Diary Entry June 13, 1926—Later
After searching the island all morning, I can only conclude that, like Katrina before her, Jonquil is gone for good.
The loss is devastating, for only now do I understand the vital role she played in our little group here on New Avalon.
Though it pains me to say so, Katrina isn’t nearly as missed.
She was too haughty to truly fit in, too prone to pouting and accusations.
But Jonquil, with her high spirits and easy manner, is different.
Without her, tension and suspicion now rule.
Or maybe it’s just me who feels this way. Mrs. Minafer has said little since Jonquil vanished. In fact, she remained in her cottage, fearful, as Mrs. Semple and I walked the entire island hoping to find some clue as to her whereabouts.
There was nothing.
Not even in the wretched clearing that I now fear to tread. Still, Mrs. Semple insisted we go there after I told her about parts of my most recent nightmare. Like Jonquil before me, I stood on the cusp of the clearing, watching as Mrs. Semple approached a rock that was clean of blood.
“See?” she said. “It was just a harmless nightmare.”
“It was more than that,” I insisted. “I saw Azra murder Jonquil! Only it wasn’t really them. It was—”
Mrs. Semple looked at me then, almost as if she knew what I was about to say. She asked anyway, forcing me to speak the word I was loath to utter.
“Daddy,” I said, the word bursting out in a blast of grief. “I saw Daddy kill Jonquil.”
“Very interesting,” Mrs. Semple calmly said. “Do you really think it was your father?”
I didn’t when I first remembered that part of my nightmare.
I refused to believe it. But time had only sharpened the memory of what I saw, which was Daddy’s dark eyes, his sharp nose, his mouth that always seemed to be curved into a frown.
Even his beard was the same. That thatch of dark bristles that scratched when he kissed my cheek.
Now I know with certainty it was him, even though he’s passed on to be with Mommy.
“I do,” I told Mrs. Semple. “I–I think we summoned his spirit during the séance. And now he’s haunting New Avalon. Haunting me!”
I’d devolved into hysterics by that point.
It couldn’t be helped. I was so scared and so confused that, when Mrs. Semple urged me to join her in the clearing, I acquiesced.
We sat on the rock slab, our legs dangling as I wept against her shoulder.
Eventually Mrs. Semple said, “Sometimes the dead stay with us long after they’re gone.
It doesn’t mean they’re haunting us. It just means that, for one reason or another, their memory refuses to fade. ”
“So I didn’t see Daddy?”
“Perhaps not,” Mrs. Semple said. “It’s possible you saw who Azra wanted you to see. They peered into your thoughts, found your father there, and decided to make it manifest.”
None of this was comforting. First, the idea that Azra could see my thoughts made me want to close my eyes, cover my ears, and shut off my brain entirely. I feared that anything that came to mind could suddenly be made real. Also disturbing was the question of why Azra would do such a thing.
“Why are they tormenting me?” I said.
“I don’t know, my dear,” Mrs. Semple said as she dried my tears. “Hopefully we will find out in good time.”
“And figure out how to stop it,” I added.
We returned to the center of the island after that, where Jonquil’s and Katrina’s clothes remained in the branches of the blackened oak.
I asked Mrs. Semple if we could take them down, but she suggested we leave them there.
In the absence of actual bodies to bury, she said the dresses will serve as tributes to both Katrina and Jonquil.
I see them now through the windows of my cottage.
Two dress-shaped gravestones swaying in the faint breeze that blows off the lake.
Watching them fills me with dread, for I can only assume that another one of us will be taken soon.
It’s only a matter of time. It could be tomorrow.
It could be in the next hour. Unless Mr. Ruggle comes early to bring supplies and pick up the latest shipment of liquor, there will likely be no one here to greet him when he eventually arrives.
No one but Azra.
I shudder now just thinking about the horrible sound of their voice.
So vile and unnatural! It didn’t sound like Daddy at all, which makes me think Mrs. Semple was right about his appearance being an illusion created by Azra.
But if Azra wasn’t Daddy, what are they?
During the first séance, they claimed to not be a spirit.
Yet they behave like one, floating through the night like something foul and evil.
Mrs. Minafer seems to think they are evil, for not long after we returned from our fruitless search for Jonquil, she approached me and said, “Are you a proper Christian, Daisy? Have you accepted the Lord and Savior into your heart?”
I told her that I had, even though Daddy wasn’t religious in the least. We never set foot in a church, even when it was Christmas or Easter. Still, I believe he’s in Heaven right now with Mommy, which is where I, too, will eventually go.
“I’m relieved to hear that,” Mrs. Minafer said. “It might be the only thing that protects you from the evil lurking on this island. That’s what Azra is, you know. Pure evil.”
Yes, I do know that.
A pernicious evil that has descended upon New Avalon.
A darkness deeper than night, blacker than sin.
The Darkness.
That, I understand, is the proper way to refer to Azra.
“I pray that Katrina and Jonquil also walked with Christ,” Mrs. Minafer said. “Otherwise, I fear that they have been dragged to Hell to meet the Devil himself.”
That horrid thought stayed with me as night covered the island and surrounding lake.
Even worse was the idea that maybe I wasn’t as guarded against evil as I had thought.
Didn’t good Christians—the kind Mrs. Minafer assumed me to be—regularly go to church?
Didn’t they read the Bible and say their prayers at night?
Having grown up doing none of those things, I now worried that I was more at risk of the Darkness than Mrs. Minafer herself, despite being told that I would be last.
Not wanting to risk it, I left my cottage and hurried through the black night to the big house, where only Mrs. Semple slept.
It felt so dark outside now that two of the cottages were unoccupied.
Where Katrina and Jonquil once stayed, windows that should have been brightened by lamplight sat dark and lonely.
Nor was there any light spilling from Mrs. Minafer’s windows, making me suspect she was huddled inside, fearfully waiting to see if the Darkness would strike.
I shoved that image from my head and continued on to Mrs. Semple’s house, sneaking in through the front door as quietly as I could. I didn’t want to disturb her, mostly because I worried she’d ask me what I was doing there.
On tiptoes, I crept into the kitchen, opened the cutlery drawer, and removed the sharpest knife I could find.
Blade in hand, I whisked myself back outside into the thickening night and returned to my cottage.
There, I knelt on the floor and spent an hour digging the knife’s tip into the wall, scratching away at the paint, carving swoops and whirls until I had created six petals surrounded by a circle.
A daisy wheel.
Daisy’s wheel.
May it keep me safe from the Darkness for as long as possible.