Onyx Webb: Book One Read online

  “All smart gamblers play poker,” Ulrich told Onyx when they first arrived in town. “I just need a bankroll to get started.”

  “Aren’t the odds always in the house’s favor?” Onyx asked.

  “With roulette and the slots, yes,” Ulrich contended. “But poker? No, with poker you aren’t playing against the house, you are playing against the biggest sucker at the table.” Amazingly, for a while, Ulrich proved to be quite the poker player, winning a significant amount from fellow workers.

  Then Ulrich fell off the wagon.

  Unfortunately, once Ulrich had a few gins in him, the biggest sucker at the table on most nights turned out to be him, and he was too drunk to realize it. Within six months, Ulrich’s winnings were depleted and he took his first loan from Hyman Holtz, a shylock who went by the nickname “The Hammer” and operated from the rear of a barbershop next door to the Majestic Theater.

  “The vigorish is 20 percent, you understand what that means?” The Hammer asked.

  Ulrich didn’t.

  The vigorish—commonly referred to as the vig for short—was a complicated means of calculating the interest rate being charged on the loan.

  “No problem,” Ulrich said, signing the marker but ignoring the question. “I’ll have your money back in two days.”

  He didn’t.

  It wasn’t long before Ulrich was forced to borrow from Frankie “Fingers” Agnello to pay off The Hammer… and from Pauly “The Pinch” DeFeo to repay Fingers… and then from Bennie “The Knife” Juliano. Worst of all, though, was Faustino “The Owl” Spilatro, to whom Ulrich currently owed $900, with the vig making the total grow larger by the day.

  The Owl had given Ulrich three days to come up with the cash or he’d send his sons to collect the hard way.

  That had been a week ago.

  While Ulrich was busy running up gambling debts, Onyx worked waiting tables at the Apache to men with dirty hands downing shots of gin and bourbon into the wee hours of the morning. It was not what Onyx considered fulfilling work, but the tips were good and they paid the rent.

  A year earlier, not long after Onyx and Ulrich arrived, movie star Marlene Dietrich—who’d just finished shooting The Scarlet Empress in Hollywood—had passed through. She’d been invited by Las Vegas mobster Meyer Lansky to make a stop in the dusty little town in an attempt to put the city on the map with other Hollywood-types. Had Dietrich seen the town before saying yes, she might not have agreed.

  Onyx stood near the side of the stage that night and watched as Dietrich—wearing a top hat, a white blouse under a tight grey vest, and silk stockings—took command of the room. Dietrich was everything a woman could and should be, Onyx thought— audacious, magnetic, witty, charming, and seductive—someone who grabbed the world by the collar and took it with her wherever she went. Most of all, Marlene Dietrich was a liberated woman. And that was the moment Onyx decided to take her life back.

  “I think I would like to try my hand at singing,” she told Ulrich when she arrived home that night.

  “You think you can become Marlene Dietrich?” Ulrich asked. “You’re not even very good at being Onyx Schröder.”

  “Webb,” Onyx said.

  “What?”

  Onyx had just used her maiden name for the first time in six years, and it felt good. “You heard me.”

  “All of a sudden my name is no longer good enough for you?”

  Onyx remained silent.

  Ulrich took a step toward her, but he knew better than to raise a hand to his Onyx after she promised to leave him if he ever touched her again.

  Ulrich simply turned and stormed from the room.

  Ulrich walked down Fremont Street in desperate need of a drink. He couldn’t show his face in any of his favorite haunts for fear of running into one of the many loan sharks he owed money.

  He turned left, worked his way down Ogden all the way to Ninth Street where he spotted a place called The Night Owl. He took a seat at the bar and put back two quick shots of bourbon, then ordered a third.

  “You have driven me to drink, Onyx Webb,” Ulrich said aloud to no one in particular.

  “Let me guess,” the female voice came from behind him. Ulrich turned to see a curvaceous cigarette girl standing there. “Lucky Strikes, right?”

