by Hunter Shea
When Daphne gave a startled gasp, Jessica put a reassuring hand on her shoulder and said, “He’s good at reading your thoughts too. And he’s right. After we put the kids to sleep, I have a proposal for you. Maybe you can help make things right.”
Nina D’Arcangela watched Paul, Mitch and Rusty as their frustration grew. Every time they attempted to start Paul’s introduction, something would go wrong. From the camera, to the lights, to a loss of audio, and now this: one of the legs of the tripod losing its ability to lock in place.
If they could get everything working, they were going to have a hell of a story to show the world. She could feel the pressure in the room building. To her, it was like being wedged in a crowded subway car.
They were here, of that there was no doubt. She’d never encountered a location so full of undead life.
Sorry to say, that little bitch Jessica was doing her job, whether she wanted to or not. When Nina had first come to the island, she’d sensed a raw energy rippling throughout it, but it was unfocused, a memory of a spark of light.
Not so now. That energy was building by the minute. It was manipulating objects in the material world, growing bolder.
Paul said, “Maybe we should just break everything down and start fresh tomorrow.”
Mitch’s hair had become unruly from running his fingers through it in frustration. “Just give us five more minutes to get our shit together.”
Rusty pulled a roll of duct tape from his pocket and placed the tripod on its side. Once he had the faulty leg at the right height, he taped over the joint. He then did the same to the other locked joints, just in case. “Duct tape, man’s best friend,” he said with a timid smile. Righting the tripod, he secured the camera to its base.
Mitch clapped his hands. “Barring the ceiling collapsing, let’s try it yet again.”
Nina pulled Paul aside. “If you hear any strange noises, you should stop and point it out to the camera.”
“Will I hear strange noises?”
“You might. The spirits are getting stronger. You mustn’t be afraid. If you want to separate yourself from all of the others, you can’t show fear.”
Paul’s Adam’s apple bobbed with a dry swallow. She could see his resolve was weak. She had to build him up somehow.
“There’s nothing they can do to you, Paul, especially with me around.” She smoothed his shirt, her hands lingering on his chest, letting him feel the warmth of her palms despite the near freezing temperature in the house. His muscles relaxed at her touch. She sensed his budding arousal.
Good. Lust could make a man move mountains.
Leaning close, she whispered in his ear, “I know you won’t let us down.” Her lips brushed against the outer folds of his ear as she pulled away.
His cheeks bloomed a bright, rose red.
Mitch and Rusty stood opposite them with their cameras poised.
“You ready?” Mitch asked.
Paul gave a quick nod and a thumbs-up.
Mitch’s fingers counted down to one. Looking serious, Paul said, “Hello, and welcome to Ormsby House, the site of the most gruesome murders in South Carolina’s history. It was an event so shocking, its details have been intentionally shrouded in mystery for decades. With complete access to the old Colonial house, the lone structure on the aptly named Ormsby Island in the Charleston Harbor, we will definitively prove that there is life after death. I’m joined by renowned psychic-medium, Ni—”
His mouth moved, but no sound came out. Paul’s eyes flashed wide in panic as he staggered against the fireplace.
Rusty nearly threw his camera down and rushed to his aid. “I think he’s choking!”
Nina grabbed Paul’s arm, following him as he sank to the floor, gasping for air.
Her heart froze when she saw the pulsing indentations in the flesh of his neck, the sign of an invisible hand choking him. While Rusty scooped his fingers into Paul’s mouth, searching for something, anything that could be blocking his airway, Nina roared a mental command, “Take your hands off him! So help me, I’ll banish you to a darkness that will consume your soul for eternity!”
Paul suddenly drew in a ragged lungful of air, sounding like a broken foghorn.
The andiron stand on the other side of the fireplace toppled over with a resounding crash. Footsteps pounded above them as everyone was jolted by the brief cacophony.
“Are you okay?” Rusty asked Paul, helping him into a comfortable sitting position.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” Paul replied shakily.
Nina looked to Mitch, who hadn’t moved from behind his camera. He flashed her an okay sign, nodding at the camera.
That’s a hell of a start, Nina thought, already wondering how many seasons they could sign on for when they made their pitch.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Rusty was grateful that he was bunking with Mitch in the same room. He wasn’t ashamed to admit that the whole incident earlier with Paul downstairs had scared the crap out of him. He’d pulled Paul aside and looked him dead in the eye when he asked if he’d been putting them on for the sake of the show. Paul vehemently denied any play-acting, and had the red marks around his neck to prove it.
Could Nina have somehow put those marks there? No, there hadn’t been enough time.
Not to mention, Paul was pretty shaken up.
Rusty looked at his watch, catching the dial in the moonlight. Almost two. Mitch snored away as if nothing had happened.
The air in the room was so cold, the exposed flesh of his face felt like ice. I’ll be the first person to get frostbite in a house sleeping several feet from a roaring fire.
Something was very wrong with Ormsby House. Of that he no longer had any doubts.
Gotta check that boat tomorrow, see if it works. If he could beat it off the island, he would. Mitch could handle things all by himself just fine.
