by D. M. Pulley
Flo and Rose were dead.
Ethel dug her fingernails into her thighs to cut through the bleak madness in her head. If she was going to get out of there, she had to focus. She had to stay awake and be ready. But her arms felt too heavy to lift off the ground. They ached from her day of shoveling shit at the farm, but it was worse than that. A black hopelessness weighed down each of her bones. There was nothing waiting for her outside the stone walls of this prison. Just booze and cigarettes, but it wasn’t enough.
She lifted her wrists and traced a finger down the scars running the length of her forearms. If only she’d gone a little deeper. Tears burned in the backs of her eyes. She deserved to rot down there in the dark. Maybe it was all finally over and she could disappear. Every time she lifted her skirt, she wished herself away to a place where no one would find her.
And now here she was.
She curled into a ball and shut her eyes. Someone still knew how to find her, and she couldn’t begin to guess what he planned to do with her.
The sounds of someone befouling one of the nuns upstairs the night before echoed in her ears. If it wasn’t Brother Wenger, who was it? The crying grew louder in her mind until it felt as though the girl were there in the room with her. Her eyes flew open, not that it helped. It was just as dark in the room as in her head.
Somewhere outside the room, a woman was weeping. The longer she listened, the more convinced she became it was real. It sounded like a bird fallen from its nest, wailing and injured on the ground. Ethel sat up and pressed her ear to the seam between the wall and the door.
“Hello?” she hissed through the gap. “Who’s out there? Are you okay?”
The crying grew louder.
“Hello!” Ethel raised her voice, then pounded on the door. “Where are you?”
Ethel pulled away from the door and pressed her ear to the wall and then the dirt floor, trying to locate the voice. Mary Alice? Oh, God, what are they doing to you?
A high-pitched scream pierced the air. Ethel’s head snapped up at the sound. Another scream tore through dark. Clutching her ears, Ethel shrank against the wall, desperate to block it out. “Stop! Stop it!” she pleaded.
Another gutted scream rose up. It was coming from the sewer drain, she realized. Ethel felt her way to the spot in the floor.
A low, muffled voice greeted her at the drain. The words she strained to hear sounded like “. . . the curse of the Lord is on the house of the wicked, but He blesses the habitation of the just.”
“Ple—ease,” a woman wept.
The low voice got lost in the pipe. Ethel cupped her ear to it. “You . . . for forgiveness . . . absolved . . . your sins.”
“For-forgive me. God. Please. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please let me go. Let me go!” she shrieked.
“That is what we are here to do, my child . . . We’re here to set you free.”
The beginnings of another scream echoed up from the ground but died in an unnatural gurgle. Ethel sucked in her own scream and stopped up her mouth with both hands. They killed her.
She leapt to her feet, colliding into a wall. Her lungs collapsed as she sipped the thinning air faster and faster. They killed her.
Purple spots clouded her vision. The silence that followed terrified her more than the screams. It stretched out for an eternity. She sank down to her knees, waiting for some sign of life besides her own labored breath and the distant sound of water. There was nothing.
A rush of fresh air swept her bare skin as the door behind her creaked open.
BABY FARM IS TORSO DEATH CLEW
Unwed Girls’ Clinic Traced
The mystery of the headless dead turned today to a hunt by detectives for a baby farm and abortion clinic known to have been operated in Cleveland’s Northeast Side.
Detective Sergeant James T. Hogan ordered his men today to inquire for such a place in the belief that the young woman whose dismembered torso washed ashore yesterday on Lake Erie’s beach at E. 165th street may have been the victim of an illegal operation or may have died after childbirth.
—Cleveland Press, February 24, 1937, p. 1
CHAPTER 19
April 8, 1999
A wall of smoke and music greeted them. Kris walked into the fog of a two-story great room flanked on two sides by rows of brick arches with a gallery of balconies overhead and a giant window at the far end.
“What is this?” she asked, gazing up at the vaulted ceiling overhead. Her voice was drowned out by the bass thumping through four-foot speakers. Jimmy led her by the arm onto the dance floor.
