Island of the Forbidden (20 page)

A heavy thump below their feet startled her. She heard Nina's voice rising, then shouting in the hall. Jessica broke from Eddie's embrace.

“Grab the books,” she shouted, running down the stairs, the frigid press of EBs enveloping her as she headed for the cloying center of the maelstrom.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Daphne watched in wide-eyed horror as the door's handle slowly turned. Something clicked within the old lock and the door opened with a long whine.

The sound of heavy objects breaking and being thrown about clamored down the hallway. She leapt out of her chair, questions as to how a locked door magically unlocked itself never entering her mind. The men were shouting and the house vibrated, a symphony of destruction that sounded like the end of the world.

She went as far as the hallway, not daring to let her children from her sight; her children who remained impossibly asleep.

Paul came flying up the stairs as soon as he heard the commotion.
Jesus, the kids are up there!

He had to make sure they were okay. Daphne may not be his biggest fan at the moment, but she was blood, just as Alice and Jason were blood. Somehow in the midst of all of their dreams at replenishing their family fortune with a get rich scheme on the back of the masses' current obsession, he had forgotten that. He wouldn't go so far as to think he'd been possessed by the house. That would have been strangely comforting, to know that forces outside himself had directed all of his ill-formed actions.

No, the problems came from within his soul, his own personal greed being the entity whose voice had drowned out all others.

“What's happening up there?” he shouted, taking two steps at a time.

Something heavy banged into the wall to his right. He skittered away from the wall, nearly losing his footing.

He froze two steps from the landing.

A crowd of children, none older than ten, had gathered at the top of the stairs, blocking him from getting to Daphne and the kids.

“N—no,” he stammered, his bladder hitching, mouth gone dry as a Nevada summer.

There was a luminosity to them, but they appeared as flesh and blood children. Seven, eight, a dozen tow-headed boys and girls with accusing eyes and slack jaws. Bodies were twisted near the breaking point, limbs half-formed, all symmetry lost. They didn't speak, didn't move. It was if they were daring him to take another step.

“Please,” he said. “I just want to see my niece and nephew.”

His heart tom-tommed, a heavy beat that rushed so much blood to his brain his world spun.

Lifting his foot from the stair, he feinted moving closer. When the silent throng of children didn't react, he put his foot back down.

Hands held out in supplication, he said, “Look, I'm sorry. I didn't know. I…I didn't know.”

One of the children wedged himself free from the pack—a frail boy with a forelock of hair obscuring one eye. He was dressed in pale green pajamas, the cuffs extending well beyond his hands—a hand-me-down from an older brother? The boy walked down the step, arms at his side, until he was face-to-face with Paul.

Paul desperately wanted to look away. He couldn't gaze into those pale, tortured eyes. Instead, he peered into the boy's open mouth, at the missing baby teeth and oversized permanent teeth crowding the front like lopsided tombstones in an abandoned graveyard. His tongue and gums were black, tiny, pale maggots squirming within the soft flesh.

The heavy redolence of death filled his nose. Paul reached for the handrail, overcome with dizziness.

A pair of glacial hands pressed into his chest.

“No!”

The boy pushed. Paul teetered backward, arms flailing. The ceiling came into view, a terrible moment of clarity, and then it was gone. Tumbling down the stairs, Paul heard a sharp crack and hoped it was the wood of the steps and not his bones.

Darkness took him before he came to a rolling stop at the foot of the stairs.

“Paul!”

Daphne saw the look of stark terror on her brother's face as he stopped short of the second floor. He whispered something, and then he was gone, falling backward down the stairs.

Oh my God oh my God oh my God!

He had to be seriously hurt. She rushed to the stairs, shocked by the sub zero cold spot in the hallway.

The door to the master bedroom slammed shut down the hall, the concussion vibrating throughout the floor and walls.

Two more doors hammered shut behind her.

Torn between checking on her brother and her children, she dashed to their room to make sure they hadn't closed it on themselves, knowing with sick dread it hadn't been their own doing. She noticed the bedroom door leading to the attic had sealed itself as well.

“Alice, Jason. Help Mommy open the door.”

She tugged on the knob. The glass stuck to her hand. It was like gripping an icicle. It was so cold it burned. No matter how hard she tried, it wouldn't turn. With her free hand, she slapped at the door. Her children didn't so much as stir.

“Jason, wake up,” she said, her lips inches from the door. “I need you to open the door.”

Daphne pulled on the knob, banging her fist against the door.

