Текст книги "Island of the Forbidden "

Автор книги: Hunter Shea

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Chapter Four

Nina D’Arcangela’s eyes snapped open, their golden flecks sparkling with the pulse of kinetic energy that bled from her like lightning in a heat storm. She drew deep, hungry breaths, startling everyone in the room. The screeching of chairs pushing back against the hardwood floor caromed around the bare walls.

“A pen, I need a pen!” Nina shouted, her hands trembling.

Someone, it was impossible to tell who in the dark, pushed a legal pad across the table, another placing a pen in her hand.

She closed her eyes again.

She could feel the weight of held breath around her.

Suddenly, she began to write. Her hand jerked across the page, spelling words she couldn’t see. A dull flare of illumination flashed across her closed lids like a projector’s light seen from the other side of a screen.

There was a gasp, then murmurs of excitement.

Nina felt the burst of power bleed from her, dragging her into the quiet, comforting darkness. Her hand went numb, and in the distance, she thought she heard the pen bounce as it left her nimble fingers.

Jessica’s body was exhausted but her mind wasn’t going to let her shut it down for the night. After lunch, she and Angela double-timed it, sucking in the clean air and warm sun, funneling it into hard work. While she worked, her brain mercifully switched off. It stayed that way all through dinner and at the bar afterward. She was grateful Angela volunteered to be the designated driver. Three hours of telling old stories over bottles of Milwaukee’s Best—when in Rome—then moving on to gin and tonics, had her head in a nice spin.

This is the first time the stick has been removed from your ass in months, she’d said to herself, hand riding the wind outside the passenger window. She had a hard time instructing Angela how to get to the newly constructed hotel, but they finally made it, giggling down the halls, disturbing the peace.

She’d made it a point to book her long-term stay in this particular hotel. It’d had its grand opening just weeks before her arrival. It had been built on an empty lot. New building, new space. No history.

Avoiding history was important, especially when it came to places to lay her head at night. “It’s goddamnfucking crucial,” she’d said to Angela. “You know how dangerous it can get.”

Angela knew.

So did Eve. And Liam.

Fuck, and Eddie.

He of the Psychic Friends Network—No Bullshit Chapter. Pay your money there and you might not like what you hear. If that happened, you were good and screwed because shit was going down whether you liked it or not.

She took a steaming hot shower, changed into a T-shirt and boxer shorts and turned on her laptop. Before she knew what she was doing, her fingers typed fearnone.com.

Nothing. That was good. When she made the decision three years ago to shut down her paranormal website, a repository for stories, photos and videos of EBs—or energy beings (what other people called ghosts or spirits)—she worried that somehow the great and powerful internet gods would snatch bits here and there, dragging them, and her, back into the light of day. Swedey, her European web developer, was damn good at his job. He erased every single trace of the website. It made her feel better to check every now and again.

What does Eddie want with me?

Jessica tugged at her hair, twisting the strands and chewing on the ends. They tasted like the cheap hotel shampoo, a mix of coconut and chemicals.

You were pretty clear that it was best you stayed away from each other.

“I was,” she said aloud, her eyes focused on the laptop’s screen but seeing nothing.

But did he agree with you?

“It doesn’t matter. This is my life. I’ll live it the way I choose. And I chose to get away from him, from everything.”

Because you were afraid.

“That’s one thing I’ve never been, sister.” She snapped the laptop closed and hit the remote to turn the TV on. A truck commercial blared from the tinny speakers.

That’s what you like everyone to think. I know it scared you.

She tried to lose herself in reruns of horrible sitcoms. Twice she got up to get a glass of water, the second time washing a couple of Tylenol down. The fuzzy edges of an early hangover crept across her skull like a mass of determined spiders.

Call them.

This time, the voice in her head wasn’t her own. She bolted upright in bed, tossing a pillow aside.

“Who was that?” she whispered, heart hammering.

In her previous life, seeking EBs day and night, she’d heard many voices, quite a few of them calling to her from beyond the veil of death.

She’d never heard this one before. It was male. Forceful, yet somehow tired. There was a familiar tone, but she couldn’t place it. She tried so hard to hang a name on it, succeeding only in detonating a skull buster of a headache.

The red digital numbers on the bedside clock burned 11:56.

Too late to call.

Tomorrow.

“I promise, I’ll call tomorrow,” she said to the voice.

Fumbling in the drawer for her eye mask, she stuffed her ears with earplugs and settled into the bed. She left the TV and lights on.

Something skittered through the leaves.

No. Someone.