No one was dancing. Ratty couches lined the edges of the gallery. The seats were occupied by a throng of slovenly dressed guys and girls with punk hairdos and Dr. Martens shoes. They all appeared to be Kris’s age but came from a different planet where tattoos and piercings and dyed hair were the norm. Nearly everyone was smoking something. A cloud of nicotine and marijuana hung above the gallery, shimmering under the red and yellow Christmas lights strung between the balconies.
Kris scanned the twenty or so faces dotted around the room and recognized none of them. None looked old enough to be friends with her father. He would have hated the lot of them. A girl in the corner shrieked out a laugh. She had a safety pin threaded through the skin over her eyebrow and a hoop ring sticking out of her lower lip. A guy with spiked black hair passed her a four-foot glass bong. He had a hole in his earlobe big enough to see through.
A few of the couch people waved to Jimmy. He threw them a nod and set his grocery bag on top of an enormous speaker in the corner. “You want something to drink?” he shouted over the music.
“Uh. Sure.” She turned and scanned the upper balconies. Groups of heads with various knit hats and odd hairdos sat chatting in clusters above them. Her father wouldn’t be caught dead anywhere near them.
Jimmy handed her a J. Ruppert’s, undoubtedly the cheapest beer in all of Cleveland. “Thanks.” Kris cracked it open. Blech. “So, uh, who are all these people?”
“Who, them?” he waved a hand at the disjointed crowd. “I have no idea.” He winked at her and led her to the nearest pair of couches.
They sat down next to a guy wearing a ski cap and a Frampton Comes Alive! T-shirt. He handed Jimmy a joint. He had a poem tattooed on the side of his neck. Kris squinted to read the words but then worried she was being rude. Next to all these heavily styled stoners, she realized she must look like a Mormon. She wasn’t even wearing lip gloss.
“Thanks, man.” Jimmy took a long drag and said in a hitched voice, “What’s up, party people?” then blew out an enormous cloud of smoke. He handed the tarry bundle of paper to Kris.
She took it out of courtesy and held it for a moment, debating whether to just pass the joint to the girl with the braided pigtails. Jimmy kept talking to Frampton, but Kris felt the eyes of the entire room on her, waiting to see what she would do. Her father would’ve had a fit if he could see her sitting there. His absence opened a gully beneath her feet, a canyon without a floor. Nothing was there to stop her or catch her. Nothing but air.
“You gonna hit that?” the girl next to her asked.
“Oh, sorry.” She passed the joint over.
Jimmy grinned at her, clearly amused. “Everybody, this is Kris.”
She waved at them weakly. Her eyes burned with the clouds of smoke and the red lights glowing over her head. The grimy fabric of the couch cushions sucked her down to the broken springs.
“Kris, this is Tommy, Bruno, Ansel, Scully, and Jane.”
They each gave her a smile or a nod as the joint made its way back to Jimmy. He took another hit and passed it to her.
She waved him off and took a swig of beer instead. The thumping electronic music switched over to reggae. All the heads in the smoky room started bobbing together in rhythm. Jesus, what the hell am I doing here?
Jimmy shouted in her direction, “You alright?”
She gazed into his sleepy stoned eyes, weighing whether to bother even asking Jimm
y about her father or just leave.
“You look like you got something on your mind.”
“I’m sort of looking for someone,” she shouted back. Against her better judgment, she pulled her father’s driver’s license from her back pocket and handed it to him. “Have you seen this guy?”
Jimmy squinted at the license through the smoke and waved off the joint being passed in his direction. Then he looked up at her, troubled. Or maybe just stoned. He handed it back to her and said, “Let’s take a walk.”
Jimmy pulled her through a cloud of bobbing music and smoke, past the couches to a staircase on the right. At the top of the stairs and around the corner, the music grew fainter, and she could start to hear herself think again. “Where are we going?”
“Who is this Alfred Wiley guy?” Jimmy asked as he pulled her down a narrow hall toward a closed door. “Boyfriend?”