Why aren't they answering me? What's happened to them?

A vision of Paul lying at the bottom of the stairs, his neck twisted, eyes already filming over with the gray of death, made her stomach lurch. She willed herself not to picture any worst-case scenarios for Jason or Alice.

Someone pounded on the master bedroom door in answer to her own frantic knocking. Everyone in the house either wanted out or in. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't get the door to budge.

“Mitch, help me,” Tobe shouted. Despite his best efforts, the dresser stayed in place blocking the door, as immobile as a mountain.

Mitch's jacket and shirt were on the ground. More scratches had blossomed on his neck. He swatted at his back and chest as if shooing furious yellow jackets.

Nina jumped to Tobe's side, angling her shoulder into the dresser, grunting as she pushed.

“It's like the damn thing's been nailed into the floor,” he said, exasperated. The wild commotion in the room had finally died down. Even the air felt empty. But that didn't change the fact that they were trapped.

Mitch stomped over to the dresser. “If you can't move it, break it.” Lashing out with his boot, he punched a small hole in one of the drawers, splitting it in half.

Taking his lead, Nina tried to yank the other drawers free, but they remained glued in place. Like Mitch, she started kicking, battering the old wood until it gave way.

“Nina, what's on the other side of the door once we get through?” Tobe asked, delivering a savage kick to the side of the dresser. The wood cracked, but didn't give.

“I don't know,” she replied, breathless. “Probably nothing. Maybe the kids are keeping us in here as a punishment, just like a parent would do to a child. In this case, the child has the upper hand.”

Damn little bastards,
Tobe seethed. Mitch's camera was in pieces. He wondered if any of the footage they had captured throughout the night was even useful. A creeping dread told him the ghost children had sabotaged that as well. He'd never felt so angry, so helpless.

Stepping up his efforts, he, Nina and Mitch beat at the dresser until it was nothing but a pile of splintered wood.

Eddie tried the bedroom door, wondering where all the EBs had gone.

“It's locked.”

“That can't be,” Jessica said. Putting the books down, she retrieved her lock-picking kit and tried to open the door. The paperclip and screwdriver weren't able to penetrate the lock. It was as if glue had been poured into the opening.

“It's gotta be the EBs,” she said. “You think you can get them to open it?”

“I don't think they're going to listen to me.” He closed his eyes, opening his mind as much as he could, listening for scraps of conversation or thoughts between the spirit children. Most had flitted from the house, dispersing among the trees.

Those left behind guarded the doors like powerful lookouts. He was amazed by how much stronger they'd become in just the last hour. He heard Tobe, Mitch and Nina shouting, a demolition derby in the room down the hall. Daphne must have been across the way, beating at the door and calling her children's names.

“They want us to be afraid,” he suddenly said.

Jessica worried the doorknob. “Tell them it'll take more than this.”

He shook his head as if warding off a nightmare. “No, not us, them. And it's working.”

Giving up, Jessica sat on the floor and opened Nathaniel's journal, using a penlight to read by. “I have to keep reading,” she said. “You're the door man.”

Eddie realized there was no reasoning with the EBs, not now. He'd have to force the door open. Brute strength wouldn't do.

George Ormsby's children were gone, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. Everything had fallen into place. George's son Nathan picked up where he'd left off, siring even more children, conducting even more terrible experiments in a quest for human perfection. When his life's endeavor failed, his own son, Alexander, was handpicked to carry on.

Creating children that were perfect, just the way their mothers had seen them, but not perfect in their possessed father's eyes.

The Last Kids were the final generation of Ormsbys. Alexander must have felt his time was coming to a close. There would be no sons to pass his dementia on to. None had measured up. So he killed them, as surely and easily as so many others. He took his life not out of guilt, but a selfish desire to die without prolonged pain and suffering.

Alexander and Nathaniel, I'm coming for you.

Taking several deep breaths, he flexed his fingers, loosening his muscles as best he could in the extreme cold, a bitterness that had turned his sweat to ice.

Moving objects with his mind was as natural to him as using his own two hands. However, the more exertion he had to put into it, the heavier the repercussion. As with all of his latent abilities, there was a give and take. He knew he'd have a bitch of a headache when this was done. He just hoped it didn't take too much out of him.

Eddie stared at the door, burning the image in his mind. His lids slowly closed, but he could still see the door plain as day. It was only a matter of wishing the door open. The knob began to turn in fits and starts. The EBs, unseen in his image, fought against him.

