Onyx Webb 6

by Diandra Archer

  “So, what’s the next thing in your book?”

  “Nothing,” Koda said. “It’s just you and me for the next two hours.”

  The weather was perfect outside—low ‘70s and virtually no humidity—so Koda arranged to have mimosas served on the back deck for him and Robyn.

  “I can’t believe you’re allowed to drink,” Robyn said. “Doesn’t it conflict with your meds?”

  Koda took a sip of his drink and set it on the table. “Mine is non-alcoholic. I decided to stop drinking anyway.”

  “Really?”

  “I figured I hadn’t had a drink in twenty-three days while I was in the coma, so why waste the good start?”

  “But mine’s got alcohol, right?” Robyn asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” Koda said with a smile.

  “Excellent,” Robyn said, picking up her glass and taking a good-sized sip of the drink. “It’s been one hell of a week.”

  “Tell me,” Koda said.

  “No way, mister. I’m here for you, not the other way around,” Robyn said. “Do you remember the first words you said to me when I got to the hospital?”

  “Yes. I told you I saw Dane.”

  “Right. But then, suddenly, you didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “I know. I decided it was a bad idea to say more with everyone around,” Koda said. “Besides, I thought there was a chance I’d been hallucinating.”

  “So, did you see him or not?” Robyn asked.

  Koda nodded. “Yeah, I saw Dane. And Juniper Cole, too.”

  Robyn took another slug of her mimosa and leaned forward. “So, tell me.”

  “It was dark—foggy sort of. I was standing on Church Street, and I saw Dane standing off in the distance on the other side of the tracks near the 55 West building.”

  “Where he got hit?”

  Koda nodded. “I started walking in his direction, but my legs felt strange—disconnected almost, as if they didn’t belong to me, like in one of those dreams where you try to get somewhere but just can’t seem to make progress. But then I heard Dane’s voice. I turned, and there he was, standing as close to me as you are right now.”

  “Dane spoke to you? What did he say?” Robyn pressed.

  “He said, ‘You’re not supposed to be here.’ He said it like I’d just crashed a party or something, like I wasn’t invited. Then he asked me if I could remember what happened. At first I couldn’t, and then suddenly I did. I remembered hanging upside down in the back of the limo—the water pouring in, rising. I was scared. Beyond scared. I remembered the water reaching my eyes, and knowing that any second it would be—”

  Koda paused. “Then Dane said he was sorry. That he’d made a mistake, visiting you at your house.”

  “Because of the shadow people?” Robyn said.

  “Yes,” Koda said. “Gerylyn was right. You were in great danger staying there. And I think that’s why I lived.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Robyn—I was dead,” Koda said. “And I know this is going to sound strange, but it felt comfortable. There was a part of me that wanted to stay there.”

  “So, why did you come back?” Robyn asked.

  “For the same reason anyone goes anywhere,” Koda said, taking Robyn’s hand. “They have a reason.”

  It took Robyn a moment to understand what Koda meant.

  He meant her.

  Chapter Ten

  CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA

  MAY 19, 1993

  Nisa Mulvaney sat strapped in a wheelchair, her wrists bound tightly to the armrests. Her feet were also bound. The duct tape over her mouth kept her from uttering a sound.

  She wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Now, if you promise not to scream again, I’ll pull the tape off your mouth,” Stan Lee said. “Okay?”

  Nisa’s eyes were locked on Stan Lee, filled with a combination of confusion, shock, and rage.

  “Tell me again why you brought her here?” Kara said from behind Stan Lee.

  “Ignore her,” Stan Lee said. “Kara tends to get jealous whenever I bring a girl home, even if they’re not staying long.”

  “I’m telling you, this was a mistake,” Kara said. “We don’t need the heat this is going to bring down on us.”

  “Shut up,” Stan Lee said over his shoulder.

  “Hey, it’s your funeral,” Kara said.

  Stan Lee stepped forward and grabbed the edge of the tape. “This might sting a bit,” he said, then ripped the tape from Nisa’s face with one quick pull, taking out a clump of her hair in the process.

