Island of the Forbidden (23 page)

Chapter Forty-Three

Renae waited an entire hour for Nelson to sober up, pouring cups of coffee down his throat until his head cleared and he could walk a straight line without falling down. Six in the morning was not a time of the day he saw very much of.

Since her encounter with the old reporter, she hadn't been able to sleep.

No news is good news. Maybe we were all wrong.

It was true, she hadn't heard anything from the Harpers out on Ormsby Island. But what if that was a bad thing? A very bad thing.

Nelson reluctantly got his ass, and his boat, the bigger one that could seat ten, in gear. Thinking about the Harper's children out there, on an island where horrible things had happened to children in the past, she had to see for herself.

“Maybe we are all wrong,” she said.

“What was that?” Nelson said over the motor.

“Nothing. How much longer to the island?”

Rubbing his eyes, Nelson checked the horizon. “Another five minutes.”

When they got in sight of the island, then closer to the dock, Renae asked, “Do you have a first aid kit?”

True sobriety washed through Nelson. He pointed at a white, metal box.

“Holleeee crap,” he said, pulling up alongside the dock. A man and a woman helped tie it up.

The dock was filled with people, two of them little kids. Renae spotted the Harpers. Tobe Harper leaned against a wood rail, a knife sticking out of his leg. His pants were stained with blood.

There was a body under a sheet. A woman Renae didn't recognize sat by the body, babbling to herself.

“Thank you,” the girl who helped moor the boat said. “If I didn't believe in angels before, I do now.” She was a bottle blond with a very pretty face, but she looked ready to collapse. The same could be said for the crew cut man with her.

“What happened?” Renae asked, her stomach feeling as if molten lead was being poured into it.

“A lot of things that no one will believe,” the girl said.

The woman by the body looked at Renae. “They do kill people. They do!”

The boat cruised across the harbor, putting Ormsby Island in the far off distance. Jessica knew the island would always be there, waiting for her, every time she closed her eyes.

Just remember reuniting the kids with their mothers,
she told herself.
You're going to have to try and forget the bad stuff. Fixate on the good stuff.

It was going to be hard, with so much bad to go around.

She nestled into Eddie. He hadn't said much since they'd left the house, headed for the docks. She knew he'd given her a ton of his own energy to pull her back, to save her life and the souls of all those EBs. He would get better, regain his strength.

“I can't believe Paul is dead,” she said, low enough so no one else could hear her. She especially didn't want the kids to hear. They were already distraught. Having to wait on a dock with their dead uncle's body wrapped in a sheet did little to comfort them.

“Had to be internal bleeding,” Eddie said. “Even if we'd had access to a phone, I don't think anyone would have gotten to the island in time to save him.”

“Eddie, did we kill him?”

He pulled her closer.

“No. It was going to happen the moment he decided to use the island to make a name for himself. He wasn't a bad guy. He just had a bad idea.”

Mitch and Rusty sat opposite them, neither talking. Jason and Alice slept with their heads on their mother's lap. Those poor kids. Sharing Jessica's gift, this wouldn't be the end for them. They could either spend their lives fleeing from the dead, or embrace it.

Daphne was a soldier, refusing to let them see her grieve, not just for her brother, but Jessica was sure the marriage was over as well. Tobe kept to himself, quiet, loggy from blood loss and shock.

Or maybe they could get past this. They would all have to try.

She wasn't sure if Nina would succeed. Because she had a quasi-refined sixth sense, she'd experienced what had happened on a deeper level than most. Eddie said he'd taken a quick look inside her mind and it was a disaster.

“I'm not sure if she can come back,” he'd said. “Maybe, after some time, I can meet with her and find her, try to help her through. For now, she's gone, Jess. Just, gone.”

Despite the guilt and exhaustion, Jessica perked up when she saw Rusty toss a black case over the side.

Mitch didn't protest as his partner threw all of their equipment into the harbor.

“It's better off down there. Maybe the fish can appreciate it,” he said. When he was done, he put his Dodgers cap over his face and slept.

Jessica nudged Eddie.

“I think we better follow Rusty's lead,” she said, eyeing the three plastic bags. Inside each was one of the Ormsby journals.

“You're right,” Eddie said. “Some things are better off unknown.”

Together, they pitched the books overboard. The pilot and the woman, Renae, asked them once what they were doing but let it go at that when they saw no one was willing to explain.

