Island of the Forbidden (7 page)

Chapter Twelve

After Paul took them on another death ride to the Charleston docks, Jessica and Eddie went back to their hotel to prepare for the week ahead. Jessica asked him to meet her in the hotel bar in an hour so they could talk. Eddie changed out of his sweaty, wet clothes and into a pair of worn blue jeans and button down shirt.

With nothing much else to do, he rode the elevator and sat at the bar a half hour early. The low lighting and maroon décor was perfect for crying in your beer or finagling a one-night stand. The Braves game was on one television beside the bar, a boxing match by a pair of welterweights on the other. He ordered a beer and stared at the baseball game, following nothing. Two innings in and he couldn't even tell a passing patron what the score was when the game went to commercial.

“Starting without me?” Jessica said, settling onto the barstool next to him.

Jessica had changed as well into low riding hip huggers with a V-neck shirt that revealed the red straps of her bra. She had filled out a smidge during the two plus years they had been apart.
She upgraded her girl body for a woman's,
Eddie thought. The blond hair still made him feel as if he were with a different woman. It was impossible not to notice how attractive she was now. When they first met, it was hard to get past the tough front she'd erected. She was softer now, maybe even a tad vulnerable, but he wasn't going to be fooled. He knew her interior was still harder than a diamond.

He waved the bartender over and ordered two beers. “I noticed you weren't much of a Tom Collins girl.”

She winced. “That was disgusting. I've never met a mixed drink I like, with the exception of that Cosmo at my aunt's place. That bartender is like a magician.”

The beer glasses were frosty, trails of foam sliding down the cold glass. Eddie made a toast. “Here's to EBs everywhere, especially on Ormsby Island.”

They clinked glasses. Jessica downed half of her beer in one long gulp. “I was thirsty,” she said.

Eddie made a half-turn in his seat to face her. “So, what did you think of our hosts?”

She chuckled. “I think they could be not-too-distant cousins of the Addams Family.”

“With Paul as a fuzzy Uncle Fester,” Eddie laughed.

“I find it hard to believe he's in any way related to Daphne. Maybe they have different fathers.”

“Or mothers.”

“Or that.” She finished her drink and ordered another. “On a more serious note, how many EBs did you see out there?”

He tipped his glass back, finishing his beer so he could keep up with her. “Too many to count.”

“How many EBs can possibly be on that island? It's a tiny speck in the grand scheme of things.”

Eddie shook his head, recalling the wall of EBs at the dock, as well as the wispy children in the library. “I don't know how, but they're all there. I was so blown away, I couldn't get a proper reading on a single one. It was like trying to zero-in on your favorite flame in the middle of a bonfire. I'm hoping I can focus a little better tomorrow.”

She clapped him hard on the back. “You passed the first test. You really didn't read anything about the island?”

“No, you told me not to.”

“Exactly. I wanted you to go in there with a blank slate. The more you know, the better chance to color your take on things.”

“Do you know the history?” he asked.

“Some of it. That reminds me, I have to ask Swedey to get more intel for me.” She pulled her phone from her back pocket and started texting. She'd told Eddie about Swedey, her European web designer who was also a cyber P.I. on the side. Even though she never met the man, she trusted him implicitly. It was a difficult relationship to decipher.

“What are you asking him to look up?”

The tip of her tongue darted in and out of the side of her mouth as she typed. “I want him to see what he can get on Tobe, Daphne and Paul. That and anything else he can dig up about Maxwell Ormsby and the island itself.”

“I don't suppose you're going to tell me anything tonight,” Eddie said.

“Nope. We'll see what comes to you tomorrow.”

“You want something to eat?”

“Hell yes. I'm frigging starving.”

Eddie reached over the bar, grabbing a couple of menus and knocking a few lime wedges to the ground. Luckily, the bartender didn't notice.

“You know what I can't get over?” he said, his face buried in the menu.

“The way the interior and exterior of the house don't match at all?”

“That's another thing—that and the pervasive chill that never seems to go away. No, what I'm talking about is how nice you've been to me through all of this. Last time we spoke, you told me to, and I quote, ‘stay the fuck away from me'. And now here we are in South Carolina having beers at a bar before heading off to an island for a week to deal with another person's haunting issues. I know it can't be the bleached hair that made this turnabout.”

She lowered her menu and he was sure she was going to hit him with it.

Why do you always push your luck with her?

“Let's not discuss this now,” she said. “Things change. People change. I'm working on it.”

He slapped his menu down on the bar. “Works for me.” Catching the bartender's attention, he said, “Can we place our order?”

She added, “Plus, I'm worried about those kids. I know what it's like. If I can somehow shield them from the same crap I went through, it'll be worth it.”

