Island of the Forbidden (19 page)

Chapter Thirty-Four

“And my aunt wondered why I majored in anthropology,” Jessica said, her head buried in Maxwell and George Ormsby's journal. “I'm finally putting it to use. Eddie, can you bring those other two books over here.”

He laid them side-by-side on the table.

“You found something?” he asked.

She arched an eyebrow. “I think I found everything. I thought I recognized Sir Francis Galton's name.”

“Sounds like an explorer,” Eddie said. He used his sleeve to sop the sweat from his face. Ever since she'd latched onto the secret of Ormsby Island, she hadn't felt the heat at all. Her head was still a bit woozy, but this wasn't the time to pull a fainting spell.

She shuffled through the journal's brittle pages. “Galton was a world renowned anthropologist back in the nineteenth century, though he was a bit overshadowed by his cousin, Charles Darwin.”

“You're talking the
Origins of Species
Charles Darwin, right?”

“There's only one. And just as Darwin became famous for his theory of evolution, Galton gained some initial fame, then infamy, with his own philosophy. It looks like Maxwell Ormsby became infatuated with the man and his theories after a chance invitation to join one of his intellectual discussion groups on the island. From what I've read, he had Galton as a visitor on four separate occasions between 1888 and 1890. They actually became good friends.”

Eddie nudged her with his elbow. “Spill it. What was Sir Galton infamous for?”

“You ever hear of eugenics?”

He shook his head. “Is it like Dianetics?”

She rolled her eyes. “Are you sure you graduated Duke, or did you scare them with your psychic abilities to hand a diploma over?”

Sighing, he said, “Feel better about yourself now?”

Grinning, she replied, “Much. Eugenics is a philosophy dedicated to manipulating the genetics of human beings to create a better, stronger race. You might have heard of an asshole named Hitler who was a very big proponent of the idea.”

“You mean that whole desire to create a master race was eugenics?”

She nodded. “At its worst. Before he took the whole concept to hell, it was seen as a bonafide scientific endeavor. Universities were dedicated to exploring the ideas. Eugenic societies flourished. You have to understand, this is right after the industrial revolution in America. We're a rising super power. A strong people meant a strong country. So what do you need to do to get stronger? Deep-six the weak. And by weak, I mean people who were sick, poor, deemed mentally deficient, thieves, even the blind and gay.

“And how do you weed these people out without pulling a Hitler? Eugenics brought the world genetic screening, which led to forced sterilization, especially among prisoners and the insane, arranged marriages based on perceived genetic matches, segregation, birth control and abortions, whether you wanted one or not.”

“So this Sir Galton was a monster,” Eddie said.

Jessica continued speed-reading, her finger zipping under lines of neatly written text.

“Not exactly. His intentions were pure. Eugenics in its earliest form was just an offshoot of the evolutionary process. If we could evolve from apes by happenstance, just think what we could become if we consciously tooled around with succeeding generations. It took other men to bastardize the whole thing. When you think about it, we're on the cusp of a new wave of eugenics. We use genetic manipulation all the time now to alter crops and livestock, producing heartier versions than the ones that came before. The next step is humans. It won't be long until scientists can manipulate DNA to custom make your baby. You want a boy with brown hair and blue eyes, pony up the fee and it can be done. In our lifetimes, doctors will use in vitro techniques to eradicate genetic defects in fetuses, because everyone wants a healthy baby. That, my friend, is eugenics in spades.”

The book grew fuzzy for a moment and she had to take a calming breath. Despite the cloying heat, her fingertips had turned to ice.

“So Maxwell Ormsby meets Sir Galton and becomes infatuated with the man and his ideas,” Eddie said, pacing. He paused, peering at the stairwell.

“Something up?” she asked.

“Some of them are moving from the room below us. But the rest, they're getting bolder. I can see them on the stairs. They're watching us.” She heard him draw a deep, stuttering breath. He whispered, “Holy shit.
Perfect, not perfect.
”

“What did you say?”