They were strong, but he was stronger. With a great mental tug, he pulled the door free. It slammed into the wall, making Jessica jump back, the journal still tight in her hand.

Daphne's head whipped around. “I can't get inside!” she pleaded.

The door to the children's room was easier. The EBs, seeing Eddie break their hold, didn't give him much resistance. The door flew open and Daphne rushed inside. Eddie grabbed two of the heavy journals. He and Jessica had just stepped into the hallway when the door to the master bedroom cracked in half. Tobe and Mitch came tumbling through, bouncing off the floor with pained grunts. Nina was framed in the doorway, looking exhausted and terrified.

It felt like someone had cleaved Eddie's skull in two. Bright, white fireworks exploded in his periphery. He had to shake it off, quick. Where he was going next would require every bit of gas he had in the tank.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Rusty lay on his back, shivering in the cold. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't sit up. Frigid, invisible hands pressed against his shoulders, his legs, froze the liquid in his eyes, making it difficult to see the moon cresting above the tree line.

He wanted to get up and go, but where?

The island was alive with
them
.

Even though he couldn't see the ones that held him in place, icing the marrow in his bones, there were others walking in the woods, feet crunching through the brambles, a seemingly aimless shamble to and from the crumbling Colonial mansion.

Eyes rolled up in his head, he was able to make out great parchments of faded paint and splinters of wood sloughing free from the house as if it were an enormous, prehistoric reptile shedding its skin. Only what lay below was not vital and fresh. Surface rot gave way to true death's decay.

Ormsby House was dying.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

When Jessica entered the hallway, her arms laden with the heavy journals, she was not alone. Daphne held Jason and Alice close to her waist, the children wiping sleep from their eyes.

How the hell did they sleep through all that noise?

Tobe, Nina and a shirtless Mitch stood outside the smashed master bedroom door. Whereas Mitch and Nina looked like a pair that had barely survived their first ride on a corkscrewing rollercoaster, Tobe wore a mask of barely contained fury that seemed completely out of place on the middle-aged aristocrat.

Eddie leaned against the wall, collecting himself.

“Jessica, what's happening?” Daphne asked.

“We're just finding out,” she said. “It's not good. Terrible, terrible things happened here. I was able to free some of the children, but there are so many more.”

Daphne's eyes grew wide, panicked. “Paul! He fell down the stairs. It…it looked like he was pushed, but I was there. He was alone. I…I…”

Eddie touched her shoulder. “I'll go check on him. You need to stay up here with the kids and Jessica.” He turned to Jessica. “After that, I'm going outside, to the little cemetery between the trees. It's time I spoke to the Ormsby men.”

“Don't go alone. I'll come with you.”

To her complete shock, he pulled her in and kissed her on the forehead. “I need you here. The children won't hurt you. They need you.”

“Need me?”

His face turned grave.

“Oh,” she said.

They don't need me to solve the mystery. They need me so they can grow stronger. They're afraid of me sending them away. No matter how horrible their time here, this island is all they know. They're terrified of what lies beyond, or maybe they're not even aware there is more.

Eddie was running down the stairs before she could tell him to be safe. Nina followed after him, then Tobe.

Mitch lumbered down the hall, wincing with every step. When Jessica saw his flesh, she took an unconscious step back. A criss-cross of scarlet slashes covered his entire torso, neck and face. It looked as if he'd been given a hundred lashes with a bullwhip.

“It burns so much,” he said, his voice pleading.

There was no need to ask him what had happened. Whatever they had done while filming had stirred the EB children into a rage. Mitch, the cocksure man who wanted to press on no matter what, was the unlucky focus of their anger.

“The burning will stop soon,” Jessica said.

“How do you know?”

“You're not the first person to get clawed up by an EB. I've gotten a few myself.”

She didn't tell him that she'd never seen it done to this extent before. Some of the welts were deep and beaded with blood. Plenty would heal into scars that would never, ever go away.

Kneeling down to the children, she was taken aback by the blank expressions on their faces. They looked like a pair of sleepwalkers, both deep in a dreamlike trance. They hadn't been right at all since they'd found them in the special place where the Last Kids had died. What hold did the Last Kids have on them? She wished Eddie were here to find out.

She said to Daphne, “You should check them for scratches, too, just to be safe.”

Their mother looked on the verge of tears. She nodded. “I just want to get them away from here.”

“I know, I know,” Jessica said, stroking Jason and Alice's cheeks. “We'll wait out here while you check.”