  Smoking was one of the few vices Ulrich did not partake in, but the stunning girl caught him off guard. “Yes, Lucky Strikes,” he said.

  Two hours later, Ulrich was lying on his back, blowing smoke at the ceiling as the naked cigarette girl drew circles on his chest with a painted nail.

  “My name is Claudia,” the girl said casually, “in case you’re wondering.”

  He wasn’t. Ulrich was thinking about how deeply in debt he was to the loan sharks and contemplating his options.

  “You want to see a picture of my favorite place in the whole wide world?” Claudia said, rolling over and grabbing her purse. Ulrich took the small black-and-white photo from Claudia’s hand.

  It was a picture of a lighthouse, set majestically on top of a cliff, the Pacific Ocean in the background with waves crashing the shore below.

  “It’s called Crimson Cove,” Claudia said. “I grew up there, on the Oregon coast. It’s the type of romantic place a couple could go and simply disappear forever.

  From the Journal of Onyx Webb

  It is important to understand that ghosts have always walked among us, among The Living. And not just ghosts of the Now-You-See-Them, Now-You-Don’t variety, who show up as gray wisps that appear and then just as quickly disappear, but fully-formed, fully-energized ghosts who look just as human as you and others...

  Ghosts who live undetected, toiling away in jobs they tolerate, riding the bus to and from prisons of their own making …

  Ghosts who serve our dinners in restaurants and clean our houses and perhaps even babysit our children.

  Ghosts who, if you’re not paying close attention—or should you not know what to look for—appear and sound and “feel” to the touch like the living.

  Well, almost.

  Of course, this can be disconcerting for some people to learn. But, rest assured that over time I will share everything you need to know…

  Every telltale sign to look for…

  And in the case of the few dark ghosts who walk among the living, I will tell you everything you need to fear.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Savannah, Georgia

  June 5, 1979

  The man had been gone for ten minutes, leaving Juniper in front of what looked like a shrine comprised of an eclectic assortment of items.

  Juniper had no idea what to make of it. It was like a giant puzzle, but none of the pieces seemed to connect.

  The wall itself was covered with photographs, mostly of Ferris wheels. Most of the Ferris wheels Juniper had ever seen were huge, with big cars you climbed into. These all seemed small, like something you’d see at a country fair—with chairs you sat in, your legs dangling free below.

  In addition to the photos, there was also a collection of models of Ferris wheels, sitting on shelves on the wall—possibly antiques.

  Then there were the newspaper articles, one with a picture of a large Ferris wheel. It was the front page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, yellow with age, from August of 1904. The headline read:

  ST. LOUIS CHILD SNATCHER FOUND—TWO GIRLS SAVED BUT KILLER ESCAPES

  Beneath the photo of the Ferris wheel was a photo of two young girls, one a bit older than the other. Juniper couldn’t read the details of the article, and could just barely make out the caption:

  Two lucky girls! Katherine Keane, age 12, of St. Louis (left), and Onyx Webb, age 6, of Louisiana, survivors.

  The girls’ names meant nothing to Juniper. She needed to move on, turning her attention to another article, this one from the Waukesha Daily Freeman, with a headline reading:

  JURY AWARDS $2.3 MILLION TO WISCONSIN FARM ACCIDENT VICTIM

  The balance of items appeared to be the typica
l assortment of things a kid would have in their room.

  A blue and silver “First Place” ribbon with track runner on it.

  An old black and white Polaroid photo of a woman in a cocktail waitress outfit that looked like it was from the 1950s or ‘60s.

  A color photo of a boy and a girl in their teens, taken at a prom or dance of some kind. Even though the boy in the photo was ten years younger, Juniper could tell it was the man who’d taken her.

  Over in the corner were stacks of what looked like comic books, record albums, and board games.

  What did it all mean?

  Juniper turned her attention to what was in the center of it all: The table with the empty cylindrical glass container the man had brought in earlier.

  An empty glass container.

