Page 118 of The Unknown

I turn my attention to the book the sketch fell out of. There’s nothing on the cover or spine. Just unmarked leather that, once I brush the dust away, is the same color as whiskey.

After opening it as delicately as I did the sketch, I flip to the dry and crackling first page. There’s writing on it. Different from what I saw on the pages found in the wall. This is definitely the work of Ruth Hume Semple.

And I’m the first person to read it in a hundred years.

June 6, 1926

It wasn’t my intention to spend the summer on New Avalon. Last year’s stay was a deep disappointment, despite the potential of the group of women I’d brought with me. No breakthroughs revealed themselves. No progress was made.

This summer, I’d decided to travel, with only a brief stop on New Avalon to make sure the island had endured the winter intact. But not long after I arrived here, I’d gotten word of a woman in need of my assistance.

Few people know what I do here. That is on purpose. In my experience, society doesn’t take kindly to women who attempt to work in spheres heretofore only occupied by men. It was true of my sister suffragettes when they fought for the right to vote and remains true for my fellow sisters trying to carve a path for themselves in the sciences. Since psychology is still ridiculed in some circles, even for men in the field, I’ve found it best to keep my practice on New Avalon a secret. Yes, I’ve heard the outlandish rumors about this place. Witchcraft! Satanism! Conjuring spirits, as if such a thing were possible. Let them talk, I say. My work is made easier when outsiders don’t know New Avalon’s true purpose.

After watching helplessly as my father descended into madness, I made it my mission to keep others from suffering the same fate. Especially women,who are already at a disadvantage in this so-called modern world we live in. That is why I work so hard to keep New Avalon from crumbling. I want to help women plagued by afflictions of the mind.

Those who are aware of my work often steer me to cases I might find of interest. That is what happened today, when I was contacted by Mrs. Clack, the warden of a nearby women’s penitentiary. She wrote to me about a young woman charged with murdering her father, even though all the neighbors in their crowded apartment building told police of the abuse she’d suffered at his hands.

“In my mind, it was absolutely justified,” Mrs. Clack wrote. “He would have killed her if she hadn’t gotten to him first.”

The poor girl had a history of mental illness, made worse by her father’s abuse. Mrs. Clack believed she should be treated at an appropriate mental institution and not sitting in jail, awaiting trial. She asked me to take her to New Avalon, where I could observe her, perform some cognitive tests, and diagnose her condition, in the hope that I might find her unfit to stand trial.

Off I went to the penitentiary, where Mrs. Clack had the young woman waiting for me.

“What is your name, child?” I asked.

She told me her name was Daisy Rue and that she was pleased to make my acquaintance.

Her rough, dingy appearance was the opposite of her manner, which was polite and intelligent. Not at all what I expected from someone in the grips of insanity. But as we packed her a suitcase full of dresses left behind by previous inmates, Mrs. Clack assured me that Daisy’s madness would quickly become apparent.

“Be careful with this one,” she warned before we departed.

Yet Daisy was pleasant company as I rowed us here. When we arrived, I set her up in the first cottage, knowing it wasn’t wise to invite her to sleep under the same roof as myself. While it’s not their intention—and certainly through no fault of their own—women with mental afflictions can be quite dangerous.

Daisy seemed harmless, though. Despite her condition, she remained polite, curious, and nonthreatening. During our initial interactions, it was impossible to quickly assess what was wrong with her. The extent of her affliction only revealed itself a few hours ago, when I left her alone for the first time. From the front window of the house, I watched her stand before the great oak and engage in a conversation with someone who wasn’t there. Despite the lack of another person present, she spoke as if she could clearly see and hear them.

“It’s lovely to meet you, Katrina,” she said with a curtsy to her invisible acquaintance. “My name is Daisy Rue.”

I continued to watch as she conversed with two additional people that only she could see. Their names, it seems, are Jonquil and Mrs. Minafer, while hers continues to be Daisy. Their interactions, if you can call them that, leave me fascinated and more than a little alarmed.

First of all, it’s just the two of us here on New Avalon.

There’s not another living soul on this island.

Second, even though she continues to introduce herself as Daisy Rue, I know for a fact that her true name is Azra.

Thirty-Four

The door to the cottage remains open after I leave. I’m too shocked to close it, too shaken to do anything but grab the handle of my suitcase and, with trembling hands, drag it outside. Even that requires too much effort, and I end up dropping it in the grass beside the path.

All I carry now is Mrs. Semple’s journal, gripping it to my chest as tightly as her skeletal hands had done for a hundred years.

Outside, the night is clear and star-filled now that the storm has passed. Yet I feel blown sideways by what I’ve just read. It changes everything I—and everyone else—thought we knew about what happened on New Avalon, starting with its purpose. Thanks to Mrs. Semple’s journal, I know that it wasn’t a commune for mediums but a place where troubled girls with equally troubled minds could get the psychological help they needed.

And one of the most troubled was young Azra Kovacic—a poor girl from Eastern Europe who immigrated to the United States when she was ten. When she was twenty, she ended up in the care of Ruth Hume Semple. After intense observation and long therapy sessions, Mrs. Semple concluded that, due to extreme physical and sexual abuse by her alcoholicfather, Azra suffered from both paranoid schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder, two afflictions both understudied and misunderstood a century ago.

Including by Mrs. Semple herself.

When she received Azra into her care, only Daisy was present. The real Azra was in hiding, too timid to emerge out from under the more dominant personality. Mrs. Semple assumed Daisy took control when Azra killed her father and had remained in charge ever since.