abby asked me to, but I didn’t get the chance to give it to her.
She slides it across the table to him. Ashford rests his hand over it but doesn’t open it yet.
ASHFORD: What happened on Bitter Rock, Ms. Novak? What did you two find there?
Sophia smiles a little, almost sadly.
SOPHIA: Nothing but echoes.
SOPHIA NOVAK
WRITTEN TESTIMONY
1
MY EARLIEST MEMORY is of drowning.
I only remember bits and pieces. The darkness of the water; the thick, briny taste of it; the way it burned down my throat when I gasped. I remember the cold, and I remember hands, impossibly strong, pushing me under. And I remember my mother lifting me free. Her voice and her arms wrapping around me before the warmth of her slipped away.
But I’ve never been to the ocean. Never choked on salt water. So I have been told all my life. My mother died in Montana, hundreds of miles from any ocean. The water, the darkness, the cold—they’re nightmares, nothing more.
Or so I thought, until Abby Ryder asked me what I knew about Bitter Rock.
* * *
The first tendrils of mist seethed past on the wind as the boat bucked. Droplets trembled on the few strands of hair that had escaped my tight braid.
“It’s just ahead,” Mr. Nguyen shouted unnecessarily: there was no way to miss the island, as grim and foreboding as the name Bitter Rock suggested. But I would have known we were approaching the shore even with my eyes closed. The sea had been a constant since we left the shore; the water had sloshed, sucked, and slapped at the sides of the boat. But now a new sound reached us: a sibilant crashing of water meeting rock.
The engine thrummed through me, singing in my bones. I knew this place. I knew those sounds, even though I shouldn’t. The thought sent a shiver through my core, but I couldn’t tell if it was fear—or relief. I knew this place. There had to be a reason—an explanation. An answer. In my pocket, my hand closed tightly around the small wooden bird that was all I had left of my mother. We’re here, I thought.
Mr. Nguyen piloted us past sharp black rocks to a tongue of weathered wood—a dock, but not much of one. The engine puttered, then cut out, and Mr. Nguyen leapt to the dock with a nimbleness that didn’t match the ash-gray patches in his hair. He didn’t bother to tie the boat off. He wouldn’t be staying. He hadn’t even wanted to bring me in, not with the storm threatening to sweep down and cut off the island from the mainland, but I’d talked him into it.
“You’re sure this is where you want to be?” he asked.
Was I sure? Was I sure that I should be here, three thousand miles from home, chasing the memory of dark water? Tracing the footsteps of a dead woman?
Yes.
“I’ll be fine,” I told Mr. Nguyen. “Will you be okay getting back? That storm looks bad.”
“I’d rather face the storm than stay here.” He helped me off the boat, catching my elbow when my foot skidded on the wet boards.
“Thanks,” I told him, pulling away. “I’ve got it from here.”
He gave me a long, unblinking look. Like he was trying to decide whether to talk me out of it. But he’d tried on the mainland and he’d tried on the way over. I guess he decided he’d done all he could. “Be careful,” he said at last. “Nothing good happens here.”
I could have told him, I know. I could have told him, That’s why I’ve come.
Instead I only nodded and turned away.
* * *
I didn’t have directions to the house where I would be staying, but it wasn’t like there were many options. The beach led to a road, and the road led in two directions: west, to the Landon Avian Research Center; or east, where the few houses on the island were located. It was after hours, so no one would be at the Center. I turned east.
The island was equal parts rock and clinging grass. The wind made the grass hiss, like the island already disapproved of my presence. I kept my head down. The strap of my bag dug into my shoulder and across my chest.
If I hurried back, I could still catch Mr. Nguyen. I could tell him that I’d made a mistake. I could go home—except there was no home to go back to. Now that I’d graduated high school, I was officially aged out of the foster system. The only thing I had left was a ghost, and this was the only place I knew to look for her.
I remembered almost nothing about my mother. A blue jacket. Her hand cupping the back of my head as I pressed my face against her thigh. Her voice barely hiding a laugh. Come on, little bird. Bye-bye, little bird. Good night, little bird.
Joy Novak died in an accident, fifteen years ago. I was three years old, and I didn’t remember any of it. I only knew what they told me in foster care, and it wasn’t like my foster parents knew any details. I wasn’t able to find any either, when I went looking. One dead woman didn’t make a ripple in a world where worse things happened every day, and I’d started to accept a future in which I never knew what her last moments had been like, or what kind of accident had claimed her.
And then I’d gotten a phone call. The girl on the other end had asked what I knew about my mother’s disappearance. The word had been so unexpected that at first I hadn’t heard it at all. I assumed she was asking about her death. So when Abby asked me about what my mother had been doing in Bitter Rock, Alaska, I’d told her she’d made a mistake. My mother died in Montana, I’d told her. I don’t think she’d ever been to Alaska.
So you believe she’s dead, then?
That’s when I realized what she’d said. Disappearance.
I still didn’t believe her. Not until she sent me the photo: my mother and three-year-old me on a beach.
Turns out there were answers. I was just looking in the wrong place.
Gravel crunched under my feet. A pale bird winged toward me. The splash of red at its throat was vivid as fresh blood. A red-throated tern—the bird Bitter Rock was famous for, in certain scientific circles. It was a perfect match to the
wooden bird in my pocket, its wings barred with black and white. The colors flashed at me as it flew overhead, and I tracked its progress.
The western point of the island rose in a hill, and at its top crouched a blocky gray building—the Landon Avian Research Center, or LARC for short. It was the only reason anyone came to Bitter Rock. It was the reason my mother had been here, at least according to Abby, and so I’d lied and wheedled my way into a summer job interning for one of the lead researchers.
The tern flew over the hill and disappeared northward. Heading, I assumed, toward Belaya Skala—Bitter Rock’s headland, connected to the main island by an unnavigable isthmus of sheer rock and home only to birds. Though that hadn’t always been the case. At least three times before, people had tried to gain footholds of one kind or another on that side of the island.
Every time, it ended in disaster. Disaster that left not corpses, but questions—which had never been answered. This island had swallowed up dozens of people. Now I was here, alone and unsure of what I was facing.
Suddenly it crashed over me, the immensity of what I was doing stopping me in my tracks. My mother was just one name among many, and these islands had eaten them all, and left behind nothing—not even bones. Who was I against that?
I turned on the road, a plea on my tongue— Wait, I’ve changed my mind. But Mr. Nguyen was a blot on the sea, too far for my voice to reach. I dug my fingers into the strap of my bag, sick with the sudden conviction that this had all been a mistake. There was a strange vibration in the air that seemed to settle in my chest and radiate out through my limbs. It made me queasy, like I stood on the lurching deck of a boat with the rumble of the motor beneath me.
I blinked. Mr. Nguyen’s boat was gone. I searched the horizon for him—he couldn’t have gotten far enough to vanish, not yet. Fear skittered over my skin. I gritted my teeth. It was fine. I wasn’t leaving anyway. I was letting my nerves get the better of me, that was all.