A row of empty docks, one of them little more than shattered timber, jutted out from the rocky shoreline. Paul slowed down, guzzled his beer and pitched it overboard.

Okay, so he’s not eco-friendly.

“What happened to that dock?” Jessica asked.

Paul pointed at the wreck of water-rotted wood. “Hurricane. Somehow it only tore the heck out of that one, which I assume is the oldest, and the weakest. Over the years, I’m sure this whole island has taken a hell of a beating. You mind helping tie this bad boy to the dock?” he asked Eddie.

“Sure.”

Eddie grabbed the rope, nimbly clambering onto the wet boards. He looped it around a pylon and Paul cut the engine. He helped Jessica out of the boat.

“We’ll just follow the path up to the house,” Paul said, striding past them.

“That looks crazy,” Jessica said softly to Eddie.

The path was a perfectly circular opening in the trees. It looked like the entrance to a dark, uninviting cave. It appeared natural and unnatural at the same time.

Eddie groaned. He reached out for her hand, coming to a sudden stop.

“What is it?” she asked. Paul was almost at the path’s entrance. A frigid breeze washed over them, bringing goose bumps to her arms. It felt as if the island itself had blown an icy breath from the path’s shadowy mouth.

She looked at Eddie. His eyes had narrowed to sharp slits. His jaw muscles flexed. The palm of his hand was suddenly cold and clammy.

His body’s reaction could mean only one thing.

Leaning close, shaking off the chill that danced up her spine, she said, “Eddie, what do you see?”

They were waiting for them.

Eddie tried to count the shimmering wraiths, but they were packed as closely as the trees behind them.

Holy Christ, what’s wrong with them?

Nothing looked right. Limbs were twisted, stunted and gnarled. Faces were morphing pools of mist. He couldn’t get a clear vision of a single EB.

They gathered before the tree-lined path to the house, a gateway made of energetic essence. He reached out to them in an attempt to catch a stray thought or intention. Even though his own psychic barriers were thrown wide, nothing came inside. Their silence, as much as their bizarre appearance, was unsettling.

Twin daggers of pain lanced his temples.

He heard Jessica whisper something to him. “What do you see?”

Forcing his eyes open, he watched Paul walk through the ghostly throng, insensible to their presence.

“They’re everywhere,” he said, sucking air through his teeth.

“What do you mean?”

He looked to the left of the docks, then the right. EBs of every size and shape dotted the shore.

“Jess, I’ve never seen so many spirits gathered in one place before other than an old battleground.” His mind drifted closer to the gathering in an attempt to latch onto brief snatches of information as one would skim the surface of a pool with a net. “They’re all tied to the island. No visitors here.”

Jessica tugged his arm, urging him forward. “We better keep moving.” Then louder, she said, “We’re coming, Paul.”

Eddie couldn’t see the bearded man through the fog of EBs.

Each step was like pounding a nail into his skull, one tiny tap at a time. “There’s so many kids,” he said low enough so only Jessica could hear. “We’re going to walk right into them in two more steps.”

If it gave Jessica pause, he didn’t sense it. Instead she seemed to pull him faster.

A frigid hand closed around his heart, freezing the ebb and flow of his blood.

Eddie gasped, overcome with the chill of a thousand deep, dark graves.

And just as suddenly as it came, his heart was set free. They were surrounded only by the pitch of the tight canopy above. The air inside the path was much cooler, bordering on cold.

He cast a quick glance behind them, but the rows of EBs were gone.

“It’s just a little ways up this incline,” Paul said, oblivious not only to the spirits but Eddie’s pained reaction.

“You all right?” Jessica asked as they walked along the uneven, overgrown earth.

He rubbed the right side of his head with his fingertips. “Yeah, the pain’s going away. It was a bit overwhelming. We’re going to have our work cut out for us.”

“I might just tell them to get their kids off the island and head back to New York.”

Leaves that had fallen years before crackled under their feet. It was going to take him some time to get used to the new Jessica. The girl he’d met three years earlier would have dived right in, ready to tackle any EB, no matter how terrifying. Now, it felt like she was taking this as a kind of consultancy, her mind already made up to offer the path of least resistance.

Flashes of light broke through the lush tree limbs.

“And here we are. Trust me, it’s not as bad as it looks once you get inside,” Paul said, waving his hand across the view of the crumbling Colonial as if he were a model showcasing the prize on a game show.

The big old house looked as if it was dying of cancer. Whatever vibrancy it once contained had long ago turned to rot and…sickness. Yes, the house gave off an aura of malignancy.

“That’s a big place,” Jessica said, stopping to take it all in from a slight distance. “Do you know how old it is?”

Paul scholarly tugged at the ends of his beard. “I think my brother-in-law told me the place was built around the mid-1800s. A small part of it burned down at the turn of the twentieth century and was rebuilt right away. I think it started from a spilled kerosene lamp. Happened a lot in places that didn’t have electricity back in the day. It’s that area to the right. Impossible to tell now. The outside looks equally bad no matter where you look. It has the same name as the island—the Ormsby House. The name alone makes it sound creepy. Probably what got people thinking it was haunted in the first place.”

“You don’t think there are ghosts?” Jessica asked.

He shrugged his shoulders. “I’ve been here a couple weeks and haven’t seen or heard a thing. I went to a couple of bars in Charleston and once I said where I was staying, I got enough ghost stories to fill a book. But none of the folks who told them have ever even been on the island. It’s a bunch of ‘my grandmother told me about the time her mother was on Ormsby Island’ stuff.”

Eddie’s head finally felt clear. He said, “So you’re the resident skeptic?”

Paul gave another one of his big smiles. “I guess you could say that. That’s until you two can prove otherwise. Now my sister and brother-in-law, they believe it whole hog. It’s why they bought this in the first place.”

Before Eddie could ask another question, Paul turned his back to them and resumed his trudge to the decaying mansion.

“It would make a lovely B&B,” Eddie joked.

Jessica didn’t laugh. “Why bring their little kids to a creepy place like this if you think it’s haunted?” Of course, her father had done the same thing to her when she was only six, so it wasn’t as if she hadn’t had experience with grown ups making poor decisions.

“Because they knew you were out there to make the ghosties go away. They get an island and a mansion on the cheap, and after a few days with you, it’s all clear.”

“Yeah, but how the hell did they find out about me?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know…yet, but I have my suspicions. Secrets that used to reside in my head have been…compromised. It’s a long story. Better still, how the hell are you supposed to banish an entire island full of EBs?”

At the foot of the rotted steps, Jessica knelt down, fumbling in the high grass that had grown between the cracks of a narrow concrete strip along the foundation of the house. She picked up an old, glass hypodermic syringe, the inside crusted yellow with some long decayed substance.

“At least there’s no needle,” she said. “Reminds me of the beaches back home.”