Getting weirder.

Jessica had put on a bright green windbreaker before dinner. He couldn’t recall ever seeing her in anything quite so colorful and bright.

“Hey Gumby,” he said.

“Rag on the jacket, you better be wearing a cup.”

Unlike so many other threats she’d launched at him in the past, this one was said with a wry smile.

“Wanna walk for a bit?” he asked.

“That’d be cool. Is there anything you need to show me?”

He rubbed the back of his head. “Oh, how I wish I could show you all the things I see right now. Unfortunately, I don’t have a pair of psychic glasses on me so you can look into the netherworld.”

“Like Roddy Piper in They Live,” Jessica said.

“What the heck is They Live?”

“Never mind. Eighties music, eighties horror movies. They’re my thing.”

They walked side-by-side to the front of the house. The farther they walked from it, the more it felt like mid-summer at dusk.

“I don’t remember you being this sarcastic,” she said.

“Yeah, well, I spent some time around this Long Island family a few years ago and picked up a thing or two.”

She gently elbowed him in the ribs.

“All kidding aside, what the heck happened here? I need you to come clean, now.”

Jessica stepped in front of him, studying his face. “How bad is it?” she said.

“I’ve never even imagined anyplace could be this bad. Jess, there are about a dozen EBs standing right behind you. And behind them are a dozen more, and so on. Everywhere I look, they’re there. The worst part is, they’re all kids.”

The world around him seemed to brighten as incorporeal bodies nudged closer to them. Hands reached out, touching Jessica. Blurred faces pressed against her legs.

“How do you feel right now?” he asked her.

“What do you mean?”

“There are five EBs touching you at this very moment.”

Her brows knitted, concerned. “Are you shitting me?”

“Nope. Others are joining in. It’s like you’re some kind of afterlife rock star.”

He knew she’d had several intense experiences, both being touched and physically assaulted by the dead. The power that she emitted gave any EB around her strength to draw on, allowing them the kinetic energy to interact with the world of the living, even if only for a moment. She may not have had his own gift of sight, but she’d been pretty damn good with discerning when an EB was present.

“I don’t feel a thing,” she said.

“They must be too weak. If things go according to script, they’ll siphon enough from you to make themselves known. Which brings me back to wondering what went down on this freaky island. I keep expecting Marlon Brando to walk out of the trees wearing a white kimono.”

Jessica looked around, hands splayed out before her, careful not to make any sudden movement that would startle the EBs. God, she was different. Eddie couldn’t think of a single woman who wouldn’t flinch after being told dead children were running their hands over her body.

“I might as well spill it. I know I don’t have all the facts…yet. It’s some pretty weird shit.”

“I kind of gathered that.”

They turned left at the darkened path, winding instead down what looked like narrow game trails through the trees. There wasn’t much to the trails and no matter how far they walked, the Ormsby House loomed above them.

As they walked, Jessica talked. “Up until twenty-one years ago, Ormsby Island was a privately owned island populated by descendants of a wealthy self-made man named Maxwell Ormsby. They pretty much kept to themselves. The lavish lawn parties and blissful retreats for the rich and artistic that Maxwell had arranged ended a long, long time ago. He went from being one of the most important, influential and interesting people in Charleston to a seldom seen memory. The citizens of Charleston, who had once jockeyed for a chance to visit him on his island, had pretty much forgotten about the Ormsbys, they were so reclusive. Towards the end, it was said that the family money had dried up and the last male Ormsby, Alexander, was an old, sick, crippled man, counting his days.”

Eddie swatted a branch out of their way. It slipped from his fingers, swinging back and headed for Jessica’s nose. It stopped in mid-swing as he held it with a quick burst of concentration. “Being alone and old out here is not an ideal situation,” he said.

Jessica stared at the unmoving branch. “I’ll never stop being impressed by that mind of yours. You sure you can’t teach me to do it?”

“You either got it or you don’t. Continue.”

The moment she walked past the branch, his mind released it, allowing it to snap back in place.

“Well, the island suddenly made itself very known one night when a passing boat spotted a fire. They called it in to the harbor patrol and soon, responders were swarming the island. They thought they were just there to put out a fire. What they found was a pile of bodies within that fire. They were children. Ormsby’s children. None of them survived.”

Eddie looked behind them. “The clearing the kids took us to.”

“I think it’s safe to assume that’s where it happened.”

“But you said Alexander Ormsby was an old man. How could he have so many kids? Better still, why? And where was their mother, or mothers?”

She kicked at a rock, sending it into a tree with a dull thwack. “No one knows. Autopsies revealed physical deficiencies in a good number of the bodies. They found Alexander in his room. He’d taken a lethal overdose. Police and fire officials couldn’t determine if he started the fire, then committed suicide, but it seemed like a safe assumption.”

“Wait, he murdered his children?”

“All twenty-three of them. You wanted to know why the mothers were never found? People suspect he was having sex with his daughters the moment they became fertile. They were burned up in the fire. He gathered his shame in one place and scorched it from existence.”

“I think there’s more to it than that,” Eddie said. “Urban legends couldn’t make a dent in what really went on here. And how did I never hear of this? A mass murder like that would be major news.”

“Not so much a couple of decades ago before the internet and twenty-four hour news coverage. The keepers of Charleston did their best to bury their dirty secret.”

Eddie stopped. He leaned his shoulder against a pine tree. The bark was sharp, cutting into his skin. “The Last Kids,” he whispered.

“And now they’re talking to Jason and Alice,” Jessica said.

“Jess, this didn’t start and end with Alexander.”

Pale bodies filled the woods around them, phasing in and out of trees, shuffling through the underbrush without a sound. Many focused on Jessica, drawn by whatever power lived inside her. Others wandered aimlessly, limping, lurching wraiths gathering under a pink and purple sunset.

“This has to go further back. There were a lot of other children before the Last Kids. I’d say there isn’t a plant on the island that hasn’t fed off the remains of Ormsby children.”

As he said it, the EBs paused, as if to say yessss, now you understand.

The pain in his head flared up again. He turned from Jessica, vomiting on a pine tree, wondering if he could carry Jessica and the children on his back and swim them the hell off Ormsby Island.

Paul watched Jessica and Eddie walk back to the house, the skinny young man leaning against the girl with the New York accent, while the children brushed their teeth in the next room.

What a pair. If what Nina says about them is true, things are about to get very interesting.

“Uncle Paul, we’re done,” little Alice called out.

“Be there in a minute. Did you brush your hair?”

“Yes,” she answered in a sing-song voice.

“Jason, did you put your clothes in the hamper?”

“Uh-huh.”

Paul let the curtain fall in place. He hadn’t bothered to turn the lights on in Daphne and Tobe’s bedroom. Better to watch their guests without being seen.