After Paul took them on another death ride to the Charleston docks, Jessica and Eddie went back to their hotel to prepare for the week ahead. Jessica asked him to meet her in the hotel bar in an hour so they could talk. Eddie changed out of his sweaty, wet clothes and into a pair of worn blue jeans and button down shirt.
With nothing much else to do, he rode the elevator and sat at the bar a half hour early. The low lighting and maroon décor was perfect for crying in your beer or finagling a one-night stand. The Braves game was on one television beside the bar, a boxing match by a pair of welterweights on the other. He ordered a beer and stared at the baseball game, following nothing. Two innings in and he couldn’t even tell a passing patron what the score was when the game went to commercial.
“Starting without me?” Jessica said, settling onto the barstool next to him.
Jessica had changed as well into low riding hip huggers with a V-neck shirt that revealed the red straps of her bra. She had filled out a smidge during the two plus years they had been apart. She upgraded her girl body for a woman’s, Eddie thought. The blond hair still made him feel as if he were with a different woman. It was impossible not to notice how attractive she was now. When they first met, it was hard to get past the tough front she’d erected. She was softer now, maybe even a tad vulnerable, but he wasn’t going to be fooled. He knew her interior was still harder than a diamond.
He waved the bartender over and ordered two beers. “I noticed you weren’t much of a Tom Collins girl.”
She winced. “That was disgusting. I’ve never met a mixed drink I like, with the exception of that Cosmo at my aunt’s place. That bartender is like a magician.”
The beer glasses were frosty, trails of foam sliding down the cold glass. Eddie made a toast. “Here’s to EBs everywhere, especially on Ormsby Island.”
They clinked glasses. Jessica downed half of her beer in one long gulp. “I was thirsty,” she said.
Eddie made a half-turn in his seat to face her. “So, what did you think of our hosts?”
She chuckled. “I think they could be not-too-distant cousins of the Addams Family.”
“With Paul as a fuzzy Uncle Fester,” Eddie laughed.
“I find it hard to believe he’s in any way related to Daphne. Maybe they have different fathers.”
“Or mothers.”
“Or that.” She finished her drink and ordered another. “On a more serious note, how many EBs did you see out there?”
He tipped his glass back, finishing his beer so he could keep up with her. “Too many to count.”
“How many EBs can possibly be on that island? It’s a tiny speck in the grand scheme of things.”
Eddie shook his head, recalling the wall of EBs at the dock, as well as the wispy children in the library. “I don’t know how, but they’re all there. I was so blown away, I couldn’t get a proper reading on a single one. It was like trying to zero-in on your favorite flame in the middle of a bonfire. I’m hoping I can focus a little better tomorrow.”
She clapped him hard on the back. “You passed the first test. You really didn’t read anything about the island?”
“No, you told me not to.”
“Exactly. I wanted you to go in there with a blank slate. The more you know, the better chance to color your take on things.”
“Do you know the history?” he asked.
“Some of it. That reminds me, I have to ask Swedey to get more intel for me.” She pulled her phone from her back pocket and started texting. She’d told Eddie about Swedey, her European web designer who was also a cyber P.I. on the side. Even though she never met the man, she trusted him implicitly. It was a difficult relationship to decipher.
“What are you asking him to look up?”
The tip of her tongue darted in and out of the side of her mouth as she typed. “I want him to see what he can get on Tobe, Daphne and Paul. That and anything else he can dig up about Maxwell Ormsby and the island itself.”
“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me anything tonight,” Eddie said.
“Nope. We’ll see what comes to you tomorrow.”
“You want something to eat?”
“Hell yes. I’m frigging starving.”
Eddie reached over the bar, grabbing a couple of menus and knocking a few lime wedges to the ground. Luckily, the bartender didn’t notice.
“You know what I can’t get over?” he said, his face buried in the menu.
“The way the interior and exterior of the house don’t match at all?”
“That’s another thing—that and the pervasive chill that never seems to go away. No, what I’m talking about is how nice you’ve been to me through all of this. Last time we spoke, you told me to, and I quote, ‘stay the fuck away from me’. And now here we are in South Carolina having beers at a bar before heading off to an island for a week to deal with another person’s haunting issues. I know it can’t be the bleached hair that made this turnabout.”
She lowered her menu and he was sure she was going to hit him with it.
Why do you always push your luck with her?
“Let’s not discuss this now,” she said. “Things change. People change. I’m working on it.”
He slapped his menu down on the bar. “Works for me.” Catching the bartender’s attention, he said, “Can we place our order?”
She added, “Plus, I’m worried about those kids. I know what it’s like. If I can somehow shield them from the same crap I went through, it’ll be worth it.”
When the food came, he noticed how some things didn’t change at all. The heat of the day had knocked the appetite right out of him. He drove his fork into his Cobb salad, wishing he’d settled on beer for his meal.
Jessica’s appetite was as strong as ever. Her plate was filled with barbecued ribs, mashed potatoes, green beans, a side of pinto beans, two biscuits that were fluffier than a new pillow and slathered in butter, and a side bowl of cole slaw. She dove in like a woman at the end of a hunger strike.
“You’re a man’s dream dinner date,” he said.
“What do you mean?” The corners of her mouth were stained red from barbecue sauce.
“It means any guy who takes you out to dinner can enjoy the meal he really wants to eat and not the paltry one he thinks his date expects him to eat.”
She twirled a clean rib bone in the air. “Just doing what I can for equality among the sexes.”
Twenty minutes later, they were both done. Jessica patted her flat stomach. “I can only imagine how good the southern cooking is outside of a cookie cutter hotel. Too bad we’ll be stuck on an island this week. I didn’t get the impression that the Harpers have spent much time in the kitchen.” She checked her text messages and tucked the phone back into her pocket. “So, let’s get to the most important part. Tell me what you can about the kids. Are they really like me?”