  “Maybe she’s not so bad after all,” Kara said when Nisa refused to yelp in pain. “I mean, that had to hurt.”

  “Who are you?” Nisa asked.

  “You don’t know?”

  “Would I ask if I knew?” Nisa said.

  “She’s got a point, Stan,” Kara quipped.

  Stan Lee looked down at Nisa in the wheelchair. “How are you feeling?”

  “Whoever you are, you’ve made a big mistake,” Nisa said. “My husband is Bruce Mulvaney, a very wealthy and powerful man in Charleston. He’ll never give up looking for me.”

  Stan Lee laughed. “I’ve known Bruce a lot longer than you have. Hell, I was changing his diapers before you were even born.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You wouldn’t,” Stan Lee said as he walked over to the cabinet and found a half-used bottle of ketamine.

  “You do realize it’s only ten in the morning, don’t you?” Kara said.

  “What are you, my mother?”

  “What?” Nisa said. “Who are you talking to?”

  Stan Lee turned his attention back to the wheelchair. “I think it’s interesting that you said Bruce would keep looking for you because he had power and money. The thing you didn’t say was that he loved you.”

  “Of course he loves me.”

  “He does? Really?” Stan Lee asked. “I know he owns you, but does he love you.”

  Stan Lee drew 100 mg of the drug into the syringe, a small fraction of the amount he’d given Nisa the night before. He only wanted enough to calm himself—not to knock himself unconscious or accidently OD.

  “Where am I?” Nisa asked, her eyes darting around the room. “What is this place?”

  “Time to break it to her, Stan,” Kara said over Nisa’s shoulder, from behind the wheelchair.

  “My name is Stan Lee Mungehr,” Stan Lee said. “I live next door.”

  “Next door? Next door to who?” Nisa asked, confused.

  “To you, Nisa. To the Mulvaneys,” Stan Lee said, sticking the needle into his arm and injecting the ketamine. “I’m your neighbor.”

  “Look, she’s speechless,” Kara said. “Show her how clever you are with your names.”

  Stan Lee tossed the syringe in a trash can, then stepped over to his collection of board games and grabbed an old Scrabble game. He sifted through the wooden tiles until he found the seventeen letters he needed and placed them in the lid of the box.

  “You can’t believe the number of names you can make from just seventeen tiles,” Stan Lee said, arranging the letters, then setting the box lid in Nisa’s lap.

  The tiles spelled:

  S-T-A-N-T-O-N L-E-E M-U-N-G-E-H-R

  “This is my full, given name. For over ten years, though, I worked under a different name, as a photographer for the Savannah Police.”

  Stan Lee rearranged the letters until they spelled:

  S-E-R-G-E-N-T E-L-T-O-N N-A-H-U-M

  “I realize Sergeant is spelled wrong, but—then again—I was a kid when I made it,” Stan Lee said.

  “I was there with him when he made it up,” Kara said. “In the Dunning Asylum with Dr. Pandor. We got even with her, didn’t we, Stan?”

  “But you probably know me as this,” Stan Lee said, turning his attention to the tiles for a third time.

  G-L-E-N-N O-R-E-N M-A-T-T-H-E-U-S

  Nisa stared blankly at him.

  “See. She
has no idea who you are,” Kara said. “Tell her about your new name.”

  “Later,” Stan Lee said.

  “No, you need to impress her,” Kara said.

  “Fine,” Stan Lee said, rearranging the letters again. “Lately, most people know me as this.”

  The tiles read:

  S-O-U-T-H-E-R-N G-E-N-T-L-E-M-A-N

  “What do you mean you knew Bruce since you were changing his diapers?” Nisa said.

  “Later,” Stan Lee said, glancing over at Nisa’s purse. Thank God he remembered to grab it.

  After he’d followed her to the bar in Myrtle Beach, Stan Lee waited patiently for the right moment to present itself. And when the bar owner went to his office to tally the day’s receipts, he made his move.

