Island of the Forbidden

by Hunter Shea

  Their mother gasped when she saw the state Eddie was in. “Oh my God, what happened to you?”

  “I kinda took a fall. Nothing broken. I do want to change out of these clothes, though.”

  It was slow going back to the house. At one point, Alice looked back at Jessica, her hand firmly in her mother’s. Her clear, bright eyes harbored something gray and secret, the eyes of a child that had seen something not fit for an adult.

  “Something’s up with them,” Jessica whispered to Eddie.

  “I can see it too,” he said. “I’ll try probing a little after I’ve gotten my bearings back. To me, it’s like they’ve been wiped clean.”

  “If that’s true, where did they go?”

  The crash of glass gave them all a start as something sailed through one of the front windows.

  “You all right if I let you go?” Jessica asked.

  “I’ll be fine. Go.”

  Daphne said, “Kids, I want you to stay with Eddie. I’ll be right back.”

  Paul’s curses spilled into the front yard. It sounded like a mosh pit had broken out inside the house.

  “I’ll go in first,” Jessica said to Daphne.

  The glass knob turned in Jessica’s hand the moment she touched it and was yanked from her grasp. The door flew open. Rusty stood poised to run, shouting when he saw Jessica in his way.

  “It’s all gone to shit,” he said, breathless.

  Jessica pushed past him.

  The mayhem stopped. Whatever forces were at work laying waste to the house turned off as quickly as flipping a light switch.

  Tobe was crouched over Paul, who was in obvious pain. Mitch was sitting on the floor, his back against the wall, rubbing an eye that looked like it would have one hell of a shiner.

  Nina crouched in a corner, her hands clasped over her ears like a frightened child on the Fourth of July.

  The sound of a glass rolling off a table and splintering on the floor broke the silence.

  Jessica stood over the psychic.

  “Too much to handle?”

  Nina uncovered her ears, a tremor running through her hands. “I think they’re still here.”

  “They’re always here,” Jessica said. “And now it’s too late to just walk away. We’re going to have to finish what you started.”

  She left the house to get Eddie and the kids.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Renae Rudd was shutting down her computer when the front door chime buzzed. She heard the agency’s administrative assistant, Kathy, talking to a man. It was almost five. She’d promised Steve grilled marinated steaks, her garlic and herb mashed potatoes and fresh green beans she’d picked from her garden. Stevie Junior was working at Taco Bell tonight, so they had the house all to themselves. She prayed Kathy would send the man to Phil or Dottie. They still had another hour to go.

  “Sure, you can talk to Renae,” she heard Kathy say to the man.

  Dammit.

  This was the one time she didn’t want the honor of being agent of the month. Aside from a cash bonus and several free lunches, the other perk was getting first crack at new potential buyers. Normally, that was just fine with her.

  She could practically smell those steaks.

  Renae shuffled her briefcase under her desk and did her best to put on her game face.

  A slight, older man walked into her office. His wiry, gray hair was in need of a brush, and possibly some shampoo and water. He had beautiful, cobalt eyes, but she could see instantly that there was something strange at work behind them.

  She stood up to meet him. Unless he was some eccentric with a stash of money, she didn’t see a sale in this one.

  “Are you the one that sold the Ormsby House?” he asked, casting aside all formalities.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The house on Ormsby Island. Are you, or are you not, the woman who sold it.”

  Uh-oh, we have a crazy. Good thing Phil is still in the office.

  She pasted on a smile. “I’m sorry, if you were interested in the island and the house, it was sold a little over a month ago.”

  “I don’t want the damn island,” he hissed. His eyes flicked to the doorway. He’d spoken low enough not to attract any attention. “I need to know who you sold it to.”

  Renae remained standing. She didn’t want the man to have any advantage over her. She had to find a way to calmly get him out of the office.

  “Unfortunately, I can’t give out that information,” she said. “I have to respect the privacy of the new owners.”

  “You shouldn’t have sold it. You like damning people to hell? Sometimes, there are more important things than a fucking commission.”

  This time, he did raise his voice. Renae spied Kathy as she peeked into the office. She hoped the girl was smart enough to get burly Phil.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Are you a relative of the previous owner?”

  He wagged a gnarled finger at her. “I know who you are. You should have been smarter than that. You’re not some outsider. You know all about that place. Ormsby Island should have been burned and demolished. No one would listen to me. So it sat there, waiting for some greedy bitch to pawn it off to someone else.”

  That got her blood boiling. The b-word had always been a trigger for her anger.

  “Now look here, sir, I don’t need to take that kind of nonsense from you. Despite what you said, you don’t know me, and I’d appreciate it if you got out of my office.”

  The man began walking in a tight circle, growing more and more hysterical. “I saw it! I saw it with my own eyes! That place is a tomb. A giant tomb. You don’t send people to live in a tomb. Especially one where the dead aren’t dead. Fucking morons. Goddamn, fucking, ass-eating morons!”

  Phil’s tall and wide girth filled her doorframe.

  “Okay pal, time to go,” Phil said, reaching out for the man’s arm.