“I shouldn’t be freezing in the middle of the fucking summer,” he said into his pillow, burrowing deeper under the blankets.
He wanted no part of the place, or Nina, or the Harpers, or even Paul. He thought of offering a ride to freedom to Eddie and Jessica, but she seemed determined to guard the kids.
But how do you guard children from a ghost?
The question gave him a chill deeper than the unearthly frost that permeated every molecule of the house.
The next morning, Mitch woke up early, brewed a pot of coffee and woke Paul up with a steaming mug. “Rise and shine, butterfly.”
Paul woke with a start, overcome by a hacking cough. It took him a minute or so to settle down and find his voice, scratchy as it was.
“What, no oatmeal and eggs?” he said, sitting up in the bed.
“We need to talk, outside. Get dressed.”
Mitch walked out, not allowing any room for question or discussion. He waited for Paul by the entrance of the path to the dock. Paul shuffled out the front door several minutes later clad in gray sweats. His hair and beard looked windblown.
He squinted at the rising sun.
“What time is it?” Paul asked.
“It doesn’t matter. What the hell are we really dealing with here? I know you didn’t fake that little attack last night because you were never that good an actor. I kept the camera rolling, by the way. Talk about a goddamn hook! You told us this place was haunted. How haunted is it?”
Paul cast a quick glance at the house. “I’m not sure. When they found the bodies twenty years ago, the place became off limits. That was horror enough. There were whispers of strange stuff going on before then, but no one is alive who could verify a thing. Somehow, an urban legend grew about the whole island. Don’t go near haunted Ormsby Island. They say a reporter went out alone one night just after the mass murder had been discovered and never came back. Since anyone who had committed the murders was either dead or gone at that point, it had
to be the island itself that offed the reporter. Mitch, Ormsby Island isn’t even on most maps of Charleston Harbor. Locals will turn away the moment you even say its name. Whether it started as parents telling their teen kids ghost stories to scare them the hell away from the place or what, I don’t know. The moment my sister and brother-in-law saw it, they knew it was the perfect backdrop for what we wanted to do. When they sent me the pictures, I couldn’t have agreed more. Man, look at the place.”
The flakes of paint peeling from the house held the orange rays of the sun, appearing as tiny flames wavering in the early morning breeze. Mitch wished to hell he had his camera with him now. If ever a place looked like it was straight from hell itself, it was Ormsby House at this very moment. He made a note to come out early tomorrow and film some B roll.
“After they bought it for next to nothing, they brought Nina on who verified that there are definite ghosts trapped here.”
Mitch said, “I’m not saying I believe in all that horse crap, especially anything that comes from your little gypsy’s mouth, but whatever it is the two of you are doing, you have to not only keep it up, you have to get it in overdrive. This is platinum stuff. Once we get inside, I’m not going to have a waking moment without a camera rolling. I’ll even bring it in with me when I take a piss. If you can prove it to me that this shit exists, you’re gonna have millions of people eating out of your hands. If it gets hairy again, don’t lose your cool. If you do, we’re done for. You got me?”
Paul nodded, taking a long gulp of his coffee that had already gone tepid from the frigid air.
“I’m serious, Paul. We’ve been buddies for a dog and cat’s age, and I know how you can flake out at times. Rusty and I put our asses on the line for you. Lose your cool, and we’re gonna have another conversation. A very unpleasant conversation.”
Paul held his steely gaze, feeling him out to glean even a hint of jest in his words. Mitch made sure to give no quarter. It had been a long time since he’d felt the rush of working on a project destined for more than straight-to-video.
Breaking into an edgy smile, Paul said, “Yeah, I get it. I’ll be cool as a well digger’s ass.”
He jumped when the front door slammed shut, the harsh bang echoing around the trees.
Mitch shook his head. “That well digger must be working in a hot spring.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
The moment Jessica’s alarm chimed on the pillow just inches from her face, she felt the difference in the house. A palpable press of bodies surrounded her bed. She may not have been able to see them…yet, but she knew they were there as surely as she knew there was a bed beneath her.
Walking to the window, she became aware of the absence of something that should have filled any silence this time in the morning.
The air was devoid of birdsong.
“Even Tweety is steering clear now,” she said as she muscled the window open. The fire in her room had died while she slept. The air outside was refreshingly warmer.
We have to find out who these kids are, get their names. I have to get them away from here before Nina and Paul make an international spectacle of the place.
She could picture it easily, as the same process had happened with so many other reportedly haunted places around the world over the years, though she suspected very few had the type of EB manifestation that lingered on Ormsby Island. Eddie said Nina had some abilities, which meant she would be poking a hornet’s nest. Paul and his little film crew would capture enough compelling footage to catch a producer’s attention. Before they knew it, Ormsby Island would become a paranormal attraction like Waverly Hills or Houghton Mansion or the Whaley House. The place would be crawling with people anxious to catch a ghost on camera or audio. The children of Ormsby Island would never find peace. And through it all, Tobe, Paul and Daphne would ring in the profits.
Unless Daphne meant what she said yesterday.
Gathering her clothes and toiletry kit, she padded down the hall to the shared bathroom. The hot water was room temperature at best. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d taken a bath instead of a shower.
