Island of the Forbidden (11 page)

Chapter Nineteen

Tobe Harper was more than mildly shocked when Jessica and Eddie walked through the front door, bags still over their shoulders. He was just about to show Mitch and Rusty to the library, a room big enough for them to set up their makeshift studio.

“Did Paul tell you?” Jessica asked, letting one of her bags drop to the floor with a resounding thud.

“He's in the kitchen with everyone else,” Tobe said. He noted the dark expression on the girl's face. Perhaps they hadn't underestimated her supposed powers—he could feel it in the change in atmosphere alone—but they hadn't taken her ferocity into account. As much as they needed her, she may also prove to be their undoing.

“Well, your little boat is fried. Actually, it's frozen. So, even if we wanted to leave, other than swimming across the harbor, we're stuck here.”

The boat was frozen? No wonder Paul had shuffled out of the room so quickly, avoiding eye contact. That was a most unexpected development.

She continued, jabbing her finger in his direction to emphasize her points. “Look, this is your house, your island, so I can't tell you what to do. But I can tell you that you are not to film Eddie or me at any point. I'm strictly here for Alice and Jason now. You have no idea what you're doing, and someone needs to keep their welfare in mind. So shoot your documentary, be a hack ghost hunter. Just leave us out of it.”

The sound of heels tapping along the wood floor made her pause. Nina entered the great room, a sandwich in hand. She took a bite, chewing slowly, her eyes flicking between Jessica and Eddie. After she swallowed, she said, “Actually, we do know what we're doing. That's why I was hired by the Harpers to find you.”

“Are you a private investigator or something?” Jessica asked.

Tobe noted Eddie's subtle shake of his head.

Nina's face blossomed into a wide, superior grin. “I guess you could say that's partially true. I believe your friend Eddie has enough pieces to figure out the puzzle. Am I right, Eddie?”

He held onto her gaze as if he was attempting to see into her very soul. Without breaking his stare, he said, “She's like me, Jess. Well, kinda.”

Jessica flexed her fingers, the knuckles popping. She turned to Tobe. “You hired a psychic to find me?”

Tobe cleared his throat. “Not exactly. She came to us with a business proposal.”

Nina interjected, “As you and Eddie know, the dead talk. And let me tell you, girlie, they talk a lot about you. Your money and secretiveness make it easy for you to hide from the living, but the dead can't be bought and you certainly can't escape them, especially when you've had such an impact on their after-lives.”

Daphne came into the room, confused by the gathering. The sound of Paul, Mitch and Rusty's voices, talking and laughing loudly, followed her. Tobe put a finger to his lips. It was best to let Nina take the reins.

“So the spirits told you to trick me into coming here?”

Nina shook her head. “It wasn't quite that simple. Your reputation precedes you. You're looked at as a savior for souls who want to move on and escape the half-alive path of an orbital ghost, if you will. For those who like things exactly the way they are, you're a monster. I've been hearing whispers about you for some time now. Then about three or so years ago, you met Eddie, and what you did together was like an atomic bomb detonating in the transom.” She clapped her hands once, loudly. “And then you disappeared. But what you didn't know is that you've been followed, every minute of every day, and watched. It only took asking the right, ah, spirits to find you and confirm the stories are true. You were merely a fascination until I met the Harpers at a dinner gathering in Savannah with an eccentric entrepreneur that was a common acquaintance. I put them in contact with Daphne's mother who had passed on ten years to the day during a particularly fruitful séance. We've stayed in touch ever since.”

Jessica's chest heaved. Nina's accounting of how things came to be didn't seem to be sitting well with her.

“That doesn't explain how you lied to us to get us on this island.”

“We need money,” Tobe said. He knew he sounded weak, desperate, but it was the truth. If they were all going to co-exist on Ormsby Island, the time for deception was over. “We…we never recovered from the market crash. Failing investments led to bad investments, until the bulk of our accounts was simply gone.”

“That's usually when people get a job,” Jessica spat.

Tobe sighed. “You don't understand. Daphne and I have never worked a day in our lives. I can't see many companies willing to take on a middle-aged man or woman with no obvious skills or work experience.”

“The ironic thing is,” Daphne said, “my brother Paul, who was always looked at as the black sheep of the family, may be the only one that can save us.”

Nina sidled next to Jessica. “You've seen how networks are eating up ghost shows left and right. Even channels that have no relation to the weird or paranormal are filling every slot they can with people running around with night vision cameras. If it's done right, it can make a lot of money. Ormsby Island is the right place. You, my dear, are the right lure. And I'm the right person to put it all together.”