  “Don’t you touch me!”

  Kathy and Dottie stood behind Phil.

  “Kathy, call the police,” Renae said.

  “The police?” the man cried. “You think the police are a threat?” He gave a short, frantic laugh.

  “We don’t need the police if you’ll just come with me,” Phil said.

  Dottie brushed the big man aside. “Peter?” she said.

  The older man stopped his pacing, his entire demeanor relaxing in an instant.

  “Peter, we all need you to calm down. Okay? I’ll even get you a cup of coffee if you want.”

  He looked at her with pleading eyes. “She shouldn’t have done it. You know that. She shouldn’t have done it.”

  Holding his hand, Dottie walked him out of Renae’s office. “It’s all right Peter. It’s all right. Everyone’s fine.”

  Renae, Phil and Kathy watched her pour the man a cup of coffee, talk quietly for a minute or so and walk him out the door.

  “What the heck just happened?” Renae said.

  Kathy replied, “I have a new nickname for Dottie. She’s now the Crazy Whisperer.”

  “You okay?” Phil asked.

  Renae nodded. “I’m fine. What a way to end the day, huh?”

  When Dottie returned, Renae waved her into her office. “You know that guy? I thought he was going to attack me.”

  Dottie gave her a sad smile. “That was Peter Montgomery. He’s harmless. I hadn’t seen him in about ten years. Time has not been kind to the man. Poor soul.”

  Renae waited for her to expand on the idea that a lunatic was a poor soul.

  “We went to high school together. He was always a bright guy. We even worked on the school newspaper. There was a time I’m pretty sure he liked me, but I guess he never got the courage to ask me out. I would have said yes.” Dottie sat down, her gaze lingering on something in her past.

  “What h
appened to him?”

  Dottie sighed. “He landed his dream job as a reporter for the Charleston Journal News right out of high school. We kind of lost touch after graduation, but I read everything he wrote. I was so proud of him.

  “When the massacre at Ormsby Island happened, the story was given to one of the more veteran reporters.” She said this in a whisper, as if speaking about what had happened over two decades ago could make it happen all over again. “I heard that Peter went to the island himself, after all of the police and press left. I guess he wanted to uncover something the others had missed. I don’t know what he found, but when he returned, he was never the same again. Whatever he saw out there broke his mind clear in half. He lost his job, his fiancé, his car, everything. I hear he’s spent most of his time in and out of institutions.”

  Ranea sat back in her chair. “Wow.”

  Shaking her head, Dottie said, “Yeah, wow. Look, I’m happy that you managed to sell what we all considered the unsellable. But I know something is very wrong with that island. It destroyed everyone who lived there. And it destroyed Peter. He just didn’t want the same thing to happen to someone else. Unfortunately, he’s no longer able to convey his emotions the way he used to. He won’t come back. I made him promise me. You go on home and forget this ever happened. Maybe we’re all wrong and whatever badness that lived on the island is gone. No news is good news, right?”

  Dottie left and Renae jammed some papers in her briefcase.

  Maybe we’re all wrong, Dottie had said.

  Renae had never put much credence in the whole Ormsby Island mystique. She had to admit the place was as queer as a three dollar bill, but part of that was most likely all of her preconceived notions coming to the fore.

  “No news is good news,” she muttered, getting into her car.

  The phrase played in a loop in her head all through dinner and even while she made love to her husband in the kitchen of all places.

  Lying in bed, she broke the loop with one simple thought.

  What if it isn’t?

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  It took some time for Daphne to clean the children up, get them into their pajamas and cook something for dinner. They’d been so quiet through it all. Considering what had taken place in the house, she wondered what her babies had been through. Eddie promised he would do his best to find out for her. How he would do that she didn’t know, but she trusted him. It pained her to think she couldn’t say the same about her husband at the moment.

  She was normally a stickler for making sure they ate healthy, but tonight was an exception. Getting treatment usually reserved for when they were sick, Jason and Alice were allowed to eat in bed, tearing into boxed macaroni and cheese, washing it down with glasses of soda.

  “You both must have been starving,” Daphne said, collecting their trays.

  Alice said, “Very.”

  And that was it. Nothing from Jason, for whom she had to wipe gooey cheese from the side of his mouth.

  “I need to talk to your father. Do you mind if Ms. Backman stays with you for a bit?”

  Both children shook their heads, neither wary nor enthused by the prospect.

  Daphne nearly bumped into Jessica in the hall. “Thank you for being with them. I don’t want to leave them alone.”

  “Trust me, I don’t want to either. Do you have the key?”

  Daphne shook her head dejectedly. “I searched all over. Tobe must have it. I’ll get it from him now. How is Eddie?”

  Jessica smiled. “He cleaned up good. Don’t worry about us. This is what we do.”

  Daphne didn’t know the young woman long, but she could tell Jessica was stretching the truth. Was it for Daphne’s sake, or her own?

  She brought the trays into the kitchen, adding their bowls to a pile of dirty dishes in the sink. I’m not cleaning these. She dropped the flatware noisily amidst the plates and glasses.