Some things were better left feared and avoided.

With any luck, a storm would wash the island away, along with any hint of its dark and terrible secrets.

They spent a good part of the day at the hospital then the police station. Unfortunately for Daphne, she had to bear the brunt of the questioning. While Paul was taken to the morgue, Tobe was admitted to the hospital, as well as Mitch for the slashes on his body and Nina for a psych evaluation. While there, they learned that the knife had been removed from Tobe's leg and he would be all right. Mitch was quickly released and brought to the station for questioning.

Daphne made it a point to absolve Eddie and Jessica from all blame. Paul died from a fall, an accident. While on the boat, Tobe and Daphne had secretly concocted a story about his accidently stabbing himself with the carving knife, falling on it in the kitchen when he heard Paul go down the stairs.

The police weren't buying it, but no one else was refuting the story. No one wanted to see little Alice go through one second of questioning. They needed to heal, to grieve. Rusty had talked a blue streak in a reverse sort of interrogation. Finally, the police gave up under his barrage.

“If you want, we can catch a late flight to New York now,” Eddie said as they entered the hotel, the place where the whole madness had started. The air conditioning was overwhelming. Since the EBs had left, she had savored the summer heat.

Jessica and Eddie parted ways with Rusty, Mitch, Daphne and the kids outside the station house. Daphne would be staying in Charleston until everything had been cleared up. She had a very good lawyer friend who promised to take care of everything.

“No one can know what really went on out there,” Jessica said. “If they find out, the place will be crawling with people. As long as the Ormsby's are out there, no one should step foot on the island.”

Daphne said, “I promise, no one will know.”

It seemed like months, not days, since they'd last been at the hotel.

“As much as I'd like to put Charleston in the rearview mirror, I need some real sleep before I get on a plane. And some food. Wait here while I check us in,” Jessica said to Eddie.

While waiting for her room key, she watched a young mother help her toddler walk across the lobby carpet, the little girl's hands holding steadily to her mother's index fingers. The girl took one wobbly step after another, until mom scooped her into the air.

Jessica thanked the desk clerk and pointed at their bags. “Can you have someone bring them up, please?”

“Of course.”

She tapped Eddie with the little white card envelope. “Come on, our bags will be right behind us.”

They took the elevator in comfortable silence.

The elevator pinged and the brushed steel doors opened. She followed the wall directions down the hall to their right, searching for room 507. When she got to the door, she turned to Eddie.

“Just this once, can you please look into my head and tell me why I keep doing this?”

He smiled. “I don't need to go that far. You do it because you're curious. You do it because you're brave. You do it because you care. You do it out of love, both for the memory of your father and for the people you help.”

Jessica said, “I thought we were a mess when we were together, that we made things worse. Don't get me wrong, we're still a mess, but a little less than when we're apart.”

Slipping her hand around the back of his neck, she pulled his head down and kissed him. It was short, soft, with the promise of more to come.

She gasped when Eddie scooped her into his arms, nearly dropping to a knee because he was still weak as a puppy. “The bags can wait.”

She moved the Do Not Disturb sign from the inner door handle to the outer, swinging it closed.

About the Author

Hunter Shea is the author of the novels
Forest of Shadows, Sinister Entity, Evil Eternal, Swamp Monster Massacr
e and
The Waiting
. His first thriller,
The Montauk Monster
, was named one of the best reads of the summer by Publisher's Weekly.
Hell Hole
, his ode to weird west fiction, was listed as one of the most anticipated reads by The Horror Bookshelf. His obsession with all things horrific has led him to real life exploration of the supernatural, spending nights on The Queen Mary and communicating with the spirit of The White Lady at the Union Cemetery. An avid cryptid enthusiast, he's exceedingly proud to tell everyone that his novel
The Montauk Monster
is on display at the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, ME.

A lifetime New Yorker, he lives with his wife and children and vindictive cat. His daughters are even starting to get into the family business, both writing and drawing and helping dole out the horror. You can follow him at
www.huntershea.com
for weekly posts, reviews, video podcasts and everything else under the blood moon.

Look for these titles by Hunter Shea

Now Available:

Forest of Shadows

Evil Eternal

The Graveyard Speaks

Sinister Entity

Swamp Monster Massacre

The Waiting

Hell Hole

Coming Soon:

The Dover Demon

How can you escape the ghost of yourself?

