Page 60 of The Unknown

By this time, Mrs. Minafer had emerged from her own cottage, drawn outside by our talking. One look at the clothes in the tree and she instantly began to fret. “We must tell Mrs. Semple,” she said.

“Let’s first make sure Katrina is indeed gone,” I said while giving Jonquil a cajoling look. She relented and, with a sigh, entered Katrina’s cottage, emerging seconds later.

“She’s not there,” she said.

I told them about my nightmare-that-might-not-have-been-one-at-all and that I had a suspicion where Katrina could be—the large rock in the clearing. In what condition, I shuddered to think.

Jonquil agreed that we needed to look there, despite the protestations of Mrs. Minafer. “Those woods might be dangerous,” she warned. “Perhaps whatever took Katrina is hiding there, waiting to take you.”

“Well, they’ll be waiting a long time,” Jonquil said as she began striding toward the trees. “Because I don’t plan on going anywhere.”

“Me, neither,” I said, reflecting on the horrible voice of Azra I’d heard the other night during the séance.

You will be last.

I’m certain all of it is related, from the voice to Katrina’s vision to my nightmare.

Now Jonquil and I are about to set off into the woods to see if I’m right. I pray I’m wrong about what happened upon that rock last night—and that all of it was just a bad dream that shall never be repeated.

Fourteen

“I swear to God, Ronan,” Heather says, craning her neck to peer up into the oak. “If this is another one of your tricks, I’m going to get the Directors Guild to come down on your ass so hard you’ll be feeling it for the rest of your life.”

It’s ten minutes after I spotted the clothes in the tree.

Nine minutes after I ran to Susie’s cottage so fast I kicked up gravel.

Eight minutes after I burst inside without knocking, finding it completely empty.

Seven minutes after I sprinted back across the green, glancing up at the tree just long enough to make sure the clothes were still there and that, like with Molly hours earlier, I wasn’t simply seeing things.

They were.

I wasn’t.

So I kept moving, to Heather’s cottage, flushed and breathless by the time she came to the door. “Have you seen Susie?” I said.

Heather shook her head. “Have you tried her cottage?”

“She’s not there. Butthatis.”

I grabbed Heather by the wrist, yanking her around the tree until she, too, saw the clothes.

“Shit,” she said.

The two of us fanned out, peeking into every cottage—including Susie’s again, just in case I somehow missed her the first time—and notifying the others. Now we’re all gathered at the gnarled oak, unsure if we should be worried about Susie—and suspicious of Ronan.

“It wasn’t me,” he says. “I swear. And this is no trick.”

I join Heather in staring up at the clothes hanging limply in the oak. They’re clearly Susie’s. No one else wore that same style or color combination. Also, all of us are dressed in our mandated outfits. Even Ronan, who continuously tugs on his neckerchief like he’s praying on a string of rosary beads.

With the issue of ownership out of the way, only one question remains: How did the skirt and blouse get up there? Caught on the end of an upper branch, surrounded by leaves, their presence seems accidental, as if they simply landed there like a deflated balloon. It’s too high for someone at ground level to have reached up and hung them there. A ladder would have been needed. A tall one.

“Who would do something like this?” Julianne says. “Whywould they do it?”

Ronan’s script doesn’t give an explanation for why the dresses are put in the tree, mostly because Daisy’s diary doesn’t provide one, either. The closest she gets is when she quotes Ruth Hume Semple talking about people leaving offerings for the witches they believed lived here long ago, including clothes left on the shore to appease them.

Despite that lack of reason, their meaning remains clear.