Eddie draped an arm over her shoulders. “Well, now you have this. Time to wake up so you can do your thing. Send them all home, Jess. Send them home.”
They woke at the same time. Jessica still felt weak, but Eddie had given her enough to get off the table and stand on her own. Rusty held his hands out, ready to catch her should she fall.
She looked at Alice and Jason, so peaceful in repose, though she knew the EBs would easily drain them of everything if she didn’t do it now.
“I’m going to send them all away,” she said to Daphne. “It’s nothing dramatic. In fact, you may not be able to tell at all. But it will happen.”
Daphne nodded. “Please, give them all peace.”
Taking a long, deep breath, Jessica once again closed her eyes, recalling each mother’s face as she was reunited with her lost children. Especially the three women who had given birth to the Last Kids, the final Ormsby line that had been burned alive by a mad Alexander Ormsby who couldn’t face the total failure of his family’s generations-long vision.
She spoke their names softly, saying between each, “You can go now, be with your children forever.”
As she’d said, there were no great displays, no flashing lights or parting sounds, pleas of mercy or shouts of happiness. Instead, the silence seemed to grow deeper, the darkness lighter as dawn crept closer.
When she was done, the room looked as it should, part of a long abandoned house that never once knew love.
Chapter Forty-Three
Renae waited an entire hour for Nelson to sober up, pouring cups of coffee down his throat until his head cleared and he could walk a straight line without falling down. Six in the morning was not a time of the day he saw very much of.
Since her encounter with the old reporter, she hadn’t been able to sleep.
No news is good news. Maybe we were all wrong.
It was true, she hadn’t heard anything from the Harpers out on Ormsby Island. But what if that was a bad thing? A very bad thing.
Nelson reluctantly got his ass, and his boat, the bigger one that could seat ten, in gear. Thinking about the Harper’s children out there, on an island where horrible things had happened to children in the past, she had to see for herself.
“Maybe we are all wrong,” she said.
“What was that?” Nelson said over the motor.
“Nothing. How much longer to the island?”
Rubbing his eyes, Nelson checked the horizon. “Another five minutes.”
When they got in sight of the island, then closer to the dock, Renae asked, “Do you have a first aid kit?”
True sobriety washed through Nelson. He pointed at a white, metal box.
“Holleeee crap,” he said, pulling up alongside the dock. A man and a woman helped tie it up.
The dock was filled with people, two of them little kids. Renae spotted the Harpers. Tobe Harper leaned against a wood rail, a knife sticking out of his leg. His pants were stained with blood.
There was a body under a sheet. A woman Renae didn’t recognize sat by the body, babbling to herself.
“Thank you,” the girl who helped moor the boat said. “If I didn’t believe in angels before, I do now.” She was a bottle blond with a very pretty face, but she looked ready to collapse. The same could be said for the crew cut man with her.
“What happened?” Renae asked, her stomach feeling as if molten lead was being poured into it.
“A lot of things that no one will believe,” the girl said.
The woman by the body looked at Renae. “They do kill people. They do!”
The boat cruised across the harbor, putting Ormsby Island in the far off distance. Jessica knew the island would always be there, waiting for her, every time she closed her eyes.
Just remember reuniting the kids with their mothers, she told herself. You’re going to have to try and forget the bad stuff. Fixate on the good stuff.
It was going to be hard, with so much bad to go around.
She nestled into Eddie. He hadn’t said much since they’d left the house, headed for the docks. She knew he’d given her a ton of his own energy to pull her back, to save her life and the souls of all those EBs. He would get better, regain his strength.
“I can’t believe Paul is dead,” she said, low enough so no one else could hear her. She especially didn’t want the kids to hear. They were already distraught. Having to wait on a dock with their dead uncle’s body wrapped in a sheet did little to comfort them.
“Had to be internal bleeding,” Eddie said. “Even if we’d had access to a phone, I don’t think anyone would have gotten to the island in time to save him.”
“Eddie, did we kill him?”
He pulled her closer.
“No. It was going to happen the moment he decided to use the island to make a name for himself. He wasn’t a bad guy. He just had a bad idea.”
Mitch and Rusty sat opposite them, neither talking. Jason and Alice slept with their heads on their mother’s lap. Those poor kids. Sharing Jessica’s gift, this wouldn’t be the end for them. They could either spend their lives fleeing from the dead, or embrace it.
Daphne was a soldier, refusing to let them see her grieve, not just for her brother, but Jessica was sure the marriage was over as well. Tobe kept to himself, quiet, loggy from blood loss and shock.
Or maybe they could get past this. They would all have to try.
She wasn’t sure if Nina would succeed. Because she had a quasi-refined sixth sense, she’d experienced what had happened on a deeper level than most. Eddie said he’d taken a quick look inside her mind and it was a disaster.
“I’m not sure if she can come back,” he’d said. “Maybe, after some time, I can meet with her and find her, try to help her through. For now, she’s gone, Jess. Just, gone.”
Despite the guilt and exhaustion, Jessica perked up when she saw Rusty toss a black case over the side.
Mitch didn’t protest as his partner threw all of their equipment into the harbor.
“It’s better off down there. Maybe the fish can appreciate it,” he said. When he was done, he put his Dodgers cap over his face and slept.
Jessica nudged Eddie.
“I think we better follow Rusty’s lead,” she said, eyeing the three plastic bags. Inside each was one of the Ormsby journals.
“You’re right,” Eddie said. “Some things are better off unknown.”
Together, they pitched the books overboard. The pilot and the woman, Renae, asked them once what they were doing but let it go at that when they saw no one was willing to explain.
Some things were better left feared and avoided.
With any luck, a storm would wash the island away, along with any hint of its dark and terrible secrets.
They spent a good part of the day at the hospital then the police station. Unfortunately for Daphne, she had to bear the brunt of the questioning. While Paul was taken to the morgue, Tobe was admitted to the hospital, as well as Mitch for the slashes on his body and Nina for a psych evaluation. While there, they learned that the knife had been removed from Tobe’s leg and he would be all right. Mitch was quickly released and brought to the station for questioning.
Daphne made it a point to absolve Eddie and Jessica from all blame. Paul died from a fall, an accident. While on the boat, Tobe and Daphne had secretly concocted a story about his accidently stabbing himself with the carving knife, falling on it in the kitchen when he heard Paul go down the stairs.
The police weren’t buying it, but no one else was refuting the story. No one wanted to see little Alice go through one second of questioning. They needed to heal, to grieve. Rusty had talked a blue streak in a reverse sort of interrogation. Finally, the police gave up under his barrage.
“If you want, we can catch a late flight to New York now,” Eddie said as they entered the hotel, the place where the whole madness had started. The air conditioning was overwhelming. Since the EBs had left, she had savored the summer heat.