by Eva Pohler
“Are you sure they weren’t hoodies?” Sue asked. “It has gotten chilly out there.”
Just then, they heard footsteps and the sound of men’s voices in the room where the hobo camp was. It sounded like at least three, maybe four, people coming toward them. Ellen moved close to her friends, shut off her flashlight, and whispered, “Turn off your lights.”
She killed the lantern and put a hand on Sue’s shoulder, where she was sitting in the wooden chair in the darkness. Tanya stood on the other side of Sue. Ellen could hear them both breathing rapidly. She couldn’t control her trembling hands or her suddenly very weak and shaky knees. Sue took out her phone, and Ellen’s heart stopped. She worried the light from it would give them away. She watched anxiously as Sue dialed 9-1-1.
“Turn it off,” Ellen whispered as she turned off her own, worried Paul would call and get them all killed.
Maybe she was letting her imagination get the best of her. Why would these people want to kill them?
Sue put the phone on mute and tucked it into her purse, leaving the call to 9-1-1 connected. Then she reached further into her purse and pulled out her gun.
Beams of lights flashed all over the room.
One of the men shouted, “The bitches are in here somewhere. I saw them go in.”
Ellen’s mouth fell open. She and her friends were being hunted.
She held her breath as a beam of light came dangerously close to falling on them. She involuntarily squeezed Sue’s shoulder to prevent a cry from escaping her throat. She prayed to Vivian, to Van Hurley, and to any other benevolent beings that existed to please protect them from harm as the men searched the room and continued onto the next.
She may have even peed a little.
One of the lights went out.
“What’s wrong with this damn thing?” someone said as he walked from the ballroom into the skating rink.
Her heart stopped again—or at least seemed to—when she heard Sue whisper, “Tanya, go into the dumbwaiter and call 9-1-1.”
Ellen wanted to object, to say they should stick together, to say Tanya might be heard, but she was too afraid to speak. When it was evident that the men had moved onto the next room, Tanya peeled away from Sue and crept to the dumbwaiter. A wooden floorboard creaked beneath her, and Ellen thought their goose was cooked. She couldn’t see whether Tanya had made it inside, but she heard the scrape of the metal door as Tanya pulled it closed. If the men hadn’t heard them before, they had to have heard that. Ellen froze, waiting for her fate, sure that tonight was the night she would die.
One of the men rushed back into the ballroom. “I’ll check upstairs on this side."
A flash of light streaked across her body as someone ran over the wooden floor toward the stairs. Ellen prayed with all her might that he hadn’t noticed her.
Please don’t see us. Please don’t see us. Please don’t see us.
Suddenly she thought of the spirits from the mass grave who had been praying out for decades:
Don’t ignore us. Don’t ignore us. Don’t ignore us.
She stood there, trembling and unable to breathe, wondering why she and Sue hadn’t at least attempted to hide behind the risers, as the man climbed the stairs and searched the second and third story bedrooms of the east wing.
Another man came into the ballroom from the skating rink and hollered, “Find anything?”
The guy upstairs came out onto the third-floor catwalk and flashed his light down on the ballroom below. “Not yet, but I know they’re here.” Then in an eerie voice, he said, “Come out, come out, where ever you are.”
His light went out. Ellen heard him say, “What the devil? I just put new batteries in this thing.”
Ellen silently thanked whatever spirit had caused that.
“Come on down.” The guy downstairs continued to flash his light around the ballroom. He started at the front, along the wall opposite them.
As he searched, he said to his buddy coming down the stairs, “Do you think there could be any truth to there being a mass grave?”
“Nah. It’s all lies spread by Blacks to make Whites look bad.”
“But the people conducting the search are white.”
“Nigger lovers.”
“Yeah,” the man downstairs agreed.
“Don’t those dames know that Blacks just want money without having to work for it?” the guy coming downstairs said. “You hear that, bitches? I know you can hear me.”
Ellen wanted to lash out at the man’s ignorance and stupidity, to tell him how wrong he was. She was so angry, that if she had been the one holding the gun, she might have shot him.
“We work hard for our money, and those lazy asses just want to leech off us,” the man coming downstairs continued. “Reparations my ass. It’s more like free money. We’ll we ain’t gonna let that happen.”
“Besides, why should we be held responsible for something our great-grandparents may or may not have done?” the guy already downstairs added.
Ellen wanted to shout that the city, as an entity, was responsible—not individual people. The city allowed, and possibly caused, the atrocious events of 1921, and its victims, or the descendants of its victims, who got a worse start in life as a direct result of their parents and grandparents losing everything, deserved compensation. It was about justice.
Someone else came in through the east entrance and shouted, “What’s the hold up? James is ready for the cross-lighting ceremony, and we think we hear sirens coming our way.”
“Shit!” the man downstairs shouted. “The bitches must have called for help. I’m gonna kill them when we find them.”
Ellen’s knees nearly gave out. She clung to Sue, propping herself up.
But her shift in weight made the floorboards creak, and suddenly two lights were on her like flies on dung.
“There they are,” one of them said. “Been here the whole time.”
