Chapter Thirty-Two
SULPHUR Springs, Missouri
August 5, 1922
“Save my baby,” the injured woman said, her moans lost in the chaos of the hospital emergency room.
She was lying on a gurney, blood soaking through the dark red winter coat she had on when she was taken from the train.
“It hurts,” she said through gritted teeth, breathing heavily.
“You’re going to be fine,” the doctor said, doing his best to put on a reassuring face.
But she would not be fine.
Her fate had already been determined.
The only thing the doctor didn’t understand was how the pregnant woman survived as long as she had, considering the circumstances.
“You’ll be fine,” the doctor repeated, turning to the nurse. “Do we have any kind of medical history at all?”
The nurse shook her head. The woman had been brought in by ambulance, without identification, and was not from the area.
“How many months along are you?” the doctor asked over the growing symphony of wailing screams from the one-hundred-plus other train crash victims that filled every open space of the tiny hospital.
The woman lifted her head and moved her lips, but her words were unintelligible.
The doctor leaned forward, his face within inches of hers: “How far along? Six months?”
The woman in the red coat exhaled, shook her head.
“Seventh?” the doctor asked.
She shook her head again.
“Eight?”
The woman managed a slight, almost imperceptible nod.
“Eight months, okay that’s good,” the doctor said.
“Is there anything we can do for the pain?” the nurse asked.
The doctor ignored her. The baby was his concern, not the woman.
“What’s your name?” the nurse asked the woman.
She took a deep breath, exhaled, unable to muster an answer.
The doctor could see the woman was going into shock, her eyes were glazing over as the light of her spirit began to fade.
Suddenly, the woman reached out and grabbed the doctor’s arm. “Take him,” she said through gritted teeth. “Take him. Do it…”
The woman understood. She was going to die. The only thing to be done now was to try and save the baby.
“Have you named him yet?” the nurse asked.
The woman reached up and touched the small nametag pinned to the doctor’s lab coat.
The tag read: Dr. Herman Declan.
She tapped her finger on the name, leaving a bloody red fingerprint.
Dr. Declan managed a slight smile at the thought of such an honor, though all he wanted to do was cry.
The nurse leaned in. “And what if it’s a girl?”
The woman did not answer, the light now absent from her eyes.
She was gone.
“Get me a scalpel,” the doctor said sharply. “Let’s at least save one damn life today.”
It had been almost twenty-four hours since the first patient from the train wreck had been carried into the emergency room, and Dr. Herman Declan had managed to fight through the mental and physical exhaustion.
Until now.
Covered in blood, the doctor literally collapsed into a chair and did the only thing left to do—weep for those who’d perished, both on the tracks and on the gurneys that still surrounded him.
The nurse approached. “There’s still the issue of—”
“The old woman,” Dr. Declan said.
“Yes,” the nurse replied.
“Is she still clutching the girl?”
The nurse nodded. “Yes, she still refuses to allow us to take her.”
Dr. Declan knew the old woman should not have been allowed to keep the dead girl in her arms for so long, but with the endless parade of injured streaming in, it was the last of his priorities. Now it had to be dealt with. “What about the priest?” Dr. Declan asked.
Father Colin Fanning, who was in charge of Our Lady of the Open Arms Orphanage in the neighboring town of DeSoto, had been summoned to the hospital shortly after the crash to deliver last rites to the dead and dying.
The nurse found Father Fanning, along with Sister Mary Margaret—the head nun from the orphanage. The nurse led them to a small side room off the main building.
Though they’d been warned, both Father Fanning and Sister Mary Margaret were momentarily taken aback when they saw the condition of the girl in the old woman’s arms—or what remained of her—covered in a thick layer of crusty-brown blood that had dried hours earlier.
“She was dead when they arrived,” the nurse said. “But the woman refuses to let us take her.”
Fanning nodded and approached the woman.
“My name is Father Fanning,” he began.
The woman—who looked to be in her late seventies or early eighties perhaps—shook her head violently from side to side. “No, no, no, you will not take her, no, she’s mine.”
“What’s her name?” Sister Mary Margaret asked.
“Lucinda,” the old woman said. “This is my Lucinda.”
“Do you remember being on the train?” Fanning asked.
The woman nodded. “I let her go for a drink,” the old woman said. “Her car went off the tracks, but mine didn’t. I searched and searched until I found her.”
“It wasn’t your fault. There was nothing you could do,” Sister Mary Margaret said.
“But what will Titus say?” the woman asked. “My husband, he’ll be home soon—from the war. He’s at Gettysburg, fighting hard for the Union—and he’ll want to see his Lucinda.”
Father Fanning shot Sister Mary Margaret a look. “Gettysburg was a long time ago,” Father Fanning said.
“Over sixty years,” the old woman said, continuing to rock back and forth, as if trying to sooth the dead girl in her arms. “He isn’t coming home, is he?”
“Do you realize your daughter is gone?” Father Fanning asked. “Do you understand she’s gone off to be with the Lord?”
The old woman nodded. “Yes, yes, I know.”
“Why don’t you let Father Fanning take her so he can perform last rites?” Sister Mary Margaret said. “That way she can rest in the Lord’s arms.”