She toweled off, brushed her teeth, tied her hair back, put on a plain, long-sleeved shirt and slipped into a Cinderella Long Cold Winter tour T-shirt. It seemed apropos. There was a group that may have looked like a hair band but had the heart and boozy soul of hardcore bluesmen. On the way back to her room, she knocked on Eddie’s door.
He surprised her by yanking it open, ready to go.
“You’re up early,” she said.
He ran his fingers along the stubble of his scalp. “I don’t sleep much anymore, so being up is a constant state of being. What’s the first order of the day?”
She motioned for him to keep his voice down. “Shh. I think the kids are still asleep.”
Confusion creased his brows.
“The living kids,” she said.
He slapped his forehead. “Holy cow, how could that slip my mind?”
“It might be because your mind is overflowing with image of the EBs that are everywhere. I won’t hold it against you.” She closed her door softly. “First, I’m starving. Let’s go downstairs and forage. Later, we need to keep a close eye on Alice and Jason. I also need to find a way to get some alone time with Daphne. And we have to be real careful about staying out of Mitch and Rusty’s line of fire. They can’t show our faces because we won’t sign releases, but I don’t even want my elbow to be part of their bullshit.”
“All sounds simple enough.” As she walked to the stairway, he pulled her back with a light tug on her shoulder. “They’re responding to you now.”
Turning to face him, she said, “Responding to me? What did I say?”
“The hallway was full of them. When you said we were going downstairs to eat, they started filing down the stairs.”
“They all took the stairs?”
Eddie nodded, his shining, gifted eyes watching the ghostly procession.
He said, “They don’t want to be far from you, Jess. And I’m not entirely sure it’s well intentioned.”
“Come to us,” the voices whispered.
Every spare molecule of the children’s room was taken by the trapped souls of the island. They watched Alice and Jason sleep, bundled under layers of blankets, mouths partly open, breathing evenly.
“Come to us and see.”
Alice stirred, turning to her side, a tiny groan escaping her lips.
“We can show you the bad man. Beware of the bad man. You have to come and see.”
The spirit children, the ones Alice and Jason called the Last Kids, waited patiently. They and the others had been very skilled at waiting. The waiting was fine when it was empty, timeless. Things were changing.
The bad man was back.
The bad man made them afraid. Because they knew that even in death, the bad man could do things to them. Sometimes, they could feel the things he’d done in the past—terrible things. The beating, how it hurt to be thrown in the pit, the awful smell that made their lungs close off, the whiff of sulfur, the burning.
Maybe this time, they could stop the bad man. Leaning closer to Alice, they said, “Come and see. See the bad man. See the bad man.”
“Tobe, I want you to see if the boat is working this morning,” Daphe said as she and her husband sat on the back patio drinking tea.
He was dressed in a black suit with an overly starched white shirt and ebony tie. She thought he looked like a pallbearer and when she told him so, he’d only smiled. Then she remembered they were supposed to be on camera today and was disgusted by the persona he wanted to portray.
“Are we running out of supplies?” he asked.
She slammed the teacup onto the saucer. “I want to take our children away from here until everything is over. Don’t you have the slightest bit of care?”
He calmly took a sip,
regarding her for a chilling moment. “Dear, what do you think can happen to them? Ghosts can’t harm you.”
“Tell that to Paul.”
With a dismissive wave of his hand, he replied, “Your brother has always been prone to hysterics. It’s why he’s perfect for this project of ours. That’s right, I said ours. I don’t remember you hesitating in the slightest as we put everything together.”
The truth of his words twisted in her, turned the hot tea to a surge of acid in her throat. “It’s not the ghosts I’m concerned about. Jason and Alice will catch pneumonia if they’re here much longer. Whatever is happening is getting beyond our expectations or control. For all I know, we should be calling in every university with a research division to study the island. This is more than just supernatural.”
Tobe collected their empty teacups. “Please, don’t fall apart on me now. It’s only for a few more days.” Walking back to the house, he stopped and looked back at her. “And I already tried starting the boat today. It still won’t work.”
Daphne jumped from her chair so fast, it skittered across the flagstone, nearly tipping over. “What if it won’t start days from now? We have no phone, no way to call for help. When Paul disconnected the landline, he must have pulled the cord too rough. Even that phone is useless to us now.”
He continued to the back door. “If worse comes to worst, I have a flare gun. The harbor is full of people this time of year. I hardly think we’ll be stranded forever.”
Daphne’s mind was beset with anger and worry. Sure, he could fire off as many flares as he wanted. When people saw they were coming from Ormsby Island, the very place the people of Charleston had spent decades wishing away, would anyone dare answer their call for help?
Jason and Alice ran by everyone as they exited the house, grabbing a couple of granola bars along the way.
“Where are you guys going?” Ms. Backman asked.
Forcing his legs to keep moving, Jason said, “Outside to play. We’ll be back later.”
It was impossible to deny he had a crush on her. She wasn’t just pretty. She was cool and smart and so different than any other adult he’d ever met. All he wanted to do was exist in her orbit, circling her like a loyal moon.