Ellen screamed as Sue started blindly firing off her gun. Unsure whether to run for her life or stay by Sue’s side, Ellen was paralyzed as several men swarmed them, pulling them away from one another.
“Give me that gun!” a man shouted. “This dame almost shot me!”
“Stop this!” Ellen shouted. “This is crazy!”
“You’re the crazy ones!” the one pinning her arms to her side said. “Now tell me where your friend is.”
“She’s not here,” Sue said.
“Liar!” another man shouted as he struck Sue across the face. “I saw her with my own eyes.”
“Tell us or we’ll kill this one,” the man said to Sue.
The one pinning Ellen’s arms down whispered, “Are you ready to die?”
The door to the dumbwaiter scraped open. “I’m right here. And you better get out of here, because the police are on their way.”
“That dumb bitch.”
“Stuff her back in there, and tie the lid shut,” the one holding Ellen said. “I’ll do the same with this one. I saw another one of those elevators in the other room.”
“What about this one?” the guy holding Sue asked.
“Did she see your face?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Bring her.”
“Please!” Ellen pleaded. “Let us go.”
She heard Tanya pounding on the dumbwaiter door, begging to be released as Ellen and Sue were dragged into the skating rink. Ellen was stuffed into the other dumbwaiter, the door slammed shut. She fell in at an odd angle, nearly on her back, with her knees crammed up to her face. She fumbled for her cell phone, hoping to call 9-1-1, but the phone was dead.
She screamed and kicked and pulled at the door, until her throat burned and her body ached, but it did no good. She was trapped.
Chapter Twenty-Three: Catastrophe
A red light began blinking in the darkness of the dumbwaiter, where Ellen had been kicking and screaming for her life. She stopped and watched the soft red glow go on, off, on, off, in rapid succession.
�
�What is that?” she whispered.
The clack of a gunshot brought her from her reverie.
Sue moaned.
“That’s what you get for shooting at me, bitch!” Ellen heard someone shout.
“Sue?” Ellen screamed. “Sue, are you okay?”
No one answered her.
Tears fell from Ellen’s eyes, and she sobbed and hugged her knees. Poor Sue! Please, God, let her be alive!
What had she gotten them into? Ellen was the one who’d said they needed to help ghosts find peace. She should have listened to Paul. They should have quit when things got serious. They were three middle-aged women—hell, senior citizens—with no real skills. What could they do, especially when the living were more evil than the dead?
She should be home preparing her nest for grandchildren, not traipsing around the country solving old mysteries.
Don’t ignore us.
The whisper was loud and close to her ear. Ellen froze, suddenly realizing where the blinking red light was coming from. It was coming from her pocket. The EMF meter was picking up on a high electromagnetic field. Paranormal investigators believed it was an indication of the presence of a spirit.
We are here.
“Help me!” Ellen whispered back to the spirits. “Help me get out of here!”
She leaned all the way down on her back and lifted her legs over her head, kicking at the top of the elevator. She felt it budge, so she kicked some more until it cracked open and dust fell in her face.
She spat and gagged and rubbed her eyes, all the while trying to maneuver back to a sitting position. It had gotten frigidly cold, and her breath was making little puffs of smoke in the soft red blinking glow of the EMF detector.
“Tanya! Can you hear me?” she shouted as she pulled at the top of the elevator to get her feet beneath her. “Tanya?”
Even colder air rushed into the dumbwaiter from above her. She grabbed onto the sides of the broken elevator and pulled up to a standing position. It was too dark to see anything, so she fiddled for her flashlight in her trouser pocket.
“Dang it!” It was dead.
She brought the EMF meter up and shined it into the space between the walls, looking for a way out.
“Tanya?” she cried again.
“Ellen?”
It was Tanya! Relief swept through her.
“Are you okay?” Ellen shouted.
“I can’t get out! I’m stuck! What about you?” Tanya shouted back.
“I’m looking for a way out!”
“What about Sue? Was that a gunshot?” Tanya called back.
“I don’t know!” Tears welled in her eyes again at the thought of her friend lying in a heap on the dirty floor, dead. “I don’t know, Tanya!”
The distant sound of sirens was becoming louder and louder. Help must be on the way.
Ellen looked up, hoping for a window. Seeing none, she looked down. Something below caught her eye. She waited for the red light to blink several more times as she tried to make out what she was seeing.
A human skeleton stared back at her.
She flinched, as a chill ran down her back.
She looked again. Beneath the skeleton, was another, and another, and another.
“Oh, my God,” she murmured.
She’d found the mass grave.
The bodies had been inside the wall.
Before she could share the news with Tanya, she heard a loud pop, like a bomb exploding, from somewhere on the other side of the wall, outside toward the highway. Then she heard an eruption of screams and wails. The screams weren’t like the moaning and hissing she’d heard from the spirits in the building. They sounded like the living. Something had happened to the group outside.
Were the police shooting at them?
No, because then she would have heard a series of gunshots, not a single loud explosion.
Had the police bombed the group?
That seemed unlikely, too.
