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.