Page 35 of The Unknown

But this didn’t look like a miracle to me. As smoke rose from a large, ragged gash in the tree’s center, thick and foul-smelling, it seemed like the opposite. Something unholy. As if the spirit of Azra were slithering out of it like a snake, sent by the Devil himself to destroy the Eden that was New Avalon.

Standing next to me, Mrs. Minafer crossed herself.

“Hell,” she announced, “has broken loose.”

Now I am back in my cottage, too disturbed by what transpired to sleep. I can still hear Azra’s slithering whisper, making it feel like they’re here withme right now. The very thought just made me shudder. Not having participated in a séance before, I don’t know where spirits go once it ends. Then again, we didn’t end our séance tonight. It was brought to a halt by the lightning hitting the tree.

It makes me fear that Azra could indeed still be on this island—and that Mrs. Minafer was correct about where they had come from.

Seven

We’re gathered again in the parlor of the main house, the same room where the table read took place. With no sunlight streaming through the atrium-like windows, the difference between then and now is literally like night and day. The oppressive darkness outside steeps the room in shadow that’s barely alleviated by the lit candles on the sideboard. Their flickering wicks cast a meager glow that skims the patterned walls and the dead butterflies in frames that fill it.

Outside, live insects continue to screech at full throttle. Maybe it’s the gin, but I at first think it’s the butterflies that are screaming, begging to be freed from their glass boxes. I approach one and stare, searching for the lone flap of wings or the wriggle of an antenna. There’s nothing, telling me it is the gin talking. The martini has made my brain deliciously fuzzy. I look to Violet, who appears completely sober, making me wonder if she drank as much as I thought or if I’m just the lightest of lightweights.

The table in front of us has been turned into a makeshift spirit board, with twenty-eight paper squares placed in a large circle. It looks just likethe one mentioned in both Daisy’s diary and Ronan’s script, right down to theYESandNOsquares.

“I wanted to use Scrabble tiles,” Brad says. “But that wasn’t invented until the thirties. To remain era-appropriate, I came up with this.”

“Why not just use a Ouija board?” Susie says.

“Those did exist, although very few mediums used them.”

Even so, I would have preferred a setup different from the one in which the women of New Avalon allegedly summoned the entity that later destroyed them. Especially now that we’re dressed like those women. The old-fashioned clothes coupled with the candlelight make it feel like we’ve traveled back in time a hundred years, to the night of that first, ill-fated séance. Not a good idea, in my mind. Even though I don’t think anything bad will happen, I see no point in creating a scenario in which it could.

And I’m not the only one who has trepidation about reenacting the scene. Before taking a seat at the table, Julianne says, “Maybe weshouldjust use a Ouija board. Why tempt fate, right?”

“Are you scared?” Susie says in a taunting way that makes me think sleepovers with her must have been hell. If she even had any growing up. Child stars like her probably didn’t do sleepovers. Still, if she had, I’m certain she was first to put shaving cream in a sleeping girl’s hand.

Julianne squirms. “I’m notscared. But I come from a very religious family. And while I’ve gotten away from all of that, I was taught at a very early age not to engage with the spirit world, even in jest.”

“But there is no spirit world,” Heather says. “When you die, you die. There’s no lingering between this world and the next. As for mediums, they’re just scam artists who make money off grieving people. Always have been, always will be.”

“What about Mrs. Semple?” Violet says, coming to her character’s defense. “She didn’t charge anyone to be here.”

Heather shrugs. “That we know of.”

“Unfortunately, participation is mandatory,” Ronan says. “If you believe, great. If you don’t, then simply think of this as a character-building exercise. Nothing more.”

“But if we contact an evil spirit,” Julianne jokes, “I want it to be on the record that I thought this was all a bad idea.”

There’s a slight quiver in her voice, suggesting a small part of her believes it could happen.

I, on the other hand, do not.

“Ghosts aren’t real, Mare,” my father constantly insisted when I was five. “There’s no reason to be afraid.”

The rest of us join Julianne at the table. Violet is on my right, seated directly in front of the letterA. Between us are lettersBthroughF. Slightly to my left is theG, followed by theNO, situated right at my elbow. The alphabet continues around the table, flowing past Julianne on my left, then Heather, then Susie. At her elbow sits the other full word in this scenario,YES.

In a departure from this afternoon, Ronan doesn’t join us at the table, choosing instead to sit with Loretta in a corner so dark I can barely see them. It’s just the five of us actresses at the table, sitting evenly spaced, like points on a pentagram.

“How is this going to work?” Susie says, staring at the circle of letters in front of us.

Brad holds up a drinking glass full of water. “You’ll be using this. According to Reddit, it works better than a planchette. Too much pressure from one person will tip the glass over. Now, to show you there’s nothing funny about it—”

He lifts the glass to his lips and tips it back, emptying it in two gulps. He then places the glass upside down in the center of the table and instructs all of us to put two fingers on its bottom, just like Mrs. Semple told the others to do in Daisy’s diary.

All of us obey, placing our index fingers on the upside-down glass.Satisfied, Brad takes a seat in the corner opposite Ronan and Loretta, all but vanishing into the shadows.