Island of the Forbidden (17 page)

Chapter Thirty

Rusty grumbled to himself as he locked his camera onto a tripod. He used heavy-duty duct tape to secure the three legs to the floor. If things started flying again, he didn't want the expensive camera thrown about.

Paul and Nina were engaged in private conversation, probably talking about what they would say when they resumed rolling. Mitch and Tobe were in the kitchen, getting drinks and some ice for Mitch's eye.

This is insane. I didn't come here to film something out of a B horror movie.

Satisfied that the tripod wasn't going anywhere unless a hurricane blew through the house, he double-checked the charge on all of their equipment. Everything was in working order. He wondered how long that would last.

What's next—floating candelabras?

A thought occurred to him. What if all of this was staged? Mitch seemed awful calm. So did Tobe. Could it be they both had rigged the place, keeping him, Paul and Nina in the dark so they could capture their very real reactions? It almost made sense. Yes, Nina and Paul shouldn't be aware of it because they were on-camera. But Rusty wasn't.
Maybe Mitch realized I wouldn't come if I thought this was all just some hoax.

That had to be it. What was going on here was downright insane. There was no way it was the work of ghosts.

But then, how did they make it so damn cold. And not just in the house?

That would take some thinking.

“You guys almost ready?” he called down to the kitchen.

“Be right there,” Mitch answered.

“How about you two?” he asked Paul and Nina. The psychic had regained her composure but Paul still looked jittery. He kept fiddling with his beard, his fingers working through it like automated knitting needles.

Paul answered, “Yeah, sure. We thought we should start over here, and you could follow us as we walk to the front door.”

“That's doable.” He handed Paul a new, fully charged audio recorder from his shirt pocket. “Here, that other one is toast.”

“Thanks.”

Nina sidled up beside him, smelling of jasmine and sweet spices. “You seem nervous. If you like, I could create a barrier of white light around you to offer protection.”

He peered into her eyes, looking for any trace of sarcasm.

Oh boy, she's serious.

“Do you always do that for yourself before you try to interact with spirits?”

“Of course. Any medium worth their salt knows to protect themselves from the dark.”

Rusty tittered. “Well, it looks like it didn't do much for you before. I'll stick to whatever light I currently have.”

Nina's lip curled and he swore she was going to growl at him. Spinning on her heels with more drama than was necessary, she went back to tending to Paul.

Everyone in this house is crazy, including me for even being here.

Walking the route Nina and Paul would take, he mapped out in his mind where the stationary camera shot would end and the handheld would begin. Mitch and Tobe returned to the great room, talking things over with Paul and Nina. Rusty looked up the winding stairs. He'd forgotten for a moment that there were five more people upstairs, two of them completely innocent, four if you counted Jessica and Eddie. He wondered if it gave the kids comfort, hearing the bustle of adults in the house, even if it might keep them awake. He sure as hell would have preferred it to pregnant silence, waiting for ghostly sounds, if he was a kid.

“Come on, Rusty, let's get the show on the road,” Mitch said.

“Coming.”

Rusty judged where he would stand while Paul and Nina stopped at the door, aware of anything that might be in his way or trip him up.

He turned away from the door, heading to the great room when he saw them.

Three girls, triplets, each of them sharing the same slack expression, jaws partly open, deep set eyes under furrowed brows, stared at him from within the mirror on the foyer wall. They weren't pale or wispy or ethereal in any sense. In fact, their skin was slightly tan, their matching tops printed with colorful flowers. There was something strange about them, whether it was the off-kilter geometry of their faces or the emptiness behind their dull eyes or both, he wasn't sure.
Learning disabled,
he thought. Or when he was a kid in simpler and less sensitive times, people would have said retarded.

He spun, expecting to find three strangers standing behind him.

They weren't there.

Heart galloping, he slowly faced the mirror. Their breath fogged the glass from within. They stared at him with an emptiness that was alien and disturbing.

“Guys, come over here,” he said, finding it hard to push the words out. He wanted to run but his legs ignored him.

