Page 107 of The Unknown

“A patsy.”

Violet puckers her lips, as if she can taste the word’s sourness. “Another believer. For the sake of realism. So that Ronan would think the only way out of the situation is to confess what he did to Elise.”

“Which is why you sprayed her perfume in his room,” I say.

“Close,” Violet says, impressed I figured it out. “It’s actually a sachet. Brad cut open Ronan’s mattress and stuffed it inside. He really is a genius. Rigged all types of things. Like those candles.” She points to the sideboard and its quartet of candles in brass holders. “The candles and candlesticks are hollow. Brad drilled holes into the sideboard beneath them and built a mechanism in the back. One flick of the switch yanks all four wicks down into the candles at the same time, snuffing them out.”

I go to the sideboard and peer behind it, seeing a complex rig of strings and switches. All this to coerce a confession from someone? There had to have been an easier way.

“Why didn’t all of you just confront Ronan?”

“Do you really think he would have admitted it?” Violet says.

“Yeah, if you held him at gunpoint,” I reply, shocking myself for even thinking of it.

Not shocked is Violet. “We considered that,” she says in an offhanded way that makes me assume she’s serious. “Our concern was that people would think Ronan didn’t really do it. That we coerced a false confession out of him. We need him to willingly volunteer the information. We thought there might be a chance to avoid all of this if Susie got him talking on tape, but that didn’t work.”

“The camcorder’s here now, I assume.” I look around the room for potential hiding spots. When Violet starts to tell me, I stop her and say, “No. I want to see if I can find it myself.”

I zero in on the mahogany box with the wicker door placed between the candles on the sideboard. When I open it, I see the camcorder hidden inside.

“I swapped out the old battery for the one in Susie’s cottage and tested the angle,” Violet says as she picks up the camcorder and presses play. An image of the table and a single empty chair appears on the view screen. Although the image is slightly obstructed, thanks to the wicker grid of the door, it still captures enough to see who’s in the empty chair.

“Ronan has to sit there,” Violet says. “In front of the letterI. Once we coax a confession out of him, we end the séance, call Loretta, and get off this godforsaken island. Then we release the video and let the court of public opinion decide Ronan’s fate.”

Okay, so it’s definitely not simple. But it does seem doable, especially if we avoid some of the theatrics of the previous séance.

“No moving table and falling picture frames tonight, I hope,” I say. “How’d you guys get that to fall on cue anyway?”

“We didn’t,” Violet says. “It just happened.”

I don’t believe her. Honestly, she’s given me no reason to.

“Sure. Just like you didn’t cause those noises in my cottage.”

“What noises?” Violet says, looking at me with genuine confusion. It’s all in the eyes, which dilate ever so slightly with fear.

“A scratching that sounded like it was coming from somewhere within the walls. There were also thumps. Loud ones. They happened all the time.”

“That wasn’t part of the plan,” she says. “If one of us was responsible, they didn’t tell me. I don’t know anything about it.”

I try not to be unnerved by the idea that one of the others has been going off script, so to speak. I was alone in the cottage every time the noises happened.

At least I thought I was.

When I return to the cottage after dinner to get ready for the séance, I search the entire place for signs of Brad’s handiwork. As far as I can tell, there are no hidden mechanisms, no tricks, literally no strings to be found.

Which makes it all the more disturbing when the scratching returns.

It happens as I change from the street clothes I’ve worn all day into my blue dress. An order from Violet to, in her words, “make the séance feel as real as possible.” Well, I don’t know about the séance, but the scratching noises certainly sound real. Enough to create an anxious chill at the base of my spine, even though I know it was faked.

Somehow.

By someone.

“Brad?” I say into the empty air of the cottage. “You can stop now. I know everything.”

The scratching stops. A pause of exactly thirty seconds that ends with a…