Island of the Forbidden (21 page)

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Mitch grabbed under Jessica's armpits to keep her from face-planting on the floor. “Daphne, I need a little help!”

The door to the children's room flew open. A hand flitted to Daphne's mouth.

“What happened?”

“I don't know. Those damn ghost kids appeared and she passed out from fright, I guess.” He gestured with his head down the hall. Daphne barely contained her shriek when she spied the gathering of dead Ormsby children.

“Help me get her inside,” he said.

Unable to tear her eyes from the silent children, she grabbed Jessica's ankles and helped Mitch get her on one of the children's beds. Jason and Alice sat on the other, staring at Jessica.

“Don't forget the books, Mommy,” Alice said.

“Books? What books?”

“The ones Ms. Backman found upstairs in the bad place,” Jason said.

The flood of questions threatened to overwhelm her. Alice pointed outside the door. Daphne tilted her head in that direction and saw the three large books spilled on the floor.

“She thinks she needs them,” Alice said.

“I'll get 'em,” Mitch gruffed, clomping into the hallway. He paused as he bent to pick them up, his gaze locked down the hall. Daphne was too afraid to poke her head out and see for herself. She'd never imagined something so terrifying.

“Are they still there?” she asked meekly.

He nodded, licking his lips.

“Please, just come back in.”

Gripping the books, he slowly stepped sideways into the room, as if breaking his gaze would cause the children to swarm the hall. He shut the door, dragging a chair and jamming it under the knob.

Looking down at the feeble barrier, he rubbed the back of his neck, muttering, “That won't keep them out. They're not even real.”

Alice and Jason stood over Jessica, pushing stray locks of hair from her face with tender strokes from their fine-boned fingers.

“She's just tired,” Jason said.

“Like us,” Alice added.

Daphne ran her fingers through their downy hair. “Yes, she's just very tired right now. Why don't we let her sleep?”

What she wanted to do was throw cold water on Jessica's face, anything to bring her back. She found it difficult to believe that Jessica had fainted at the sight of ghosts. If it had been Nina, she would have understood. But Jessica was different. She and Eddie were all they had now. It was hours until daylight and with no working boat, there was nowhere to go. Not that she thought she had the courage to walk past the eerie children at the end of the hall and face God knows what that was waiting for them in the rest of the house or the cold, darkened woods. They would have to wait it out, and hope that Eddie could figure a way to stop the madness that had taken hold of the island.

She jumped at the sound of a revving motor. A metallic sputtering echoed throughout the house, the sound of steel breaking down, becoming undone.

The lights flickered, then died.

“The generator,” she whispered in the darkness.

Reaching out for Jason and Alice, her hands swooped through cold, empty air.

“Jason? Alice?”

The hinge to the door gave a light squeak. The children had gone.

Paul groaned, turning his head slightly. His breathing had been so shallow and thready.

Nina heard the generator's last gasp and felt the first trickle of true fear pour down her back when the lights went out. She'd never been afraid of the dark, not even as a little kid.

But she'd never been in a place like Ormsby House before, where the dark held its secrets and a multitude of angry wraiths, eager to lash out at the living.

“Tobe!”

His voice, heavy with irritation, came from far off. “I know. I'm checking it now.” A door opened and slammed shut.

Her hand brushed Paul's beard. The flesh of his face was cold and clammy. It reminded her of her grandmother's wake, when she'd taken her gram's hand in her own, feeling the certain chill of death.

Something creaked on the stairs. Her shoulder rose up, as well as every hair on her body. Her hands and feet became numb. Staring into the darkness, she held her breath.

Jason and Alice slipped through the lone shaft of moonlight that penetrated a crack in the great room blinds. Nina exhaled, an uncontrollable rush of shivers galloping through her body.

“You shouldn't be down here,” she said to them, teeth chattering.

They didn't answer. She listened to their bare feet as they padded away from her with a slow, benumbed gate. “Where are you going? It's not safe in the dark.”

Where was their mother?

She rose to go after them.

The wood stairs groaned. She said, “Daphne, I just saw Jason and Alice go by.”

Nina looked to the stairs, jumping back with terror, tripping over Paul's prone body and slamming her head onto the floor.