  The container was tall, at least three-feet high. And it was wide—tall enough and wide enough to fit half of a person.

  Half a person.

  Juniper looked at the box the man had set beneath the table and read what was printed on the side: Formaldehyde 40%, APC Pure. 6 - One Gallon Bottles.

  Juniper looked back at the pictures of the Ferris wheels on the wall. All the photos were of old-time Ferris wheels—the kind from the ‘50s and ‘60s where you sat in a swing with your legs dangling free below—and she understood.

  The pictures weren’t of the Ferris wheels.

  They were pictures of legs.

  Ninety minutes later it was over.

  Nahum finished cleaning the floor and the metal table, removed his rubber gloves and placed them in a plastic trash bag and sealed it. Then he pulled a chair into the center of the room and took a seat. He hadn’t figured out exactly where to dispose of everything, but he could do it later. Right now he just wanted to sit and enjoy his work.

  Juniper Cole was his fourth victim.

  The first time he’d killed a girl, it was in a fit of blind rage, but he hadn’t thought things through. He hadn’t even considered taking her legs.

  The second time was in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. He’d strangled the girl in a hotel room, panicked, and simply left her there.

  The third kill was also in a hotel room—in Charleston. He’d managed to get the woman’s legs, but a cop car turned the corner as he was carrying them to the van. So he did the only thing he could—he dropped them in the middle of the street and ran.

  In retrospect, he was lucky to get away.

  Nahum vowed then and there that the next time he would do it right. And he had.

  The only question now was:

  Would one pair of legs be enough?

  Chapter Forty

  Desoto, Missouri

  March 23, 1925

  It had been almost three years since Obedience Everhardt had been found among the survivors of the Sulphur Springs train tragedy that had taken thirty-four lives and injured another 186 men, women and children.

  Sister Mary Margaret had recognized the old woman with the long gray pony tail immediately—but she pretended otherwise. Then she talked Father Fanning into taking the traumatized old woman with them to the orphanage, and the priest reluctantly agreed.

  But why had she done it?

  Why had Sister Mary Margaret gone out of her way to keep Obedience Everhardt’s identity a secret? It was a question the nun had asked herself numerous times. Then one day it hit her.

  It was curiosity.

  She was curious to learn about the woman. In particular, she wanted to hear about the girls Obedience had taken and killed. She had never met anyone else who had killed before, at least not to her knowledge.

  In Sister Mary Margaret’s case, however, it was boys. Maybe she and Obedience were merely opposite sides of the same coin.

  Sister Mary Margaret had long wondered if the old woman would ever come clean and admit who she was, but she never did. So the nun began working Obedience for information about her past but to no avail. The old woman pretended to have no memory before that day on the train, but Sister Mary Margaret knew it was an act. What Obedience shared that day at the emergency room had been the result of trauma, not a desire to confess.

  So, as Sister Mary Margaret and Obedience took their usual afternoon walk in the woods, the nun turned and said, “I know who you are, Obedience Everhardt, and I know the terrible things you’ve done.”

  Obedience stopped, a look of genuine surprise on her face. “When did…?”

  Sister Mary Margaret pulled a pack of Old Gold’s from a secret pocket sewn on the inside of her habit. She shook one of the unfiltered cigarettes loose from the pack and lit it.

  “When?” the nun said, taking a seat on a fallen tree at the edge of the woods. “The first day in the emergency room. What, you think that just because I’m a nun that I don’t read the daily paper?”

  “Does Father Fanning know?” Obedience asked.

  Sister Mary Margaret inhaled deeply, then blew a long stream of blue smoke into the air. “Father Fanning is an idiot.”

  “Why didn’t you turn me over to the police?”

  “Do you think I should have?”

  “I would think you would have,” Obedience said. “After all, I have committed sins. Murder. The worst sin of all.”

  “Where did you ever get the idea that the church is in the business of punishment?” Sister Mary Margaret said. “We’re in the business of forgiveness.”