Blood rushed to Rusty's head. He was dizzy. He couldn't break their gaze, no matter how much he wanted to.

He reached out to the mirror, his fingertips mere inches away from the cold, flat surface.

“Seriously, I need you all to see this,” he said.

Nina's heels clacked on the bare wood floor.

The girls raised their hands, seeming to reach out for him.

Oh my God, this is real.

His finger pressed against the glass the moment Nina turned the corner. The girls turned their heads in her direction, vanishing before she could see them.

But the condensation of their breath remained on the glass, retracting clouds of spirit vapor that left ice water on Rusty's finger.

“He won't give me the key,” Daphne said. One of her cheeks was heavily powdered. Eddie thought he saw a rose mark at the edge of her jawline. Her red-rimmed eyes were in stark contrast to her alabaster skin.

“Don't worry, we can still get to the attic if you can tell us which room has access,” Jessica said, deftly avoiding whatever had happened downstairs.

“It's across the hall, the second bedroom from the right. There's a door to the left when you go inside. That leads to the attic.”

“Have you been in there before?” Eddie asked, noting the slight tremble in her hands. Cupping her elbow, he led her to the chair positioned between the two beds. Jason and Alice were fast asleep.

She shook her head. “As a rule, I don't like attics. I'm not a fan of spiders and they tend to collect there. Tobe thinks it will add atmosphere to their film. He doesn't want me to spoil it for them. I…I honestly don't understand him at all right now. This is so unlike him.”

They left her staring at a spot on the floor, overcome by her emotions.

“I think he hit her,” Eddie hushed.

Jessica had taken her makeshift lock-picking tools from her pocket and was already at work on the bedroom door.

“I know he did,” she said. “But we have something bigger to do right now.”

They heard Rusty say, “Seriously, I need you all to see this.”

Eddie closed his eyes, let the house and everything in it come to him. When he opened them, Jessica had successfully picked the lock and was turning the knob. “They just made themselves appear to Rusty,” he said. “I get the impression they got a kick out of scaring him. These kids were powerless when they were alive. They're beginning to realize they hold some of the cards now.”

As the door swung open on rusted hinges, Eddie peered inside, pulling Jessica back.

“What's wrong?” she asked.

“They're all in there,” he said.

“Not just the Last Kids?”

“Them and a lot more.”

Eddie waded within their ephemeral bodies, their intent gazes following his every move. Reaching up for a metal cord, he pulled down, filling the room with light. The empty floor and bare walls were covered with a thin, sparkling sheen of frost. Eddie watched as a dragon's breath of rolling clouds of smoke poured from his mouth and nose.

Can you please let us pass through to the attic?
he asked them. Their psychic silence produced a dull tickle that ran across his scalp. He futilely scratched at his temple.

“Holy shit, it's freezing,” Jessica said, close behind him.

“I didn't want you to come in yet,” he said. “It might be a little overwhelming.”

Jessica pulled back her sleeve. Every hair stood at attention. She started to shiver. He watched the EBs float in and out of her, their icy touch sending off every alarm built into the protective systems that had been finely honed over the millennia to keep man and woman from danger.

“Are you all right?” he asked, holding his hand out to her.

She paused, took a breath, expelling it in a mushroom cloud of vapor. “Yeah, I'll be fine. Just trying to get my bearings.”

“That's fight or flight vying for control. Just hold onto me. I'll try to get them to back off.”

He looked into their faces, teens to toddlers, impossibly gathered into the small room. Again, there was an alarming number of children that didn't look right, deformities that made him cringe.
They want to be here when we go in the attic.

Addressing them all, he said,
I just need you to clear a path. If you keep touching Jessica, she won't be able to help you. You want our help, right?

Jessica's teeth chattered. The flesh of her hand had turned the texture and temperature of the grave.

The EBs parted. A narrow path to the door that led to the attic was made for them. Jessica sighed.

“I'm all right now,” she said.

“That's because they're letting you be, at least for now. Be careful how you step. It's icy as hell.”