Dozens and dozens of children appeared from thin air. They gathered round her, dead, vacant eyes with black holes for mouths.

“You won't take us to Father,”
they hissed, a barrage of tiny voices dipped in decades of cooling revenge.

“No! No!”

She tried scooting away on her back, legs pushing as hard as they could, the pain in her head threatening to bring down the curtains. Her shoulders bumped into something solid.

Looking up, she saw two teenage boys glowering down at her.

It can't be! They're not alive! I shouldn't be able to feel them
!

Several pairs of hands grabbed her legs, pulling her closer to the horde of angry spirit children.

“Get off me! Stop touching me! Leave me alone!”

“You won't take us to father.”

They clawed at her clothes, her hair, her neck, her limbs. No matter how hard she struggled, she couldn't escape their icy grip. She screamed, the howl dying in her throat as a small fist that tasted of sweet, pungent gangrene, forcefully worked its way into her mouth.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Eddie found the three graves not by the meager light of his cell phone but the unearthly pull of the demented souls interred within. He stood over the hidden graves, nauseated by what he had to do next.

Kneeling into the soft earth, his head snapped toward the house when he thought he heard a scream. All of the lights were out.

“Gotta make this fast.”

When he'd first psychically gone to visit the graves, he'd detected no hint of the spirits of the Ormsby men. But that was before he'd started to regain control of his abilities. He wondered if he was siphoning off of Jessica as much as the poor Ormsby children, over a hundred lost souls born without a name. Or maybe the dead bastards simply wanted to be here to watch the show.

This time would be different. He knew now exactly who had been buried behind the old mansion: George, Nathaniel and Alexander. Three men who had insulated themselves from the world, so convinced that they were onto creating a new dawn for their family and, ultimately, mankind, that they couldn't bear to rest eternally far from their life's work. The patriarch, Maxwell, a man who was the first to be intrigued but not driven by the new eugenics philosophy, was buried elsewhere, perhaps the town of his birth. Eddie could feel his son, grandson and great-grandson lurking about, keeping to the shadows, lest their strengthening children should find them. Old Maxwell's spirit was nowhere near this place, perhaps disgusted by what had become of what was once a cherished family name.

Eddie lay on his back and closed his eyes, feeling the fingers of death brush against his spine. “Nathaniel Ormsby! Alexander Ormsby! Come!”

He felt their curious presence, stepping closer, furtive yet fearless of the strange man who had disrupted their island.

“Come!”

He couldn't let them retreat.

They whispered through the trees surrounding the graves, keeping low to the ground, out of sight.

Closer.

Come on, come on.

When they were close enough, Eddie unleashed a mental net, snaring them within.

“Got you!”

He threw his mind wide open, plunging into a deep, dark well, clutching at the writhing souls of monsters. Stomach lurching into his throat, he fell, flipping and twisting until coming to rest within Nathaniel Ormsby's coffin.

Despite the total absence of light, Eddie could see the ages-eaten corpse's smile, black worm lips pulled over browned teeth. Decades of decay had run riot since his first visit in the Ormsby graves. The madness that had gripped these men and fueled their sick desires, even into death, was coming undone.

“Where were you ninety years ago? Things could have been much different,”
Nathaniel Ormsby said with a voice that sounded as if he were gargling rocks.

Eddie wasn't going to be pulled into any discussion with the Ormsby monsters. He'd come for one thing only. If he let them play with his emotions, he could be lost. How many children had Nathaniel and Alexander bred for their experiments? How much blood was on their hands?

“Where are the women who bore your children?” he demanded.

“I had no children,”
Nathaniel gurgled.
“Only failure. No matter how hard I tried, only failure.”

Another voice, a memory, whispered,
“Perfect, not perfect.”

“How many women did you bring here? Who were they? What did you do to them?”

Nathaniel Ormsby laughed, a horrid cackle that chilled Eddie's psychic essence.

“Why would you care so much about cattle? I looked for the finest stock, and they gave me runts. Every last one. I hope those cunts are burning in hell.”

Eddie never wanted to strangle someone before, alive or dead. If he could, he would tear Nathaniel's corpse to pieces while doing his damnedest to shatter what was left of the madman's life energy. If it meant destroying himself in the process, so be it.

