Page 65 of The Unknown

Like someone just took a step toward Susie.

She emits a terrified yelp and begins to run. With the camera jostling, everything becomes a disorienting blur. The forest floor passes in streaks. Tree trunks leap into frame. Low-hanging leaves slap the lens. All of it is underscored by the sound of Susie’s increasingly panicked breathing.

After another collision—a spindly branch this time, whipping the lens—the image settles enough to make out a circular clearing in the trees, moss carpeting the ground, and, in its center, a large flat rock. It looks bigger on-screen than it did in real life. Scarier, too. Bathed in moonlight, the rock practically glows.

A second later, it’s gone, the camcorder twisting toward the edge of the clearing. The trees forming the circle stand packed together, their branches intertwined. Like they’re joining forces, blocking Susie’s escape. The image judders as she yells into the darkness.

“Who’s there? What do you want?”

For a moment, nothing happens.

Nothing moves.

Not Susie.

Not the trees.

Absolutely nothing.

Then something bursts from the trees, into the clearing, rushing toward Susie. It’s impossible to tell what it is. Just a blur of movement, dark and fast on the very edge of the frame, bringing with it a half second of chaos.

The camera tilts.

Susie lets out a sliver of a scream before it’s cut off.

The image somersaults, like she’s dropped the camera. A sickening tumble of sky, rock, and trees before everything goes still and silent and dark.

Other than a startled gasp from Julianne, none of us watching makea sound. It’s clear that we’ve just seen something terrible happen to Susie Hutchinson. I don’t know what the others are thinking right now, but I assume it’s the same thing I am.

Either someone in this parlor is responsible—or we are not alone on this island.

June 11, 1926—Later

Hours have passed, and we’ve seen no trace of Katrina. I know it seems impossible, but I fear she’s gone for good.

It took Jonquil and me longer than expected to find the clearing. There were multiple times in which I thought we were close, only to end up in another dense cluster of trees. It felt, in many ways, like a game of hide-and-seek, with the clearing moving about the forest, always remaining out of sight.

When we did eventually find it, Jonquil once again refused to enter. “This place is weird, Daisy, and you damn well know it.”

I agreed but approached the clearing anyway. I needed to see with my own eyes if Katrina was there. My deepest fear was that I’d see her there, lying atop the rock in a pool of blood.

Instead, the slab was clean and, other than a few stray leaves that had fallen from the trees, empty. A sense of relief flooded my chest. So it had just been a nightmare. I should have known all along that I couldn’t have witnessed something so horrible in real life.

I left the clearing happier than I had been minutes earlier. Yes, Katrina was still nowhere to be found, but at least she wasn’t there, dead on the rock, her blood trickling down its side. That fact alone put a renewed spring in my step as I joined Jonquil at the trees.

“Happy now?” she said.

“Very,” I replied, looping my arm through hers.

We set off through the woods again, getting not ten feet before something appeared right in front of us. A hole in the ground, half buried in the undergrowth. It was so well hidden that we would have fallen right into it if both Jonquil and I hadn’t noticed it at the same time.

“What the devil is that?” Jonquil said, walking carefully around its edge.

The hole was rectangular in shape and, from the look of it, recently dug. Clumps of dirt were scattered about on all sides, making it look like a fresh grave. Indeed, when I peered into the hole, I saw a wooden box covered with a lid.

A coffin.

That was my first thought, because it was roughly the same shape and size as one. A coffin for a child or a petite woman. Someone like Katrina.