Page 95 of The Unknown

No longer scratching on the door but tapping on the glass. An even worse sound.

Tap, tap, tap.

It won’t stop, even though I’m screaming as I write this, begging the Darkness to leave. No matter how loud I cry, I can still hear it.

Tap, tap, tap.

Tap, tap, tap.

So far, I’ve kept myself from turning to the window. I’m too scared to look. Too afraid to see the horrifying face in the Darkness waiting for me on the other side of the glass.

But I must see.

I need to understand why the Darkness has taken that form.

Okay, I’m going to look—

Right now—

Twenty-Five

I’m back in my cottage.

It seems like the safest choice, even with an evil spirit lurking about.

Maybe.

Possibly.

After confronting Violet, I’m not sure of anything anymore. She said nothing else as I lingered in her room, begging for the truth. She just strode silently toward the door, self-preservation nudging me backward. I didn’t want to end up like Susie or Heather or Julianne.

Where they might be or what happened to them, only Violet knows. Because she helped cause it. Right now, that’s one of two things I am certain of.

Now I’m in bed, tired but unable to sleep, and not just because the island’s insects are screeching louder than normal. A steady, anxious trill that soundtracks my anxious thoughts. I can’t stop wondering about what’s going on, what Violet and Loretta are up to, why they’re doing it. Most of all, I can’t keep from worrying when it’s going to happen to me.

Because it is.

That’s my other certainty.

That at this very moment, they intend to make me vanish as well.

I know I should warn Ronan. And I will. When the night is over and there’s daylight for protection and enough time has passed since our encounter in the hallway that I won’t feel icky about it, even though right now I still very much do.

I’m so lost in my thoughts that I all but ignore the scratching when it starts up. It’s the same with the thwumps. The only sound I pay attention to is a whisper of movement just outside the cottage as the shadows at the window begin to stir.

Molly is there.

Or at least the prospect of her.

Just like all her other visits, she’s hard to see. A silhouette within the shadow of night. But unlike our previous encounters, this time I’m prepared.

Reaching under my pillow, I grab the flashlight Heather took from Susie’s cottage. I kept it after Heather herself vanished and now flick it on as I swing it toward Molly. A circle of white light scrapes the wall, sliding toward the front of the cottage. It hits the window, the reflection a starburst of brightness.

Outside, a figure recoils from the light, hunched over and shuffling backward.

Shocked, I try to steady the flashlight. The light skims the left side of Molly’s head, then her right. I finally hit my mark, the flashlight’s beam centered directly over her face.

She hisses, winces, lifts a hand to shield her eyes, the flashlight illuminating the pale skin of her palm. In that blur of motion, I see enough to know it’s not Molly at my window.