The Girls Are Never Gone, page 1
ALSO BY SARAH GLENN MARSH
Reign of the Fallen
Song of the Dead
Fear the Drowning Deep
Dread the Harvest Moon
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York
First published in the United States of America by Razorbill,
an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2021
Copyright © 2021 by Sarah Glenn Marsh
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Marsh, Sarah Glenn, author.
Title: The girls are never gone / Sarah Glenn Marsh.
Description: New York : Razorbill, 2021. | Audience: Ages 12 and up.
Summary: Seventeen-year-old Dare plans to spend her summer debunking a haunting at an historic estate with a dark past, but she finds herself in a life-or-death struggle against a malignant ghost.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021020274 | ISBN 9781984836151 (hardcover) ISBN 9781984836175 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781984836168 (ebook)
Subjects: CYAC: Dwellings—Fiction. | Ghosts—Fiction. | Diabetes—Fiction. Podcasts—Fiction. | Bisexuality—Fiction. | Horror stories.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.M3727 Gi 2021 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021020274
Cover photo © 2021 Marko Nadj
Cover design by Kristin Boyle
Design by Rebecca Aidlin, adapted for ebook by Michelle Quintero
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.
pid_prh_5.8.0_c0_r0
For Mom, who believes.
For Erin, who sees.
And for those who went before me,
who walk beside me still.
CONTENTS
Cover
Also by Sarah Glenn Marsh
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Attachments: S1, E1
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Attachments: S1, E6
Acknowledgements
About the Author
ATTACHMENTS
S1, E1
Intro music fades in. Violins play a slow, eerie melody.
DARE CHASE (voiceover): Imagine: you’re on a vacant highway in the murky dark, gas tank on empty. Desperate, you take the first exit you finally see—that is, if you have enough privilege to think you’ll be safe there. But to your dismay, the tiny two-pump station closed hours ago, even though it’s just past ten p.m. As you look around, you see a few other buildings, their windows boarded up, the only light coming from the glow of the familiar Golden Arches. You seriously consider getting some hot, greasy fries to ease the pain of being stranded until morning. But even the McDonald’s has been closed for an hour already, its sign a beacon for disappointment.
That’s life in New Hope, Virginia, population 4,602. It’s the kind of place where you’d never want to insult your neighbor in public, because his first-grade teacher is standing behind you in the grocery checkout line, and that teacher also happens to be your cousin who you pissed off last Thanksgiving by challenging their racist politics.
The town sprang up around a paper mill, which produces a strong rotten-egg smell throughout the area—talk about tourist repellent. But even more remote and unloved than the town itself is the Arrington Estate. Built in 1870 for Lou and Jane Arrington, the estate lies a desolate ten miles outside of New Hope, accessible only by a one-lane bridge and bordering a large lake. Shrinking from the sun and buried in weeds, it’s the kind of place where vampires would feel more at home than the living. But it’s where I’ll be spending a month this summer instead of getting sunburned on a beach with my best friends—anything for a good story. For the truth.
I suppose it’s time to introduce myself: I’m Virginia Dare Chase, but you can call me Dare. Most of you likely know me from my ghost-hunting YouTube channel, Strange Virginia, but this summer, I hope you’ll join me in trying something new. A podcast, focusing on one story over the whole season: the mysterious death of Atheleen Bell. This is Attachments.
I’ve put a picture of Atheleen on our official Instagram account, so be sure to check it out and follow us for more updates. For now, I’ll describe her: long, wavy brown hair frames a pale oval face and a pixie-sharp nose and chin. Her eyelashes are thick behind slightly crooked gold-rimmed glasses. Her big, goofy smile as she hugs a black-and-white cat against her chest tells me she had no idea what fate awaited her at the Arrington Estate when her family moved in.
Now, if you haven’t heard of Arrington, you’re not alone. I first learned about the estate a few weeks ago from a Strange Virginia subscriber: shout-out to KiwiLovesMango! According to Kiwi, the place is as haunted as it looks. There are reports of objects moving on their own, phantom smells, feelings of being watched—a ghost hunter’s dream. And it just so happens this lucky ghoul will be staying there for the entire month of July, volunteering with the town’s historical society to help renovate the estate as a museum.
I suspect the ghostly activity there is related to Atheleen, the seventeen-year-old girl who supposedly drowned in the lake in the summer of 1992. Foul play was quickly ruled out, and her parents left in a hurry. It seems Atheleen was homeschooled, so no one knew much about her or her family other than that they were brave enough to move into Arrington in the first place. The estate has cast a shadow over the town since long before the Bells arrived, and has continued to do so in the years that followed.