He helped her to the door where she once again crouched down and worked at the lock. It took a lot longer than the bedroom door. She cursed under her breath. Eddie watched the EBs react, the younger ones recoiling with silent gasps.

“Better watch your language. There are children present. I think you're freaking them out.”

“Sure,
I'm
the one freaking
them
out. This lock is old and probably rusted.” Her fingers worked cautiously. “Don't want to break it. If we have to bust the door in, that'll alert the fools downstairs.”

Eddie felt the EBs' impatience. They were only going to hold back so long.

He knew not to rush her. That would only make her mad and slow things even more.

The spirit children were at his back, pressing closer like hundreds of acupuncture needles stabbing up and down his spine.

Jessica angled the screwdriver high, twisting the unbent paperclip. “Almost there.”

So were the EBs.

Something clicked inside the lock. Jessica gave the knob a hard twist. She had to push her shoulder against the wood to crack the door open.

“Ladies first,” she said, grabbing a flashlight from her pocket and snapping it on, ascending into the darkness.

Paul's stomach roiled and rumbled. He had to stop his on-camera dialogue with Nina twice because he thought for sure he was going to blow chunks. His head pounded with pent up pressure.

Enjoy the guilt. You've earned it.

Tobe watched him with heavy-lidded eyes, ready to pounce should he make an excuse to call it a night.

“No one will come to the island, lest they disturb the unsettled rest of the two dozen children who perished here. Their disturbing deaths were also an end to the Ormsby family line. The people of Charleston made a conscious effort to let the story die with them, a shame so great, they wanted to hide it from the world,” Nina said. She spoke with her eyes closed, hands atop the old, scarred dining room table, “reading” the history of the house. “Paul, I'm seeing something. It's…it's awful.”

He forced himself to feign concern, asking, “What is it?”

“There were two men. No, three. They came to the island looking for help. They were met by two of the Ormsby children. Something about their boat having engine trouble.”

Paul covered his sigh of exasperation with a cough. “Can you see their faces or better yet, get a name?”

Her eyebrows knitted closer. She shook her head. “It's too hard, like watching an overexposed super-8 movie. The Ormsbys took them in, gave them shelter. But there was nothing wrong with their boat. They, they came to…to…”

Nina broke down in tears. Paul looked over to see Mitch grinning behind his camera. Rusty looked pale and just as nauseous as he felt. Whatever he saw in the mirror had rocked him to his core. He hadn't spoken a word since.

They all jumped when a stampede of footsteps came crashing down the stairs behind them.

“What the hell are they doing?” Tobe hissed, dashing out of the camera's view.

Paul knew it wasn't Jason and Alice. Their tiny feet could never create such a thunderous racket.

The footsteps reached the bottom floor, continuing down the hallway and into the dining room. Tobe gave a startled hoot. The furniture vibrated as the horde of pounding feet trampled through the room. Paul jumped from his chair, expecting to be overwhelmed by the unseen charge.

It stopped as suddenly as it began. Paul's heart continued fluttering in tight syncopation with the cadence of the footsteps.

Mitch spluttered, “Holy crap, what was that? Did you get that Rusty?”

Tobe staggered into the room, leaning against the wall. “It went right through me,” he muttered. Rusty pivoted to make sure he captured Tobe's unrehearsed reaction.

“Welcome to Ormsby House,” Rusty said, shutting off his camera and disappearing into the kitchen without another word.

Chapter Thirty-One

Jessica jogged to the top of the stairs, the beam from her flashlight jittering across the walls like a nightclub light show.

“Eddie, it's hot.”

He was more cautious making his way up the ancient wooden steps. When his head was level with the floor, he said, “Now this is summer in the south. Is there a window anywhere?”

She swept her beam around the attic. “Nope. We're going to be sweating our asses off in no time.”

“The EBs won't come up here. That's why it's not like the rest of the island.”

“I think we're going to need more light.”

A dangling chain glittered in the narrow shaft of light. “Now let's hope the bulb isn't blown out.”

It took several tugs for the clear bulb to buzz to life. The tiny filaments sizzled and there was hesitant but expanding light. The attic came into focus.