Stop it, Eddie. That's what he wants.

He slipped into Alexander Ormsby's coffin. The old corpse regarded him with dripping, milky eyes.

“You won't get what you want from me,”
Alexander said.
“Buried and burned, buried and burned. Buried and burned.”

He'd gone completely mad before he'd taken his life, before he'd burned his children to death. It would be impossible to glean a coherent thought. It was painfully clear to see that there was nothing he could say to make the dead man expose his secrets. If only he'd been stronger.

“Buried and burned. Never find them. Never. Buried and burned.”

The Last Kids. How they must have suffered in those final agonizing moments. And here was this fucking creature who called himself a man, singing about their demise as if it were a nursery rhyme. Alexander and Nathaniel, and even George, they were the
bad man
. Their power coursed through the island like a blood-borne disease. But it wasn't incurable! Eddie and Jessica had been lured here to put an end to this.

Perfect not perfect.

Their mothers. Where were their mothers?

A soothing warmth came over Eddie as he realized the only way to shock both dead men to telling him what he needed to know. He tunneled through the earth, slipping through his own body and into the night.

It was time to be a shepherd.

Jessica awoke in darkness. She startled when a man's voice said, “Thank God you're awake.”

She looked across to where the voice had come from.

“Are you all right?”

A bright flash of pain went off in her head like a bottle rocket. It was Mitch. Why was she in a room with Mitch?

“Yeah, I think so. Where is everyone?”

“I don't know. When the lights cut out, the kids walked out of the room. Daphne went after them. You were out cold.”

She swung her legs off the bed. Her legs gave out when she tried to stand up. It was an effort to even breathe. What the hell happened to her?

“Where's Eddie?”

“I have no idea. I haven't seen Rusty in a while, either. All I do know is that I'm not leaving this room. No fucking way.” Something hard and heavy smacked into his hand. “If anyone tries to screw with me, they're getting the leg of this bed over their head.”

Struggling to talk, she said, “Mitch, what's on this island can't be hurt by you. They're already dead. You can't kill them twice.”

Snorting, he said, “I can make them
think
twice before touching me again.”

“You have to put that down. You'll hurt someone, if not yourself.”

“No fucking way.”

Summoning up the few stores of energy she had left, Jessica managed to get to her feet, holding onto the bedpost for support. She had to get out of this room. For all she knew, Mitch would bash her head in if he heard the mattress settle. The man was wound tighter than a banjo string.

“Where are you going?”

“To find Eddie and the kids. Promise me you'll stay here. I don't want to think about you running around the house with your little bat.”

The bed creaked under his shifting weight. “I told you, I'm not leaving here, at least until the sun comes up. Then I'm getting the hell out of here, and I don't care how.”

She took a shuffling step, leaning forward into the wall to keep erect. Bearing her shoulder against the wall, she slowly made her way out the door, sitting on the top step and taking them one at a time. Daphne cried out for the kids on the first floor, her voice faltering, desperate.

Come on, Jess. Slide down another step. That's it. Now the next.

She wished she could say she was getting stronger, but in fact it was becoming more and more clear that her body was shutting down.

Perhaps for good.

Chapter Forty

Alice stumbled in the dark. Her brother's hand snagged the sleeve of her heavy, wool night dress, keeping her from falling.

The bad man was in the house. The Last Kids had warned them about the bad man when they put them in that swirly wind. Hadn't they? It seemed like something she had known all along, yet for some reason, this was the first time she'd actually thought about it. She was so sleepy. She knew she was walking, but it felt like a dream, as if she would float above the floor if she willed it.

“Over there,” Jason whispered in her ear, tilting her head to the kitchen.

They'd passed Nina and Uncle Paul, who'd been sleeping. It was weird that he was sleeping on the floor and not in his room. And why was Nina sitting by him?

She wasn't important. Neither was Uncle Paul.

As long as the bad man was here, nothing else mattered. The other adults couldn't see the bad man. Only she and Jason had the gift of special sight. The bad man had been right there, with them, the entire time.

They had to make him go away. He was hurting everyone, just like he did the Last Kids.