When the food came, he noticed how some things didn't change at all. The heat of the day had knocked the appetite right out of him. He drove his fork into his Cobb salad, wishing he'd settled on beer for his meal.

Jessica's appetite was as strong as ever. Her plate was filled with barbecued ribs, mashed potatoes, green beans, a side of pinto beans, two biscuits that were fluffier than a new pillow and slathered in butter, and a side bowl of cole slaw. She dove in like a woman at the end of a hunger strike.

“You're a man's dream dinner date,” he said.

“What do you mean?” The corners of her mouth were stained red from barbecue sauce.

“It means any guy who takes you out to dinner can enjoy the meal he really wants to eat and not the paltry one he thinks his date expects him to eat.”

She twirled a clean rib bone in the air. “Just doing what I can for equality among the sexes.”

Twenty minutes later, they were both done. Jessica patted her flat stomach. “I can only imagine how good the southern cooking is outside of a cookie cutter hotel. Too bad we'll be stuck on an island this week. I didn't get the impression that the Harpers have spent much time in the kitchen.” She checked her text messages and tucked the phone back into her pocket. “So, let's get to the most important part. Tell me what you can about the kids. Are they really like me?”

The entire time he'd been in Ormsby House, he tried to cleave through the white noise of the horde of EBs, seeking what he called the psychic pulse of the children upstairs. He'd caught enough snatches to confirm the initial impression fed to him by the dead before he reconnected with Jessica.

He took in a deep breath. “From what I can tell, yes, they do have an innate ability to draw the dead to them. It's nothing like yours, but they're still kids. Adolescence will be the time when things really kick in. Teen years are a drag for more than just pimples and voice changes.”

Perfect, not perfect.

The voice was his own, but he had no idea why it had flitted into his head. He was suddenly aware that he hadn't seen the weeping blond women, or the other dead that had been his constant companions since leaving his apartment. He'd heard them say it so many times, it had become a song that looped in his brain.

Jessica played with the ends of her hair. “Do you think their parents are aware of it?”

“It was impossible for me to tell. I'd hope not. What kind of parents would use their own children as bait?”

“There are shitty parents everywhere, Eddie. Right now, some kid is getting a cigarette burned into his arm or a beating with a belt buckle. Tobe and Daphne don't seem like the type, but you never know.

“I need you to spend as much time with them as you can tomorrow,” she said. “We're either going to make this place safe for them or convince Tobe and Daphne to get them the hell out of there. Every internal meter I have was going off when we were in that house. No doubt there's something hanging around. We just need to find out who and why.”

Sighing, Eddie said, “It'll be a lot of
whos
, I can tell you that much.”

They sat quietly for a while, both lost in their own thoughts.

Best to tell her now,
Eddie thought. They were going to put themselves into the center of a storm in the morning. It was unfair to keep her in the dark about his problems.

“Jess, there's something I need to tell you.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Looks like it's serious.”

His stomach twittered with anxiety. “I'm broken.”

Jessica leaned back, staring at him with skeptical confusion. “What do you mean by broken?”

“I can't shut them out. Ever since New Hampshire, I've steadily been losing control. For the past couple of years, the dead have been smothering me. Most times, it's like living in the middle of the stock exchange. I can't even get to sleep at night without a few drinks. When I touched that pedophile's spirit—”

“We both did,” Jessica interjected. She was right. He'd been able to draw her into contact with the dead man's depraved soul. It had sickened them to their core, but also gave them what they needed to find his rotting corpse and put an end to his reign of terror on the poor girl he'd attached his desires to.

“For me, it feels like it accelerated things, so much that I couldn't keep up. All of the controls I've spent my life putting in place were blown wide open and I can't get them back. I'll be able to see and hear the EBs on Ormsby Island. I just don't know if I'll be able to make much sense of them.”

“Have you spoken to your father or any of your professors at the Rhine?”

“No.” His relationship with his father, a burned out psychic, was tenuous at best. He could have called the Rhine, but a part of him didn't want them to know he'd failed being on his own.

Surprisingly, she gently placed her hand over his. “Hey, we'll get through it together. At least you haven't spent years running from yourself.”

He met her eyes and was relieved to see the sympathy there. “There is one good thing. Since I met up with you, other than on the island, the EBs have been staying away. I think, and this is no joke, that they're afraid of you.”

Jessica chuckled. “I guess it's cool to see that I've made a name for myself on the other side.”

He paid their tab and agreed to meet in the lobby at nine the next morning. They rode the elevator together. When Jessica was getting off at her floor, he said, “That island is a bad place. We're going to have to be very careful.”