“Would that be okay?” Father Fanning asked.
“Could you perform the rites for all the girls?” the old woman asked.
“All the girls?” Father Fanning asked.
“Yes, for all my Lucindas,” the woman said.
Father Fanning, clearly confused, turned and looked at Sister Mary Margaret. “Do you have any idea what she’s talking about, Sister?”
Of course she did.
Sister Mary Margaret was three steps ahead of Father Fanning in all things, including this. He didn’t even have the good sense to question why a woman of eighty claimed to have a daughter who was clearly under the age of ten.
Not only did she know who the old woman was but also knew the terrible things the woman had done.
“Not the slightest idea, Father,” the nun said. “But I do believe it is our obligation to help her.”
Once they had arrived at the Open Arms, Sister Mary Margaret helped get Obedience settled in the infirmary, while Father Fanning attended to the paperwork for the four children who would now be residing at the orphanage.
Three of the children were girls. The fourth was the newborn boy—Declan—named after the doctor who’d taken him from the dying woman in the red coat. No last name had been assigned. No identification had been found for the mother, who passed before doing so.
Father Fanning looked down at the infant, wrapped tightly in a white blanket and wondered about the proper procedure for assigning the boy a last name. But it was getting late and the priest was exhausted. He looked like a good Irish boy, Father Fanning thought, and wrote the first name that popped into his mind on the admittance form:
Mulvaney.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Lily Dale, New York
FEBRUARY 3, 2010
“Honestly? I think it’s a load of total crap,” the Bulldog of a man said, his beefy arms folded across the chest of his plaid flannel shirt.
“Thomas, please,” the small Maltese of a wife said from beneath the lavender shawl she’d knitted herself, something she’d started doing recently to keep her mind off of her loss.
Their loss.
“Can we just get this over with?” the Bulldog asked.
“I take it one of you is a believer, and the other is not,” Ingrid Luckner said from the sofa opposite them.
“Wow, they are good,” the Bulldog said sarcastically.
“Thomas, you promised,” the Maltese chided.
“It’s quite all right,” Paul Luckner said, seated next to his wife. “We get our fair share 0f skeptics here at Lily Dale.”
Lily Dale—or the Lily Dale Assembly, as residents call it—was a quaint town with a population of 275 in the southwestern part of New York, south of Buffalo. What made Lily Dale unique was that, in order to live there, residents had to pass a test proving their abilities as psychics, mediums, or healers of some sort. People traveled from all over the world in hopes of making contact with a loved one who had passed away.
“If you are really psychics, tell me how much money I have in my front pocket,” the Bulldog said.
“Thomas, please,” the Maltese implored.
“So there’s no misunderstanding, Paul and I are not psychics,” Ingrid said.
“That’s right,” Paul continued, following a well-rehearsed script the two of them had used for going on thirty years. “Ingrid and I are trained mediums.”
“I didn’t realize there was a difference,” the Maltese said.
“Oh, yes. Psychics use tools like crystal balls or tarot cards to see the future,” Paul said.
“Mediums—like us—communicate with those who have passed on, usually through spirit guides that act as a bridge between the physical world and spiritual world,” Ingrid added.
“Like that John Edward fellow?” the Maltese asked.
Paul and Ingrid stiffened in unison and forced smiles to hide their jealousy. It was hard to ignore the success of celebrity mediums who achieved fame with their own cable TV shows, speaking to packed ballrooms of believers eagerly shelling out $150 a head to be there.
“We prefer a quieter existence, out of the limelight,” Paul Luckner said.
“So, if you’re expecting us to tell you which lottery numbers to play or which pony to bet on at the track, you’ll be disappointed in our time together,” Ingrid said, moving the conversation forward. “But if your goal is to make contact with someone who has passed on…”
“Yes, that’s what we want,” the Maltese said, tears welling up in her eyes. “My husband and I are here to make contact with…”
“Christ, honey, don’t tell their names,” the Bulldog said, cutting his wife off mid-sentence.
“Your husband is right,” Paul said. “You do not need to share any details with us. In fact, we’d prefer that you didn’t.”
The Bulldog pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to the Maltese. “Will they come through?” the Maltese asked, dabbing her eyes.
“The veil separating the living and the dead is very thin,” Ingrid said. “If a loved one wishes to communicate, he or she will.”
“That said, it helps if you keep an open mind,” Paul added, looking directly at the Bulldog. “Now, if you’re ready, we’ll start the recording.”
Paul and Ingrid sat in silence, eyes closed. “Your daughter is passed,” Ingrid said finally, not as a question but as a statement of fact.
The Maltese placed her hand to her chest, looked at her husband. “Our daughter?”
“Yes, she… she says she’s sorry,” Ingrid continued. “Sally? No, Sandy.”
“Oh,” the Maltese gasped.
“Marcus wants you to know he’s here, too,” Paul said.
The Bulldog leaned forward in his chair.
“Oh, my God,” the Maltese managed through a stream of steadily falling tears. “They’re together. Sandy and Marcus are together. Are they okay?”
Paul Luckner rocked back and forth, eyes tightly closed as if working hard to listen to a voice from a great distance. “He says, not her fault. His fault. Drinking. Too many drinks.”