Roused from a long, dreamless slumber, all attention was drawn to the figure walking through the trees, whistling, blissful.

Another figure emerged from behind a pair of gnarled oak trees. A boy.

He joined the other. A girl.

While they walked, both now whistling a tuneless song, the air electrified in their wake, a low, rippling current that kissed the bark of the trees, traveling down to the roots, through the moldy earth.

Wake up! Wake up! Look!

I can see them! Can you?

Yes!

Where are we?

A man’s voice cried out. The boy and girl stopped, smiling. They yelled a reply, running away.

Home.

Jessica woke up at eight feeling like seven shades of hell. Groggily looking at her phone, she saw a text from Angela saying she’d knock on her door to go down for breakfast at nine. One hour to regain some form of stasis. She chucked her eye mask and earplugs on the bed, stumbling into the bathroom. The full-length mirror that was the width of one of the walls did little to lift her spirits.

Even she didn’t recognize herself, and it had little to do with the visible scars of her hangover. Not only had her hair changed. Her physique, skin tone, and if possible, even the structure of her face had transformed her into a different person. She was all sharp angles and well-defined muscle, a bottle blond with haunted eyes that kept men at bay.

She scraped the gunk from her tongue against her teeth, spitting into the sink. “Morning beauty queen.”

The shower helped clear the fog in her brain. Changing into clothes that weren’t designed for heavy duty work helped regain a sense of femininity that had been fading bit by bit as she traversed the country.

With twenty minutes to kill, she eyed the phone on the night table.

Who do I call first?

If she called her Aunt Eve, she was sure to be on the phone for an hour, at least. Even she had to admit she owed Eve that much.

Eddie it was. At least it would be short. She’d see to that.

His number was programmed in her phone, even though she’d forbidden him from knowing her own. It rang four times before he picked up.

“Jess?”

Christ, he sounded like he was in even worse shape.

“Why are you calling my aunt?” she said, hiding zippo of her displeasure.

He coughed on the other end, holding the phone away from his mouth. It sounded like he swatted a twelve pack of empty cans around the room.

“It’s nice to hear your voice too,” he said. Well, at least he hadn’t lost his sarcasm.

“I told you to stay the fuck away. Some people might construe your calls as harassment.” She sat on the edge of the bed, one leg crossed over the other, bobbing to a death metal beat.

“You know, you hold on to anger like other people cherish fond memories.”

“Did you get that from a song?”

He breathed heavily into the phone.

“I was only trying to help,” he said, softly, hoarsely.

“Obviously I didn’t want it,” she said.

“Obviously.”

He groaned. Sheets ruffled in the background as if he was shifting in bed.

“Look, I haven’t got all day. What do you want?”

Eddie cleared his throat. “It’s not what I want. It’s what someone else will want.”

She pulled the phone from her ear, glowering at the display, wondering if she should just tap the End Call icon. “I’m not in the mood for riddles. Say what you have to say and let me live my life.”

“I have your father to thank for thrusting me into your life,” he said sharply.

“Hey, asshole, leave my father out of it.”

He immediately sounded apologetic. “Stop taking everything I say the wrong way. I’m the one who has never felt like my choices are my own. I’m the one who should be pissed off.”

Hearing him mention her deceased father made her cheeks and ears grow hot. She’d watched the man give his up life to save her and an entire cabin full of strangers. Years later, through Eddie’s incredible medium abilities, he’d connected with Jessica’s father seemingly out of the ether. In fact, her father was the one to initiate contact, pointing the gifted Duke grad that had overwhelmed The Rhine Center’s greatest expectations in Jessica’s direction. Hers and Eddie’s brief partnership sent them into the heart of a maelstrom that made her question everything she’d done with her life up until that moment. The fact that Eddie hadn’t been able to get her in contact with her father following those events was the first crack in their paranormal inspired union.

Their trip to see a frightened New Hampshire family three years ago brought them both face-to-face with harsh realities that neither was, even now, prepared to take on. It wasn’t the teen girl’s doppelganger that had unnerved her, so much as the discovery of her own latent abilities that nearly helped shatter an innocent girl.

For reasons unknown to her, Jessica could banish an EB simply by saying its name and commanding it to do so. It was something she learned about at an early age and came in handy when doing her one-woman paranormal investigations.

What she didn’t know was that she was also a beacon for the dead. Her presence was a sort of psychic power plant, giving strength to EBs, whether they were well intentioned, indifferent, or, in her last case, pure evil. In hindsight, it explained a lot. How had she never considered the incredible evidence and interactions she received when she immersed herself in a “haunted” location? She was young and cocksure and so wanted to pick up where her father left off. The why of things didn’t matter. What did was the act of doing something that felt like her legacy.

