“She thinks she needs them,” Alice said.

“I’ll get ’em,” Mitch gruffed, clomping into the hallway. He paused as he bent to pick them up, his gaze locked down the hall. Daphne was too afraid to poke her head out and see for herself. She’d never imagined something so terrifying.

“Are they still there?” she asked meekly.

He nodded, licking his lips.

“Please, just come back in.”

Gripping the books, he slowly stepped sideways into the room, as if breaking his gaze would cause the children to swarm the hall. He shut the door, dragging a chair and jamming it under the knob.

Looking down at the feeble barrier, he rubbed the back of his neck, muttering, “That won’t keep them out. They’re not even real.”

Alice and Jason stood over Jessica, pushing stray locks of hair from her face with tender strokes from their fine-boned fingers.

“She’s just tired,” Jason said.

“Like us,” Alice added.

Daphne ran her fingers through their downy hair. “Yes, she’s just very tired right now. Why don’t we let her sleep?”

What she wanted to do was throw cold water on Jessica’s face, anything to bring her back. She found it difficult to believe that Jessica had fainted at the sight of ghosts. If it had been Nina, she would have understood. But Jessica was different. She and Eddie were all they had now. It was hours until daylight and with no working boat, there was nowhere to go. Not that she thought she had the courage to walk past the eerie children at the end of the hall and face God knows what that was waiting for them in the rest of the house or the cold, darkened woods. They would have to wait it out, and hope that Eddie could figure a way to stop the madness that had taken hold of the island.

She jumped at the sound of a revving motor. A metallic sputtering echoed throughout the house, the sound of steel breaking down, becoming undone.

The lights flickered, then died.

“The generator,” she whispered in the darkness.

Reaching out for Jason and Alice, her hands swooped through cold, empty air.

“Jason? Alice?”

The hinge to the door gave a light squeak. The children had gone.

Paul groaned, turning his head slightly. His breathing had been so shallow and thready.

Nina heard the generator’s last gasp and felt the first trickle of true fear pour down her back when the lights went out. She’d never been afraid of the dark, not even as a little kid.

But she’d never been in a place like Ormsby House before, where the dark held its secrets and a multitude of angry wraiths, eager to lash out at the living.

“Tobe!”

His voice, heavy with irritation, came from far off. “I know. I’m checking it now.” A door opened and slammed shut.

Her hand brushed Paul’s beard. The flesh of his face was cold and clammy. It reminded her of her grandmother’s wake, when she’d taken her gram’s hand in her own, feeling the certain chill of death.

Something creaked on the stairs. Her shoulder rose up, as well as every hair on her body. Her hands and feet became numb. Staring into the darkness, she held her breath.

Jason and Alice slipped through the lone shaft of moonlight that penetrated a crack in the great room blinds. Nina exhaled, an uncontrollable rush of shivers galloping through her body.

“You shouldn’t be down here,” she said to them, teeth chattering.

They didn’t answer. She listened to their bare feet as they padded away from her with a slow, benumbed gate. “Where are you going? It’s not safe in the dark.”

Where was their mother?

She rose to go after them.

The wood stairs groaned. She said, “Daphne, I just saw Jason and Alice go by.”

Nina looked to the stairs, jumping back with terror, tripping over Paul’s prone body and slamming her head onto the floor.

Dozens and dozens of children appeared from thin air. They gathered round her, dead, vacant eyes with black holes for mouths.

“You won’t take us to Father,” they hissed, a barrage of tiny voices dipped in decades of cooling revenge.

“No! No!”

She tried scooting away on her back, legs pushing as hard as they could, the pain in her head threatening to bring down the curtains. Her shoulders bumped into something solid.

Looking up, she saw two teenage boys glowering down at her.

It can’t be! They’re not alive! I shouldn’t be able to feel them!

Several pairs of hands grabbed her legs, pulling her closer to the horde of angry spirit children.

“Get off me! Stop touching me! Leave me alone!”

“You won’t take us to father.”

They clawed at her clothes, her hair, her neck, her limbs. No matter how hard she struggled, she couldn’t escape their icy grip. She screamed, the howl dying in her throat as a small fist that tasted of sweet, pungent gangrene, forcefully worked its way into her mouth.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Eddie found the three graves not by the meager light of his cell phone but the unearthly pull of the demented souls interred within. He stood over the hidden graves, nauseated by what he had to do next.

Kneeling into the soft earth, his head snapped toward the house when he thought he heard a scream. All of the lights were out.

“Gotta make this fast.”

When he’d first psychically gone to visit the graves, he’d detected no hint of the spirits of the Ormsby men. But that was before he’d started to regain control of his abilities. He wondered if he was siphoning off of Jessica as much as the poor Ormsby children, over a hundred lost souls born without a name. Or maybe the dead bastards simply wanted to be here to watch the show.

This time would be different. He knew now exactly who had been buried behind the old mansion: George, Nathaniel and Alexander. Three men who had insulated themselves from the world, so convinced that they were onto creating a new dawn for their family and, ultimately, mankind, that they couldn’t bear to rest eternally far from their life’s work. The patriarch, Maxwell, a man who was the first to be intrigued but not driven by the new eugenics philosophy, was buried elsewhere, perhaps the town of his birth. Eddie could feel his son, grandson and great-grandson lurking about, keeping to the shadows, lest their strengthening children should find them. Old Maxwell’s spirit was nowhere near this place, perhaps disgusted by what had become of what was once a cherished family name.

Eddie lay on his back and closed his eyes, feeling the fingers of death brush against his spine. “Nathaniel Ormsby! Alexander Ormsby! Come!”

He felt their curious presence, stepping closer, furtive yet fearless of the strange man who had disrupted their island.

“Come!”

He couldn’t let them retreat.

They whispered through the trees surrounding the graves, keeping low to the ground, out of sight.

Closer.

Come on, come on.

When they were close enough, Eddie unleashed a mental net, snaring them within.

“Got you!”

He threw his mind wide open, plunging into a deep, dark well, clutching at the writhing souls of monsters. Stomach lurching into his throat, he fell, flipping and twisting until coming to rest within Nathaniel Ormsby’s coffin.

Despite the total absence of light, Eddie could see the ages-eaten corpse’s smile, black worm lips pulled over browned teeth. Decades of decay had run riot since his first visit in the Ormsby graves. The madness that had gripped these men and fueled their sick desires, even into death, was coming undone.

“Where were you ninety years ago? Things could have been much different,” Nathaniel Ormsby said with a voice that sounded as if he were gargling rocks.

Eddie wasn’t going to be pulled into any discussion with the Ormsby monsters. He’d come for one thing only. If he let them play with his emotions, he could be lost. How many children had Nathaniel and Alexander bred for their experiments? How much blood was on their hands?