Heads turned upward in wonderment. They considered him, but were far from convinced. He projected an image of the “perfect women” who had followed his every move back in Connecticut. Perfect. Not Perfect.

“They sent me to find you. You are all perfect. Follow me.”

He slowly descended, spying his body, breathing softly, atop the graves. The sight gave him a chill so deep, he saw it shake through his seemingly sleeping body.

Eddie looked around. The children came from every direction, some holding hands, in various stages of development and decay. For a man who dealt with the dead all of his life, the sight would haunt him until his own last breath.

They stopped short of the cleared area for the graves.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “They can’t hurt you anymore.”

The EBs hesitated, considering him with nickel-plated eyes.

“But you can hurt them.”

Rusty felt the pressure at his arms and legs disappear. Still, he kept his eyes closed, not daring to move. He was so cold. He was sure he’d never be warm again.

A lone voice shouted in the distance.

Rusty slowly opened his eyes.

Thank God, he was alone!

The children had left him, though he could still feel their icy hands, frostbit impressions on his flesh.

Someone was screaming.

Rusty scrambled to his feet, deciding whether to run toward the voice coming from the diseased Ormsby House, or to the relative safety of the docks.

Put this shit behind you, Russ. This isn’t your fight anymore.

He started at the path to the docks, sighed, and started running.

Daphne moved as fast as she could in the dark, calling out for her children. Her knee smashed into the side of the library door. She spun once, catching her other foot on the edge of the throw rug, and fell into the andirons. She cried out in pain as her back whumped on top of the unyielding iron.

“Jason. Alice,” she sputtered.

When she’d first come down the stairs, she’d stumbled upon Paul, resting under a blanket. She’d checked his breathing to make sure he was in fact alive and pulled herself away from him. He sounded terrible, like he was drowning. She had to find Jason and Alice.

Why did they leave? They hadn’t been right since Jessica and Eddie found them earlier. It was as if someone or something had snatched their souls, leaving organic automatons behind.

And where was her husband? Or Nina and Rusty? Had they been intentionally separated, easy pickings for whatever curse lived on this island? She wished to hell she’d never heard of Ormsby Island. Better to live in poverty than die trying to regain something as meaningless as money.

The library doors slammed shut with a loud bang.

Daphne jumped to her feet, pulling at the doors.

They wouldn’t budge.

She pounded her flat hands against the doors shouting, “Let me out! Alice! Jason! Somebody let me out!”

Chapter Forty-One

A phalanx of Ormsby children gathered in the back yard, watching the boy and girl approach the bad man.

Yes, they could finally see the bad man! And they would make him go away.

But he hesitated. Something tried to swim against the current of his rage. The boy and the girl might hesitate. They needed them to see…completely.

In turn, the bad man had to see as well.

They would make him see.

Jessica heard Daphne’s cries for help, her steady thumping on the doors somewhere off to her left. On her hands and knees, Jessica’s palm came to rest on something soft and warm. Groping like a blind woman, her fingers became entangled in a thick underbrush of wire.

Paul.

She rested her hand on his chest. If it was moving, it was doing so imperceptibly.

“Help!” Daphne cried again.

Jessica winced. Yes, she wanted to help Daphne, but with her strength leaking from her like a blown gas tank, she could only do so much. And right now, what she had to do was find Eddie and the kids.

She thought she heard Alice’s voice drifting into the house. Pulling herself across the polished floor, she turned the corner of the breakfast room and faced the entrance to the kitchen and the open back door. It looked miles away. If she hadn’t felt like she was dying, she could have made it out the door in just a few seconds. Even the thought of doing so now drained her.

Her forehead dropped to the floor. Her arms shook, elbow joints turning to Jell-o.

She was going numb. Not from the cold, but from the inside outward. All of her senses dulled, the hardwood floor beneath her body more of a conscious reality than a tactile presence at her back.

Sleep. Sleep was what she needed. A good eight hours. No, make it twelve. Maybe even an entire day. Eddie would take care of the kids. He was stronger than her, more tuned in to the things she’d always prided herself on being the resident expert. Pride goeth before the motherfucker of all falls.

“Stop!”

The man’s voice, hitting octaves reserved for moments of abject fear, shook Jessica from the heavy pull of sleep.

“Go away!”

A girl’s voice. Alice? Followed by, “He’s a bad man. A very bad man.”

Jason!

Her fingernails found the narrow slat between the floorboards as she pulled herself toward the kitchen, inch by agonizing inch.

Eddie felt like the Pied Piper. The dead Ormsby children, victims, every last one, gathered close.

“I’m going to get you all away from this place. I promise. I just need you to follow me. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Not anymore.”

The children craned their heads down toward the three graves where his body lay in silent repose. Their confusion pulsed in sonar-like waves. How could this man who was talking to them, standing before them urging them to gather round, also be lying on the cold earth?

There were so many. And he knew some were still roaming about the island or in the house. He felt them, sentinels not daring to leave their posts.

“Come,” he said. “Follow me.”

Eddie dropped back into the graves, once again hovering over cruel, sardonic Nathaniel.

“Last chance to tell me who gave birth to your children,” Eddie said.

“Burned and buried,” Alexander chimed from the parallel grave, pleased with his final act, a false sense of security that he had spared the Ormsby name from the true horror and shame it deserved.

A fat worm wriggled from the corner of Nathaniel’s eye, slinking into the gap between the taut lines that had once been his lips.

“Leave me be,” Nathaniel intoned. “You’ve disturbed enough of my rest as it is. Enjoy the pleasures of the lush island we’ve left behind. We may not have realized our aspirations, but we did produce the finest fertilizer in the world.”

His slow, wicked laughter nearly threw Eddie into an uncontrolled rage. If he didn’t keep his concentration, his body would retrieve him as quickly as a rubber band stretched to its limit. If that happened, he’d fail.

Keeping his calm, he said, “Well, since I can’t seem to make you see the light, I thought I’d bring the light to you. Children, make these men tell you who your mothers are.”

Alexander ceased his mindless prattle. Nathaniel’s aura of twisted superiority washed away like glittering sand in the tide.

The first children snaked their way into their coffins.

“No! Keep away from me! You’re nothing to me! Stay away!” Nathaniel screamed.

Alexander joined the chorus as Eddie elevated from their dark resting places, letting the children flow down, deeper and deeper to prize the truth from the monsters that both made and destroyed them.

“I know it’s a bit late, but happy Father’s Day,” Eddie said, rejoining his body and waking to a headache so severe, he was sure blood vessels were going to burst in his skull.