Now, maybe Atheleen really did drown, and maybe it was an accident. New Hope doesn’t have much crime to suggest otherwise. Maybe I’m heading to the Arrington Estate based on a bunch of spooky rumors born out of the doldrums of small-town living. But there are a couple reasons I think there’s more to Atheleen’s story. First, while the lake is massive, conditions were calm on the day of her death. It was eighty-five degrees, sunny, no wind. An ideal time for an avid swimmer to cool off in the clear waters of Paradise Lake. Second is the state of Atheleen’s body. Only one news article mentions the coroner’s findings: that her remains were sunken and skeletal, suggesting rapid decomposition in the span of hours. I’m no doctor, but something doesn’t add up here. I want to know what the estate is hiding.
Could Atheleen herself still be there, waiting for someone to listen so she can tell her story? What really happened to her before she wound up in that lake? Over the next month, I intend to find out whatever I can, to shed light on a restless spirit’s final days.
Secrets always surface. And if the Arrington Estate has any, I’m going to sweep its darkest corners until I dredge them up, kicking and screaming.
Once again, this is Attachments. Stay tuned.
ONE
I’VE ALWAYS BEEN DRAWN to the dark. I’ve never seen a ghost, or a body, or known someone who’s gone missing, but when bad things happen, I can’t look away. And in just a few hours, I’ll be standing on the shore where Atheleen Bell spent her final moments. The thought makes my stomach churn around the remnants of breakfast, the tall, weathered house casting a long shadow across my mind. Funny how it’s even bigger in my imagination than it seems in pictures.
Rolling green fields dotted with sheep flash by the car windows, but I barely spare them a glance as I check the subscriber count on my new podcast, Attachments, for about the millionth time today.
“Any new subscribers?” Mom asks. She knows me too well.
I shrug. “Not today. Not yet.” I try to sound like I don’t care, but I really wish the count were higher already. This i
From the back seat, Waffles whines, startling me from my thoughts. I half turn in my seat and meet my dog’s sincere shiny-copper eyes, which he takes as an invitation to lick my cheek, coating me in slobber.
“Gross,” I moan. “You’re a mess, buddy. You got your paws all wet, too. And the seat. Do all dogs drool this much, or do you need to see somebody about that?”
My teasing aside, either he’s alerting me to my blood sugar going low, or he needs a potty break—and we only left DC two hours ago.
Behind her large tortoiseshell sunglasses, Mom’s eyes haven’t left the road; I think she was hoping a four-hour drive would mean no stopping, especially in a strange area. She gets turned around easily, always in her head thinking about work, and the signal out here is patchy. I only have one bar right now.
“Blood sugar or bathroom?” Mom asks, sounding a little exasperated.
Waffles is my very best friend, but he isn’t very good at his diabetic alert dog duties—signaling to me when my blood sugar is dropping. His slimy cheek kiss probably means nothing, but I still glance at the continuous glucose monitoring app on my phone to check in. Straight from a thin wire under my skin to an app via Bluetooth, my CGM tells me that my blood sugar is 180 mg/dL and climbing. Not cool—prolonged high blood sugar can eventually lead to organ damage and other complications—but not what Waffles is alerting me about. It’s not surprising, though; I ate a bagel for breakfast, after all.
Plus, okay, I’m a little nervous. Usually around this time, I’d be packing a bag for a week at the beach with my friends—Amanda, Deitra, and Lindsey. It’s been tradition since we were little to go to Ocean City in July.
Instead, this year I’ll be in a new place, faced with unknown internet quality. Potentially crappy food. New people who might not get my fascination with all things dark and unexplained. Not to mention new people whose only reference to diabetes is an elderly mustached man on a drug commercial.
I’m not bitter, I swear, but sometimes it gets exhausting, having to teach everybody the basics of my disease.
Like how being nervous can lead to high blood sugar—what’s happening right now. I grab my insulin pump from my jeans pocket and give myself a dose with the push of a few buttons. The plastic casing around the small pump is electric blue, matching my latest hair color. My hair used to be rose gold bordering on pink, but since this summer will be different—hopefully, my best one yet—I figured I might as well try out a new look.
Waffles whines again, louder. He’s not a barky, growly sort of dog; he’s usually a quiet dude, so that whine means he urgently needs a pit stop. “Bathroom break,” I tell Mom, and she sighs.
Outside, we pass more white barn churches, precarious wood fences, and a brick chimney whose house crumbled to dust long ago. Mom taps the brakes, parking us in the grass alongside a cow pasture.
