Page 103 of The Unknown

I flatten the ragged pages against the floor and give the first a quick, anxious scan. It’s covered in a faded scrawl, the script large and frantic.

Oh. My. God.

Somehow, whether through fate, destiny, or just dumb luck, I’ve found the missing last pages of Daisy Rue’s diary.

my own face!

Dear God!

That’s who the Darkness looks like now! A mirror image of me, my eyes filled with fog, my skin the color of smoke.

“Do you understand now, Daisy?” Mrs. Semple just said.

But I don’t! I understand none of this!

Mrs. Semple just stepped into the cottage. She’s coming closer as the Darkness, wearing a gruesome mask of my own face, hovers at the doorway.

They’re here to take me!

I won’t let that happen! I can’t!

I need to run!

Right now!

I—

June 16, 1926

It’s early. Not yet dawn. And even though I managed to live through another night on New Avalon, I already know I won’t last another day.

I know because Mrs. Semple is dead.

And I am the one who killed her.

I didn’t mean to. I just wanted to get away, to save myself. When I tried to run, I was blocked by Mrs. Semple and the Darkness. I still didn’t understand why it looked just like me. But then Mrs. Semple said, “You know what happened to the others now, don’t you, Daisy?”

I shook my head. I honestly didn’t! But the longer I looked at my own face in the Darkness, the more I started to recall things that had happened on the island. Bad things. Horrible things. The stuff of nightmares.

But that’s not what they were.

“The bad dreams I had,” I said, gasping. “Those weren’t nightmares!”

“No,” Mrs. Semple said. “Not quite. But what you saw wasn’t quite real, either.”

I looked at my face within the Darkness, the truth striking me so hard I thought I’d break into a thousand pieces.

“It was me!” I cried.

Mrs. Semple approached me, arms open, pulling me into an embrace thatI no longer resisted. Instead, I wept in her arms, overwhelmed as I sobbed, “I killed them! Oh, dear God, it was me!”

“I don’t blame you, my dear,” Mrs. Semple whispered. “It wasn’t your fault. It was all Azra’s doing.”

No, she was wrong about that. She had to be. Because that meant the Darkness had been in me this entire time. A prospect so frightening that I covered my ears, no longer willing to listen. But Mrs. Semple kept talking, insisting that it was true. She said that Azra had been coming out when I wasn’t aware of it. That all those nightmares were something worse.

A possession.

“Where are Katrina, Jonquil, and Mrs. Minafer?” I asked, despairing. “What did I do with them?”