Free Disappearance at Devil's Rock by Paul Tremblay

statements and interviews. To any news source looking for information or a comment, she’s given one, and she’s e-mailed digital copies of Tommy’s seventh-grade school photo and a cropped candid of him taken at the Griffins’ Memorial Day barbeque. Tommy has on a red Iron Man T-shirt and baggy black shorts that hang down below his knees, and he’s almost smiling.
    She points the remote at the TV, and she notices something on the floor. In the middle of the throw rug, like a small pile of leaves, are pages torn from a magazine or book.
    Elizabeth leans to her right, reaches over the arm of the couch and sets down her glass hard on the end table, sending juice as sticky as tree sap spilling over the rim. She then fumbles to turn on the lamp.
    The pages are yellowish and covered in black scribble, covered inhandwriting, not the neat type of something that was printed by a machine. She falls forward and to the floor, to the pages, and there are three of them. She flips the pages front to back and back to front. She sees the words without really reading them at first, registering that this is something that belongs to Tommy, this is something that he wrote. Her eyes fill with tears and she blinks madly to clear them.
    The pages, jagged along the left margins, must have been torn out of one of his sketchbooks. Accompanying the text are strange little drawings and doodles, each ranging from quick scribbles to one intricately detailed drawing of a zombie with both loose flesh and icicles hanging off his arms, nose, and hollowed-out cheeks. Some of the scribbles look like Minecraft characters. She doesn’t know their names but knows enough to know that the blocky little beasties belong to that video game universe. There’s a skeleton with three heads, a pig-faced human, and this one thing with creepy tentacles dripping off the front of its face. She remains there, on her knees and on the floor, reading the pages. The first page is a title page. It has a 3-D block-lettering title of MENTAL DROPPINGS 2.0 , made to look as though it was carved from solid rock, and it takes up almost the whole page. Below the title, writ almost indecipherably small:

    The notes on the next page are written as bullet points:

    The last page doesn’t have any drawings and is written in a big block paragraph and the sentences all smooshed together, as though the text is a written equivalent of a whisper.

    On the kitchen table the pages are carefully laid out, one next to the other, like tarot cards. Elizabeth sits with her chair pushed back, her hands folded on the table, and her chin resting on top of her hands. At this awkward and extreme angle, the pages are blurry and the text cannot be read. The pages feel safer that way. Maybe if she keeps them all blurry like this, they’ll disappear and she’ll forget she ever found them or read their messages.
    Janice enters the kitchen yawning, and walks directly to the coffeemaker. She says, “Good morning.” She has on a blue, long-sleeved T-shirt with N ANTUCKET printed across the chest, though as far as Elizabeth knows, Janice has never been to that island. Certainly not recently.
    Elizabeth bolts upright in her chair, like she’s a kid again, guilty of hiding something. “’Morning, Mom.” She is about to say something about the pages but doesn’t. Maybe she won’t say anything until Janice walks over to the kitchen table and discovers them for herself.
    Janice says, “Any news? Did the detective call or send a message?”
    â€œI got an e-mail but nothing really new. I’ll give her a call at eight if she doesn’t call first. But Mom, you need to come look at this.”
    Janice says, “What is it? Do I need my glasses?”
    â€œYes, you do.”
    â€œWhat is it?” She pats the pockets of her pajama pants and pulls out her pharmacy-bought readers. The frames are rainbow striped and totally not her, but at