  Nisa was heavier than he’d expected, but he managed to get her in the van without too much trouble. The Porcupine was another thing altogether. Far too heavy for a single person to lift, Stan Lee was forced to leave the motorcycle next to the building where it was parked. A loose end, for sure—one that could eventually lead the police north to Myrtle Beach. With any luck, no one other than the bartender had seen him.

  “So what do you have in here?” Stan Lee said, dumping the contents of Nisa’s Louis Vuitton handbag on a metal table. It contained: a matching Louis Vuitton wallet, a makeup compact, two tubes of lipstick, a single earring, a half-used package of Kleenex tissue, a Sony Walkman CD player with a Dream Academy CD inside, the key to the Porcupine, and what he assumed were the keys to her house.

  Stan Lee opened the wallet. Inside he found six credit cards, photos of Nisa with Koda and Bruce, $180 in cash, a business card for Crazy Horse Motorcycles, and what appeared to be a repair ticket for Nisa’s Mercedes—which explained why she’d made the odd choice of racing away on the Porcupine rather than her car.

  “What’s this?” Stan Lee asked, holding up the ticket.

  Nisa remained silent.

  Stan Lee stuffed the cash and the auto repair claim ticket in his pocket. Everything else went back into the purse, which he intended to bury in the tunnel, including the keys. Especially the keys. The last thing he needed was to allow himself to get caught on a security camera at the mansion.

  “Do your Southern Gentleman speech for her,” Kara said.

  “She’s not interested in hearing that,” Stan Lee said, still thinking about the repair ticket, a plan beginning to form in his mind.

  “Who are you talking to?” Nisa said.

  “I’m sorry. Nisa, this is Kara,” Stan Lee said, pointing his finger to the empty corner of the room.

  “My God, you’re crazy!” Nisa said.

  “You better watch it,” Kara said. “If there’s one word he doesn’t like, it’s that one.”

  “What do you want?” Nisa said. “Whatever you want, my husband will give it to you. Money? He’ll pay you any amount. Just tell me what you want. What do you want?”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” Stan Lee asked. “What I want should be obvious. I want you.”

  Chapter Eleven

  CRIMSON COVE, OREGON

  OCTOBER 3, 1995

  Onyx found little reason to spend time in the caretaker’s house, a place used only for storage of her paintings and an assortment of odds and ends left over from her years with Ulrich. Too many memories, the vast majority of which were bad.

  Once each year, however, Onyx would go there to use the kitchen, which happened to be tonight.

  Onyx turned on the oven, then began assembling the baking supplies she had delivered by a local store. Every Tuesday a young man would place the items she’d ordered on the steps of the lighthouse, and take an envelope containing payment and a list of needs for the following week’s delivery.

  The delivery men had changed many times over the years.

  Onyx had not.

  More often than not, the order consisted of various art supplies—canvasses, paints, brushes, sketch pads, and the like—and an occasional music record or magazine.

  This week’s order was the exception.

  Tonight, as she’d done on the anniversary of her father’s death every year since he passed, Onyx would bake her father’s favorite dish—a Mock Apple Pie using the recipe passed down by her mother.

  “Your momma made a Mock Apple Pie most every week,” Catfish said more than a few times, hinting that he’d like Onyx to do the same.

  “Why would anyone want to replace real apples in an apple pie?” Onyx asked the first time she’d made one.

  “Cause when the pioneers were heading west back in the 1800s they couldn’t always get them,” Catfish explained. “Far as I’m concerned, those Ritz Crackers are even better than real apples.”

  Onyx retrieved a nine-inch pie tin from the cupboard and pulled thirty-six Ritz Crackers from the box, per the recipe. Then she assembled the rest of the ingredients she needed—two cups of sugar, two cups of water, two teaspoons cream of tartar, two tablespoons lemon juice, the grated rind of one lemon, ground cinnamon—and a generous amount of butter.

  She rolled out the bottom pastry crust into the nine-inch pie plate and combined the water, sugar, and cream of tartar in a saucepan, placing it on the stove and letting it boil gently for fifteen minutes. Then she added the lemon juice and rind. After letting it cool, Onyx did her favorite part—pouring the syrup over the crackers. She then placed generous pats of butter on top, and then sprinkled a layer of cinnamon over the pie.