“Damn right it was his fault,” the Bulldog said.
“It happened so fast, your daughter says. There was no time, she couldn’t help it,” Ingrid said.
“Help what?” the Maltese asked.
“She’s showing me an animal, a deer,” Ingrid continued, her eyes tightly closed, head tilted to the side. “So fast, no time, so fast, no time, so fast, no time.”
“This is total bullshit!” the Bulldog snorted. “Where did you get this? From some Internet search? You got it wrong, my daughter wasn’t driving. She wasn’t! It was that drunken husband of hers!”
“Stop!” the Maltese screamed. “It’s our daughter. I need to hear this!”
“Sandy is showing me the keys. She is saying she took the keys. She says that she was driving. ‘So sorry, so sorry, so so so so sorry,’ Sandy keeps saying, ‘so so sorry.’”
The Bulldog dropped his head, and the tears began to come—held back for months.
Oddly, the Maltese was suddenly stoic, as if the two had inexplicably changed roles. “Our daughter, Sandy—and her husband, Marcus—were killed in a car crash two months ago, coming home from a party,” the Maltese said calmly. “They hit a tree. Both were thrown from the vehicle so no one knew for sure who was driving.”
“We assumed it was him, Marcus,” the Bulldog said, regaining his composure. “Marcus drank a lot. I told Sandy not to get in the car with him if he’d had too much, to take the keys from him if…”
“Marcus is sorry for his weakness, for his mistakes. He’s asking for your forgiveness,” Paul said.
The Maltese nodded. “Of course. Of course we do.” She put her arms around the Bulldog and held the big man in her arms as he began to sob.
“They know how sad you both are, and they came through to tell you they are okay, and you must live. As hard as it sounds, know that they are always with you, but you must live,” Ingrid said.
“Can you tell them that…?”
Paul shook his head. “They’re gone,” he said. “But don’t worry, they know. They know.”
The Bulldog wrote out a check for $250 and hugged Paul for the third time. “We can’t thank you enough,” he said, and then hugged them both again.
Paul opened the door and saw the couple out, then joined Ingrid in the kitchen as she made a pot of tea. “That was a difficult one,” Ingrid said.
“Yes, it was,” Paul said. “Nothing can ever take the pain away, not entirely, but knowing your loved ones are okay and at peace brings enormous comfort.”
There was a knock on the door.
“Looks like someone I know is going to get another hug,” Ingrid said with a giggle. Paul made his way to the door, swung it open and saw his son standing there, suitcase in hand.
“Dane!” Paul exclaimed as he stepped out onto the porch and hugged his son. “Why didn’t you call? We would have picked you up.” Paul took the suitcase from Dane’s hand and ushered him inside, then called out. “Ingrid! Our son is home!”
Dane heard his mother scream with joy from the kitchen.
An hour later, Dane settled in his room, exhausted.
He laid on his bed, looking around at his things—photos, yearbooks, lacrosse trophies, clothes hanging in the closet just as he’d left them almost two years earlier—and wondered if he could ever resign himself to such a simple existence again.
Two years traveling the world in a private jet, staying in the best hotels, being ushered into clubs like an A-list celebrity had changed him.
He was not the same little kid who’d grown up in Lily Dale.
But he wasn’t part of that other world either. Not rea
lly.
He’d been spoiled by treatment that never would have been afforded him had he not been Koda Mulvaney’s friend.
Dane closed his eyes. Who am I without Koda? Am I anyone? Do I even exist?
The thought scared him. He felt lost.
Dane felt something thump on the bottom of the bed near his feet. He opened his eyes and saw a small brown and white terrier standing there, tail wagging, looking at him expectantly.
“Hey, Duffy,” Dane said. “I missed you, boy.”
The dog offered a tiny snort then jumped off the bed and ran toward the closed door.
And directly through it.
The fact that Dane’s childhood dog had just run through a solid object didn’t faze him in the least. He was used to such things growing up in Lily Dale.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Las Vegas, Nevada
JULY 8, 1933
Onyx had been presented with a tough choice: Stay in New York and follow her dream of becoming a successful painter, or leave with her husband.
She left with Ulrich.
The deciding factor was the specific part of her wedding vows—the ‘till death do us part phrase—which Onyx took very seriously.
Once the Twentieth Century Limited departed Grand Central Terminal, Onyx made it clear to Ulrich that should he ever so much as raise his hand to her again—in public or in private—it would be the end of the marriage. She also insisted he stop drinking.
The days that followed were even harder than Onyx anticipated as the exhilarating high of the Big Apple gave way to the depressing reality of the new destination Ulrich had chosen for them: A place called Las Vegas.
The good news was that Mohawk Joe was not coming with them, opting to get off the train in Chicago where the Indian had a line on a job working on the Twenty-Second Street sewer tunnel project. Based on the way the man smelled, it seemed totally appropriate. A few months earlier, a number of workers had been trapped thirty-five-feet below earth in the tunnel, several dying of smoke inhalation when a fire broke out. Since then, getting workers for the project proved difficult.
Onyx Webb: Book One Page 12