Page 43 of The Unknown

“Who’s doing that?” Heather says, flinging her gaze to the rest of us, trying to catch one of us in the act.

“No one,” Violet says right before the table jumps again.

“Someone has to be doing it, and it sure as fuck isn’t—”

She’s cut off by the sound of the table, no longer jumping intermittently but literally hopping.Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk.

“Stop it!” Susie shrieks, either to us or the table or both. “For God’s sake, stop!”

The table hits the floor with one last thunk and settles there. As it does, the candles on the sideboard go out.

Every single one.

At the same time.

They’re extinguished in an instant, as if a giant hand has snuffed them out, plunging the room into darkness so thick I can’t see anything. Not the table. Not the others. Not even my hand, which, yes, I hold in front of my face. In that sudden and total blackness, I hear a voice.

Speaking right into my ear.

No, not speaking.

Whispering.

An insidious rasp of four words.

“You will be last.”

I pivot, groping in the darkness, seeking the source of the voice. But no one is there. Just empty space that I continue to claw.

“Who said that?”

For a slash of a second, I think I’ve spoken without realizing it, the plaintive question flying from my lips, unbidden. I certainly thought it. Certainly intended to ask that very thing. Which is why I assume my voice said it without consulting my brain. But then I hear it again, not from me but from someone on the other side of the pitch-black room.

Susie.

“Who said that?”

“Said what?” someone—I think Heather—asks.

“You didn’t hear that?” Susie says, returning to that scared, childlike whine.

“I didn’t hear a thing,” Violet adds.

Standing in the darkness, I think of Daisy’s diary. How she’d described the exact same thing happening to her.

There’s no time to let that sink in, because within seconds Brad is flicking on a flashlight, flooding the room in white, incandescent light. His face looks pale in the blinding glow, his cheeks and forehead slick with sweat.

“Are you okay?” Ronan says.

“No, I’m—”

Brad suddenly drops the flashlight, its beam spinning around the parlor like we’re at a disco. He then lurches out of the room, moaning. In the dizzying whirl of the flashlight, I lock eyes with Violet. We both know something is very, very wrong.

“Brad?” I say, feeling my way out of the parlor and down the hall. In the darkness, I hear him stumbling to the front door, which he throws open. Light appears behind me. Ronan, flashlight in hand, leading the others.

“Where’d he go?”

“Outside,” I say.