  Before Onyx covered the pie with the top crust, she added vanilla extract into the mix, an ingredient that really did not belong in the recipe. Then she trimmed and fluted the edges together and cut slits in the top of the crust so the steam—and the scent of the vanilla—could escape.

  She placed the pie in the oven.

  As she waited for the pie to bake, Onyx became restless and found herself walking down the hall toward the burned-out bedroom—the same hallway she had run down that night, her face and arm covered in flames—finally extinguishing herself in the bathtub.

  The memory was painful.

  Perhaps next year she wouldn’t come and bake the pie, Onyx thought as she made her way back to the kitchen. She’d had the same thought the previous year. And the year before that. Still she came.

  For her father.

  Onyx opened the oven door and saw the pie crust had turned a crisp, golden brown. She reached in with her bare hand and pulled the searing-hot pie tin from the oven, feeling nothing, and raised the steaming pie to her face to catch a hint of the vanilla extract before it cooled. For whatever reason, Onyx had discovered vanilla to be one of the few scents she could detect, having given up on the joy of smelling the wide array of aromas life had to offer decades ago.

  The only other aromas Onyx could smell were fear and death, neither of which she found even a hint of joy in.

  Was it the same for all ghosts? Onyx wondered. If she ever met someone in her situation, she’d have to ask.

  Onyx carried the pie back to the lighthouse and set it on the piano. Then she retrieved two small plates, two forks, and a knife from the oak hutch that her father had built when he was there and set them on the piano as well. She walked across the room and started the record player, placing the needle gently on an old vinyl 33 record. After several seconds of subtle scratching, Arlo Guthrie’s voice filled the lighthouse.

  “We were once those fifteen restless riders,” Onyx said aloud to the empty chair opposite her, cutting two wedges of Mock Apple Pie and placing one on each plate. “Of course, when we boarded the train for the fair that day, there were many more than fifteen of us, weren’t there, Daddy?”

  Onyx found a candle and a box of wooden matches from the pocket of her dress and placed the candle into the slice of pie nearest her and lit it.

  Onyx thought about that steamy August morning in 1904. It was standing-room only, she remembered—each person bound for the St. Louis World’s Fair—each filled with excitement and anticipation of experiencing something new and thrilling. These were feelin
gs Onyx could no longer feel and would never feel again.

  Onyx watched the candle burn for a bit, and then reached out and pinched the wick to extinguish the flame since she no longer possessed the breath to blow it out. Then she began the long climb to the top of the lighthouse, leaving both pieces of pie on the plates—uneaten.

  From the Journal of Onyx Webb

  I have decided it is time to document an event, and I choose to do it here, in this journal, as opposed to sharing it with Alistar Ashley – whom I fear would include it in his notes. After that, God only knows where the information might land.

  It began in September 1933 on the night Marlene Dietrich had been invited to perform at The Apache in Las Vegas by a local mobster named Meyer Lansky.

  That was the night I decided I wanted to sing.

  A group of Dietrich’s friends from Hollywood happened to be seated in my section that evening. They were drinking heavily but polite. When the performance was over, the group moved on. All except for one.

  A man.

  “You’re pretty enough to be an actress,” the man said. When I dismissed the comment as a drunken flirtation, he insisted he was telling the truth. “Do you know who I am?” he asked.

  I told him I didn’t, other than his being an acquaintance of Ms, Dietrich’s.

  “I work in the movies,” he said. “Have you seen the Gold Diggers of 1933?”

  I told him I hadn’t.

  “Oh, you must go!” he said. “Warner Bros. invested heavily in it, lots of big stars and elaborate dance numbers by Busby Berkley. Do you know the song ‘We’re in The Money?’”

  I told him I did.

  “Ginger Rogers sings it in the movie,” he said. “It’s quite smashing. Can you sing?”

  I don’t know what compelled me to say it, but I said, “I’ve never had anyone I wanted to sing for.”

  He smiled and handed me his card. “If you ever wish to audition, I hope it will be for me.”