She glanced at his broad shoulders, becoming uncomfortably aware how easily he could overpower her. The room full of drunk and stoned people behind them didn’t give her much comfort. “No. He’s . . . he’s my dad.”
“Oh . . . Shit. I’m sorry.” Jimmy stared at her a beat then went to open the door to what she was certain must be his bedroom.
“Wait.” She pulled her hand back from his, a panic building inside her. The room buzzed with all the secondhand smoke she’d inhaled. She couldn’t remember how to get out, and she didn’t know this guy from Adam. “Have you seen him? Is he around here? In the building, I mean.”
His deep brown eyes bent with sympathy. “I’m sorry. I haven’t seen an old dude like that in here. It’s mostly old drunks like Maurice or, you know.” He waved his hand toward the party.
“Oh.” Disappointment flooded her body along with a wave of exhaustion. For a moment, she’d seen a glimmer of recognition in Jimmy’s face, but this whole thing was a dead end. But why did he list this place as his address? Where is he? The unanswered questions reeled past her. She slumped against the wall.
Two warm hands cupped her face. Deep brown eyes poured into hers. “I’m sorry you can’t find him. I really am.”
For a terrible second, she was certain he was going to kiss her, and she felt herself lean in. He seemed nice enough, inviting her in out of the cold, offering her beer. His full lips and lean build made him more than a little attractive. She hadn’t been kissed in . . .
Kris stiffened and shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Relax. I’m not gonna hurt you,” he whispered, but instead of driving her into the floor with a kiss, he let go. “I want you to meet someone.”
She blinked her eyes clear. “You do?”
On the other side of the door, six people sat on the floor circled around six candles. They were holding hands and swaying back and forth. All of them looked like different versions of the stoners they’d sat with on the couches. All except one.
A heavyset woman with pale wrinkled skin and long gray hair tied into a braid sat at the head of the circle. She looked old enough to have mothered all of them.
“Good evening, Madame Mimi. Can we join you?” Jimmy asked.
The woman glanced up at Jimmy and whispered to the others, “Widen the circle for our friends.”
The students shifted to make two more seats around the tiny bonfire of candles. Madame Mimi pulled two more red votives out of her bag and lit their wicks.
“What are we doing?” Kris whispered, then immediately wished she hadn’t. Every eye in the room turned to her. She shrank in apology and stared into the candlelight. The room reeked of patchouli and sandalwood.
“We are communing with the dead,” Madame Mimi answered gently.
Kris lifted her eyes and frowned at the old woman. What?
“We are in a place full of ghosts. A girl was held prisoner right here, in this very room.”
Kris shot Jimmy a look that said, Is this lady nuts? She didn’t want to commune with the dead. She wanted to find her father and prove that all of it had been a terrible mistake.
Jimmy tilted his head and threw her a side-eye that said, Shut up and listen.
“You are a skeptic. You want to know why,” Madame Mimi said softy. “Some of us are searching for answers. Some of us are looking for meaning.”
The older woman studied her a moment and added, “Some of us have unfinished business with the dead.”
Kris sat there stunned for a moment in the fog of incense and candle wax, certain the crazy hippie lady had somehow seen right into her soul. Then her inner cynic spoke up. The woman’s a con artist. It was her job to read people’s expressions, and Kris realized she must’ve looked like she’d seen a ghost at the mere mention of the word dead.
“We must all clear our minds. The dead will speak to us if we listen,” Mimi announced.
They sat in silence with their eyes closed while Jim Morrison shared his drunken musings about dead Indians from the gallery below. All except Kris. She let her gaze wander over the group deep in prayer or meditation or whatever it was they thought they were doing. Jimmy was stooped over at the waist with his eyes closed. The blond with a crocheted Rasta tam rocked back and forth. One of the girls had dreadlocks so thick and heavy Kris wondered how she lifted her head. Beads and metal amulets had been woven through the sticky twigs of her hair.
“Relax your mind,” Mimi said in a low, soothing voice.