He shook her off, eyes never leaving the spot where EB children stood watching them.

A chilly finger ran down her spine. She was close to unlocking the mystery. Even the EBs could feel it.
Nothing like a little pressure,
she thought.

She continued, “Maxwell sent his only son off to Harvard to become a doctor. George returned to the family estate a year after his father died. At least that's what I assume. There's a year gap between Maxwell's last entry and George's first. He had the same interest in eugenics as his father, except he had the medical background now to take things to the next level.”

“And what level might that be?”

“Experimentation. It says here he fathered six children with two different women, each of them hand selected for their economic and social positions, as well as certain genetic markers he was looking to improve upon. I wouldn't be surprised if there was an abortion or two thrown in the mix.” She read as fast as her brain would allow, a dizzying input of abhorrent facts, a twisted family tree sown with fevered desires.

Names. Give me some names. You had to name your own children, George. Just give them up and I can get them away from this place of pain.

She wasn't sure if it was stress or exhaustion that was weakening her eyes. Words blurred into one another. She asked Eddie to bring her a clean piece of paper and a pencil. He placed them next to her.

“Help me,” she said. “If you spot a name, point it out and write it down. He's talking about six kids here, but I can't tell which is which. He measured every minute detail of their growth. We'll assume Nathaniel is one of them and considering he carried on the family project, we can leave him out of the mix for now.”

Jessica smelled the fading scent of Eddie's cologne as he stood shoulder to shoulder with her. He took the left side of the book while she took the right. When they were done, they'd turn to the next page.

At one point, Eddie flicked his finger on the book. “You were right, there's Nathaniel.”

“Have you seen any grown men within the EBs?”

“No.”

“Then he's not here. Keep looking.”

She didn't mean to be abrupt with him, but she could feel time running out. Just why, she didn't know. What more could happen?

The longer you're here with Alice and Jason, the worse things can get.

She pinched a corner and turned the page.

“Holy crap. Bingo!” she squealed.

A list of six names ran down the page. Next to each was a birth and death date. Only Nathaniel's name didn't have a death date.

“Write those down,” Jessica snapped, fighting back nausea as she added up the dates to determine how old each child was when they passed on. The oldest had been thirteen, the youngest, seven. When Eddie was finished, she scanned the proceeding entries.

Failed experiments.

Because Nathaniel was the oldest son and carried the most traits that George Ormsby deemed acceptable, he was chosen to live and, as had happened to George, ushered off to Harvard to study medicine. How the other children had died wasn't mentioned. What did he do to them? Did he tinker with them like lab rats until he'd gone too far, their bodies and their will no longer strong enough to hold on?

She eyed Nathaniel's closed journal on the table, written in code. He must have taken things further, to a dark, dark place.

She felt Eddie's hand on her shoulder. “George killed them,” he said.

Jesscia had to lock her knees to stay upright. “How do you know?”

He pointed at a bare wall opposite them. “She told me just now. He didn't mean to, but the things he did,” Eddie paused, swallowing hard.

“Who told you, Eddie?”

“She's so little, so pretty, Jess. I can feel her fear of being up here, but she's fighting it. It would break your heart if you could see her.”

His face was as pale as cotton, his flesh pulled tighter over his skull.

She picked up the sheet of paper. “Is she one of them?”

“Yes. All of George's children are up here. They're different than so many of the others. The only word I can think of to describe them is unblemished. Even then, George must have found fault with them. They were somehow imperfect.”

Jessica's heart ached. She had to set the five free. How saying an EB's name broke them from the realm that intersected with the physical world had been a mystery to her, and to Eddie. As far as they could tell, no one had ever displayed such an ability, if you discounted Catholic exorcists that cast demons out of their frail, human hosts by name. She may have been Catholic, but she was no exorcist. And these EBs were no demons. Just children born without love. And what about their mothers? Were they complicit in George Ormsby's grand design, or had something happened to them as well?