Sinister Entity

© 2013 Hunter Shea

The Leigh family is terrified. They've been haunted by the ghostly image of their young daughter, Selena. But how can that be, when Selena is alive and well, and as frightened as her parents? With no where else to turn, the Leighs place their hopes in Jessica Backman, who has dedicated her life to investigating paranormal activity. Accompanied by a new partner who claims to able to speak to the dead, Jessica will soon encounter an entity that scares even her. And a terror far worse than she imagined.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Sinister Entity:

This was the way it always started. Your body reacts faster than the mind can comprehend and a person with experience learns never to ignore what the hairs standing at attention on your arms are telling you. The house was quiet, had been deathly silent for the past three hours. Silent, dark and empty.

Jessica Backman was about to move from her position at the end of the bed and head to the hallway when she felt the first prickles of gooseflesh break out across the back of her neck, until every follicle on her scalp was tingling with anticipation. The sharp whine of a monitor went off in the living room below and stopped suddenly, as if smothered by someone or something that didn't want its presence to be known. Jessica's heartbeat started to race as the first jolt of adrenaline raced through her system. She had to force herself to inhale slowly from her mouth to dampen the noise of her own breathing in her head. Here, in the dark, her sense of hearing was the primary tool in her arsenal.

She carefully clicked her penlight on, shining it onto her notebook so she could mark the time.

2:36am – Living Room EMF/Trifield alarm…short burst…goosebumps…not alone

Craning her neck, she could just make out the empty driveway. Sometimes clients made surprise visits in the middle of the night, ultimately throwing a fat monkey wrench in the works. Unless they walked from Bedford to Bronxville, an almost thirty mile distance, the McCammon family was not the cause of the sudden change in the atmosphere. Jessica sat as still as a stone, waiting.

Pap.

Just outside the bedroom door, a slight tap, like the sound of a pebble bouncing off the carpeted hallway. The night vision camera sat on a tripod in the corner of the room, pointing at the doorway. If something had fallen onto the floor, the camera would hopefully have captured it. Jessica waited for more. She could feel the building tension now in her chest and head. It was as if the house was gathering its strength, building and building until the air was redolent with static electricity and the pressure in her ears was ready to pop.

The sound of scratching on the walls, like a large determined cat trapped between the rafters, wafted throughout the house. Jessica couldn't tell where it originated from, and it stopped the moment she rose from the bed and took her first step to the door. She paused, waiting a few moments for it to resume, then continued into the hallway. Leaning forward over the steel banister, she looked down into the living room and adjoining dining room.

Everything was as she had left it. Earlier in the night, she had placed glow-in-the-dark masking tape around the perimeter of each piece of furniture, as well as the framed pictures on the walls. The glowing yellow squares, circles and rectangles gave the dark living room the appearance of an alien landscape found in the ocean depths, populated by sleeping, iridescent sea creatures. She had tacked down tape around all of the moveable objects so she could easily see what had shifted from its proper place during the course of the night. By virtue of being alone, she was assured that no one else could disturb the contents of the house.

One of the drawers in the kitchen could be heard slowly sliding open. Jessica darted down the stairs and into the kitchen, careful not to bump into anything along the way. This was her seventh night in the McCammon house and she had taken great pains to memorize every detail of the layout.

The middle drawer to the left of the sink, where the McCammons kept their odds and ends, was halfway open. Jessica took a picture of the open drawer with her digital camera, shielding her eyes from the flash. A quick breeze whispered past her back in the kitchen. She had closed every window and door five hours earlier, sealing them shut with special tape so any manipulations by passing air could be eliminated. She shivered, more from the tightening of the tension in her body than the temporary icy gust that crept around her.

She looked once again at the drawer, the exposure of its contents mocking her, daring her to find the secret hidden within the walls of the Tudor house.

One of her Trifield meters in the upstairs bathroom squealed for several seconds before tumbling to the floor. She heard the plastic device smack the hard, unyielding tile, bouncing twice before settling to a standstill. The Trifield meter was used to measure changes in electromagnetic, electric and radio/microwave fields. She wasn't entirely sold on its efficacy, but it was the best of the limited lot available to paranormal research. And now she was down one.

“Oh, I see,” Jessica said aloud. “You want to play your games, just not with me. Can it be that you're afraid of a nineteen-year-old girl? I'm all alone and I have all night. In fact, Kristen and Tim and the girls left the house to me all weekend, so I have nothing but time.”

