Page 87 of The Unknown

During my loop around the island, I paused at the spot where Heather disappeared. Last night, it was too dark to see if someone else had been there. Today, in full daylight, I saw no signs of struggle. No footprints in the muddy bank of the lake. No obvious signs someone had moved through the nearby brush. All I saw were the footprints left behind by me and Heather and some flattened undergrowth beside the downed tree that stretched from forest to water.

After that, I returned to the oak, staring at the clothes in its branches. In the bright noon light, they were a riot of colors and textures. Exotic blooms on a tropical tree. Just looking at them scared me in the same way that creepypasta posts or urban legend Reddit forums do. Less than a minute had passed between Julianne’s disappearance in the mist andher dress ending up in the tree. That wasn’t just weird or uncanny. It was brain-breakingly unfathomable.

Literally the only explanation I could think of—and it’s a doozy—is that when Azra takes someone, all that’s left of them are their clothes. Like thatWar of the Worldsmovie in which anyone zapped by the aliens is immediately disintegrated, leaving behind flyaway shirts and pants drifting on the breeze.

But why did the clothes go to the tree in the first place? I could sort of, kind of understand why it was done in the ancient past, when people placed clothes on the island’s shore to appease the witches who allegedly lived here. Maybe, I thought, that was what happened in 1926—and what was happening now. An offering from Azra to appease a being even more powerful and malevolent than they were.

I slowly approached the oak, which had been at the center of these disappearances from the very beginning. Not only was it where the clothes had been found, both now and a century ago, but it was literally in the middle of the island. Most curious of all was how nothing strange happened on New Avalon until after lightning struck the tree during that first séance in 1926. Daisy’s diary mentioned a dark, smoldering crevasse disturbing enough for Mrs. Minafer to claim that Hell had broken loose.

Today, though, there is no crevasse. Just a V-shaped split of trunk that is now scabbed over with bark. If a portal to Hell had once been there, it no longer exists.

I backed away from the tree and hurried here to the parlor, freaked out by both my thoughts and actions. That I’ve started looking for a literal Hellmouth shows just how crazy this place has made me.

Or maybe it’s the other way around and I’ve always been crazy. I saw my dead sister for an entire year, after all. If that’s not a sign of insanity, I don’t know what is.

Maybe Azra—or whatever unknown thing that’s been here for centuries—has been waiting for someone like me. Just like it was waitingfor Daisy. Biding its time on New Avalon until some sad, desperate, stricken soul arrived. Then I did, and now here I am, sitting in a stinking dress with no plan other than to wait until something else happens.

I’ve long stopped expecting Loretta’s return. She’s gone, for reasons unknown, leaving us here until Pete arrives for his scheduled pickup on Saturday. That’s two days from now. Plenty of time for history to repeat itself as the rest of us vanish one by one.

Unless I can find some way to avoid it. Hence my frantic review of Daisy’s diary, which Ronan notices when he peeks into the parlor.

“There you are,” he says, visibly relieved. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“And I was looking for Julianne and Heather.”

Ronan doesn’t ask me if I found any sign of them. The answer is clearly no. He joins me at the table, scootching close to see what I’m reading.

“And this is?”

“Research,” I say, gripping the bound diary with a trembling hand. “I’m thinking that if I—”

The rest of the sentence refuses to emerge. I don’t know what I’m thinking, other than that three people are gone and we three who remain are going to end up the same way if I don’t do something. So my hand continues to shake, the diary it’s holding a jittery blur of words.

Ronan takes the diary, sets it down, grips my uncontrollable hand in both of his steady ones. “We’re going to get through this,” he says with such conviction that I start to believe him. It helps that his hands are warm and shockingly soft. Mine instantly calms, trembling no more.

He continues to keep hold of it, saying nothing. But his pulse races. I can feel the spiking beat in my palms. Something is happening, although I’m unsure what. The chance to find out, though, vanishes when Violet suddenly appears in the doorway.

“What’s going on here?” she says.

Ronan yanks his hands away from mine. Both drop into his lap as he says, “Looking over Daisy’s diary.”

“Why?” Violet says with more curiosity than suspicion. She joins us at the table, eyeing the diary, its pages wrinkled and dog-eared.

“Trying to make a plan,” I say, echoing the advice she gave me our first night here. “Daisy, Mrs. Semple, the others? They didn’t have one. And they vanished because of it. But we can learn from their mistakes. I mean, we all agree that this is Azra’s doing, right?”

“Yes?” Violet says, her voice thick with uncertainty.

“And that Azra isn’t a ghost but—”

“A demon.”

Violet lets out a disbelieving laugh that, while on the surface seems inappropriate, completely sums up the insanity of the situation. On one hand, I feel silly—just absolutely bananapants insane—for thinking all of this could be real. But on the other hand, it’s still happening.

“The answer might be somewhere in here,” I say, gesturing to the diary. “Because Daisy wrote about it, we can assume what’s coming next, especially since everything that’s happening now occurred in the past, in roughly the same order. Susie and Katrina Fiske first, then Heather and Jonquil Collins, and Julianne and Phoebe Minafer. Following that pattern, the next person would be—”

“We don’t know,” Ronan says. “When Daisy’s diary ends, both she and Mrs. Semple are still alive. That might have changed on one of those missing pages, but we’ll never know.”

“But it’s me in the screenplay,” Violet says. “If that means anything.”