  Earlier, there had been a heated debate between Mitch and Rusty, the latter wanting to take the logical route and get off the island. Tobe had taken him to the boat launch, proving once again that they were stuck, for now.

  An unwelcome embrace of claustrophobia squeezed harder around Daphne when she heard the boat still wouldn’t start.

  Everyone had gathered in the library. The house was a disaster. Tobe and Paul had done their best to pick things off the floor and clean up the broken bits of glass and ceramic. Everything was askew, including the furniture. She knocked on the library door.

  Paul opened it. Rusty paced by the window, hands on hips. Mitch sat beside Nina, both looking worse for wear but calm. Tobe was still in his undertaker’s outfit, leaning against the roaring fireplace, smoking a cigarette.

  “Hey, sis, we were just talking about you,” Paul said.

  She looked past her brother. There was no way she could speak to him at this moment and maintain any sense of civility. “Tobe, can you come outside for a minute?”

  Her husband rolled his eyes, as if to say see what I have to deal with?

  “I’m really sorry about the house,” Paul said. “We had no way of knowing anything like this would happen.”

  Needles of pain stung her jaw as she ground her molars together. “So does this mean you’re stopping?”

  He cast his eyes to the floor. “No. We may have just captured the footage of the century. We can’t stop now.”

  Tobe filed between them. Daphne stared at her brother for a moment, searching for the sensible, wandering soul she once knew. She left before he could say another word.

  Her husband waited for her in the main dining room, far enough from the library so they couldn’t be heard.

  “You have to stop this,” she said.

  He sighed. “Look, I know what just happened is a bit frightening. This has become bigger than us. We have an obligation to document everything we can. This could change the way people think about life and death.”

  She turned her back to him, studying her distorted reflection in the window. “People will think you’ve faked it all. It’s too much. No one will believe us. Just leave whatever is here be. Tell Paul to send up a flare and get some help so we can get off the island. I don’t care about the money anymore. We’ll find a way, or we’ll just have to live different lives. It doesn’t have to be the end of the world.”

  His heavy footsteps came up behind her. He grasped her shoulders. “Nina thinks the ghosts have drained all of their energy. They won’t be able to do that again, at least not for a long while.”

  Her flesh cringed at his touch. “So you’re comfortable leaving your children in a house filled with angry ghosts?”

  “They’re powerless.”

  “You call what just happened powerless? I’m worried about Alice and Jason. They’ve barely spoken a word since we found them. Who knows what they saw out there?”

  “They’ll be fine. Maybe a little frightened for now, but they’ll get over that faster than any adult.”

  Daphne pulled free from his hands, turning to him. “Then I’ll get the flare gun. At least I can take the kids out of here.”

  He pursed his lips, walking to the other side of the room. “We don’t have any flares. Paul thought they were on the boat, but they’re not. If you want to flag someone down, you’ll have to wait until morning.”

  She felt her blood simmer.

  Just one more night. Sleep in the kids’ room and get them out at first light. Tobe and Paul can do whatever they want then. Maybe I’ll make it hard for them to find us when they’re done.

  “We’re leaving in the morning,” she said.

  “I understand.”

  She was about to storm away when she remembered Jessica’s request. Jessica had told her there was a chance she and Eddie could put a real end to everything before Paul and his crew did more damage.

  “I need the key to the bedr
ooms. Jessica and Eddie need access to the attic.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t let them go up before us. We’re saving that for tomorrow.”

  “You brought them here to help us.”

  “As evidenced by everything around us, they’ve done exactly what we needed them to do. They don’t want to be in the documentary, they don’t get access to the attic.”

  Daphne huffed. “So you think calling it a documentary gives it some gravitas? What’s gotten into you? I know you have the key. Just give it to me so someone with an ounce of sense can find some answers.”

  Tobe folded his arms. “No.”

  “That wasn’t a yes or no request. I have as much right to the key as you do. Give it to me.”

  She stomped over to where he stood, her forehead inches from his cleft chin. Tobe remained still as a statue.

  “Where is it? Your jacket or pants pocket?”

  When he didn’t respond, she reached into one of the side pockets of his suit jacket.

  The stinging slap against her cheek whipped her head sideways. Her hand reflexively went to her burning face.

  “I told you no,” Tobe said, barely above a whisper.

  Daphne had no words. He’d never so much as hinted at touching her in anger before. She now understood what stunned speechless meant.

  He left her as if nothing had happened. She heard the library door open and close. Acidic tears streaked down her face as she ran upstairs, hatred for her husband squeezing her heart so hard it was difficult to breathe.

  Alice asked Jessica if she could have a glass of water.

  “Sure, sweetie. I’ll be right next door in the bathroom.”

  When she left the room, Alice bounded into her brother’s bed. He shot her a strange look. “They’re right, the bad man is here,” he said.

  “What do we do?”

  “I don’t know. The Last Kids will help us when the time comes.”

  Alice sighed, wiping a tear away before it could fall. “I’m afraid.”