“Who is Richard Church?” Koda asked.
“Read the stone,” Declan said.
Richard Church, General, who, having given himself and all that he had to rescue a Christian race from oppression and to make Greece a nation, lived for her service and died amongst her people, rests here in peace and faith.
1784 – March 30, 1873
“How do you know him?” Koda asked.
“I don’t,” Declan said. “But the first time I walked through this cemetery I saw a woman standing right here like we are now. She placed a single red rose on the grave and when she walked away, I noticed she was crying. And it made me wonder, what was it about this man that, almost a century and a half later, would cause someone to care enough to cry over him and place a flower on his grave? More to the point, it made me wonder if I’d done anything during my time here on Earth that would have someone crying over my passing a hundred years from now.”
“I imagine that’s what all people want,” Koda said.
Declan nodded. “Yes, I’m sure it is. In my case, however, I have done a number of things for which I am ashamed—horrible, vicious things that I will never burden another living soul with—least of all my family. But I’d like to think that with a little more time, perhaps I can achieve something worthy of a showing of love and admiration as that woman gave Richard Church that day.”
“Is that why you brought me here?” Koda asked.
“Have you ever spent a night in a cemetery?” Declan asked, changing the subject.
“An entire night?” Koda asked.
“I once dared my best friend from the orphanage to spend a night in a cemetery, from midnight till dawn,” Declan said.
“Uncle Tommy?” Koda asked.
“I take it I’ve mentioned Tommy Bilazzo before?”
“Uh, yeah, like a few hundred times,” Koda said with a smile. “He’s still alive?”
“I’m not sure. I hope so.”
“You guys have a fight or something?”
“No,” Declan said. “Like many friends, we simply went our separate ways, I guess. Now stop derailing my story and let me continue.”
“You brought him up, not me,” Koda said.
“So, this one night, Tommy Bilazzo and I snuck out of our beds and walked two miles in the pitch dark to the DeSoto Cemetery not far from the orphanage. I told Tommy it was to see if he had the guts to do it, but in truth it was because I wanted to see if I could find my mother.”
“I don’t understand,” Koda said.
“Of course you don’t. How could you?” Declan said. “All I knew about my mother was that she died during childbirth after being severely injured in the Sulphur Springs train wreck. A terrible thing it was—dead bodies and debris spread for miles. Each of the dead was eventually identified—all except for one.”
“Your mother.”
Declan nodded. “Yes. She had no identification on her, and no one ever came forward on her behalf. All I ever knew about her was that she was wearing a red coat, and she gave me the first name Declan. My last name, Mulvaney, was given to me by a priest at the orphanage, or so the priest claimed. But that’s a story for another time. Now, where was I?”
“You and Uncle Tommy snuck out to go to the cemetery.”
“Thank you,” Declan said. “When we got to the cemetery, it was so dark we could barely see a thing. We stumbled around for a bit, bumping into gravestones and tripping over fallen tree branches, and then went back to the orphanage. I never let on to Tommy that I was probably more scared than he was.”
“What made you think you could find your mother’s grave if you didn’t even know her name?”
“Her grave? I never said I was looking for her grave, Koda,” Declan said. “I said I was looking for my mother. I went to the cemetery because two nights earlier I saw her—standing at the foot of my bed—wearing a long red coat, just like they said.”
“What did she say?”
“Nothing,” Declan said. “She just looked down at me. All I really remember was her smile.”
“How can you be sure it was her?” Koda asked. “If you didn’t know what she looked like, I mean?”
“I just knew,” Declan said. “With or without the red coat, I would have known it was her. So, you see, Koda, besides the Mulvaney name, we have two things in common. We’ve both seen ghosts, and we’ve both been damaged in ways that only young boys who have lost a mother’s love could ever understand.”
Koda nodded.
“Are you still having the nightmares?”
Koda shook his head. “No, not for a long time now,” he lied.
“Good. You know, I never thought I’d say this, but growing up in the orphanage, as I did, was probably easier than what you had to go through.”
“I doubt that very much,” Koda said.
“No. Except for that one moment, seeing my mother at the foot of the bed, I never knew her—not enough to miss her, at least. But you? It had to be terrible. I know it was.”
A long silence hung in the air before Koda said anything. “So, about the girl—the one I saw in the mirror—you think she was real?”
“Of course, she was,” Declan said.
“And you don’t think I’m crazy?”
“Not in the least,” Declan said. “If seeing a ghost makes you crazy, then I’m crazier than bat shit because I’ve seen several in my day.”
Koda felt a massive sense of relief pour over him and let out a breath. “I’m sorry I missed your eighty-fifth birthday party, Grandpa,” Koda said.
“Oh, so you knew about that?”
“Yeah, I saw the article in Forbes,” Koda said. “It looked like it was quite a bash.”
“Too big a bash for my tastes,” Declan said. “Your father tried to track you down, you know, but you were dancing on a table somewhere in Spain.”
“I really am a shit, aren’t I?”
Declan placed his hand on Koda’s shoulder. “You’re not a shit, Koda. You’re young. You’re just young.”