“I know. Try to get some sleep. Call me if any dead strangers won't leave you alone.”

The doors closed before he could ask what she would do if he called.

Once in his room, the first thing he did was scoop up several small bottles of vodka from the mini bar, setting them on the bedside table. He showered, changed and watched the news, waiting for the dead to come.

The room remained empty. He closed his eyes, entering his barn talisman. The old structure looked older, with jagged cracks splitting the wood-flaked beams. The doors remained open wide, a crumbled defense that couldn't even hold back the whisper of a summer breeze. Dragging a bale of rotted hay to the center of the barn, he sat and waited. They would come. They always came. And then he would drink the vodka.

But they didn't. Even the heavy scent of the tall grass outside the barn would not enter.

Eddie came to in his bed with a start. His eyes roamed the room, searching for motorcycle crash victims, suicides, cancer patients, pretty women with impenetrable souls chanting
Perfect. Not perfect.

The news had given way to a late night talk show.

He eyed the vodka bottles. The craving had nothing to do with aiding his escape to empty dreams.

I have to stop living like this.

Unscrewing the cap of Absolut, he brought the tiny opening to his lips. Before the burning liquid could touch his tongue, he flung the plastic bottle across the room, splashing the mirror and writing desk. He scooped up all of the bottles, dumping them in the sink one at a time.

Digging through his luggage, he found the bottle of Xanax. Jessica's father had become addicted to the pills after his wife had died in her sleep, terrified of being the sole caretaker for a small child, terrified of being alone, terrified of dying, terrified of living. It had been his undoing for many long years. He knew that if he'd told Jessica he had been taking them, she would have read him the riot act, maybe going so far as to
physically
impress upon him why he had to stop.

“I don't need this,” he said, staring at the bottle in his palm.

But of course, he had needed it. How else was he supposed to sleep surrounded by the clamor and push of the dead encircling his bed every night?

They weren't here now.

Jessica was, although floors away.

Taking a deep, hitching breath, he poured the blue, oval pills into the toilet, flushing before second thoughts could take hold.

Chapter Thirteen

This time, Paul was waiting for them, wearing the same clothes he had the day before. He helped them load their bags into the boat. It was another sweltering day. Jessica was grateful they were going to be on an island that was impervious to the South Carolina summer.

“You folks have breakfast?” Paul asked. “If not, there's a great pancake shack a few docks down I can take you to.”

“Thanks, but we took full advantage of the free breakfast at the hotel,” Jessica said.

Eddie had been very quiet since they'd hit the buffet line this morning. It looked like he hadn't slept much at all. He was an attractive guy, so much so that Angela had thought Jessica was insane for not even thinking about taking things to a romantic level. Now, with his sunken cheeks, sallow skin and overall haunted expression, he looked like an undertaker from a bad horror movie. What was that guy's name from
Phantasm
? He was the Tall Man, or something like that. Lucky her, she had Tall Eddie on her side.

“You know the deal. Hang on,” Paul said, speeding away from the slip.

It was beautiful out on the water. There was a time when Jessica craved the dark and all its mysteries. Now, she could just as easily have spent the day on a rented boat skimming through the harbor, enjoying some cocktails and a sunset dinner on the top deck. Time and money certainly weren't issues that she ever had to struggle against.

You're helping innocent kids, Jess. You don't want them to end up like you. Maybe we can get things under control for them
. She gave a short laugh, causing Eddie to look to her for the joke. She shook her head.
Just because
you
didn't take to Eddie's help doesn't mean they won't. Maybe they can all teach me a thing or two.

Ormsby Island emerged from the shadow of a larger island they had to navigate around. From a distance, it looked like an arboretum or animal sanctuary. It was hard to believe there was a massive mansion within the crush of trees.

Paul docked the boat and helped them with their bags up the uneven path. “Daphne and the kids are out back. I'll show you to your rooms and you can meet up with them in a bit.”

“It feels at least ten degrees colder on the island,” Eddie said, his and one of Jessica's bags slung over his shoulder. She reached into her knapsack, finding the digital thermometer. Before they went in the house, she turned it on and took several temperature readings.

“Close,” she said. “It's thirteen degrees cooler than it was on the dock in Charleston. It's either the trees or EB air conditioning.”

Paul chuckled. “EB air conditioning. I like that. Tobe told me that's what you call ghosts. Sounds as good as any other name to me. Well, wait till you feel the EB central air in the house today.”

True to his word, an icy draft went straight through their bones the moment they stepped into the deceptive colonial.

“This is what my apartment was like when I came home from work one day in winter and forgot I had left a window wide open,” Eddie said. His expression morphed from his new standard—haunted—to concerned. “Is it always like this in the morning?”