There was enough light in the kitchen to see by and avoid bumping into the table. The back door was open. Jason and Alice turned in unison to the butcher block, gravitating to the big knives they were told never to touch. The metal blade sung a high, short tune when it was extracted from the metal holder. Jason handed one to Alice. It had a long, curving blade, the one their mother used to cut vegetables.

Jason took the one that was a big, sharp rectangle. She'd watched her mother cut through rib bones with it or quarter a chicken.

“Out there,” Alice said softly.

They stepped onto the back patio.

To their right was a type of shed, the place where the generator was kept. The tall picket door was open. The bad man was in there.

She looked over and saw the Last Kids standing by the shed's entrance, an affirmation that she was in the right place, doing what was necessary. Jason gripped her hand, taking a steadying breath.

They stopped when the bad man emerged from the shed. He had a face she'd never seen before. Balding, with a large, bulbous nose, ears that came out too far from his liver spotted skull, a loose sack of skin hanging from his neck.

“What are you doing out here?” the bad man asked. His initial surprise was replaced with a cold sneer, his voice somehow changed. “You don't belong here. I exterminated you! Get away from me!”

Alice's stomach seemed to go all soft, like it did when she was sick. She knew it wasn't from fear of the bad man. It was something else. Something the Last Kids hadn't told her about. More than anything, she just wanted to lie down. But she knew she couldn't, not now.

Alice felt the cold steel in her hands and braced her arm. If the bad man came any closer, she knew what she had to do.

They were everywhere.

Jesus. How much were they drawing from Jessica and the kids to manifest like this? If he didn't stop them now, they could very well kill them.

Floating above the trees, able to view every inch of Ormsby Island, Eddie called out to the EB children.

“Help me,”
he pleaded.
“I can make the pain stop. I need your help.”

Heads turned upward in wonderment. They considered him, but were far from convinced. He projected an image of the “perfect women” who had followed his every move back in Connecticut.
Perfect. Not Perfect.

“They sent me to find you. You are all perfect. Follow me.”

He slowly descended, spying his body, breathing softly, atop the graves. The sight gave him a chill so deep, he saw it shake through his seemingly sleeping body.

Eddie looked around. The children came from every direction, some holding hands, in various stages of development and decay. For a man who dealt with the dead all of his life, the sight would haunt him until his own last breath.

They stopped short of the cleared area for the graves.

“Don't be afraid,”
he said.
“They can't hurt you anymore.”

The EBs hesitated, considering him with nickel-plated eyes.

“But you can hurt them.”

Rusty felt the pressure at his arms and legs disappear. Still, he kept his eyes closed, not daring to move. He was so cold. He was sure he'd never be warm again.

A lone voice shouted in the distance.

Rusty slowly opened his eyes.

Thank God, he was alone!

The children had left him, though he could still feel their icy hands, frostbit impressions on his flesh.

Someone was screaming.

Rusty scrambled to his feet, deciding whether to run toward the voice coming from the diseased Ormsby House, or to the relative safety of the docks.

Put this shit behind you, Russ. This isn't your fight anymore.

He started at the path to the docks, sighed, and started running.

Daphne moved as fast as she could in the dark, calling out for her children. Her knee smashed into the side of the library door. She spun once, catching her other foot on the edge of the throw rug, and fell into the andirons. She cried out in pain as her back whumped on top of the unyielding iron.

“Jason. Alice,” she sputtered.

When she'd first come down the stairs, she'd stumbled upon Paul, resting under a blanket. She'd checked his breathing to make sure he was in fact alive and pulled herself away from him. He sounded terrible, like he was drowning. She had to find Jason and Alice.

Why did they leave? They hadn't been right since Jessica and Eddie found them earlier. It was as if someone or something had snatched their souls, leaving organic automatons behind.

And where was her husband? Or Nina and Rusty? Had they been intentionally separated, easy pickings for whatever curse lived on this island? She wished to hell she'd never heard of Ormsby Island. Better to live in poverty than die trying to regain something as meaningless as money.

The library doors slammed shut with a loud bang.

Daphne jumped to her feet, pulling at the doors.

They wouldn't budge.

She pounded her flat hands against the doors shouting, “Let me out! Alice! Jason! Somebody let me out!”