Diary Entry June 8, 1926
I fear I am already running out of things to write. Nothing of note has happened here on New Avalon. The four of us just lounge and stroll and read while Mrs. Semple observes from a distance. Until today, there was very little talk about our special abilities, which is why all of us are here.
Jonquil was the one to broach the subject while we spent the afternoon enjoying the lake.
The water looked so cool and refreshing that we kicked off our shoes, hiked up our skirts, and waded in up to our knees.
Even Mrs. Minafer, who earlier had declared that she would never behave in such an improper manner, eventually couldn’t resist and allowed herself to dip her feet into the drink.
Only Katrina remained on the shore, perched daintily on a rock.
“Will you melt if you get wet?” Jonquil teased her from the water.
“If you must know,” Katrina said with a sniff, “water interferes with my abilities.”
“To do what?” I asked, genuinely curious. Daddy had taught me to never discuss my Gift, fearful it would make people think I was touched in the head. So to hear someone else mention hers so freely was as refreshing as the lake water around my knees.
“I have visions,” Katrina said. “They’re like paintings of some future point in time. I can never quite tell what they are or the meaning behind them. I suppose that’s why I’m here. To find out why they happen and how they might be useful.”
“I’m an empath,” Mrs. Minafer said.
I squinted at her, the word confounding me. “What’s that?”
“Someone who senses the moods of others. I touch them and can tell exactly what they’re feeling.”
Unable to resist, I splashed toward Mrs. Minafer and reached out to her. “Tell me what I’m feeling.”
She gently took my hand in hers and, after a moment, announced, “You feel great joy.”
It was true, for in that moment, I felt happier than I had been in a very long time. Not since before Mommy passed on. Yet a small bit of concern tugged at my thoughts so much that I felt compelled to mention it to the others.
“Why do you think we’ve all been brought here?”
“To explore our powers,” Katrina said. “That’s obvious.”
“But we haven’t been doing that,” I replied.
So far, all we’d done was roam the island while Mrs. Semple observed from a discreet distance.
That morning, I was certain she watched from an upstairs window as we all left our cottages and headed toward the water.
I looked to the shore, half expecting to see her there, watching us still. But no one was there but Katrina.
“Are you saying Mrs. Semple is lying about what goes on here?” she said.
“No, but I am wondering why she gathered us together like this.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” Jonquil admitted. “I don’t have any gifts. At least not the kind you’re talking about.”
I considered that for a moment, concluding that she had to have some special ability. “I bet you do. You just haven’t figured out what it is yet.”
“You all claim to have these special powers, and maybe you do. I’m not saying you’re fibbing, but it will take a lot for me to believe in this bunk,” Jonquil said.
“That’s why you’re here!” I said brightly. “To be the official skeptic. Every group needs one.”
“And why are you here, Daisy?” Katrina asked, her haughty tone implying that I, too, had no special powers.
“My Gift is an ability to hear the dead,” I said, speaking slowly, remembering Daddy’s anger whenever I brought it up.
I didn’t want my new friends to also be angered by it.
“They speak to me with regularity, often arriving when I least want them to and always without warning. I could be alone in a room, lost in my thoughts, and a voice will suddenly appear, speaking right into my ear, as if they’re sitting directly beside me.
But no one is there. It’s just me and the voices that no one else can hear. ”
“Or maybe you’re just loony,” Katrina said.
I should have been annoyed at her, but that’s also what Daddy thought when I tried to explain what was happening.
But I knew I wasn’t crazy. I had no doubt that the voices I heard came from beyond the veil and were reaching out to me for a specific reason I have yet to understand.
Perhaps my time on New Avalon with Mrs. Semple will allow me to do that.
“I’m not loony,” I said. “I think Mommy gave it to me in the hope that one day I’d be able to hear her again.”
“And have you?” Mrs. Minafer asked, likely sensing that I had become slightly sad.
I shook my head. “Not yet, but I hold out hope that one day I will.”
The mood having grown somber, we decided to return to our cottages. While the rest of us put our shoes back on, Katrina’s eyes went wide and her entire body stilled. Although she sat paralyzed like that for only a few seconds, I could tell she had just experienced one of her visions.
“What did you see?” I said.
“Come on,” Jonquil urged when Katrina said nothing. “You can tell us.”
“I saw—” Katrina paused, clearly reluctant to reveal more. “I saw Daisy’s cottage.”
This was a surprise. Since Katrina didn’t seem to like me very much, I never expected to be the focus of one of her visions. “Was I there?”
“I think so, yes,” Katrina said. “I could only see the outside. It was night and something was at your door.”
“Don’t you mean someone, dear?” Mrs. Minafer nervously asked.
Katrina gave an uncertain shake of her head. “It–it didn’t seem human. I couldn’t see a face. Just a figure dressed in a cloak that was completely black. Darkness personified. And it was waiting right outside your door, Daisy. Waiting for you!”
She began laughing then, a torrent of giggles she tried to hide behind her hand. “You’re so gullible, Daisy,” she said.
“So you didn’t have a vision?” I said.
“Not of you.”
Jonquil looped her arm through mine and said, “I told you so. It’s all bunk.”
That might have been true, but as we left the lakeshore, I noticed a nervous look cross Katrina’s face, giving me the sense that she hadn’t made it up at all—and that whatever she did see in her vision frightened her to death.