Jessica recoiled as if Nina was breathing onion and garlic in her face. She said, softly, “Bitch, I can't wait until you come to me so scared you'll be begging for my help.” Nina's confident smiled faltered for a moment so brief, Tobe wasn't sure he'd seen her façade crumble at all. “And when I tell you to take a hike, you remember this moment. You want to stir things up? Bad frigging idea. While you play games, Eddie and I will get to the truth here and if you're very lucky, we'll make it go away before it gets its claws into you.”

Jessica snagged her bag, brushing against Nina as she went upstairs. Eddie, avoiding eye contact, went right behind her.

The house suddenly shook, as if it had been pulled up from its foundation and dropped back down again. Tobe's hand met his wife's as she gasped. Paul, Mitch and Rusty came bounding in the great room, eyes like frightened cats.

“What the hell was that?” Rusty cried.

Nina walked about the room, eyes partially closed, arms outstretched, her palms upright.

She said, “That, my friends, is pay dirt.”

When the house shook, Jessica ran to the window at the end of the hall. She breathed a long sigh of relief when she spotted Alice and Jason running in the backyard, laughing and blissfully unaware.

“Eddie, was that you?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Not me.
Them.
I can't tell whether they were upset or happy with your interaction with Nina.”

Jessica threw her bags back into the Blue Room. “This place is a fucking circus. If it comes down to it, I'll take those kids, load them on the boat and paddle my way back to the mainland.”

Eddie grasped her arms. “I think you did a pretty good job throwing down the gauntlet. You also laid out exactly what we have to do.”

“I did? I think I kinda blacked out there for a second.”

“You did. We have to find out exactly what happened here and the names of the children so you can set them free.”

She gave him a soft punch in his chest. “Seeing as we're cut off from the world without access to any records, people or even the internet, it's not going to be easy.”

Out of all the people she had helped come to grips with the paranormal in her life, she had never been blindsided like this. She felt like a chump. Her time away from the field had dulled her senses, clouded her ability to judge people and situations.

But feeling the way the entire house just vibrated, the strange ability she had to fuel EBs hadn't waned one iota.

“Which means we have to fix you,” she said. “Remember the first time I brought you on an investigation?”

“How can I forget? You were being choked to death by that pissed off EB. Of course, you did encourage it to come at you with everything it had.”

Twisting her hair into a ponytail, she said, “Exactly. You were able to grab his name for me so I could send him away. I just need you to do the same thing here, only like a hundred or more times. This time around, though, I won't be the one provoking them.”

“So they'll only be strangling other people.”

“I don't see anything wrong with that, especially if one of them looks like a dime store gypsy.”

They both let out a burst of quiet laughter. It was a much needed release from all the tension they had gathered downstairs.

“Plus,” Jessica added, “we need to find that attic. The EBs didn't point you in that direction for nothing. At least now, I don't have to be polite and ask permission to poke around those locked rooms.” She went into her room, rummaged through one of her bags and came back out to show him her arsenal—several paper clips and a small screwdriver.

“What the heck is that?” Eddie asked.

“My lock picking tools. A house this old, this should be all I need to get in those rooms.”

He plucked the screwdriver from her hand. “Since when did you become a thief? Was this another one of your experiences on the road?”

She took the tool back and stuffed it in her back pocket. “I was bored one weekend and learned how to do it on YouTube. It's easier than you think.”

“Easier than just asking for the key?”

“Think of it as insurance. I'm not sure they're going to play nice with me from here on in. They wanted to use me so I can draw the EBs out, make them strong enough to show up on camera and audio so they can snag some million-dollar deal. Well, shame on me, but they got what they wanted. Now all I want to do is protect those kids and do my best to wreck the Harpers' little plan.”

Chapter Twenty

Rusty nervously stroked his mustache while he filled a folding table with various monitors and cameras. The scene with Nina and Jessica had been ugly. He prided himself on being a lover, not a fighter. Confrontations made him jumpy. The only child of soft-spoken Lutheran parents, he'd always sought quiet corners, happier with silent contemplation than loud parties. His five-year stint in the army had given him enough barking and bellowing to last a lifetime.

“You got everything?” Mitch asked when he entered the library.

He nodded, eyeing the thousands of dollars of equipment, some of it borrowed without permission from the studio where Mitch did contract work. They should be good if they returned it all by Sunday, no one being the wiser.