Daphne ushered them back into the room where they had just been locked away.

Looking at Mitch's savaged body, Jessica found it hard to find sympathy for the man.

“You should probably put your shirt and jacket back on, unless you want to freeze to death.”

“Yeah.”

He turned to go back to the master bedroom where he'd left his clothes and gasped.

The end of the hallway was choked with children, eyes like silver dollars, mouths “catching flies” as Jessica's Aunt Eve used to say when she spotted her staring off into space.

They were a dozen or more, silent, motionless, a wall of un-death.

In all her years investigating the paranormal, Jessica had never seen anything like it.

“Perfect, not perfect,”
they said, though their mouths never moved. Their collected voices sounded as if their throats were clotted with dirt, the words pushing through the gaps in the worm-filled earth.

Mitch skittered behind her, his hands on her shoulders. She tried to shrug him off but he held firm.

Perfect, not perfect.

Eddie had said that when they were in the attic.

What did it mean?

Perfect.

Perfect people.

Perfect race.

It all came back to eugenics.

An island of perfect but not perfect children. Generations of what the Ormsby patriarchs deemed experiments gone wrong.

Jessica buckled over. Her stomach felt as if it was teeming with burning snakes. Her pulse pounded at the back of her skull. The journals slipped from her hands, thudding on the hardwood floor.

No!

The children phased in and out as she struggled to remain on her feet. It was so hard to breathe. Impossible to stay upright.

Sleep. God, she was tired. Beyond bone tired. An exhaustion that depleted her energy right down to a cellular level.

As consciousness faded, so came an influx of empathic emotions, a tidal wave of sadness and horror, sweeping down the hall, tumbling her end-over-end, sluicing down her throat until she couldn't scream, couldn't draw a lifesaving breath.

Paul was unconscious but breathing at the foot of the stairs. Each breath sounded wet, like blood was filling his lungs. Eddie knew that was a very bad sign. His left leg was twisted at an impossible angle, a compound fracture for sure. He was going to need some serious medical attention.

Eddie felt for them man's pulse beneath the wiry beard on his neck. Still strong.

While Nina dropped to the floor to hold the big man's hand in her own, Tobe stepped over his brother-in-law's body, heading for the kitchen.

“He's alive,” Eddie said to the retreating man. “Just in case you give a shit.”

Tobe whirled at him. “Of course he's alive. I can see that.”

Eddie wondered just how he could in the dark.

Before he could ask, Tobe stalked into the kitchen, banging cabinet doors.

“Should we move him to the couch?” Nina asked.

“No, with that leg the way it is, we just have to make him comfortable where he is. Grab a pillow from the couch and a blanket. Then see if there are any painkillers in the house, or Ibuprofen at the very least. When he regains consciousness, he's going to be in a hell of a lot of pain, and probably shock.”

He didn't express his concerns about the sound of the man's breathing. Should he be rolled onto his side, to drain any fluids that made come up? Or was it better to keep him on his back? Eddie couldn't think straight.

She nodded quickly, running to the great room to get the pillow and blanket.

“What did you do up there?” Eddie asked her when she came back.

“I…we…”

“I need to know what you said or did to get them so angry. I'd find out for myself, but it's hard to make out anything through their static. It's like listening in to a kennel of pissed off pit bulls.”

He lifted Paul's head so she could slip the pillow underneath.

Nina wiped her hand across her face. She looked ten years older than she had before the night started. Yes, she had a touch of psychic abilities, just enough to get her and everyone else in a world of trouble. That was a problem that wasn't unique to her. Too many others thought they had all the answers, could control every outcome when dabbling with the unknown. They could take the cork out of the bottle, but they had no concept of what to do with the genie when it emerged, or how to put it back in the bottle. Genies were not to be trifled with.

“I was telling the children here I could reunite them with their father. Children need their parents, more so in death than life.”

“You what?” He desperately wanted to shake her for displaying such profound stupidity.

Tears snaked down the crow's feet around her eyes.

“I just…just thought.”

Eddie bolted erect. “You didn't think. You didn't think at all. You play acted like a goddamn fool. Those children don't need to be with their fathers for a very simple reason. Their fathers were the ones who murdered them. They watched them grow, grand little experiments that were tossed aside the moment they didn't live up to theory.”

Nina's mouth worked, open and closed, but no words filtered out.

He left here there, pondering the consequences of her actions, turning on the assistive light on his cell phone to search for the Ormsby graves.