Eddie wanted to teach her to harness it, to find a way to make it work in her favor.

The problem was, she didn’t want to do anything with her strange curse. The more Eddie insisted, the further she drew away. Things got ugly in the end. Real ugly.

“Let’s just agree that we’re both pissed and move on. Say what you have to say. I have to meet Angela in a few minutes.”

Eddie replied, “I’m glad you still have her in your life. She’s good for you.”

Jessica picked at a loose thread in the comforter.

He continued, “I don’t know how else to say this other than being straight with you. Someone is looking for you. It’s gotten so I can’t even sleep. Something has everyone on the other side riled up, Jess. Whatever it is has you as part of its plans. I don’t know whether I’m supposed to warn you or help you.”

“Was my father one of your messengers?”

He paused, then said faintly, “No.”

“Then I really don’t give a rat’s ass what the other side is telling you.”

His breath blew into the phone. For once, she had him at a loss for words.

“It was real nice talking to you,” she said, thumb hovering over End Call.

“Wait! There’s one more thing.”

She sighed heavily, staring at the ceiling. “What?”

“There are kids involved. Kids like you.”

“What do you mean, like me?”

“I’m pretty sure they’re young. Real young. They’re using them as bait.”

Jessica’s stomach balled into a tight fist. Her extremities went cold, numb. “Are you going to be around later?”

“I will.”

“Good. Answer when I call.”

Chapter Five

Eddie Home looked at the disaster that was his apartment, considered getting out some paper towels and cleaning supplies, thought better of it and crashed on the couch. He ordered a pizza and watched The Omega Man while he waited.

No matter how much the opaque spirit of the man in his kitchen vied for his attention, Eddie kept him tuned out. His old skin sagged from his bones—death by old age—kind, rheumy eyes always staring, an unknowable plea drowning in their depths. Eddie had tried talking to the man many times before because he reminded him of his own long-deceased grandfather. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get a coherent word or thought from the man. He knew that he was the problem, not the poor old spirit. So, he tried his best to ignore him. Maybe he’d get the hint that Eddie wasn’t much company and leave.

That also went for the woman wearing a billowing dress with a collar that went up along her neck, barely concealing a red, vertical slash, standing behind the couch whispering his name.

He turned up the volume when a skinny man clothed in rags, his eyes swollen and leaking a viscous fluid, sat in the chair to his left. The man’s mouth, stained with grime, moved but no sound came out.

Just ignore them. They’ll get tired and go away.

Eddie ran a hand over the remaining stubble of his hair. He’d shaved it all off a week ago. It was hot and he couldn’t be bothered with it anymore. It was yet another aspect of his process to simplify his life. He’d traded in his Bronx apartment for a better place in Cos Cob, Connecticut. It was small, the rent was cheap and it was close to his job as the manager of a pet supplies store. The stock market may have been gangbusters but the economy was still in a major shit heap. Almost everyone in the pet store had recent degrees going to waste.

Closing his eyes, he conjured the image of his talisman, the mental portal his uber-psychic father had taught him to construct as a barrier between the living and the dead.

The once-solid barn sitting amidst a green and gold field of waving grass looked weathered and worn. The vibrant red paint had faded, chipped away, revealing gray, rotting wood. He placed himself within the shadowy confines of the barn, facing the wide-open double doors.

There was a time he could keep those doors locked tight, opening them only when he wanted to, when he needed to speak to the other side. Now, no matter how hard he tried, the hinges remained rusted in place, his psychic barrier thrown wide for all to come and go as they please.

The doorbell rang, yanking him from his broken talisman. He paid for the pizza, dropped the box on his coffee table but didn’t open it. His head hung low as he fumbled with his cell phone.

Please, Jessica, call. I’m just as broken as you are, maybe even more so. Something’s coming, and if we don’t face it, I don’t know what’s going to happen to us.

The constant pressure of the dead, like being a passenger in a steadily rising jet, had never felt more ominous, more foreboding. Sometimes, when his mind was weak with exhaustion and he couldn’t hold them back or continue ignoring their presence, he was able to sense another mind, a living mind, someone with gifts, though nothing quite as immense as those he’d been born with, poking, prodding, searching. This mind, whenever it came through, caused great ripples in the pool of souls that existed around him—hell, around everyone. Then they would press in even closer, demanding—what? He desperately tried to close his mind, not only to keep out the other, but to erect a “do not cross” barrier for the multitudes that congregated in his apartment, the pet store, even his car.