Jessica's jaw dropped.

“All that's missing is Vincent Price,” she said, filled with a leaden awe.

The attic was a vast space, spanning the width of the entire house. It was crammed with tables cluttered with leather bound books and glass tubes, vials resting in metal holders, pencils used down to their nubs, loose papers, medical supplies and tools both mundane and strange. Two long gurneys sat side by side opposite them with long IV poles. Shelves had been built into one wall, all of them stacked with folded sheets, blankets and surgical scrubs. On a coat rack in another corner hung several long, yellowing doctor's coats, the pockets bursting with rubber gloves and needles.

Along another wall was an enormous mahogany desk and leather chair. Two tiffany lamps were poised on each end of the desk. She walked closer to it, the floor creaking. Again, the lamps worked, casting kaleidoscopic light on the desk. A curling ink blotter was littered with notes and scribbles that meant nothing to her. It was like staring at a foreign language. It reminded her of what her doctors wrote on prescription pads.

“What the fuck is this?” she said.

Eddie plucked an appointment book off the desk, flipping through the brittle pages. “Looks like there wasn't much on the calendar. Just a bunch of numbers on the notes pages in the back.”

She gently touched the wood of the desk, the objects scattered on it, the leather spines of the books as if she could glean their history through the pads of her fingers.

“This looks like a doctor's office or lab,” she said. “Were any of the Ormsbys doctors or scientists?”

Eddie winced, grabbing his head. He shook it off and said, “They were. The EBs won't come here but they're seeing and hearing everything through me somehow. I can't keep them out. When you asked that question, they all screamed
yes
at the same time.”

“It's going to take a long time to find some answers. I mean, look at this place. Aside from the medical stuff, there're enough books to fill a small library. What the hell went on up here?”

Eddie stared at the beakers and glass pipettes. “Nothing good.”

Wiping sweat from her forehead, Jessica said, “So, where do we start? I can take the desk and you can hit that table over there.” She pointed at a folding table that sagged under the weight of books upon it.

Something thumped against the floor. One of the gurneys rolled across the room, coming to a soft stop against the coat rack. There was a squeak of wood as they watched a wooden panel swing away from the wall. Inside were three shelves. A thick book the size of an atlas, held shut with a metal clasp, rested on each shelf.

“Thank you,” Jessica said toward the stairs and EBs below. She picked up the book on the top shelf and carried it to the table under the ceiling light. A haze of dust billowed from the cover when it hit the table. “Looks like it's a good thing you're their closed circuit TV,” she said to Eddie.

“Easy for you to say when you don't have to feel the pressure of dozens of EBs within your own skull.”

“Have you always complained this much?” She gave him a wry smile, in case he thought she was being serious. Eddie grabbed the book on the middle shelf and went to the desk, settling into the overstuffed chair.

There was no lock on the clasp of the book before Jessica. The spine and pages crackled when she opened it.

“I'm almost afraid to look.”

She began to read, the stifling heat of the room fading into the numbness of unreality as she scanned page after page.

What the heck am I looking at?

Then she saw a familiar name scrawled underneath a paragraph written in a shaky hand, the words almost impossible to decipher.

Alexander Ormsby.

An old black and white photograph was tucked into the book. It showed a middle-aged man dressed in surgical scrubs, a pipe in one hand, the other stuffed into a hip pocket.

Is that you, Alexander?

There was no smile on the man's gaunt face, nor in his eyes. He looked like a man…consumed.

Jessica gasped.

He looked as if he could be Tobe Harper's brother. The resemblance was chilling.

She was about to tell Eddie when the house below them became unhinged.

Daphne absentmindedly caressed the cheek Tobe had struck, the skin still prickling and hot to the touch, when the entire house shook. It felt and sounded as if it had been hit by a speeding dump truck.

A glass of water fell to the floor. Daphne reached out for her children who jerked awake.

She heard a scream, and quickly realized it was her own.

Jason and Alice stared at her with sleepy, uncomprehending eyes. They didn't ask her what made the noise or acknowledge the shattered water glass.

