Mystery Walk

'There's nothing you could have done,' Dr Hillburn said. She was standing at the foot of the stairs, and had seen the news bulletin. This morning she'd read in the paper about the fiery destruction of the Alcott Hotel, on South Spines Street, and had known that Bonnie's messenger had been right again.

'Yes there was. I could've told somebody. I could've—'

'You told me,' Dr. Hillburn said. She glanced at Billy and the others and then her gaze returned to Bonnie. 'I found Spines Street on a Chicago map. It's in a very bad area on the South Side, full of flophouses for derelicts. Two days ago I called the local police station and the fire department's prevention bureau. I explained who I was, and my conversation ended with, respectively, a desk sergeant and a secretary. I was told there were dozens of transient hotels on Spines Street, and an inspection of them all was impractical. You did the best you could, Bonnie, and so did I.'

Forty people dead, Billy thought. Maybe more, their bodies buried in the rubble. The Alcott Hotel, South Spines Street. Forty people dead. He could envision them awakening from drunken sleep as fire roared through the corridors. They would've had no time, no chance to escape. It would have been a terrifying, agonizing way to die. Forty people.

Bonnie, her face strained and tear-streaked, took her coat from the closet and went out into the cold. She walked into the park, her head bowed.

'She'll survive,' Dr. Hillburn said. 'She's a fighter, and she knows I'm right. Billy, what time does your bus leave?'

'Four o'clock.'

'Whenever you're ready, I'll drive you to the station.' Dr. Hillburn watched Bonnie walking in the park for a moment, then started up the stairs.

Billy kept thinking about the Alcott Hotel. The raw image of people leaping from the windows was imprinted on his brain. What would his mother want him to do? He already knew; but he didn't know if he was strong enough for that many of them. He had two hours before his bus left. No, he should forget about the Alcott, he told himself. He was going home, back where he belonged.

Dr. Hillburn was about to enter her office when Billy said quietly, behind her, 'I'd like to talk to you, please.'

'Yes?'

'That hotel fire. All those people, trapped in there. I . . . think that's where I should go.'

'Why? Are you presuming that just because there was fast and painful death, discarnates are present? I don't think that's a very valid—'

'I don't care what you think,' Billy said firmly. 'I know that some souls need help in crossing over, especially if death came so fast they didn't have time to prepare themselves. Some of them—a lot of them, I think—are probably still in that place, and they're still burning up. They don't know how to get out.'

'So what are you suggesting?'

'I want to go there. I want to see for myself.' He frowned when she didn't respond. 'What my mother taught me had to do with compassion, with feeling. Not with brainwaves or machines. They need me at that place. I have to go, Dr. Hillburn.'

'No,' she said. 'Out of the question. You're acting on an invalid, emotional assumption. And I'm sure that what remains of the Alcott is extremely dangerous. While you're in this city, I feel responsible for you, and I won't have you walking around in a burned-out building. I'm sorry. No.' And she went into her office and closed the door.

Billy's face was grim. He went to his room, put on his heaviest sweater, and tucked the rest of his money into a jeans pocket. A bus stop was two blocks north, he knew. He'd have to find the Alcott Hotel by himself. Anita saw him leave, but he spoke to no one. Outside, small flakes of snow were spinning down from an overcast sky, and the wind was frigid. He saw Bonnie out in the park and almost went over to comfort her but he knew she needed to be alone, and if he paused he might lose the determination that was forcing him to the Alcott. He started walking north, and didn't hear Bonnie's voice when she looked up and called his name.

55

The bus doors hissed open, and Billy stepped onto the pavement in a chilly mix of rain and snow. On the corner was a rusted street sign that read South Spines. As the bus pulled away, Billy shoved his hands in his pockets and started walking into the wind, his teeth beginning to chatter.

For the last hour and a half he'd been transferring from bus to bus, heading deeper into Chicago's grim, gray South Side. He was almost at the edge of the city, and he'd ridden the bus to the end of the line. Rows of square, severe-looking buildings surrounded him, and on the horizon factory chimneys belched brown smoke. Metal shields were pulled down across storefront windows, and the reek of decay hung in the air.

Billy walked south, shivering. In the distance he heard a police car's siren, the wail strengthening and ebbing. The street was all but deserted. Around him snowflakes hissed as if falling on a hot griddle. From windows an occasional solemn face watched him pass.

After another block, he could smell charred timbers. The air grew denser, thick with a grayish brown haze that seemed to hang in layers. He heard an eerie chorus of police sirens, a noise that climbed the scales to a chilling dissonance. Billy could feel the hair at the back of his neck standing up.

The haze grew denser still, like a filthy fog. Billy walked into it, his eyes stinging.

And through it loomed his destination, a scorched five-story building with the letters all ott ho remaining painted in dark red just under the rooftop, which had collapsed during the fire. Windows were rimmed with black, and rooms and narrow corridors had been exposed when part of the hotel's brick skin had slid down to the ground. Smoking rubble was piled up all over the street. A safety barricade, yellow sawhorses with blinking lights, had been set up to hold back a group of fifteen or twenty curious onlookers, and two police cars were parked nearby. Firemen in long brown canvas coats were picking through the debris. A group of men in scruffy clothes stood around a blaze in an empty oil can, passing a bottle back and forth. Parked across the street was a fire engine, its hoses snaking into the rubble.

Two firemen were digging something out. A third came over to help. The blackened shape they were trying to lift fell apart in their hands, and one of the men leaned unsteadily on his shovel as the group of drunks hooted and catcalled.

Billy's heart was pounding, the chorus of sirens making his skin crawl. He saw a couple of policemen moving around in the rubble. Something within the building cracked, and bricks fell from above, causing the officers to scatter.

And then Billy realized those weren't sirens he was hearing.

They were high, dissonant, eerie screams. Coming from inside the Alcott.

And he knew that he was the only one who could hear them.

'Got another one over here!' one of the firemen shouted. 'Get me a bodybag, it's a bad one!'

Billy stared across the barricades into the blackened remnants of the lobby. Furniture had been charred into lumps. A tangle of pipes leaked dirty water, and a narrow staircase, warped by intense heat and the weight of water, ascended along a sooty wall. The screams drove themselves into his brain like spikes, and he knew there were too many. He couldn't handle them all, they'd kill him. He'd never tried to help this many, not at one time!

'Step back,' a policeman told him, and he obeyed.

But he knew that if he didn't at least try, give it his best and strongest effort, he'd hear that terrible screaming in his mind for the rest of his life. He paused, waiting for the chance. I am strong, he told himself. I can do it. But he was trembling, and he'd never been more uncertain in his life.

The drunks started shouting at the firemen who were zipping a black form into a bodybag. The policeman hurried over to shut them up, his broad face reddening with anger.

And Billy slipped under the barricade, then into the Alcott Hotel's ruined lobby.

He ascended the stairs as quickly as he could, ducking low beneath twisted pipes and dangling timbers. The stairs groaned under his weight, and around him shifted a curtain of gray smoke. Above the sound of the ghostly screams he could hear restless wind roaring along the upper floors. As he reached the dank second floor, noises