What did they want? What were they up to?

It had gotten much worse over the past couple of weeks. Bits and pieces came into focus momentarily, then evaporated like steam. Eddie clung to each fragment, seeing how they fit in the puzzle.

As the picture lost its obscurity, his worry grew.

Jessica’s number, repeated a dozen times, stared back at him from his phone’s call log. I know I’m the last one you want to talk to, but whatever’s brewing doesn’t care about what either of us wants.

When he looked up, every space in the apartment was crammed with the ethereal bodies of the dead. All eyes, even empty sockets as black as the core of the galaxy, were fixed on him. Jaws worked, up and down, up and down, but he refused to hear their words.

A half dozen women, young, blond, pretty, their wet, onyx eyes shielding him from their intent, stood between him and the television, their forms so concrete, he couldn’t see the picture behind them. Heavy droplets of tears fell from their unfathomable eyes.

“Not you again,” he said, pinching his eyes shut.

The women were the worst of the lot. With the others, he was still able to catch glimpses of how they lived, how they died, what they wanted from him, which at this point seemed to be his sanity. Not so with the blonds, the oldest maybe scraping up against middle age. Their chests didn’t move, but he could sense the inrush of air that preceded the same thing they said to him, day and night.

“Perfect, not perfect. Perfect, not perfect.”

When they’d first come to him, along with the parade of other uninvited dead, he’d tried to connect with them, to learn their story, perhaps set them to rest. At the very least, his intent was to get them to bother someone else, maybe even someone not as sensitive as he, a person whose life wouldn’t be turned inside out by their constant presence. They were as impenetrable as the deepest edges of space, wraiths of dazzling beauty and confounding purpose.

Who wasn’t perfect? Were they talking about themselves? They sure looked perfect enough, at least in the physical sense.

Or was it a commentary on him, a condemnation that despite his cockiness in his psychic abilities, he was a far cry from what they truly needed, perhaps what all of the dead who suffocated him needed.

“Perfect, not perfect.”

He reached for the can of beer on the coffee table, the hot, bitter remains barely enough to coat his tongue. The amber bottle of anti-anxiety pills sat on top of his television, but to get to them, he’d have to pass through the women. For a man who had been interacting with the dead since he was a small child, he was frustratingly afraid to get so close as to mix his atoms with theirs, to share a space in place and time more intimate than if he’d made love to them.

They were what scared him, what drove him to break his promise never to speak to Jessica again. The others wanted to be around him because he was one of the few that could see and interact with them, a filament connecting them to a life now gone.

The perfect women were different. Not so long ago, he would have been able to decipher their intent. Now, they were either an urging or an admonishment. A plea or a caution. Sometimes the other dead, equally disturbed by them, gave him glimpses, but it was hard to coalesce everything into a linear plotline.

Eddie buried his head in a stained pillow, squeezing his eyes shut so hard, bright sparks flitted in his periphery.

Jessica.

“Are you sure this is it?” the tall, pale man asked, rubbing his thumb along the crease in the paper.

“The spirits are quite sure,” Nina D’Arcangela replied with a dismissive wave of her hand. She loathed people who doubted her. She’d had enough of that growing up, the strange kid in a family of eight who had been left alone because no one knew how to react to the things she said and did. Even her parents, the weakest pair of suburban automatons to ever sire children, had been of no use to her, other than to question her sanity, and seemingly, her right to be part of the family.

What she didn’t say was that the connection to the spirit world had never been so strong. It was almost overwhelming, not to say unsettling. She’d been a psychic medium since she’d turned thirteen, able to snatch bits and bobs from the netherworld. It was always enough to build a story that would assure her return clientele.

But this place, this time, was different on every order. When she opened herself to the spirits, they not only came, they did so with unreal force. They didn’t whisper snippets. They practically shouted at her. She would have to remember to encircle herself with a protective light next time she came out. She wasn’t entirely sure all the spirits that descended upon her like ravenous lions had good intentions. There was evil here, and she didn’t want it following her when she walked out the door.

Tonight, she’d had a very specific task to perform, and the spirits had come through in spades. Or more like clubs that had done a number on her gray matter. Her head was pounding.

Who needs the NSA? If I can find a way to harness this energy outside this house, I can make a fortune working for private snooping agencies.

She wanted to be out of here and back in her hotel so she could rest. There was just no way a person like her could get a moment’s peace out here.