“Everything's all right,” she assured them, hearing the high-pitched quiver of her voice and realizing how poorly she was masking her fear.

“I know, Mommy,” Alice said, and turned over in her bed, settling back into the covers. Jason did the same.

Did I fall asleep and dream it? Maybe my scream and the breaking glass is what woke them up.

She bent down to pick up the shards of glass, using Jason's dirty shirt from the nearby hamper to sop up the water.

She had convinced herself that the house's quaking was all in her head when she heard Paul downstairs asking what the hell had just happened. Like her, he couldn't hide the unease in his voice. She wanted to go downstairs but didn't dare leave the children.

So she cleaned the floor, returned to her chair and waited like an expectant sentinel, growing increasingly unsettled the more she thought about Jason and Alice's torpid reaction.

Mitch turned the camera around so he could see the lens. The thick glass was busted. “It's like it exploded,” he said to Rusty.

“Night vision is out on mine,” he said, switching on the powerful light atop his camera. The breakfast room was bathed in harsh light that birthed angular shadows.

Tobe had run outside with a flashlight the moment the house was struck. Once he recovered from the initial shock, Paul joined him.

Nina took a seat, one hand over her chest.

“I thought the whole place was about to explode,” Mitch said. “Christ, I hope we caught all that.”

“It happened right when Nina was taunting them,” Rusty said. He glared at her with bloodshot eyes. “You shouldn't have done that. They're children, for God's sake. Would you talk to a living child like that?”

She swallowed hard, her throat dry. “I only wanted them to show themselves again. Sometimes you have to push the spirits to get them to do what you want.”

“You ever think that maybe they're not here just to do what you want?”

Mitch said, “Everybody calm down. For all we know, a tree just slammed into the side of the house or the furnace backed up.”

“There is no furnace in the house,” Rusty shot back.

They remained under the shroud of an uncomfortable silence until Tobe and Paul returned, both winded.

“There's nothing outside,” Tobe said.

Paul threw up his hands. “That's it, we're done. We're messing with something we don't know enough about. We've obviously pissed the ghosts or whatever off royally. I say we call it a night, a wrap, check the gate, we're done. Tomorrow, I'll swim to goddamn Charleston if I have to.”

Mitch watched his friend lose his shit. Rusty paced in a tight circle, teeth worrying at what was left of his fingernails. Even Nina looked as if she'd been punched in the gut.

You better get their heads out of their asses before the whole thing implodes,
he thought.

He stepped between Paul and Rusty. “Hey, hey, hey, everyone just take a breath. If I'm not mistaken, isn't this what we all came to document? You can't set out to make a dog bark and run for the hills the moment he does.”

Paul pointed at Nina. “You didn't say we'd get anything like this. Maybe some EVPs or an odd shadow. This place is becoming a damn fun house. What did you do?”

Nina leapt from her seat. “What did I do? What did you do? I told you that Jessica would empower the spirits. You wanted her as an insurance policy to make sure we didn't come away with nothing. They're feeding off her like starved parasites. The children aren't making it any easier.”

Paul's expression darkened. “What children are you talking about?”

“Alice and Jason. They have a small part of the same ability as Jessica. It must be too much, like an unchecked circuit. That's why the spirits can interact with the physical world with such force.”

“Did you know about this?” Paul asked Tobe.

Tobe sniffled, the frigid air having turned his nose bright red and watery. “Yes, but whatever they're adding to this is miniscule. Nina assured me of that before we even bought the island.”

“You son of a bitch!”

Paul lunged at his brother-in-law, landing a hard right to his jaw. The tall man went down in a heap, covering his face with his arms. Mitch dove to break them up.

“You all need to stop giving off such negative energy,” Nina shouted.

“Shut up,” Rusty barked.

“Rusty, you're not helping,” Mitch said.

He didn't have time to block Rusty's punch to his midsection, folding him in half. He dropped to his knees beside a wounded Tobe who was trying to cup the blood pouring from his mouth into his palm.