“Not a bad punch for an old guy,” Koda said, rubbing his jaw.
“You deserved it,” Declan said.
“Yes, I did.”
“Now, go take a shower, put on some clean clothes, and then we’ll sit down and you can tell me what in the hell it is that’s bothering you.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Savannah, Georgia
June 4, 2010
Doing a live remote broadcast from the Forsyth Park Hotel in Savannah was a risky decision, but Nathaniel Cryer hadn’t climbed to the top of the ratings chart by playing it safe.
“And what if the piano doesn’t play?” the producer asked.
“Then I end up having egg on my face,” Nathaniel said.
“No, we end up with egg on our faces,” the producer said. “You remember what happened to the career of the producer who did Geraldo’s special on Al Capone’s vault?”
No one spoke.
“My point exactly,” the producer said.
“She’s right,” Olympia said. “Why don’t we just shoot it as usual, FedEx it back to the studio, and let them do their magic? We’re talking two days, three tops.”
“Because the video clips people have been taking are already all over the Internet,” Nathaniel said. “If we don’t go live tonight, we could end up being last instead of first, and I refuse to be last in anything.”
And that was that.
Decision made.
Of course, the decision to broadcast live from Savannah would require significant additional costs—engineers, electronic field production personnel, a remote pickup unit, a satellite feed, hotel rooms, on-site hair and makeup, and creating a makeshift set—money that didn’t need to be spent and, if things went south, would never be recouped.
On top of that, going live also meant that Nathaniel would have to pull strings to convince the network to whip up a promo—and run it all day long—touting the special event. How else were they going to get people to tune in for a show that wasn’t in their regular time slot—at two in the morning no less?
Nathaniel didn’t care.
It wasn’t often you got the chance to catch paranormal phenomena as it was happening. Besides, Nathaniel had seen the videos—and people’s reactions, how frightened they were seeing the keyboard cover lift on its own and the piano begin to play. He was determined to capture that fear and transmit it live.
People loved to be scared.
And scared people were good for ratings.
It required a significant amount of Nathaniel’s political capital, but in the end he got everything he wanted—plus an extra half hour of air time to interview Dr. Gerylyn Stoller, the world’s foremost expert on ghost phenomena—who would join them at the end of the show.
Even Olympia was impressed.
Most people saw Nathaniel as a thin, gay, balding newcomer to cable television, but Olympia knew her co-host possessed the ability to throw his weight around like a sumo wrestler when he wanted to.
When he wanted to, unlike a year earlier.
Olympia had asked for Nathaniel’s support during contract renegotiations, and watched him disappear into the woodwork faster than most of the ghosts he claimed to believe in. And while the lack of help still weighed heavy on her heart, Olympia knew to never let the hurt show on her face.
Like now.
“One minute to air,” the segment director called out as Olympia teased her foot-tall hair, and a makeup artist powdered the top of Nathaniel’s head to take the glow off.
“You’re gonna be great, sugar,” Olympia said to Nathaniel.
“No sugar, tonight,” Nathaniel said as he laid his notes on the table and wiped his hands on his pants for the third time.
My God, Nathaniel’s nervous, Olympia thought to herself.
“In ten seconds,” the director said.
“Relax, sweetie, it’s gonna go fine,” Olympia said.
“Well, it’s not your ass on the line if it doesn’t,” Nathaniel said.
“And in five… four… three…”
The director pointed two fingers silently toward the desk, then one finger, and they were on.
“Good evening, my name is Nathaniel Cryer and I am what you may call a true believer…”
“…and my name is Olympia Fudge—your resident skeptic—just tryin’ to keep it real!”
Nathaniel turned and looked into a second camera and read his text directly from the teleprompter: “Tonight we’re coming to you live from the ghost capital of the United States—Savannah, Georgia—where some very strange things have been taking place. And, if the spirits are willing, we’re going to show you something in the next hour that will keep you up the rest of the night. We’re talking a real live ghost!”
The contradiction in the term live ghost notwithstanding, Nathaniel had managed to pull himself together, Olympia thought, and just in the nick of time.
“Well, I’m just glad we’re on late-night cable so I can tell you what I really think,” Olympia said. “You ask me, all this ghost stuff is pure bullshit.”
The thirty or so people who had been selected to serve as the evening’s studio audience broke into laughter, which was a nice change from the silly-sounding laugh track that was added during post-production for their other shows. Maybe Nathaniel was on to something doing the show live.
For the next forty-five minutes, Nathaniel interviewed an assortment of guests, including the bartender who first discovered the ghostly phenomena and an expert on player pianos, who certified that the instrument in question had no ability to be programmed to play by itself.
After the fourth and final commercial break, Nathaniel interviewed the manager of the Forsyth, who stumbled his way through three self-promotional minutes about the hotel property and the great summer rates being offered.
“So, is this the only ghost activity you’ve experienced at the hotel?” Nathaniel asked.