The entire time he’d been in Ormsby House, he tried to cleave through the white noise of the horde of EBs, seeking what he called the psychic pulse of the children upstairs. He’d caught enough snatches to confirm the initial impression fed to him by the dead before he reconnected with Jessica.
He took in a deep breath. “From what I can tell, yes, they do have an innate ability to draw the dead to them. It’s nothing like yours, but they’re still kids. Adolescence will be the time when things really kick in. Teen years are a drag for more than just pimples and voice changes.”
Perfect, not perfect.
The voice was his own, but he had no idea why it had flitted into his head. He was suddenly aware that he hadn’t seen the weeping blond women, or the other dead that had been his constant companions since leaving his apartment. He’d heard them say it so many times, it had become a song that looped in his brain.
Jessica played with the ends of her hair. “Do you think their parents are aware of it?”
“It was impossible for me to tell. I’d hope not. What kind of parents would use their own children as bait?”
“There are shitty parents everywhere, Eddie. Right now, some kid is getting a cigarette burned into his arm or a beating with a belt buckle. Tobe and Daphne don’t seem like the type, but you never know.
“I need you to spend as much time with them as you can tomorrow,” she said. “We’re either going to make this place safe for them or convince Tobe and Daphne to get them the hell out of there. Every internal meter I have was going off when we were in that house. No doubt there’s something hanging around. We just need to find out who and why.”
Sighing, Eddie said, “It’ll be a lot of whos, I can tell you that much.”
They sat quietly for a while, both lost in their own thoughts.
Best to tell her now, Eddie thought. They were going to put themselves into the center of a storm in the morning. It was unfair to keep her in the dark about his problems.
“Jess, there’s something I need to tell you.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Looks like it’s serious.”
His stomach twittered with anxiety. “I’m broken.”
Jessica leaned back, staring at him with skeptical confusion. “What do you mean by broken?”
“I can’t shut them out. Ever since New Hampshire, I’ve steadily been losing control. For the past couple of years, the dead have been smothering me. Most times, it’s like living in the middle of the stock exchange. I can’t even get to sleep at night without a few drinks. When I touched that pedophile’s spirit—”
“We both did,” Jessica interjected. She was right. He’d been able to draw her into contact with the dead man’s depraved soul. It had sickened them to their core, but also gave them what they needed to find his rotting corpse and put an end to his reign of terror on the poor girl he’d attached his desires to.
“For me, it feels like it accelerated things, so much that I couldn’t keep up. All of the controls I’ve spent my life putting in place were blown wide open and I can’t get them back. I’ll be able to see and hear the EBs on Ormsby Island. I just don’t know if I’ll be able to make much sense of them.”
“Have you spoken to your father or any of your professors at the Rhine?”
“No.” His relationship with his father, a burned out psychic, was tenuous at best. He could have called the Rhine, but a part of him didn’t want them to know he’d failed being on his own.
Surprisingly, she gently placed her hand over his. “Hey, we’ll get through it together. At least you haven’t spent years running from yourself.”
He met her eyes and was relieved to see the sympathy there. “There is one good thing. Since I met up with you, other than on the island, the EBs have been staying away. I think, and this is no joke, that they’re afraid of you.”
Jessica chuckled. “I guess it’s cool to see that I’ve made a name for myself on the other side.”
He paid their tab and agreed to meet in the lobby at nine the next morning. They rode the elevator together. When Jessica was getting off at her floor, he said, “That island is a bad place. We’re going to have to be very careful.”
“I know. Try to get some sleep. Call me if any dead strangers won’t leave you alone.”
The doors closed before he could ask what she would do if he called.
Once in his room, the first thing he did was scoop up several small bottles of vodka from the mini bar, setting them on the bedside table. He showered, changed and watched the news, waiting for the dead to come.
The room remained empty. He closed his eyes, entering his barn talisman. The old structure looked older, with jagged cracks splitting the wood-flaked beams. The doors remained open wide, a crumbled defense that couldn’t even hold back the whisper of a summer breeze. Dragging a bale of rotted hay to the center of the barn, he sat and waited. They would come. They always came. And then he would drink the vodka.
But they didn’t. Even the heavy scent of the tall grass outside the barn would not enter.
Eddie came to in his bed with a start. His eyes roamed the room, searching for motorcycle crash victims, suicides, cancer patients, pretty women with impenetrable souls chanting Perfect. Not perfect.
The news had given way to a late night talk show.
He eyed the vodka bottles. The craving had nothing to do with aiding his escape to empty dreams.
I have to stop living like this.
Unscrewing the cap of Absolut, he brought the tiny opening to his lips. Before the burning liquid could touch his tongue, he flung the plastic bottle across the room, splashing the mirror and writing desk. He scooped up all of the bottles, dumping them in the sink one at a time.
Digging through his luggage, he found the bottle of Xanax. Jessica’s father had become addicted to the pills after his wife had died in her sleep, terrified of being the sole caretaker for a small child, terrified of being alone, terrified of dying, terrified of living. It had been his undoing for many long years. He knew that if he’d told Jessica he had been taking them, she would have read him the riot act, maybe going so far as to physically impress upon him why he had to stop.
“I don’t need this,” he said, staring at the bottle in his palm.
But of course, he had needed it. How else was he supposed to sleep surrounded by the clamor and push of the dead encircling his bed every night?
They weren’t here now.
Jessica was, although floors away.
Taking a deep, hitching breath, he poured the blue, oval pills into the toilet, flushing before second thoughts could take hold.