WtAF Eloise Journal Ep3

May 22nd, 2014 (Episode Three)

Session 6 (9/10/2014)
Dear Luther,
Things have taken a turn for the dramatic. I received an oddly ominous phone message from Oz, indicating that he was afraid the hospital was haunted, and claiming the he and Daniel had seen a ghost! She was the ghost of a nurse, a young black woman seemingly from before the sixties or so.

While he chattered and complained in my ear through the damned headset thing he got me (I admit to taking it off - it hugs my head too tightly, and the bands make me sweat beneath them and you know how I feel about such things), I did some reading. Shortly after, Josephine and James arrived to help me with the reading.

James is a marvel! His time in university clearly did him a great deal of good. Not only is he good at research, but he is very organized and orderly. Oz and I usually end up in a sprawl of books, flipping through this and that as we find them. Not James - we divided books among us, taking care to note possibly important pages while he took extensive notes not just of what he found, but also of what Josephine and I discovered and read to him (and thence to Oz).

We discovered a great deal of information regarding ghosts in general, and about what drives them away, what destroys them and what prevents their passage (salt, as it turns out). I sent Oz and Daniel a care package of salt (hidden under a bag of cookies) through Jaye (thank God for that antisocial night owl!) while we continued to research. I will admit that we wound down fairly rapidly after several straight hours of hard, efficient research. I fear I was already nodding off when Daniel and Oz struck up a conversation with a nurse about the ghost they call "Black Betty" (an appalling nickname, of course).

I said goodnight to everyone (including Oz and his communications device, which I am not wearing all the time no matter what he thinks) and came upstairs. I thought I should take a moment to write in the journal, to tell you what is going on, before bed.

Goodnight, my love. I still miss you terribly.

May 24th, 2014 (Episode Three)

Session 7 (9/24/2014)
Dear Luther,
I'm afraid that the others are going to be very cross with me. If I'm being perfectly truthful, they've a right to be.

I spent the day yesterday helping to get Oz out of the hospital. He'd had just about enough, and I was afraid he was going to simply try and walk out of there if we didn't get him out. So, I went down to help him get out of there, and even made arrangements with one of the doctors on staff to act in a private capacity in terms of his home care. They agreed that he could come back to my home, where I've opened up some of the domestics wing and turned the rooms out there. Honestly, seeing the way this kind of thing works, I suspect all of us will be spending some amount of time in recuperation from these hunts.

Oz's sister Jessica was there when I got there. I don't know if you'd remember her - she came over to our home once or twice during the family parties we'd throw and invite the Carmichaels to. She was the cute little blonde girl who was altogether too bossy for her own good. That tendency has unfortunately carried itself into a career in law, where she's now convinced she has the right and authority to tell everyone what to do. She and I had something of a terse but polite conversation on the topic of not telling other adults how to live their lives.

We got Oz settled in at the house after a stop off at his shop and his home. He's of course champing at the bit to do some more research (he's very enthusiastic about reading through all those books in a purposeful way), with me playing nursemaid. I ended up having to lock the door of the workshop downstairs lest he haul himself down there to do more reading and risk injuring himself. So very headstrong. So very like his mother, though I'd never tell him that.

As Josephine and James did more research at the city library, they discovered that most of the deaths we're attributing to the ghost were of folk who were white. Upon hearing this, Daniel was positively in an Oz-like froth to get out of the hospital himself! He was so adamant that he was prepared to simply walk out, waiting be damned. So, rather than see him do so and do him injury, or work himself into a tizzy and possibly give the medical staff a reason to question his mental fitness, I stepped in and spoke with one of the doctors, a Dr. Meredith Davies.

Dr. Davies is a very pleasant young doctor, although I couldn't help but overhear her complaining about the cut-backs in terms of hours and pay that have come as a result of Detroit's slow decline. She agreed to sign Daniel's release papers when I assured her that I'd be overseeing his care alongside Oz's, especially since I'd helped arranged Daniel's care be tended by the hospital's Good Samaritan Fund. He faster he was out of there, the more there would be for others who also needed the help. Along those lines, I asked her if she'd be willing to drop by and see to their home care, in exchange for some amount of compensation, wholly under the table.