Every molecule in the air around her was alive, a dark insistence that scratched and clawed like a cat begging to be let inside. It was so damn draining.

“If you’re right—” the man started.

“When I’m proven right, you have the details to wire my next deposit.”

His lips curved into a smile that fell quite far from his eyes. “Very well. I’ll have Paul take you back.”

As anxious as she was to leave, she forced herself to take her time, leisurely walking through the sparsely furnished house. She didn’t want them to think she was the least bit…perturbed.

Even though there were several other people in this house, a place with no carpets and old, wood flooring, the mansion was as silent as death itself. Such a strange house. It looked like something from a haunted amusement park on the outside, yet the interior was impeccable.

There was a lot riding on this. More than she suspected her hosts had even considered.

Nina wasn’t about to make a single move that could screw it up.

Jessica surprised herself by crying when she said goodbye to Angela at the security line. For her part, Angela wiped her own tears away and tried to diffuse the sadness by saying, “Build your little house, then get your ass home for a while, you hear me?”

They hugged fiercely.

“I hear you,” Jessica said into her friend’s neck, her tears rolling down to her collarbone. She hadn’t told her on the drive about her call to Eddie. No need to spoil a perfectly good parting.

Angela pulled back a bit so they could be face-to-face. “You better not be lying, because I’m going to need your help.”

Jessica sniffed, rubbing a tear away with the back of her hand. “Oh yeah, help with what?”

Breaking into an enormous grin, Angela said, “I’m pregnant.”

The news hit her like ten car pile-up. Her brain short-circuited, refusing to send words down to her mouth.

“Boarding for flight three fifteen to New York. All rows, please proceed to the gate.”

“Sean Peters is the father, he knows and is thrilled, as are all our parents, and the wedding will be three months after the baby is born because I don’t want to be a fattie in a wedding dress.” The words tumbled from Angela as fast as an auctioneer as she struggled to slip her bag over her shoulder. “You need to come home and put those newfound skills to work building a crib and help me plan my wedding since you’ll be the maid of honor.”

Jessica croaked, “You wait until now to tell me?”

Angela pinched her cheek. “Now if you want to hear the rest, you have to get your ass to Long Island. It’s called a tease. We’re women. We created the art form. Now, tell me you love me and wish me a safe flight.”

She couldn’t help but giggle with excitement. “I love you and have a safe flight. Oh my God, I’m going to be an aunt…sort of.”

“And not a wandering one, either.”

Angela blew her a kiss and hustled to the security line.

Did that just happen?

Feeling like she was in a dream, Jessica walked to the big viewing window and stayed there until the plane pulled away, headed for the runway. Her face muscles cramped from the smile that hadn’t left her lips since Angela spilled the news. She walked against the throng of people heading to vacations and business trips and overdue visits home. Passing a store window, she spied a tiny green and yellow Green Bay Packers T shirt. She went inside and bought it, along with a Packers onesie, pink I Love Wisconsin footie pajama set, three teddy bears and two rattles.

She had to cover her bases, at least until she knew the sex of the baby. Unless it was twins, a boy and a girl!

It was hard to remember the last time she felt this happy.

I’m going to be an aunt. I’m going to be a maid of honor.

The frenetic pace of the airport couldn’t penetrate her cocoon of sudden bliss. It took some searching to find her car in the short-term parking lot. Her mind was on other things.

Does Aunt Eve already know? Angela only lives four doors away. She has to know. Is that why she’s been so desperate to get in touch with me? Why have I been such a loser, doing everything I can to avoid her?

Time to grow up, Aunt Jessica. Wow, that sounds weird. Wonder what it sounds like if I say it.

“Aunt Jessica. No, wait, Auntie Jess.”

Still weird.

Her Jeep wove in and out of traffic as her mind prepared a list of things she’d need to get and do. It was staggering.

Sean Peters. He and Angela had been dating off and on for a year. Well, it sounded like things were definitely on now.

As she pulled into the hotel parking lot, her cell phone blasted AC/DC for an incoming call from an unlisted number. She’d hoped it was Eve.

“Hello.” She cut the engine.

“Is this Jessica Backman?” The woman’s voice at the other end sounded reticent, with a touch of an indefinable accent. Hell, she was in such a good mood, she’d even be nice to the lady. She tried to guess the coming sales pitch.

“Yes this is Aunt Jessica Backman.”

“You don’t know me, but I believe you’re the only one that can help.”

Jessica’s cloud nine burst into gray particles, plummeting to earth in a death spiral.