She recalled another list she had read in Nathaniel's journal.

Sub 0507 > F > hrng imp

Sub 1112 > F > bld

Sub 0802 > M > men fac

Slamming the covers open on the other two journals, she savagely yanked page after page back, looking for more coded lists. Clarity came slowly, and with it, a repulsion so deep, she wanted nothing less than a scalding shower to wash it all away.

F for female.

M for male.

What's the last line mean?
her inner voice wailed, feeling the desperation to find the final, irregular pieces of a puzzle in danger of being blown to pieces by a fierce, incoming wind.

Hrng imp.

“Come on, Jess, it's only
Wheel of Fortune
. Just buy a vowel already,” she muttered.

Eddie bent closer. “What's
Wheel of Fortune
?”

She jabbed a finger at
hrng imp
. “This. It has to mean something. After George, Nathaniel and Alexander didn't even bother to name their children, at least not on paper. And if the subject numbers are right, they procreated like rabbits on Viagra. What kind of monster doesn't even name his own children? In each journal, they listed their subject number, the closest they would come to a name, sex and then this.” Jessica's heart thrummed in her chest. Her hands trembled with a fresh injection of adrenaline.

Hrng imp.

Hrng imp.

And suddenly it was clear as day, as if Vanna White, out of the kindness of her game show host heart had turned over the missing letters.

“Hearing impaired! That has to be it!” she shouted. “A defect. A reason to terminate the experiment for each subject. Jesus Christ, Eddie.” She felt as though her head and heart would burst. Decoding the other “defects”—
stutter, bad temperament, dyslexia, hyperactive, mental faculties
—she worried that her knees would buckle.

All those young lives, snuffed out for the smallest of issues. Worse still, they were killed by the one person who should have protected them. There should be a word for a father who murders his own grown children. Murderer seemed too kind.

“I'm going to call the ones we have names for,” she said, brushing sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.

Eddie kept his hand on her shoulder. “I'm right with you.”

She looked down at the page, at Eddie's blocky script, at the names of the children who had urged them to this place, to unearth their family's horrible past. Only George had taken the time to give his children proper names. Did that make him less of a monster? No, she hoped there was a physical hell and he was forever trapped in it.

The names blurred through the tears that welled in her eyes. She thought of Angela's baby, her future niece.
Auntie Jess, Auntie Jess!
She loved that child without having seen or heard her or his tiny voice. What if she had been born to George Ormsby? What if she was one of these lost EBs, or what Jason and Alice called the Last Kids? To know she had suffered, not even finding peace in death. It broke Jessica's heart.

Jessica wept as she read the names, the paper shaking in her hands.

“Richard Ormsby, Patrick Ormsby, Peter Ormsby, Anne Ormsby and Elizabeth Ormsby. Come to me. I know you can hear my voice. I can help you.”

A tear splashed onto the paper, washing away Peter's name. Eddie's grip tightened.

“They're coming,” he said.

“You can see them?”

“Yes. The little girl, she was one of them. The other four just walked up the stairs. They're waiting.”

Sniffling, Jessica had to swallow several times to find her voice.

“You can go now,” she said. “Richard, Peter, Patrick, Anne and Elizabeth, I need you to leave this place. You don't need to stay here any longer.”

She thought she saw a flicker of prismatic light up by the eaves. The pressure in the room dropped, though only slightly.

Eddie whispered in her ear, “They're gone. You did it, Jess. They're free.”

She turned into his chest, letting the tears flow. He pulled her close. There were still so many more to go. How could she possibly do this a hundred more times? She wept for them in sadness and thanks that they could finally move on, but also in fear that she wasn't up to the task of saving all of them.

“Where are the mothers, Eddie? With so many children, what did the Ormsby men do to the mothers?” she said, feeling his heart beat against her cheek.

His body suddenly stiffened.