Chapter Five
Five
It feels like midnight, even though it’s only nine p.m. The island, I realize once the sun fully sets, gets darker than other places.
It’s so unlike Manhattan, with its ambient glow that lasts until dawn.
Here, the darkness is all-encompassing. A shroud tossed over New Avalon that blacks out everything but the stars.
Even with three lamps burning—one in the sitting area, one on the counter across from it, and one on the nightstand—the cottage remains cloaked in hazy half-light.
Not completely pitch-black, but not the incandescent brightness I’m used to.
It would help to light the fireplace, but I’m worried it will make the cottage too hot.
With no breeze to alleviate it, the late-August air has already made the cottage sticky and suffocating.
So I sit in the stultifying gloom, dabbing sweat from my face with a handkerchief as I listen to the buzz of insects outside the cottage. Another realization once night fell. The bugs are, for lack of a more poetic phrase, fucking obnoxious.
From their high-pitched drones, I guess the worst offenders to be cicadas.
There are crickets, too, their staccato chirps instantly recognizable.
Mixed in are other sounds from other creatures.
Flies and frogs and cheepers. Surrounded by their endless cacophony, I start to read Daisy’s diary for the second time.
The first read was spent comparing it to Ronan’s script, which is shockingly faithful.
I’d assumed plenty of liberties had been taken, with the screenplay bearing no resemblance to the diary other than the general plot.
The loosest of adaptations. Instead, the script follows the events of the diary exactly.
Even direct quotes made their way into the screenplay.
As for the characters, even I can see how well the film has been cast. Heather Benchley is exactly how I picture the free-spirited Jonquil Collins, while Julianne Brown has the same properness as Phoebe Minafer.
I knew Violet Wright was a great match for Ruth Hume Semple before I even read the script.
But after reading Daisy’s diary, it’s obvious that she’s perfectly cast. Both women possess a warm intelligence that can veer from welcoming to intimidating at a moment’s notice.
Even better is the casting of Susie Hutchinson as Katrina Fiske.
Not only do they share a certain haughty brattiness, but also, other than Violet, Susie is by far the biggest name in the cast. Her disappearance comes as a total shock, sending a message that anything can happen. No character is safe.
While this isn’t the first time a horror movie has killed off all its familiar faces, leaving a complete unknown as the sole survivor, it’s rare enough to still be effective.
But the scariness of Ronan’s script hits different from Daisy’s diary.
In the script, everything is kept at a chilly remove.
He’s peppered it with long establishing shots of swaying grass, decaying leaves, bugs burrowing into the ground, all of it suggesting that a festering something lurks beneath New Avalon.
Daisy’s diary is more straightforward, though no less unnerving. These were real women. Trapped on this very island. Disappearing one by one.
But even Daisy’s point of view can’t provide the complete picture. The truly scary stuff is in the margins. All those unknowns regarding the why and how of it all. And thanks to the diary’s missing pages, we’ll never know. It simply ends mid-entry. An eternal cliffhanger.
For the screenplay, Ronan relied on his own imagination, picking up where the diary left off and bringing the story to an ambiguous ending.
The final shot is of Daisy sitting alone on the lakeshore, basking in the light of the sunrise as the water laps at her feet.
History tells us that, like the other women of New Avalon, she was never seen again, forcing the viewer to decide if she becomes the story’s final victim—or its final girl.
On the second read, my goal is to take Ronan’s advice and try to get a better understanding of Daisy herself.
Nuggets of insight hide on each page, and I intend to mine every single one of them.
Already, I relate to Daisy. For much of the diary, she comes across as guileless as I feel.
Both of us arriving in a strange place with new people and trying our best to make sense of it all.
Granted, Daisy’s situation was far more dire than mine. I’m merely prepping for a movie. She feared for her life.
As for the culprit, Daisy remained convinced the disappearances were the work of a malevolent spirit they had summoned during their first séance.
This is where we differ. I know there is no universe in which these women were vaporized by an evil spirit.
That doesn’t mean I think Daisy was lying in her diary.
To me, it’s obvious she believed every word she wrote.
But what she witnessed was only half the story.
I’m certain there’s a logical explanation behind what happened that she wasn’t privy to, making her assume it was supernatural, even if that wasn’t the reality of the situation.
Because people don’t just evaporate.
Something real and horrible happened to them.
Caused by someone else.
Daisy was on the island for ten days. That we know of.
Her last known diary entry is dated June 15, a day before Pete’s grandfather discovered New Avalon empty.
Even though what’s on the missing pages could have been written days, even weeks, after that, it’s doubtful.
The police would have found her after Pete’s grandfather reported them missing.
That means that Daisy either vanished the same way as the others or—
My train of thought is derailed by a strange sound.
Scratching.
Soft but persistent.
As if something is clawing the wood of the cottage.
My initial thought as I listen in the lamp-lit gloom is that there’s an animal in the walls. If I were still in Manhattan, I’d say a rat. But because I’m on an island in Vermont, it could be anything. Mouse. Squirrel. Raccoon.
Where it’s coming from, I have no idea. It seems to be everywhere and nowhere, both inside and out.
Trying to pinpoint the source, I approach the wall with the poster of waterfowl.
I touch it carefully, afraid a rat the size of a Rottweiler might burst through the pictures of mallards and trumpeter swans.
Instead, I sense nothing moving directly behind the poster or anywhere else in the wall.
But the scratching continues, sounding like it’s above me one minute, below the next.
Since I can’t reach the ceiling, I drop to the floor, running my hands over it the same way I did the wall. Even though it has a front porch, the cottage isn’t raised in any way, making me wonder if whatever animal this is has burrowed underneath and is now trapped there.
Thankfully, the scratching stops. Whatever it is either died quickly or, hopefully, made a hasty retreat. Even better is the idea that nothing was under the cottage or in its walls and the sound was just a random squirrel stopping by to say hello like this is some kind of Disney movie.
Convinced that’s the case, I’m about to get off the floor when the baseboard near the door catches my eye.
It’s painted the same shade of white as the walls, and there’s a small crack between the two, indicating the baseboard has come loose.
When I crawl across the floor and push it back into place, I notice that a circle has been carved into the baseboard itself, barely visible under several coats of white paint.
I touch it, tracing the arc with my index finger.
As I do, I notice more carving inside the circle.
The same pattern of crude petals I’ve spotted all around the island.
Even though Brad said it’s a hex sign, thanks to Daisy’s diary, I know what it’s really called.
A daisy wheel.
This one, the diary also tells me, was carved by Daisy herself, even though, during her second day on the island, she questioned if the symbols actually worked. A week later, she had an answer.
No, they don’t.
At least not for her.