Paul shook his wooly head. “It's been getting a little colder each day, but it took a big leap last night. You think it's ghosts—I mean EBs—absorbing all of the energy from the atmosphere? They make cold spots when they're around, right?” He seemed genuinely excited and not the least bit worried that he might be surrounded by the dead. Jessica jotted that down in her mental notebook. It was obvious he was a fan of the rash of paranormal TV shows, spouting the jargon like the gaggle of pseudo-experts that paraded on millions of screens ever week.

“That's one theory,” she said.

They were led up the short spiral staircase, the wood gleaming with polish, and took a right down a hallway lined with doors.

“Old Ormsby must have either had a lot of family or guests that stayed overnight. There're a ton of bedrooms up here. The nice thing is they all have their own fireplaces. I stocked them with wood for you.”

“Thank you, Paul,” Eddie said. He walked slowly, his head swiveling from left to right, seeing things, Jessica was sure, that neither she nor Paul ever could.

Paul opened the doors to opposite facing rooms at the end of the hall. “This one is called the Yellow Room. As you can see, why it got the name is self-evident. Everything in here is the way the last Ormsby left it. We cleaned the sheets, of course.” The wallpaper was a rich yellow, as was the upholstery of the chairs, chaise lounge and linens on the bed. “Naturally, Jessica, I thought you'd take this one. Over here is the Blue Room for Eddie.”

The Blue Room was furnished the same as the Yellow Room, just with an opposing color scheme. The blue on blue made the room seem much smaller.

“I'll take the Blue Room,” Jessica said. “I never was a big fan of yellow.”

Eddie shrugged his shoulders. “Fine by me. They'll both be dark by the time we flop down at night anyway.”

Paul's eyes rolled between the two of them, seemingly miffed that they had turned his plan for their accommodations upside down. Jessica threw her bags on the bed and said, “I'm done. Everyone is outside?”

“Um, yes, they're all on the patio.”

Eddie was a little more careful with his bags. He closed the door to his room and said, “If you don't mind, Jessica and I would like to walk around the house a little bit before we head outside. We'll join up with you in a few minutes.”

Paul hesitated, then said, “Sure, sure. I'll be outside warming up. You probably want to do an initial sweep to get baselines and stuff like that.”

Jessica had to fight from groaning aloud. “Pretty much,” she said with a plastic smile.

His heavy footsteps pounded down the stairs, along the ground floor and outside. The catching of the door's latch echoed up to them. Because there was no carpeting, objects on the walls and very little furniture, even the slightest sound in Ormsby House carried to all corners.

“It's going to be hard to tell what's natural noise and not in here,” Jessica said. “If someone farts downstairs it'll sound like a ghostly moan by the time it gets up here.”

“That's a pleasant way to look at it.”

Jessica tried the doors to the other bedrooms as they walked down the hall. All of them were locked. “Who locks their bedroom doors?”

“People who know strangers are staying in their house?” Eddie replied.

The only door that was ajar was to the bathroom. A bronze, clawfoot tub dominated the room. The fixtures were old but everything looked as if it had just been installed.

“Looks like all baths, no showers this week,” Eddie said.

Jessica's fingertips glided over the tub and sink and mirrored medicine cabinet. “The Harpers said they haven't done any renovation. This place was left to rot for two decades. How is this possible?”

“The house maintained itself,” Eddie said.

“That's not possible. A house is a thing. It has no soul, no conscious mind. People talk about haunted houses but it's not the houses. It's the energy of the people.”

“Maybe their energy is what keeps the place looking like new.”

“But they let the outside decay,” Jessica said. Warning claxons were going off in her head but she couldn't find the source of the threat.

“Maybe to keep people away,” Eddie said.

“Is there anyone with us now?”

He stepped backward out of the bathroom, his head turning to the stairs. “Just the same two EB children from yesterday. It looks like they're waiting for us to go downstairs.”

Not for the first time, Jessica wondered what it would be like to live with Eddie's ability. How long could a person go on until they lost the fine definitions between the living and the dead? The fact that the few people who had been genuinely proven to share Eddie's gifts gradually lost their special sight as they got older was probably the mind's way of protecting itself from going mad.

“Are they saying anything to you?”

Eddie cocked his head, listening. “It's…it sounds like gibberish. Like baby talk. I can't make out their faces. But I can feel one thing.”

She walked to the head of the stairs, wondering if she was standing in the middle of their energy or if they stepped aside to let her through. “What's that?”

“They're very interested in you.”