What a sad place our city has become, Luther, when a talented young woman such as Dr. Davies needs to take on such work to make ends meet, even if it is to our benefit that she does so.

James and Josephine discovered that the young woman whose ghost became called Black Betty was probably killed in the late fifties, and possibly by some construction workers. As part of the research, I managed to get my good friend David Edelstein to email me the hospital construction plans from the time when she disappeared, and we discovered a likely location where her remains might have possibly been hidden. It's a horrifying thought - that poor young woman.

We got Daniel ensconced at home as well, and had the whole group over for dinner (thank God for April). Over dinner in the new sitting room that is adjacent to the rooms I'm setting up for the others, it was decided that we ought to do something about the ghost of "Black Betty" that very night. With Oz and Daniel out of commission, Robert agreed to come along as an extra hand, which I was thankful for.

My job, of course, was to remain with the car (which I encircled with salt) and monitor what was going on through the headset thingys of Oz's (he and Daniel were of course listening from their beds). They found the old section of hospital, and I listened to Robert bluff his way past an attendant quite handily (the Irish rascal that he is).

Once they got inside the abandoned space, they immediately discovered a strange symbol on the ground, one wrought in blood! I asked them to send me a photo of it, but there was no service down there, and they were forced to move on. I admit that it bothered me - I'd spent so much of my time reading up on such things lately that I was positively itching to see if I recognized the pattern. More than that, though, I was feeling useless. I wanted to do something, to be of better help than just someone sitting idly by listening to what was going on, ready to drive away at the end of things.

I was scared, Luther. I'd been scared for weeks now, since we discovered all of this. No, actually, I don't think that's true - I think fear truly came to rest in my heart when I saw the three vampires in the church. That was literally the first time I'd seen the truth of it all - that the supernatural was not only real but monstrous. The others had seen it before, in that abandoned building, but I was upstairs when it happened, and saw only the aftereffects.

Something inside me quailed and died a little at that church when those monsters showed their faces for the first time, and all I could think to do was flee as quickly as I might. Something inside me had withered, and I wanted to quicken it again. So I made a foolish decision: while the others moved on in their investigation, I took my camera, my flashlight and my box of salt, and I crept down into the basements of the hospital after them, so that I might record that symbol for later research. I intended to slip in and then out again, with none the wiser. And I largely succeeded, save for one who noticed me.

Black Betty herself.

As I turned to leave, she was suddenly there, blocking the exit. I screamed and fled for the safety of the others. I scarcely remember the resultant conflict, if I'm being honest. I remember trying to protect myself inside a circle of salt, but it did not protect me from the debris she hurled at us (I have a spectacular set of bruises all over my torso as proof of that). I do remember tearing open the box and hurling it at her, remembering that salt disperses their manifestations, and it worked spectacularly, if only for a moment.

In the end, they found her bones - tucked away under some old rotting tarps, like so much garbage - and dealt with them, by salt and fire. Though Robert and Josephine both hissed threats to "talk about this" at a later time, I paid only half attention to them. I couldn't dismiss the image of that poor young woman's remains dumped there. So much so that before I started writing this, I called the hospital security line anonymously, telling them that my son and his friends had somehow found a way into the abandoned sections of the hospital's old cellars and they'd found something horrible down there.

Hopefully they will find her bones - all burnt and destroyed as they are - and at least give her a decent memorial of some kind. Even if it's just an anonymous pauper's grave, it will be better than remaining a pile of bone carbon and smeared ash in a forgotten corner of the hospital somewhere.

We destroyed that ghost rather than lay it to rest. I should like some other options, I think. For next time.

I love you, Luther, and wish you were here for me tell all of this to personally.