Jessica's ears popped a split second before she saw the couch in the living room move a few inches to the right. The legs of the couch scraped across the hardwood floor and the EMF meter on the table next to it wailed like a siren.

She decided to coax the presence in the house a little further.

“Moving furniture in other rooms doesn't impress me. You did that once before and I was bored then.”

Slam!
The kitchen drawer shut itself with enough force to crack the wood face.

Jessica considered the intensity required to do such a thing. This was new. The EB was either getting stronger or angrier…or both. Good.

She pulled her digital recorder from the custom designed leather holster around her waist and clicked it on. Even though there were more cameras down here, one in the kitchen and two in the living room, she wanted every piece of equipment she had at the ready to record her observations. She had also placed IR lights around the room to expand the scope of her cameras. IR lights boosted the distance her cameras could record in night vision mode.

“Kitchen drawer just closed so hard, the wood cracked. Time is two-forty-eight a.m. I dared the EB to be more demonstrative and it's taking up the challenge. The air smells funky, like burning wires. No signs of smoke.” She stopped. Something started tapping on the walls around her.

Tap-tap,
pause
, tap-tap-tap,
pause
, tap.

Jessica continued, using meditative breathing exercises to calm herself, “I hope I caught that. It's tapping out in a sequence.”
Tap-tap
. “Two taps, followed by three, then one. I'm not sure if it's some form of Morse code or the beat to a song or what. It just keeps tapping, and the burning smell is getting stronger,” she whispered into the audio recorder. Then, much louder, “Are you trying to tell me something? If you speak into this recorder in my hand, I may be able to hear you. What does the tapping mean? Or are you just trying to scare me?”

A heavy rumble shook the floor beneath her feet.

Tap-tap-tap
.

Tap.

Tap-tap.

Jessica put the recorder close to her lips. “I'm going to have to check the outlets. The burning smell is getting intense. Something —
whoa!”

The recorder was knocked from her hand and skidded across the linoleum floor. The hand that had been holding the recorder felt like it had been dipped in a tub of ice. She gave it a few sharp shakes to halt the pins and needles sensation that followed.

The house was once again silent and the darkness seemed to intensify. Even though her eyes had acclimated to the night, she was finding it harder to make out the shapes of the furniture around her. It was as if a heavy, black gauze had oozed throughout the house like an obsidian blob.

She took a few tentative steps towards where she assumed her digital recorder lay. The air itself was heavy and she knew she was far from alone. She fought hard to fight back the tingling dread that threatened to dance up her spine. A part of her was sure that something was very close behind her. Silently, it approached with arms wide open, edging closer with each deliberate step. If she were to turn around now, she would come face to face with all of her worst nightmares brought to life.

If only she dared to take one simple peek.

In the dark.

So close she could feel the ripples of its intrusive essence caressing the back of her neck.

Jessica stopped when she reached the threshold of the dining room and closed her eyes. She felt like a blind person in a crowded room of silent guests, no one daring to breathe lest they reveal their presence to the woman in their midst, yet eager to pounce if she gave the slightest inkling that she was aware of their proximity. Her heart skipped a beat as she breathed deep. The fight or flight instinct was battling for control. Her body was in the throes of the primal, physical ache to flee. It would be so easy to run now. The front door was only twenty feet away. Just turn a couple of locks and she could be outside.

The floorboards creaked behind her, a slight groan of wood protesting the weight of a single, heavy footstep.

Three more breaths. Her heart rate slowed to a steady rhythm.

Another creak, this time to her right, near the breakfront.

Jessica smiled and she felt the tension release its grip from her shoulders.

Breathe in, hold, breathe out.

Something hard and small smacked into the glass top of the coffee table.

Breathe in, hold, breathe out.

The sound of glass under stress, spider cracks crunching their way across the surface of the table.

Now!

Jessica turned quickly and shouted “Boo!”

The coffee table top exploded in a shower of glass pebbles as she faced the empty darkness behind her. Bits of glass bounced harmlessly off her leather jacket. A picture frame flew from the fireplace mantle and crashed into the opposite wall. All of the kitchen chairs slid out from under the table at once, one of them falling completely backwards. Jessica turned back towards the living room in time to see the blinds on the front window part as if someone ran a finger from top to bottom. Upstairs, it sounded as if a brawl had broken out. The ceiling fan shook under the pounding of footsteps and falling objects.

The house was alive and it was not happy.