by Hunter Shea
“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 s
ubject. 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.
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.