Then a chill crept down her spine as she suddenly realized what had probably happened. The cross-burning ceremony must have caused an explosion over the gas seep. Ellen covered her mouth as she continued to hear the cries of men outside. Then the light from the flames illuminated the space where she was trapped—from where the light came, she wasn’t sure. Down below, the skeletons lay piled on top of one another. Why weren’t they hissing and moaning from the fire, like they had in the past? Was it possible that they had caused the explosion? Had they gotten their revenge?
No, Ellen thought. Those dummies outside had done it to themselves.
Had they deserved it? Ellen decided it wasn’t her place to judge, but she couldn’t help but feel a little satisfaction from it.
The loud sound of sirens now overshadowed the wails of fire victims. Along with the soft red glow of the EMF detector and the dancing light from the fire was an even bolder blinking of blue and red, probably from police cars and hopefully a firetruck and ambulance. Now that she’d figured out what was happening outside, a new fear paralyzed her.
Would the building catch fire while she was trapped inside? Was it her fate to join the victims of the 1921 riot below?
She longed for her husband and children. She had to live to see them again. This couldn’t be the end. It couldn’t!
Tears stung her eyes as she cried, “Help! Help!” over and over, kicking at the dumbwaiter door.
“Tanya? Are you still there?” Ellen shouted.
“I’m still here! Still stuck! Can you hear what’s going on out there? It sounded like an explosion. I think I see fire, and I smell smoke. What if this building catches fire with us in it?”
“Don’t think that way!” Ellen shouted back, though she had just been thinking the exact same thoughts.
And now she, too, could smell smoke coming into the walls.
Like a frenzied animal, she kicked and screamed and pounded her heart out.
Suddenly the scraping of the elevator door caught her attention, and she stood paralyzed by fear and hope. As the door slid open, Ellen stooped to her trembling knees and crouched down to see either her persecutor or her savoir. The person staring back at her was the old Native American woman.
“Come,” she said, offering Ellen her hand.
Ellen took the old woman’s hand. “Thank you.”
Then Ellen fumbled on her sore and trembling legs through the skating rink to the ballroom, where the other dumbwaiter door was tied to the risers with a length of rope.
“Tanya! I’m out. I’m getting you out now, too.”
The old woman helped her with the knot, and then the two of them pulled open the metal door. Tanya practically fell into Ellen’s arms.
“Where’s Sue?” Tanya asked.
Ellen looked at the old woman, who shrugged.
Tanya and Ellen rushed around the building like chickens with their heads cut off calling out for Sue.
Ellen stumbled through the skating rink toward the old bowling alley. It was darker in here, without the light from the windows, and her flashlight and phone were both dead.
“Sue? Sue, are you in here?” Ellen called out.
“Over here,” came her barely audible voice.
“Tanya!” Ellen shouted, full of excitement. “I’ve found her, and she’s alive!”
“Barely,” Sue whimpered.
Ellen fumbled in the dark toward the sound of Sue’s voice. Tanya soon followed, shining her flashlight.
“There she is,” Ellen said, rushing to Sue’s side.
She lay splayed out on the bowling lane on her back, with her arms above her head and her legs out, one knee slightly bent.
“What happened?” Tanya asked, shining her light all over Sue.
That’s when they saw the blood.
“Oh, my God!” Ellen cried. “She’s been shot!”
The Native American woman appeared beside them with a handful of dry dirt. “Put this on the wound. It will stop the bleeding.”
“It’s my foot,” Sue said. “T
he bastard shot me in the foot.”
Ellen gently removed Sue’s shoe.
“Leave the sock,” the old woman advised. “It will help, too.”
“But it’s soaked,” Ellen said.
As the old woman packed the dirt over the top of Sue’s foot, Tanya asked, “Did you see what happened outside?”
The old woman nodded. “I told you. The spirits don’t like white people. They’re all dead.”
They heard footsteps coming toward them from the roller rink, and the Native American woman disappeared in the shadows.
“Anyone in here?” came a voice. “I’m a police officer here to help.”
Tanya shined her light on Sue. “Over here! My friend’s been shot!”
The officer made his way to Sue’s side and assessed her wound. “Do you think you can walk?”
“No way. I could barely walk before my foot got shot. No way I’m doing it now.”
Suddenly Ellen recognized the police officer. “Officer Ryan?”
“Yes?”
A chill snaked down Ellen’s spine. This may be the very man that instigated the hate crimes against them. Was he here to finish the job?
“Aren’t you the one who told the papers about us?” Sue managed to mumble.
“What? I didn’t talk to no paper. What are you talking about?”
“I think Sue needs a stretcher,” Ellen said. “And she might be delirious from the loss of blood.”
“You ladies wait right here,” the officer said. “The fire’s been contained. You’re safe in here. I’ll go get the paramedics.”
Ellen hoped he was telling the truth and not leaving them in there to die.
Within a half hour, the paramedics had come and taken Sue to one of the ambulances waiting on the curb. For the first time, Ellen and Tanya saw the massive destruction all around them. Charred bodies lay all over the ground on the north side of the building. Huge billowing black smoke rose from the ground into the dark sky. Ellen coughed as some of it filled her lungs. First responders rushed around them, looking for survivors and finding none. The feeling of satisfaction over their misfortune, which Ellen had felt while trapped in the dumbwaiter, was replaced by profound sorrow and grief.