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?
“Where are the women who bore your children?” he demanded.
“I had no children,” Nathaniel gurgled. “Only failure. No matter how hard I tried, only failure.”
Another voice, a memory, whispered, “Perfect, not perfect.”
“How many women did you bring here? Who were they? What did you do to them?”
Nathaniel Ormsby laughed, a horrid cackle that chilled Eddie’s psychic essence.
“Why would you care so much about cattle? I looked for the finest stock, and they gave me runts. Every last one. I hope those cunts are burning in hell.”
Eddie never wanted to strangle someone before, alive or dead. If he could, he would tear Nathaniel’s corpse to pieces while doing his damnedest to shatter what was left of the madman’s life energy. If it meant destroying himself in the process, so be it.
Stop it, Eddie. That’s what he wants.
He slipped into Alexander Ormsby’s coffin. The old corpse regarded him with dripping, milky eyes.
“You won’t get what you want from me,” Alexander said. “Buried and burned, buried and burned. Buried and burned.”
He’d gone completely mad before he’d taken his life, before he’d burned his children to death. It would be impossible to glean a coherent thought. It was painfully clear to see that there was nothing he could say to make the dead man expose his secrets. If only he’d been stronger.
“Buried and burned. Never find them. Never. Buried and burned.”
The Last Kids. How they must have suffered in those final agonizing moments. And here was this fucking creature who called himself a man, singing about their demise as if it were a nursery rhyme. Alexander and Nathaniel, and even George, they were the bad man. Their power coursed through the island like a blood-borne disease. But it wasn’t incurable! Eddie and Jessica had been lured here to put an end to this.
Perfect not perfect.
Their mothers. Where were their mothers?
A soothing warmth came over Eddie as he realized the only way to shock both dead men to telling him what he needed to know. He tunneled through the earth, slipping through his own body and into the night.
It was time to be a shepherd.
Jessica awoke in darkness. She startled when a man’s voice said, “Thank God you’re awake.”
She looked across to where the voice had come from.
“Are you all right?”
A bright flash of pain went off in her head like a bottle rocket. It was Mitch. Why was she in a room with Mitch?
“Yeah, I think so. Where is everyone?”
“I don’t know. When the lights cut out, the kids walked out of the room. Daphne went after them. You were out cold.”
She swung her legs off the bed. Her legs gave out when she tried to stand up. It was an effort to even breathe. What the hell happened to her?
“Where’s Eddie?”
“I have no idea. I haven’t seen Rusty in a while, either. All I do know is that I’m not leaving this room. No fucking way.” Something hard and heavy smacked into his hand. “If anyone tries to screw with me, they’re getting the leg of this bed over their head.”
Struggling to talk, she said, “Mitch, what’s on this island can’t be hurt by you. They’re already dead. You can’t kill them twice.”
Snorting, he said, “I can make them think twice before touching me again.”
“You have to put that down. You’ll hurt someone, if not yourself.”
“No fucking way.”
Summoning up the few stores of energy she had left, Jessica managed to get to her feet, holding onto the bedpost for support. She had to get out of this room. For all she knew, Mitch would bash her head in if he heard the mattress settle. The man was wound tighter than a banjo string.
“Where are you going?”
“To find Eddie and the kids. Promise me you’ll stay here. I don’t want to think about you running around the house with your little bat.”
The bed creaked under his shifting weight. “I told you, I’m not leaving here, at least until the sun comes up. Then I’m getting the hell out of here, and I don’t care how.”
She took a shuffling step, leaning forward into the wall to keep erect. Bearing her shoulder against the wall, she slowly made her way out the door, sitting on the top step and taking them one at a time. Daphne cried out for the kids on the first floor, her voice faltering, desperate.
Come on, Jess. Slide down another step. That’s it. Now the next.
She wished she could say she was getting stronger, but in fact it was becoming more and more clear that her body was shutting down.
Perhaps for good.
Chapter Forty
Alice stumbled in the dark. Her brother’s hand snagged the sleeve of her heavy, wool night dress, keeping her from falling.
The bad man was in the house. The Last Kids had warned them about the bad man when they put them in that swirly wind. Hadn’t they? It seemed like something she had known all along, yet for some reason, this was the first time she’d actually thought about it. She was so sleepy. She knew she was walking, but it felt like a dream, as if she would float above the floor if she willed it.
“Over there,” Jason whispered in her ear, tilting her head to the kitchen.