Page 57 of The Unknown

I swallow hard, stopping the scream erupting in my throat. I force it back down, the act a painful struggle, like I’m choking. For a moment, I can’t breathe, can’t move, can only sit here gagging on my fear as panic spikes in my chest.

Molly.

Even though it’s too dark to make out any features, I know it’s her.

Dripping wet.

At my window.

After twenty years, she’s tracked me down.

Suddenly I am five again, terrified under the covers, pressing my bodyinto the mattress. As if I can somehow burrow my way inside it. As if that will keep me safe.

Outside the window, Molly doesn’t move.

She just watches.

I stare back, fear pinning me in place. I couldn’t move if I wanted to. All I’m capable of doing is whispering the same thing now as I did back then.

“You’re not real. You don’t exist. Please be gone.”

I keep repeating it as I roll onto my side and close my eyes. Tears squeeze out anyway. Cold ones that drip like the water falling from Molly’s hair. They soak the pillow as I spend God knows how long saying the same thing over and over.

“You’re not real. You don’t exist. Please be gone.”

Eventually I open my eyes, wipe away the tears to clear my vision, and look to the window.

I have to.

I need to know that she’s gone.

She is, thank God. It’s only the shadow of the oak again, higher up the wall now that the moon has shifted.

When I was young and Molly came to visit, I never checked to see if she was real. I knew she wasn’t because that was what my parents told me. But they’re not here right now, forcing me to remind myself that ghosts don’t exist. This is just my mind starting to play tricks on me again. Which shouldn’t be a surprise. My time on this island has been so surreal that the lines between what’s real and what’s supernatural would naturally begin to blur.

That theory is strong enough to push past my still-potent fear and force me out of bed, out of the cabin, onto the porch. I go to the spot at the window where I saw Molly standing.

No, where Iimaginedshe was standing.

She wasn’t really there, staring inside, looking at me while water dripped from her always-wet hair. She couldn’t have been. I’m so sure ofit that I bend down and touch the exact spot on the porch where I imagined she stood.

I jerk my hand away, more shocked than if I’d been zapped by a live wire.

Even though the rest of the porch is completely dry, that spot is inexplicably, terrifyingly wet.

June ?, 1926

It’s the middle of the night. An hour so late I can’t tell if it’s today or tomorrow. I so hope it’s tomorrow. Because after the terrible nightmare I’ve just had, I don’t want to go back to sleep.

The nightmare began with me snug in my bed inside the cottage. I was sound asleep in the dream, awakened suddenly by a strange noise outside. I went to the window to see what it was and saw someone moving past the mighty oak. The person was wearing a black cloak, the hood pulled up over their head. Even though I couldn’t see the figure’s face, a stirring of fear told me exactly who it was.

Azra.

I knew from their movements, which were so unlike the way the others walked. The cloaked figure seemed to glide, as if floating an inch off the ground. Even though I was frightened by the sight of it, I also couldn’t stop watching.

It was…bewitching.

Perhaps that was why, when Azra passed my window, I decided to follow. That it might be dangerous—or even cost me my own life—was something I didn’t consider. All I thought about as I slipped into the sultry night was that I needed to see what Azra had planned.