“What do I do now, Grandpa? Just tell me what to do.”
“There’s only one thing you can do,” Declan said. “Buckle down and get to work. Make me and your father proud. Whenever things got rough for me in my life, I simply put my head down and got busy. Can you do that for me, Koda?”
“Yeah, I can do that.”
“Good. Come here.” Declan wrapped his arms around Koda and held him tightly. “I love you, Koda Mulvaney, and so does your father. Show him what you’re capable of, and maybe—who knows—maybe someday he’ll even get around to showing you how much.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Desoto, Missouri
May 26, 1936
Sister Mary Margaret placed the record needle on her favorite new opera, The Emperor Jones, which had premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City the previous spring.
Emperor Jones was the only opera Sister Mary Margaret had ever heard in English, so she actually understood the story in which an escaped convict finds himself haunted over a murder he committed years earlier. Overcome with guilt, Jones commits suicide.
Jones was an idiot, Sister Mary Margaret thought as she eased herself into the near-scalding bath water and lit an Old Gold. Why would this man, Jones, choose to feel guilty? If he was Catholic, he could have simply confessed his sins and gone on his merry way. Wasn’t that the entire point of the Catholic religion? To do whatever you pleased, and then be forgiven?
Sister Mary Margaret closed her eyes, took another deep drag on her cigarette, and allowed herself to get lost in the music, even if the main character was a fool.
At the spot in the story where Jones finds himself in a moment of reflection and lucidity—“It’s me, O’ Lord, standin’ in the need of prayer”—Sister Mary Margaret opened her eyes to find Sister Katherine standing at the foot of the tub.
Holding a rope…
Tied into what looked like a hangman’s noose.
“Sister Katherine, what
in heaven’s name?” Sister Mary Margaret asked, trying to process what was happening.
But it was too late.
Without answering, Sister Katherine lowered the rope into the tub and quickly—in a single practiced motion—slid the noose around Sister Mary Margaret’s feet and lifted them out of the water with all her strength, just as it had been described in the True Detective magazine.
The story in the magazine—about a husband who’d murdered his wife by grabbing her ankles, pulling them up out of the water, and submerging the woman’s head and drowning her—hadn’t actually incorporated the use of a rope.
That was Katherine’s idea.
And it worked.
Pulling up on the rope with all the strength she could muster, Sister Katherine was able to bring Sister Mary Margaret’s feet straight up out of the water, forcing her upper body down, submerged into the tub.
Sister Mary Margaret grasped at the slippery edge of the tub and thrashed her arms—desperately trying to gain enough leverage to raise out of the water to get a breath of air but it was impossible.
The oddest thing about the situation, Sister Mary Margaret thought—just before her need for air grew so great she was forced to gasp, inhaling the hot bath water—was the sudden sense of guilt she felt over having beaten Stick Boy that day in the shed. How the boy begged for mercy yet she had none to give.
Maybe the character in Emperor Jones had it right all along, Sister Mary Margaret thought as she stopped thrashing and went limp, gazing up through the soapy water at Sister Katherine, who continued holding the old woman’s ankles against her chest for another full minute, just to be safe.
The next morning, the Open Arms Orphanage was buzzing with rumors. Something had happened to one of the nuns, someone said. Something had happened to Sister Mary Margaret, someone else clarified.
Some of the kids claimed the old nun had quit.
Another rumor had Mar Mar running off with Father Fanning, something that Declan Mulvaney thought unlikely since she wasn’t his type.
An hour later that rumor proved untrue when Father Fanning was spotted walking down the hallway. But things ratcheted up again when the police arrived and carried something—or someone—from the rectory to a Paddy Wagon, the rumors shifting to Sister Mar Mar having killed herself.
Declan, Tommy, and the entire class were in full debate when the classroom door opened. Everyone went silent as Sister Katherine entered the room, followed by Father Fanning.
Sister Katherine stepped behind Mar Mar’s large oak desk—at least it had been Sister Mary Margaret’s desk—and faced the class.
“Good morning, boys. My name is Sister Katherine. I am your new teacher and, starting now, things are going to be different around here.”
Sister Katherine turned her gaze to Father Fanning.
Father Fanning, who allowed his hand to linger on a naked leg a moment too long while tending to a scraped knee…
Father Fanning, who she’d seen caressing boys’ shoulders in the guise of providing comfort…
Father Fanning, who Stick Boy had accused of making advances on him when the office door was closed…
Yes, Father Fanning would finally need to be dealt with.
She would see to it.
After all, Sister Katherine was a foot soldier in the Army of the Lord, an angel of mercy sent to protect the children. She was a missionary charged with doing God’s dirty work here on Earth. Vengeance had to be extracted for the unthinkable acts of cruelty committed by those whose job it was to protect the children, and who then abused that power in the most egregious ways.
Sister Katherine turned her gaze to where Declan Mulvaney and Tommy Bilazzo were sitting.
And she smiled.
Christ, thought Declan, she’d done it.
Sister Katherine had seen to it personally, with her own hand, just as she said she would, becoming in that instant the only adult Declan had known who’d ever kept their word.