  Obedience said nothing.

  “Do you feel guilt over what you’ve done?” Sister Mary Margaret asked.

  “Yes,” Obedience said, “a great, suffocating guilt that chokes the remaining life from me daily.”

  “Well, Obedience, this is your lucky day,” Sister Mary Margaret said, taking another drag from her Old Gold and making the sign of the cross. “I forgive you of your sins.”

  “What about God?” Obedience asked. “Will God forgive me?”

  Sister Mary Margaret thought for a moment.

  “It would have been better if you’d taken boys. Girls are angels, but boys? Boys are little more than rodents.”

  “I thought God looked down at all his creatures the same,” Obedience said.

  Sister Mary Margaret took one last drag from the Old Gold and snuffed it out on the log. “Yes, God is very good that way, Obedience. But God doesn’t have to take their shit all day, now does he?”

  The next morning Sister Mary Margaret was standing at the front of a classroom, teaching a history lesson, when a young girl began wailing.

  “Look over there! Look over there!” the girl screamed.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Sister Mary Margaret demanded.

  “There, in the woods!” the girl said, pointing out the window.

  Several kids jumped from their seats and ran to the window.

  “Children, take your seats!” Sister Mary Margaret yelled as she crossed the room toward them.

  The children scrambled quickly back to their desks as Sister Mary Margaret approached the window and looked out.

  “What is it? I do not see anything.”

  “There, in the trees,” the young girl said, pointing again. “The woman in the trees.”

  Sister Mary Margaret looked again, following the girl’s pointed finger and finally saw her.

  It was Obedience Everhardt—a rope pulled tightly around her neck—hanging from the branch of a large oak.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Lily Dale, New York

  February 5, 2010

  “Why didn’t you bring Koda with you?” Ingrid Luckner asked from across the kitchen, removing the remaining strips of bacon from a well-worn black-iron skillet.

  Dane had been home for less than twelve hours and was already regretting the decision. Then again, where else was he going to go?

  Growing up behind the picturesque gates of the tiny village, established in 1879 on the eastern shore of Cassadaga Lake, had been both a blessing and a curse.

  On Dane’s fifth birthday, his parents had taken him to the lake for a picnic. They’d just sat down at a tab
le in the gazebo when Dane excitedly asked, “Can we go on the Ferris wheel?”

  “Ferris wheel?” his father said, looking expectantly to Dane’s mother.

  “Are there people on the Ferris wheel?” his mother asked.

  “Sure, lots of them,” Dane replied.

  “Can you tell us what the people look like?” his father asked.

  “They’re wearing hats and holding umbrellas,” Dane had replied.

  Paul and Ingrid Luckner shared a knowing look, then hugged Dane tightly. Yes, he shared their gift.

  The Ferris wheel had been torn down a hundred years earlier.

  Dane had no idea what all the fuss was about. But his parents seemed happy, and that was a good thing.

  But the curse of living in Lily Dale was how Dane was treated in school—taunted and bullied—called everything from creep-boy to freak-fest, and other things too vile to repeat.

  In particular, Dane remembered the day in fifth grade when a classmate said, “Hey, Houdini, wanna read my palm?” Dane wittily responded: “Houdini wasn’t a psychic. He was a magician… ass-wipe.” At which point Dane had the crap beat out of him.

  “So, what is Koda up to these days?” his father asked.

  What to say?

  There was a part of Dane that wanted to tell them about Koda’s situation—about seeing a girl in a mirror, a girl he thought looked dead. On the other hand, when Dane went off to college he’d pledged to never tell a soul about his spiritualist roots—growing up in Lily Dale—or that his mother and father communicated with the dead for a living.

  “I need to take a walk,” Dane said.

  Dane grabbed his Syracuse University letterman’s jacket and a scarf and headed out the door toward the frozen lake. He walked passed row after row of quiet streets lined with quaint, snow-dusted gingerbread houses, feeling like an outsider in the only home he’d ever known.