Diary Entry June 11, 1926—Later
Hours have passed, and we’ve seen no trace of Katrina. I know it seems impossible, but I fear she’s gone for good.
It took Jonquil and me longer than expected to find the clearing.
There were multiple times in which I thought we were close, only to end up in another dense cluster of trees.
It felt, in many ways, like a game of hide-and-seek, with the clearing moving about the forest, always remaining out of sight.
When we did eventually find it, Jonquil once again refused to enter. “This place is weird, Daisy, and you damn well know it.”
I agreed but approached the clearing anyway. I needed to see with my own eyes if Katrina was there. My deepest fear was that I’d see her there, lying atop the rock in a pool of blood.
Instead, the slab was clean and, other than a few stray leaves that had fallen from the trees, empty. A sense of relief flooded my chest. So it had just been a nightmare. I should have known all along that I couldn’t have witnessed something so horrible in real life.
I left the clearing happier than I had been minutes earlier. Yes, Katrina was still nowhere to be found, but at least she wasn’t there, dead on the rock, her blood trickling down its side. That fact alone put a renewed spring in my step as I joined Jonquil at the trees.
“Happy now?” she said.
“Very,” I replied, looping my arm through hers.
We set off through the woods again, getting not ten feet before something appeared right in front of us. A hole in the ground, half buried in the undergrowth. It was so well hidden that we would have fallen right into it if both Jonquil and I hadn’t noticed it at the same time.
“What the devil is that?” Jonquil said, walking carefully around its edge.
The hole was rectangular in shape and, from the look of it, recently dug. Clumps of dirt were scattered about on all sides, making it look like a fresh grave. Indeed, when I peered into the hole, I saw a wooden box covered with a lid.
A coffin.
That was my first thought, because it was roughly the same shape and size as one. A coffin for a child or a petite woman. Someone like Katrina.
Fear coursed through me as I stared at the partly buried box.
I could only think of my nightmare. That terrifying image of Azra standing over Katrina with a blade in hand, ready to plunge it into her chest. If it had been real and Katrina really was dead, perhaps this makeshift coffin was where Azra had placed her.
A grave marked not with a tombstone but with Katrina’s clothes in the oak in the center of the island.
As much as the idea horrified me, I knew there was only one way to know for certain.
“We need to look inside,” I told Jonquil.
“We?” she said. “I’m not touching that thing. You’re on your own, doll.”
I got down on my hands and knees and crept to the edge of the hole. Leaning over it, I tested one corner of the lid, finding it loose. There was no going back. Now I had no excuse not to open it.
Before lifting the lid all the way, I closed my eyes, again too afraid of seeing Katrina’s bloodied body stuffed inside. Instead, I waited for Jonquil’s reaction before deciding whether to look or not. When it arrived, I was relieved to hear not horror but delight.
“Boy howdy!” she exclaimed.
I opened my eyes to the sight of her leaning over the crate, inside of which were several bottles of brown liquid packed in straw.
“What is it?” I said.
“Hooch!” Jonquil said giddily.
She reached for one of the bottles, stopping when a voice rang out behind us.
“Please don’t touch that!”
We turned to see Mrs. Semple, followed close behind by Mrs. Minafer, who clearly had told her about Katrina’s disappearance and our search.
“But I haven’t had a good drink in ages,” Jonquil said.
I hadn’t ever had one and, judging from Mrs. Minafer’s look of disapproval, neither had she. When Prohibition began six years earlier, Daddy had complained endlessly about it. That didn’t stop him from drinking, though. He soon found ways to procure bottles exactly like the ones in the crate.
“Are you a bootlegger?” I asked Mrs. Semple.
She wrung her hands in agitation and, with a sigh, said, “No, my child. But I confess to turning a blind eye to those who are.”
Because it’s privately owned and largely uninhabited, Mrs. Semple explained, New Avalon is a convenient way station for a bootlegger who travels Lake Faraday.
He arrives by boat in the middle of the night and brings his illicit goods ashore, burying them like pirate gold.
Then, every week or so, when Mr. Ruggle arrives with Mrs. Semple’s order of necessities for the island, he marches into the woods to gather the alcohol and take it to the mainland.
“Where it goes after that is none of my concern,” Mrs. Semple said. “I’m not witness to any of it. As payment for my discretion, some money is always left behind for me.”
“Where I come from, that’s called a bribe,” Jonquil said.
Beside her, Mrs. Minafer tut-tutted. “Had I known any of this, I never would have agreed to come here.”
“I know it’s wrong,” Mrs. Semple said. “But New Avalon is so very expensive to maintain, and very little of my father’s fortune remains. The money this man provides goes a long way toward keeping this place up and running. I wish I didn’t need to rely on it, but unfortunately, I do.”
I still had so many questions, beginning with the transfer of goods. “Why does he bring the crates here? The dock is on the other side of the island.”
“Oh, he never uses the dock,” Mrs. Semple replied. “It’s less conspicuous to arrive on this side of the island. Right there.”
She pointed west where, through the trees, I could see a small curve in the shoreline that formed an inlet.
Although not very big, it still seemed to provide enough cover to moor a boat and hop out without being seen by anyone else on the lake, especially at night.
It helped that the incline to the top of the island was more gradual than on other parts of New Avalon, making it easier to carry heavy cargo.
In fact, when I took a second look, I clearly saw a line leading toward the lake where the leaves and underbrush had been trampled.
Suddenly a theory began to form about Katrina’s whereabouts.
“Do you think Katrina left with the bootlegger?” I said. “Perhaps she was awakened in the middle of the night, came out here to find him, and asked to be taken to the mainland. Why, she might be trying to get a new boat for us at this very moment.”
“Wearing what?” Jonquil said.
No, my theory didn’t explain why Katrina’s clothes had been hung in the tree, but it was as good an explanation for her absence as anything else.
I thought Mrs. Semple would be proud of me for thinking of it.
Instead, she shook her head and said, “I’m afraid that’s impossible.
This crate was already here when we arrived on the island the other day. ”
I almost asked if Mr. Ruggle could have perhaps stopped by the island during the night, but the answer to that lay in the hole at our feet. He wouldn’t have come all this way and not picked up the crate of bottles.
“Then what happened to Katrina?” I said. “Where could she have gone?”
No one had an answer, including me. All we could do was circle the island, hoping we’d find her while knowing deep down that we wouldn’t.
Now, as stars shine over a New Avalon with one less person on it, I can’t shake the terrible thought that, because of her vision and my nightmare, all of us already know what happened to Katrina. We’re just too afraid to admit the horrible truth.
She was taken by Azra.