“I was hoping to charge everything up at once, but the electrical here leaves a lot to be desired. We're going to have to be careful with how much we plug in. If something blows out here, we're screwed.”

When Paul told Rusty on the boat ride over that the place ran on a generator, he'd been less than thrilled. Everything they had required juice—lots of it. Gennies drained easily.

Mitch collapsed into a chair, his girth causing the wood to protest. “We'll do some light filming tonight, then spend tomorrow making sure everything is fully charged so we can go at it hot and heavy. You want any help with that?”

Rusty waved him off. “I've got it. It's better I keep busy.”

He'd known and worked with Mitch on various projects—commercials, a documentary on the Atlanta drought, a couple of music videos by fledgling pop stars that never popped, and even a corporate video on sexual harassment in the workplace. They were both cameramen by trade, though Mitch had directed a few things as well. Rusty liked working with him. The big guy made him laugh and was a consummate pro.

Unfortunately, times were tough and they needed to find a way to jump on a gravy train, any gravy train. They weren't getting any younger. And then came Paul, an old friend from film school, with a plan that had potential.

“Ominous start to things,” Rusty said as he checked a mini dv camcorder.

Mitch blew out a big gust of air, rubbing his belly. “That's what happens when you're surrounded by people who are obviously bat shit.”

“Jessica was pissed, but she seemed normal to me.”

“She's a goddamn ghost hunter, Rusty. That's a little nuts.”

“That doesn't say much for us, agreeing to be part of this.”

Paul rounded the corner and closed the library door behind him. “Hey, sorry about all that, guys.”

“Speak of the bat shit devil,” Mitch said with a hard grin. “Was what that girl said true? Is the boat really frozen?”

Paul waved his concern away. “It's not frozen. The engine just won't turn over. Some water may have gotten into the starter. I'll try it again tomorrow. I'm sure it'll be fine.”

Mitch crossed one leg over the other. “Good. I don't like the idea of being stranded on Spooky Island, or any island for that matter. And if you once refer to Rusty and me as Skipper and Gilligan, you'll have to wear hats to hide the weird shape of your head for the rest of your life.”

Rusty gave a quick snort but kept his eyes and hands glued to the task at hand.

“And what's with that Nina chick?” Mitch said. “I thought you were going to be the lead on this.”

“I still am. But we need Nina to give her psychic impressions, help build the tension. You've seen those shows. Audiences eat that stuff up. The only difference here is, she's the real thing and not some hack.”

Mitch gave a derisive laugh.

Paul took a seat beside him. “No, I'm serious. I've seen what she's done so far.”

Patting Paul on the arm like he was an excitable child, Mitch said, “No problem, Paulie, we all know psychics are real. I agree that having one on the show will help with the theatrics, and that's all that really counts.”

Something had been nagging at the back of Rusty's brain. He had to scratch the itch before it drove him mad. Turning from his mobile control board, he asked, “What made that noise after Jessica and what's-his-name went upstairs?”

Paul shrugged his shoulders. “I don't know. Nina says it was like a psychic sonic boom or something. It definitely wasn't the house settling.”

“Not unless it settled into a sinkhole,” Mitch said.

Rusty said, “So you think this place is really haunted? To be honest with you, I thought we'd have to jazz things up to make this saleable. I know the gruesome history of the island will have networks drooling, but really, what are the odds of catching anything real?”

Pointing at the ceiling, Paul said, “Our ace in the hole is what will tip the odds in our favor.”

Perplexed, Rusty said, “What are they, actors or special effects people?”

“Nina says Jessica is some kind of ghost lure. And Eddie's got something going on too. They can't help but bring them to us.”

Mitch rose from the chair, his back and knees popping. “Paul, I don't exactly know what you and your crazy sister and brother-in-law have concocted, and to tell you the truth, I don't want to know. I'm here to film it, edit it down to just over forty minutes and pitch the fucker. Hopefully you can keep the drama to a minimum so we don't end up with the paranormal Jerry Springer Show.”

I'm not comfortable with this at all,
Rusty thought, turning back to his gear.
There are too many people telling too many lies in too small a place. A psychic sonic boom? What the heck does that even mean? And now we can't even get off the island if we wanted to.

Paul and Mitch left the library, debating about where to start the night's first scene. They closed the door behind them, leaving him to work in silence.

Rusty ran extension cords throughout the room, expecting that blood freezing noise to erupt at any moment. It was going to be a long five days. He wished he'd packed warmer clothes. It was like working in a wintry graveyard.

Bad analogy, Rusty.

He suddenly felt very alone and very, very vulnerable.