Page 59 of The Unknown

I didn’t huddle under the covers, terrified.

I didn’t slide out of bed, creep outside, crouch at the spot where she stood on the porch, and touch a lukewarm puddle.

It was all just a nightmare, no doubt spurred by being stranded on an island that’s been stuck in time for the past century. Yes, the water I’d felt on the porch was real, but that could have been caused by anything. A leak. A rainstorm that came and went while I intermittently slept. Maybe it had been there all along, unnoticed amid the drama of the previous day.

A stretch? Yes. But it’s more logical than thinking Molly has returned after twenty years. Because that means she was there in the first place, back when I was a scared little girl.

And she wasn’t.

She couldn’t have been.

And she wasn’t here last night, which is what I tell myself on repeat as I swap the nightgown for the dress. By now, it’s second nature. As is heading to the main house at the break of dawn to make breakfast, which is what I do next.

On the porch, I pause at the same spot I touched last night. It’s still wet. Then again, so is the rest of the porch, which is slick with morning dew. Maybe that’s what I felt during the night.

I dry my hand on my dress and move off the porch, stopping a moment at the oak. It’s so old—so battered by time and the elements and, according to Daisy’s diary, at least one lightning strike—that I’m shocked it’s still standing, still casting its ominous shadow on the cottage walls.

I eye a low-hanging branch, the cluster of foliage at its tip verdant and heavy, bending it slightly downward. It’s possible that I saw a similar one last night at the window, making me think it was Molly. This island, I’m starting to realize, plays tricks on your brain. At least it does to mine.

I’m so busy trying to convince myself it’s what happened that I don’t immediately notice something else in the massive oak. It’s high up, near the top, hidden so thoroughly by leaves that I need to back up, tilt my head, examine the tree anew. Only then do I realize what’s there.

Clothes.

Dangling from a branch.

My mouth goes dry. Those shouldn’t be there. Nothing should. Yet there they are. Cream-colored top. Maroon skirt. Satin trim.

While all of us here are in costume, only one person on New Avalon has clothes that match what’s now hanging in the tree.

Susie Hutchinson.

Staring at her outfit, I can only think of the séance, the whisper in the dark, and the words Susie claimed to have been told.

You will be first.

June 11, 1926

Katrina is gone!

No one knows how it happened or where she went. She’s simply not here anymore, even though there’s no way off the island.

I’m the one who discovered her missing this morning. I sought her out because it remained unclear if what I experienced during the night was just a bad dream or something that actually occurred. The dirt on my boots suggested the latter, which made me worry about Katrina. After changing into my dress, I rushed outside to make sure she was okay.

That’s when I saw her clothes hanging high up in the oak. It was a mystifying sight. I had no idea why they were there or how they came to be snagged in the tree’s branches. It all left me so unsettled that I shrieked. The sound pulled Jonquil from her own cottage, asking me what was the matter.

“That,” I said, pointing to the clothes in the oak. “Those belong to Katrina.”

“Why are they up there?”

I couldn’t begin to guess, and so I said nothing. Instead, I turned to Katrina’s cottage, noting how it was exactly the same as mine. All the cottages were. Looking at it, I thought about the vision Katrina claimed was a joke to scare me but that I assumed was real. She said she had seen a cloaked figure standing outside my cottage. But at that moment, I started to think she waswrong about what she had seen. That it wasn’t my cottage in her vision, but her own. And the figure in the cloak waiting just outside the door was the same one I had followed in my nightmare.

Azra.

“Please look in Katrina’s cottage,” I said to Jonquil. “See if perhaps she’s still inside, fast asleep.”

“Why can’t you do it?” Jonquil said.

Because I was too scared to check for myself. I didn’t want to be the one to discover it empty, which I feared it was.