“Oh, no, we have ghosts here all the time,” the manager boasted. “In fact, just a few months ago, Koda Mulvaney—just named the Sexiest Man of the Year by People Magazine—saw a ghost right over there in that mirror.”
The camera panned over to the mirror and held the shot while the manager continued.
“We loaned the mirror to Mr. Mulvaney as a courtesy, but now it’s back here where it belongs—at the very haunted Forsyth Park Hotel—with great summer rates.”
Then it was time for the real show to begin.
When the piano failed to play, Olympia thought Nathaniel might burst into tears. But he managed to hold it together. Until it was time to interview Dr. Gerylyn Stoller, that is.
As it turned out, Dr. Stoller was unable to make it down from Richmond due to a sudden illness in the family—leaving Nathaniel staring into a live camera with no one to interview—and with virtually no studio audience, the majority of people having bailed after the piano debacle.
Within seconds of going off the air, Nathaniel’s cell phone rang.
“Yes, it’s me… Uh, huh… Yes, of course… Yes, I’ll handle it,” Nathaniel told the other caller.
Then Nathaniel hung up and turned to the show’s producer.
“That was John at A&E in New York. He asked me to let you know that you’re fired.”
“Me? I’m fired?” the producer said, her mouth dropping open in disbelief. “This entire thing was your idea, Nathaniel! Why are they firing me? Why aren’t they firing you?”
Nathaniel stood and straightened his jacket. “They can’t fire me—I’m the talent.”
It was almost four in the morning, and the only person left in the lounge besides Olympia was the bartender.
“That’s it for me,” the bartender said. “You want one last drink for the road?”
Olympia had just finished her third glass of Moscato, and shook her head. She was scheduled to meet with Nathaniel for breakfast at 9:00 a.m. and getting a few hours of sleep was probably a good idea. “No, I’m just going to visit the little girl’s room,” she said and
headed down the hall toward the bathroom.
On the way back, Olympia noticed the mirror.
“The story about the mirror—is that true?” Olympia asked.
“Supposedly,” the bartender said. “I mean, I wasn’t here, but there was a lot of hoopla going on around it when it happened.”
“It was really Koda Mulvaney?” Olympia asked.
“Yep, that I can verify,” the bartender said. “They say he touched the glass, and there she was.”
Such a good story, Olympia thought. Too bad it wasn’t true. But—just for kicks—Olympia reached out and placed her palm against the glass.
The girl stood in the gray room, the palm of her hand pressed against the large mirror on the wall before her.
She knew touching the mirror was against the rules, but she also knew she’d done it before.
The place she was in was important somehow, but she could not remember why. She’d been coming here often, that much she knew for sure.
But she didn’t know why.
How long had she been standing here?
What did she expect to happen?
Suddenly—as quickly as the thought had entered her mind—she saw someone looking back at her.
A woman with big hair.
Then she remembered the boy.
She and the boy had touched their fingertips together through the mirror, which caused the color…
Yes, that’s what it’s called!
Color.
The woman in the mirror jumped back and as quickly as she appeared, she was gone.
The girl pulled her hand away from the mirror and gazed at it as if it were something magical, so full of color now—not just a single fingertip like the previous time with the boy—but her whole hand looked as if it were glowing.
The girl turned and looked around the room, remembering why she’d come here.
She’d come to play the piano.
“Holy shit!” Olympia shouted, jumping backward away from the mirror.
“Ha, ha. You’re a riot,” the bartender said.
“No, no—you don’t understand,” Olympia stammered. “I just saw her. She was really there. Holy shit!”
Olympia leaned against the wall until she caught her breath, and then staggered back to the bar and climbed back on one of the stools. “I changed my mind, pour me another Moscato.”
The bartender poured another glass of the sweet dessert wine and set it on the bar. Olympia gulped down half the glass without stopping.
“I’m not kidding, and I’m not crazy, okay?”
“Didn’t say you were,” the bartender said. “Besides, I’m the one who discovered the piano, and no one believed—”
The bartender stopped mid-sentence and pointed to the opposite side of the lounge.
“What?” Olympia asked.
“Look,” the bartender said.
Olympia turned and looked to where the bartender was pointing—at the large, black grand piano on the other side of the lounge—and watched as the keyboard cover lifted into the open position. By itself.
“Oh, my God,” Olympia said.
“No, no, just wait,” the bartender said. “It gets even better.”
When the piano began to play, all Olympia could think about was how bad she felt for Nathaniel, who’d spent his entire adult life as a believer, and when the moment finally came to see proof with his own eyes, he’d already gone off to bed.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Desoto, Missouri
May 26, 1936
A week had passed, and Sister Katherine found herself noticeably depressed, realizing how alone she felt and how much she missed her friend—she missed Onyx more than she could ever have imagined.
