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THE BEAST

EXHIBIT G

Post onAkrou & Bonevideo game fan forum

“Off Topic: Urban Legends & Paranormal Activity” sub-forum

March 22, 2014

Subject: Lucy Gallows and the Ghost Road—Primary Docs?

Things have been a little quiet on the Lucy front lately, but I stumbled across an interesting account in an old paranormal zine (found somewhere very bad for my asthma and let’s leave it at that). This guy claims that he and his wife traveled a “ghost road” and he mentions Lucy Gallows. This account is from the 1970s (!!) which makes it one of the earlier first-person accounts we’ve found (if it’s true, of course).

The zine had a bunch of water damage and it’s totally falling apart, but I did manage to scan this part before it turned to brown mush:

to the end, barely. What we experienced along that road would fill volumes, and I don’t know if I can bring myself to write about much of it. We found evidence that we weren’t the first to travel along it. Eventually, we reached the end—or an end, at least. And there we met a girl. She said her name was Lucy. She asked us for help. She said she’d been stuck on the road for some time and couldn’t escape on her own. I was eager to find a way to help her. At that point, any other human contact was welcome. But my wife became distressed.

She pulled me aside and told me that she knew the girl—or knew her voice, at least. She kept referring to “whispers that scratch at the inside of my skull” and called her “the gallows girl.” She insisted that we had to get away from her. That we couldn’t trust her.

I’m not proud of what we did, but by that point we had learned that the only way to survive was to trust one another’s instincts absolutely. And so when we had the opportunity, we ran together, and left young Lucy behind.

[Illegible] ended her own life less than a year later. [Illegible] still dreamed of her. [Illegible] journals, they were filled with Lucy’s name, along with two words, scrawled randomly through normal entries: Find her.

The one really incongruous thing is that this couple is from Missouri. They hitcheda ride on the ghost road just outside of St. Louis, which might be why none of us have found this particular bit of Lucy lore.

—mnemosyne_amnesiac

12

WE CAN’T OUTRUNthe darkness. It crashes over us, and it’s all I can do to keep hold of Anthony’s hand. This time there aren’t thirteen steps, only one, staggering, before the darkness rips away as quickly as it found us. It rolls past, tearing itself apart as it moves. Scraps of pure shadow wrench themselves into small shapes—birds. Crows. Hundreds of them, thousands, as the tide of darkness breaks apart in a cacophony of caws and beating wings. For a few chaotic seconds they darken the sky, blocking the slanting light of the rising sun, and then they stream out over the forest to the west.

For a moment I think I see something in the direction they’re flying, something that looms above the trees—maybe a tree itself, with branches jutting up to either side of its peak. But they look more like antlers, and then whatever gray shadow I saw is lost in the mist and the swarm of crows.

Four birds remain, wheeling above us in a tilting sort of dance; the rest are gone. The trees are sparser here, their branches mostly bare, letting the sunlight slant through. Water drips from them as if it’s just finished raining, but the sky is clear.

“What did you do?” Jeremy demands, dropping Trina’s hand and taking a menacing step toward me. Trina holds the preacher’s book against her chest, both hands crossed over it.

“I—” I don’t know what to say. How to explain.

“You killed her,” Mel says, horror in her voice. Kyle edges toward Trina.

“Hold on,” Anthony says, holding out his palms and stepping between me and Jeremy.

“She just murdered Vanessa,” Jeremy says.

“And you’re going to do what, exactly?” Anthony asks. Jeremy’s jaw tenses, his hands balling up into fists, but he sets his weight back, done advancing.

“I don’t think shewasVanessa,” I say. “She didn’t stutter anymore. And she was—she was different. And I couldn’t remember—I don’t think she was holding anyone’s hand when we came through the Liar’s Gate. Were any of you holding her hand?”

They glance at each other, unease breaking over them.

“That doesn’t mean ...” Jeremy trails off. “People don’t stutter all the time.”

“But the other stuff—she was acting different. I think,” Mel says softly. “I don’t know her that well, though.”

“Sara didn’t know her that well, either. Did you?” Jeremy asks.

I shake my head. “We weren’t close, but we’ve been in school together for years. Vanessa wasn’t Vanessa. Trust me.”