Page 72 of The Unknown

That does the trick. After closing my eyes and opening them again, I see nothing at the window.

Molly is gone.

Unlike in the first episode of this unwanted reboot, I’m now absolutely certain she was there. The only way to truly know, I realize, is tocheck where she stood on the porch. I assume that, like after her visit yesterday, it will be wet.

I don’t get the chance to find out.

Because when I step onto the porch after several minutes of nervous stalling, I notice that, on the other side of the green, the door to Susie’s cottage is ajar. That’s alarming enough on its own, since it’s clear Susie hasn’t magically returned. If she had, she’d surely announce it to all of us, basking in the attention as she regaled us about spending a day lost in the woods. Even if she did decide to just slip back into her cottage, unnoticed, surely she’d light a lamp or candle. Instead, her cottage windows remain dark.

As I peer at them from my porch, something passes by the glass. A shadow moving through shadow.

Someone is inside Susie’s cottage.

I mentally run through the suspect list that currently sits on my bed, trying to think of which of them it could be. Only one seems plausible.

Lindy Garrett has returned.

June 12, 1926

I no longer like it here.

I know that’s a horribly ungrateful thing to say, especially after Mrs. Semple has been so kind to me. But it’s true. I don’t like what’s been happening on New Avalon. Because Katrina’s strange disappearance isn’t the worst of it. More frightening things occurred today, and I fear what’s yet to come.

It began this morning, when I awoke to find everything once again out of place. My shoes, this diary, even my dress, which had been moved from the back of one chair to another. What’s worse is that I found yet more writing in my diary.

GO AWAY DAISY

Although it had been written in the same childish scrawl as before, this time I have no idea who could have done it. Katrina, the person I’d thought was responsible, is now gone. And when I told Jonquil and Mrs. Minafer about it, they suggested that it was me who did it.

“Do you sleepwalk?” Mrs. Minafer asked.

“If she’s asleep when she’s doing it, how would she know?” Jonquil quite reasonably said.

I thrust out my hand so that Mrs. Minafer could grasp it. “Maybe your Gift will tell me if I am.”

Mrs. Minafer took my hand only a second before quickly letting go, clearly disturbed.

“What did you sense?” I said, alarmed.

“Nothing,” she replied. “Your hand was cold, that’s all.”

It felt like a lie, which surprised me. The last person I’d suspect of lying is pious Mrs. Minafer. Perhaps she was the one responsible and didn’t want to admit it, although I can’t see why she would do such a thing.

I intended to tell Mrs. Semple about it this afternoon, but she was quick to pull me aside and say, “You’re concerned about Katrina, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” I admitted, despite the fact that we didn’t get along. But now that she was gone without explanation, I worried that something terrible had happened to her. “Where do you think she went?”

“I don’t know, my dear. Perhaps we’ll never know. But I do think she’s gone for good, don’t you?”

“What if she’s dead?” I asked, finally speaking aloud the fear that had hummed in my thoughts since discovering she was missing.

Mrs. Semple leveled her gaze at me, full of sympathy and understanding. “I can think of only one way to find out,” she said.

I knew exactly what she meant. She was suggesting another séance.

That is how, once darkness settled over the island, we wound up back at the table in Mrs. Semple’s candlelit parlor. She’d once again arranged the lettered tiles around the table’s edge, an upturned glass sitting in the center.

“Now,” she said with an energetic exhalation, “let’s see what we can learn this evening.”