In particular, Katherine missed having someone around she felt she could trust. While most people would assume a religious institution would be the place where everyone could be trusted, Sister Katherine found that to be the exact opposite.
And at Open Arms, Sister Katherine trusted no one, least of all Sister Mary Margaret. Plus, she had her suspicions about the godliness of Father Fanning, who ran the entire place.
So she found herself spending even more time in the chapel than usual, seeking the solace of her only true allies—Saint Therese of Lisieux and, of course, God.
She’d been kneeling before the statue of St. Therese of Lisieux for almost an hour, deep in prayer, when she suddenly recalled one the first paintings Onyx had done when she was recovering in the infirmary the previous fall.
“I love the way the woods look in winter, the ground frozen over and the trees covered with snow. You should paint that,” Katherine had said encouragingly to Onyx.
Then another thought came to Katherine about the day Onyx’s husband, Ulrich, had approached her and asked if she knew where he could find a shovel.
“In the shed by the edge of the woods,” Katherine had responded.
In the shed by the edge of the woods…
Shed by the edge of the woods…
And what were the odd words Ulrich had been singing at the time? Oh, yes…
“All around, in the branches and on the ground, that’s where dem birdies is.”
It wasn’t the words that stuck in Sister Katherine’s mind so much as the way Ulrich had sung them—his thick German accent making the word birdies sound like…
Bodies.
Ground.
That’s where dem bodies is.
Sister Katherine pulled herself to her feet and hurried from the chapel, realizing the clues had been right in front of her the entire time, just as God had clearly intended.
By the time Sister Katherine arrived at the shed, she was cursing herself for not realizing it sooner. She’d seen Sister Mary Margaret dragging boys here many times—kicking and screaming and begging for mercy—to this very shed.
Sister Katherine rummaged around, searching with her eyes in the darkness, wondering why she didn’t bring a candle, when suddenly she found it…
Lying discarded in the corner behind a standing wooden case of tools, covered with the unmistakable dark-brown color of dried blood…
A stick.
Stick Boy’s stick.
Sister Katherine grabbed a shovel and stormed from the shed out into the woods. Sister Mary Margaret wouldn’t have ventured very far—according to what she’d read, a dead body was much more difficult to move than people would think—and who would bother to look for a missing orphan.
Stick Boy would be written off as simply another run away.
Sister Katherine stopped and looked into the woods and saw nothing out of the ordinary.
She looked to her left. Nothing.
Could she be wrong? Perhaps. But not God.
God was never wrong.
Sister Katherine turned her head to the right and then she spotted it—about thirty feet from where she was standing—a slightly discolored patch of earth with no vegetation.
Katherine walked to the spot, pushed the shovel into the dirt, and began to dig. It took less than two minutes for Sister Katherine to find the bones.
Tonight is the night, Sister Katherine thought.
She’d waited long enough.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Athens, Greece
June 19, 2010
“All this drunken gallivanting of yours—am I to assume it’s because of that silly TV show?” Declan asked.
“Yeah, well that silly TV show turned into my ridiculous life,” Koda said, grabbing a Diet Coke from the hotel minibar and taking a seat on the sofa across from his grandfather.
“No life is ever defined by a single event, Koda,” Declan said.
Koda wasn’t so sure about that. “It’s not just the show. It’s the reason I ended up on the show in the first place.”
Declan nodded in understanding. “You mean the girl you supposedly saw in the mirror.”
Koda stayed silent, and then nodded.
“Tell me about it,” Declan prompted.
“No,” K
oda said, shaking his head. “I’m tired of people thinking I’m crazy.”
“Give me some credit, Koda,” Declan said, taking a sip from a bottle of Perrier. “I’ve passed no judgment on you.”
“You will.”
Declan set his Perrier on the coffee table and stood.
“Let’s say you and I take a walk.”
“Athens is one of the world’s great cities,” Declan said. “I thought you should get out and see it.”
“I’ve been here for five days,” Koda said.
“True, and during those five days the only things you’ve seen are the insides of hotel rooms, nightclubs, and jail cells.”
His grandfather had a point, Koda thought. “Do you get to Athens a lot?”
“Every chance I get,” Declan said. “And Rome and Madrid and Sydney and a hundred other magnificent places. The only places I don’t go are France and Germany—I saw enough of both during the war.”
“Why, what happened?” Koda asked.
“Come with me. I want to show you one of my favorite places,” Declan said, ignoring the question.
The two of them walked in silence for several blocks until they came to a large cemetery. Koda had never seen anything quite as massive, with row after row of carved stones and mausoleums so large they looked like small condominiums.
“Your favorite place is a cemetery?” Koda asked.
“In Athens, yes,” Declan said.
“Why?”
“Here, I’ll show you,” Declan said, stepping off the concrete walkway onto the grass and leading Koda through the sea of stones until he came to one in particular.
Onyx Webb: Book Two Page 9
