Page 108 of The Unknown

Thwump!

It’s louder than the previous ones. A real cottage-rattler. So much so that I rush outside and circle the place, expecting to find Brad and Heather out back with a battering ram, readying another strike. But there’s no one else near the cottage, making me wonder how they’re possibly doing it.

Because, I realize, it might never have been Brad or Violet or any of the others.

Something else could be responsible.

I can’t help but think about what Violet said this morning. That Daisy’s full diary doesn’t completely rule out the idea that something else could be lurking on this island. Something supernatural. Something…malevolent.

Even though she said it to salvage her ruse, it might be true. It’s at least plausible. There’s always been something off about New Avalon.I’ve felt it ever since I approached the island in Pete’s boat. A shivery disquiet. I suspect it’s one of the reasons I fell for the others’ grand deception. I’d sensed it in my bones.

I feel it now as I continue to circle the cottage, which makes me consider the prospect that the island is indeed haunted. And if such a thing is possible, that would mean that Molly’s visits to my window when I was five might really have happened, too. Yes, I get why my parents blamed a mental imbalance brought on by grief. But they never experienced what I went through. They didn’t see Molly at their window, staring, looking for something that I never could grasp.

Now, though, I think I understand what my sister was doing during those late-night visits.

She was watching over me.

Making sure that I was safe—and that I could go on without her.

And if I believe that, then I guess it means I believe all of it. That her visits were real. Thatshewas real.

I know there’s no way to ever prove it, just as I know that most people, including my parents, wouldn’t agree. I really don’t care anymore. I spent twenty years wondering if Molly’s haunting really happened. Now I choose to believe it did. Which, to me, makes it true.

Just like I think it could be true that New Avalon is haunted. Maybe not by a typical ghost or an evil spirit, but by something. An energy, perhaps. Or an ancient force no one can quite identify. A thing that once was here and now lingers.

Night is falling fast by the time I finish circling the cottage, its arrival hastened by storm clouds rolling in from the west. A wall of darkness that slowly but surely erases the stars that have just popped into the sky. I watch them wink out one by one as I head back to the main house.

Inside, all is dark save for a single lamp just beyond the front door. I grab it, intending to let it guide me to the parlor. Instead, I end up in the kitchen, with only a vague notion as to why. Running on instinct, I grabthe first sharp object I spot—the ice pick—and bring it with me into the parlor.

There, for reasons that don’t make complete sense to me, I kneel at the sideboard and scrape at it with the ice pick. My etching skills are terrible. More stabbing than carving. But within minutes I’ve created a rudimentary circle surrounding a six-petaled flower.

I stand, drop the ice pick onto the sideboard, and admire my handiwork.

A daisy wheel of my own making.

Just in case.

Thirty

When Violet and Ronan enter the parlor, it looks exactly the way it did during our initial séance.

Letters and upturned glass on the table.

Candles on the sideboard, lit and flickering.

The only changes between this séance and the first are the number of chairs—three instead of five—and the camcorder inside the mahogany box on the sideboard. I’d just finished checking its position when I heard Violet and Ronan coming down the hall. Now the wicker door is shut while, behind it, the camcorder films everything.

Ronan pauses just outside the parlor with his own lamp. The golden light illuminates his face from below, giving him the look of a camp counselor about to tell a ghost story. His voice, though, is the opposite. Flat and bored.

“So, um, do you really think this is necessary?”

“If we’re being stalked by an evil force, then yes,” Violet says.

“How do you know this is even going to work?”

Violet clasps her hands together. “I don’t.”

“I’m desperate enough to try anything,” I say, adding the faintestquiver to my voice. “Even though the idea of contacting Molly terrifies me. But the alternative scares me more.”