Daphne Harper sat in an Adirondack chair wearing a sweater. She could hear water lapping at the shore behind the house but couldn't see the undulating harbor waters through the dense foliage. Tobe had taken the children on a short nature walk.

All walks are short out here,
she thought. There wasn't much to Ormsby Island itself, but it was grand in its seclusion.

She sipped at her tea from a thin china cup she'd found in one of the cupboards. It felt like spun sugar in her hands. It surprised her the first time she poured coffee into it, waiting for it to crack or explode or even dissolve into tiny granules. It was heartier than it looked.

“Hey Daph, Jessica and Eddie are here. Said they wanted to go around the house a bit before coming out.”

The cup made a tiny
plink
when she set it down on the wooden arm of the chair.

“That's good,” she said. “I want them to get comfortable with the house.”

Her brother sat heavily on a petrified tree stump. She wondered when he'd last bothered to bathe. Their mother, had she been alive, would have been very disappointed in her Bohemian son. Daphne did all she could to mother him, to keep him out of trouble with a roof over his head. It was taxing, but family was family.

Paul did have his uses. The children loved him. Of course they did. Children enjoyed playing with children, even if one was an unshaven man-child. Their purchase of Ormsby Island wouldn't have been possible, or necessary, without him, so she made it a point to overlook his deficiencies.

“I was fixin' to take the kids on the water this afternoon, keep them out of the way,” he said, pulling a leaf into shreds.

“I wish you'd stop saying that. You sound like a hick,” she scolded.

“Unlike you, I stayed in the south and this is the way we talk. All of us haven't forgotten where we came from.”

Daphne's eyelids fluttered with impatience. “You came from an affluent family and attended some of the best schools in the country. It's not like you grew up on a catfish farm in Louisiana.”

Paul smiled. “Yeah, well, money doesn't last forever, right? That reminds me, I still wanna try some of that catfish hand fishing. I have to call Pete and see if he's up to it when I leave.”

Her brother was impervious to her disappointment or anger. She was about to ask him to kindly find something else to do when the back door opened. Jessica, wearing a teal long-sleeved shirt and black jeans, and Eddie in his faded blue jeans and button down denim shirt, walked onto the patio.

Time for the show to begin.
Daphne willed her lips into a welcoming smile and rose from the chair to greet them.

“Paul was right,” Jessica said, “this is the place to be to warm up.”

Daphne said, “That's partly why I'm out here. It was a frigid start to the day. I'm sure it's nothing new for someone with your experience.”

Jessica slowly shook her head. “I can't say I've ever been to or heard of a house that retains such a low temperature.”

“Really?” Daphne said, a curious look on her face. Eddie wasn't sure what to make of her reaction, so he did what came natural—tried to poke into her mind.

“Really,” Jessica replied. “Almost makes me think it's something more on the natural side of things than supernatural. I have a remote assistant who can look up records on the island, see if anything about the island itself or the harbor can explain it.”

“I'm not sure if you'll be able to access anyone outside the island. Even cell phone service is practically nonexistent.”

There goes Swedey,
Eddie thought. Jessica's remote PI could be handier than a pocket on a shirt. From what she'd told him, he was a master at digging up information, even if it had been officially been sealed.

Daphne continued, “It's so strange. Do you honestly think it could be something as mundane as that?” She did little to hide her disappointment.

If her call was to get them to, in a sense, cleanse the island of any preternatural phenomena, why did she seem so reluctant to hear that the cold may have nothing to do with ghosts? Eddie closed his eyes, feigning a pause to savor a deep breath of the fresh air. He tried to push his way into her conscious, but there was so much interference in the atmosphere, he couldn't navigate his way through. He couldn't make sense of what was coming to him. The voices were everywhere. For the moment, he couldn't see them, but they were there, as steady as the current of a swollen river.

“I was hoping we'd get to meet your kids,” Jessica said.

“Oh, they'll be here any minute. My husband took them out to look for leaves, rocks, you know. In fact, I think I hear them coming now.”

Tobe Harper emerged from behind a row of hedges that lined the concrete patio. He gave them an odd, borderline effeminate finger wave.

“Good morning Jessica. Good morning Eddie,” he said. He turned around, stooped out of sight and reemerged with his daughter in his hands. He lifted her over the hedges. She was a very pretty girl with wheat colored hair braided down her back, wide, aquamarine eyes and a tiny nose above a smile that would melt a curmudgeon's heart.

“Hi,” she said in a very small voice.

Her brother came next. His hair was like his sister's, all one length that went past his shoulders. His cheek was smudged with dirt, as were his pants and shirt. He had the mischievous look of most boys his age, though his eyes still held the innocence of a youth shielded from the negative influences prevalent in today's world.