Maybe that’s how things are handled, Declan thought.
Maybe that’s how the world is made right.
Maybe praying to God for intervention was a waste of time.
Maybe the best way to solve a problem was the way Sister Katherine had:
You solve it yourself.
“The universe is a blank canvas, and you are the paint. The only thing that matters is how much of yourself you are willing to splash upon it.”
The 31 Immutable Matters
of Life & Death
From the Journal of Onyx Webb
The world is filled with horrors, many of which are nothing but the imaginings of frightened school children.
When I was a young girl, living in the bayou, we would sit around the fire and tell such tales, never really knowing if they were true or not.
There was one tale about a girl whose name was Mary. According to the legend, if you stood before a mirror in a darkened room and chanted “Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary,” her terrifying face would appear.
But as often as we tried to conjure her spirit, Bloody Mary was never seen.
Another legend told of a man, hitch hiking on a dark and stormy night. When he saw the headlights of an approaching car, he held up his thumb and the car pulled over. But when he turned to thank the driver for stopping, he saw that there was no one behind the steering wheel. In total fear, he tried to get out of the car, but the door would not open. Then the man heard laughter, and the car drove off with him still in it…
Never to be seen again.
There are many others, of course.
Many, indeed.
As scary as these stories may be, the one I find most horrifying is a local legend one that revolves around an old woman who lives in the lighthouse out on Crimson Cove. Supposedly, the woman was burned in a fire many years ago. Those who have seen her say she wears a black mask and arm sleeve to hide her horrific scars.
“Don’t go out at night,” the teenagers say when they sit around their campfires on the beach.
“If you do, Onyx will find you! And if she’s hungry, she’ll suck the life from you and toss your dead body from the cliffs to the rocky beach below.”
So many people have died in Crimson Cove over the years that some of the locals have taken to calling the place Suicide Cove.
Not good for tourism, they complain.
The locals, of course, not the dead.
The dead rarely complain.
In any case, it’s fair to say that Some legends are simply that… the stuff of legends, born from the imaginations of people with nothing better to do.
Other legends, however, are true.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Episode 6: Killing Father Fanning
Desoto, Missouri
August 25, 1938
It was, without question, the hottest day Declan Mulvaney could remember—104 degrees, with high humidity—and no end of the heat wave in sight.
To make matters worse, Declan was preparing to do something no person—boy or adult—had ever done.
He was attempting to move a rock.
The rock.
The rock, which was more of a boulder actually, had probably been sitting there in the field behind the main building of the Open Arms Orphanage for a thousand years. Trying to move it was an exercise in futility.
So why even try?
Because Sister Katherine was watching.
Ever since Sister Katherine had killed Sister Mary Margaret—at least that’s what Declan believed she’d done—life at the orphanage was a hundred times better. No, check that—a thousand times better.
Sister Mary Margaret had terrorized kids at the orphanage for years, especially the boys. It was Declan’s belief she may have even killed a few, including Randall Iglewski—also known as Stick Boy—whose body had been discovered in a shallow grave in the woods behind the orphanage. Not long after that, Sister Mary Margaret had accidently drowned in the bath.
But Declan knew better. The drowning was no accident—th
e old nun had been murdered by Sister Katherine—and Declan loved her for it. And it didn’t hurt that Sister Kay Kay was easy on the eyes, even if she wore a habit and had a deep scar running through her lips.
“Bet you a five spot you can’t do it,” Tommy said.
“What makes you think I can’t?” Declan said, rolling up his sleeves and beginning to draw a crowd around him.
“Because I’ve already tried, and I’ve got a good thirty pounds on you,” Tommy said. Declan knew Tommy was right. Even though Tommy Bilazzo was fourteen years old—three years younger than Declan—he had tried to move the rock a year earlier, and it didn’t budge an inch.
“No bet,” Declan said. “Besides, you ain’t got five bucks to pay me with anyway.” Declan glanced over toward where he’d spotted Sister Kay Kay.
She was still there.
“Okay, here goes,” Declan said, then he lowered his shoulder, placed it against the boulder, and pushed—legs driving behind him, churning in the dirt—giving it everything he had, sweat pouring from his brow so hard it looked like his head was raining.
The rock didn’t move.
“Told you,” Tommy said.
Declan tried to wipe away the sweat from his forehead, but his shirtsleeves were soaked solid.
“You know what the difference is between you and me, Tom?” Declan asked.
“I’m not sweating like a stuck pig?”
“No,” Declan said. “You see a rock; I see a challenge.”
The meal bell rang and everyone stopped what they were doing and reflexively held their breath. It was the middle of the afternoon, hours after lunch and long before dinner, so the ringing of the bell meant one of two things:
Something really good had happened.
Or something really bad.
The bell had been Father Fanning’s idea. He’d paid a German laborer—who’d lived at the orphanage over the winter a couple years earlier with his sickly wife—to install it. The woman’s name was Onyx, Declan recalled, but he’d forgotten the man’s name. Unger…? Ulbrecht…?
Onyx Webb: Book Two Page 10
