Page 81 of The Unknown

“I could have yelled for help,” I say. “Or run to one of the neighbors. Instead, she died while I sat in my room, ready for my nonexistent close-up. That’s why she came to my window every night for a year. To remind me that she was dead and that it was all my fault. And I think that’s why she’s doing it again, right here on New Avalon.”

“When did you see her?” Violet says, still radiating empathy.

I wipe the tears from my face, embarrassed but also relieved. It feels good to admit I’m seeing Molly again. It feels even better to at last have people believe me. “The past two nights. Including tonight.”

“And you really think that’s why she’s here? To make you feel guilty?”

“Yes,” I say, because what other reason could there be? “She’s here to let me know that she still holds a grudge.”

A few feet away, Julianne plops onto the ground, the long skirt of her dress spreading over the night-damp grass like the petals of a wilted flower.

“Right before he died, I told Dean I wanted a divorce,” she says. “We were so young, and it was clear to me that we were completely wrong for each other. Dean didn’t see it that way. Didn’t see it coming at all, really. I’ll never forget how hurt he looked. Like I’d just punched him. He left in a rush, saying he was going for a walk, that he needed to be alone for a while. An hour later, the police called to tell me Dean was dead. He was hit by a cab while crossing the street.”

She lifts her hands, palms up, and stares at them. As if they’d been gripping the steering wheel when it happened. As if they were stained with blood.

“I was devastated. Completely gutted. Because Dean was gone, ofcourse, but also because I knew that his final moments were full of heartbreak. And I had been the one to cause it. That was my first thought when I sensed him in my cottage. That he was there to let me know how much I’d hurt him.”

Violet sits next to Julianne and places an arm around her shoulders. “My father didn’t approve of my being an actress,” she says. “He told me it was foolish to think I could make something of myself that way.”

I hear my father’s voice, thick withI told you soscorn after the debut of my commercial.Well, now I hope you finally realize how stupid that acting dream of yours was.

“When my father got sick, I was about to go to Europe to make my first movie,” Violet continues. “Because my mother couldn’t take care of him by herself, it was expected that I’d quit the movie to help out. I was given an ultimatum. My father or the movie. I chose the movie.”

She pauses, allowing the rest of us to wonder if we’d make the same choice. I don’t even need to think about it. Of course I would.

“I was on set when my father died,” Violet says. “I got the call right before I was about to shoot my biggest scene in the movie. I didn’t cry. I didn’t even tell the director. I just filmed the scene, went back to my hotel, and wept all night. I had missed my chance to say good-bye to my father. That’s what I was thinking when I smelled him in my room. That he had returned to beg me to finally say good-bye.”

And I’m thinking about Molly. Not just why I’ve been seeing her, but how she got here. This is Vermont. She died in Pennsylvania. Is it possible for ghosts to roam that far? I assumed the only reason they’re ghosts is because something binds them to a particular place.

But maybe it’s not like that.

Maybe ghosts can also bind themselves to a person.

The idea that I might be the haunted one in this scenario—not a place, not a house, me—doubles me over with fear. Has Molly been with me all this time, following me around like my shadow? If so, why haven’t I seen her again until now?

The only answer I can come up with is that I’ve never been on New Avalon until now. Maybe the island isn’t haunted so much as it is receptive to hauntings, and everyone who sets foot on it brings their own ghosts. For Julianne, that’s Dean. Violet’s is her father. Molly is mine. Maybe Susie and Heather had them as well.

The video of Susie pops into my thoughts as vividly as if I’d just pressed play on her camcorder. My mind’s eye sees her trudging through the pitch-black woods, in search of something. She never said what she saw or why she was following it. But now I’m starting to suspect it was whoeverherghost was.

Heather, too, might have seen someone. A person so unexpected that she dropped her flashlight and chased after them.

I think of Daisy’s diary next. How she wrote about seeing her dead father on the island multiple times. Whenever she saw him, it ended with her waking up in bed, unsure if she left, how she got back, or if all of it was just a nightmare. Her confusion is easy to understand. I thought something similar after seeing Molly. That I had to be dreaming. It was worse for Daisy, though, who mistook her father for Azra.

Which, the more I think about it, might have been intentional on Azra’s part.

“What if it’s not them?”

I’m suddenly restless, my legs itching to move. I begin to circle the oak, unable to stop myself, ducking under its weighty branches as I think about Molly at the window of my cottage. How I was too afraid to check if it was really her. Maybe because, deep down, I suspected that it wasn’t.

“Molly and Dean and Violet’s father. Maybe the people we saw or smelled or sensed weren’t actually them, but something pretending to be them.”

“Azra,” Julianne says.

“What?” Ronan says. “Why?”

“To lure us away from everyone else, into the woods.”

A stricken look comes over Violet, making her appear both spooked and spooky. “Where we’ll disappear.”