Kris told herself it would be rude to upset the whole séance. She watched the candle flames dance and weave. This thing will be over soon, and I’ll go home. Maybe Ben called to tell me it’s all just been a mistake. He’s fine. He’s coming back. Breathe, Kris. It’s going to be all right. The weariness of the last twenty-four hours sank deep into her bones.
“We are safe here. Let yourself go. Let the candles light your way.”
Kris felt herself drifting in and out of consciousness as the fortune-teller kept muttering about peace and relaxation in that soothing slow voice. Her mind wandered down the narrow corridors of the building, through the hobbit door.
The throbbing drumbeats below her began to quicken their pace as the music shifted. Instead of drifting lazily down the brick pathway, she was now running down a long, narrow hallway. She took a wrong turn and got lost in the courtyard. The iron gate was closed. Panic shot through her as she scanned a hundred doors and windows looking down at her. They were all locked.
He’s coming.
Kris’s eyes startled open. She was back in the room with the hippie lady. Madame Mimi was looking right at her. The feeling that someone was behind her still pulled at the nerves in her back, but there was no one there.
“Who has a question for the dead?” she asked the group, but her eyes stayed on Kris.
A guy with a goatee answered with his eyes still closed, “How many ghosts are living here?”
The rest of the stoners kept their heads down and waited for the answer. Madame Mimi made a study of Kris’s face, then answered, “They drift in and out, but over three hundred people died in this building.”
“Whoa,” Goatee answered and bobbed his head in agreement.
“How’d they die?” Beaded Dreadlocks whispered as though it might happen to her next.
“Many died in the hospital in the old wing. During the war.” Madame Mimi kept her voice low and even, a hypnotist at work. Kris found herself staring at the long necklaces dangling from the old woman’s neck. One looked like an eye. One looked like an owl.
“Which war?” a voice asked.
“It was the Civil War. Lincoln’s men camped two blocks away. Many wounded were treated here. Some lost their legs. Some lost their lives.”
“No shit.”
“Who else died here?” It might’ve been Jimmy asking, but Kris kept her eyes on Madame Mimi.
“Many infants and children. This was an orphanage for many years before it became a Bible press and mission.”
Kris recoiled at the idea of dead children but then figured the words were specifically chosen for effect. The more horror the better
if you’re staging a séance. The bits of history lent some real intrigue, but Kris told herself that anyone with a library card could have sussed all that out.
“Do they see us?” another girl asked.
Kris scanned the room for drifting specters despite herself. The candles threw shadows all over the room. Severed heads and broken torsos lurked in all of them.
“They see us as often as we see them,” Madame Mimi answered.
“Why are they still here? What do they want?” a small girl with a garden of tattoos up and down her arms asked.
“What do you want?” Madame Mimi asked in response.
Kris wanted to get the hell out of there.
“It’s different for all of us,” the old fortune-teller continued. “Some are angry. Some are lost. Some like to watch. Some are too frightened to move on.”
“What about the girl that was a prisoner here, in this room?” Jimmy asked. “What does she want?”
Mimi directed her red-rimmed eyes right at Kris. “A way out.”
Kris decided she’d had enough of the charade. “So she’s trapped here? Doesn’t she know she’s dead? Or is it like that movie, you know the one with Bruce Willis?”
A few pairs of eyes glared up at Kris’s irreverence, but Madame Mimi wasn’t fazed. “This girl was murdered many floors below us.”
Kris stiffened.
“When death comes suddenly and violently, the shock can render the dead immobile. Petrified. The victim is frozen in those final living moments and can’t break free.”
Kris’s heart tightened. Her father’s face peered out from behind the plastic of his driver’s license in her back pocket. Trapped.
“Isn’t there anything we can do to help her, you know, find peace?” someone asked.
“We can try. For this, I’ll need total silence.” The fortune-teller shot Kris a look and then pulled a bundle of dried twigs from a fold in her caftan and lit one end with a candle. She blew out the flame and then waved the smoldering ember around until the room hazed over with smoke.