“We probably shouldn’t have given Waffles his whole breakfast before we left,” Mom says, beating me to it. We’re usually on the same wavelength, and today is no exception.
“No one can resist those eyes!” I laugh, opening the door so the dog can barrel out to freedom. I’m glad he’ll be staying with me this month—thank goodness for service dog laws—even if he isn’t exactly the hypoglycemia-sniffing machine we were promised when he was a puppy. He’s the best partner in crime I could imagine, unafraid of whatever life throws at him.
Cows flick their tails lazily at swarms of flies, not even glancing up as Waffles sniffs around for the perfect potty spot. There’s a ramshackle fence between us and them, but it’s not enough to keep anyone—let alone an eighty-pound Labrador retriever—from getting through if they’re determined. But maybe the cows don’t realize that.
As Waffles does his thing, I pull out my phone again and— I can’t help it—check the subscriber count for Attachments again. Still less than two hundred. Ouch. Very few of our Strange Virginia fans have followed my solo project so far, almost like they were only watching the old vids for Joey’s icy blue eyes and the edgy attitude he put on for the camera.
Hopefully, once I’m at the estate and post another episode, I’ll start getting more listeners. The Arrington Estate hasn’t been explored by other ghost hunters yet, and it’s barely been written about online—its past, and its spirits, are mine to discover. I have all the necessary ghost-hunting equipment, and a bunch of experience in old, spooky places. I know how to establish baseline readings of a building, and what to look for during an investigation: the drops in temperature, an electric feeling brushing across the skin, the softest noise set apart from the background creaks and groans of life in an aging house. If Atheleen Bell really has lingered after her untimely drowning at seventeen, I’ll find her.
Privately, I’m willing to bet she hasn’t. The rumored haunting is the result of an overactive imagination and too much spare time, with a side of not understanding the mechanics of old homes with bad plumbing and weatherworn boards.
I know it’s weird for a ghost hunter to be this much of a skeptic. For most of my life, since my grandpa died when I was in kindergarten, I’ve wanted nothing more than to see a ghost. To know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there’s something more after death. My life-changing type 1 diabetes diagnosis only made me need some proof of the afterlife more; there’s nothing like being confronted by your own mortality at fifteen, holding a syringe of life-saving hormone in your shaking hand and knowing that while it’s necessary to push that needle into your stomach and get your insulin, taking too much could be the last mistake you ever make. My need for proof is why I started hunting ghosts, and why I’m an avid Insomniac, a proud Gravekeeper—you name the spooky fandom, I’m part of it.
But in all the allegedly haunted sites where I’ve sat for hours, the digital camera counting the minutes of my boredom, I’ve seen nothing. Heard nothing. Felt no stray chills. I’m a far cry from the hoaxers and conspiracy theorists willing to disregard the scientific because they need something more. But since I crave that something more, too, I’ll keep stalking the dark and searching for answers—for myself, and for my listeners. If I ever get them.
Waffles grabs a large stick, more like a fallen branch, between his teeth. Tail wagging, he scampers in circles around me, inviting me to play. But before I can try to snatch the stick out of Waffles’s mouth and run with it, Mom opens the back door of the Jeep and makes a sweeping gesture.
“Next stop, Arrington!” she declares cheerfully but firmly. AKA no one else better need to make a pit stop between here and there. Can’t argue with that—it was really nice of her to take a day off work and drive me in the first place. I wasn’t sure my old car was reliable enough to make even a four-hour trek out of the city.
As the Jeep kicks to life, resuming our steady drive southwest toward the blue-green foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, I’m hit with a welcome rush of AC. It must be pushing ninety degrees today; just ten minutes outside the car and I’m already sweating hard enough to loosen the tape around the infusion site on my right hip—the spot where my insulin pump connects to my body. I’m glad I piled my neon hair into a high ponytail before we hit the road, making it easier for the cold air to reach the back of my neck.
My phone pings twice.
“Is that your brother?” Mom asks knowingly. “Does he need something?”
Good luck, Ghost Bait! Max says. If you need me, I’ll be at the beach with your friends. Speaking of, I think Lindsey blocked my number. Talk to her? You know she can’t get enough of my sick GTA skillz.
I roll my eyes and grin. Seventh graders, am I right?
“He’s fine,” I assure her. She hates leaving him home alone for the day, even though we both know he won’t move from his gaming chair where he’s playing Grand Theft Auto with his merry band of would-be NASCAR drivers.
