The ghost in room 506

August 21, 1863- 5:17 a.m. 

Something about the stars that night looked surreal. Struggling to keep up with her peers, Elizabeth heaved the bucket of water she was carrying along, finally setting it down outside the back door to give her arms a break. She stopped again for a moment to watch those twinkling stars on the clear night, and the moon settling itself on the horizon. The August heat was dying down with the sun setting, and the cool night air was blowing through her hair. For a moment, everything felt completely at peace. 

Then, Mary yelled out from the kitchen to hurry along, there were lots of people waiting in the front room for service, and her dilly-dallying wasn’t doing anyone any good. 

Back into the loud kitchen Elizabeth went, dragging in the big bucket of water. She stopped it at Dinah’s feet, who poured it like it was weightless into the large pot on the stove to boil. Re-tying her apron, Elizabeth got back to work, grabbing a tall pile of folded blankets and tucking them under her chin to keep them steady. Pushing open the kitchen door, she was hit with a wave of sound. Men yelling about border-ruffians, talking about new plans for change, and crowding around maps and newspapers. 

Elizabeth had only been in Kansas for a little under a year, but the chaos had been steadily growing since she got there. In other parts of the country, people rarely spoke in public about politics and talk of civil war, but here, your opinions were screamed from the rooftops. That caused trouble often, especially at the bar on the other side of the street. At the Free State, there weren’t many varying opinions, and frankly, the fact that it was a headquarters for the jayhawkers made it a dangerous place to be sometimes. But Elizabeth felt secure with the men who had caused so much chaos outside of Lawrence, and knew that if worse came to worse, a maid in the hotel wasn’t a top target on a list of the most-wanted abolitionists in the state. 

Treading up the stairs, Elizabeth started her rounds, knocking on doors to be sure no one was asleep in the room before heading in and stripping off the old blankets and sheets and replacing them. Falling into a rhythm, it felt like hours had gone by of the same old same old. 

In one of the rooms along the way, the window opened itself. Or maybe the last person to stay in the room forgot they had opened it. Who knows. As Elizabeth went to close it, she noticed something peculiar. 

Lawrence had gone up in flames.  

March 12, 2021- 1:54 a.m. 

 Abigail was stuck. Even though she had taken enough melatonin to put a horse to sleep, she was still up and staring at her computer, waiting for something magical to happen. A grocery-list of topics stared back at her, the next few months of her life wrapped up in whatever topic she picked. Each of them, in retrospect, sounded unbelievably boring. After finding a mild amount of interest in the travels of Bonnie and Clyde, she found herself impulsively in Lawrence, staying at the Eldridge hotel, getting nowhere in the realm of inspiration. She’d read somewhere online that they had stayed at this hotel at some point, and she thought maybe, if she was in that same hotel, she’d find her inspiration. This paper was the last piece in the 5 year long puzzle, and she was not going to spend months of research on something she hated after day three. 

But she found herself hating the topic already. It was fascinating, but it wasn’t spend-four-months-researching-and-presenting-to- thousands-of-people fascinating. It had been done before. She wanted something new, information no one had heard before or thought to discuss. There wasn’t much of that left in society, and she felt painfully stuck. 

The clock glowed 2:00, and Abigail heaved herself out of bed. If she wasn’t going to sleep she might as well be useful. She started tossing rolled up socks into her suitcase like a basketball, and throwing granola bar wrappers and McDonalds cups into a pile on the desk. She walked into the bathroom and started filling an empty makeup bag with the free shampoos and conditioners and gathering her own things too. She was standing a good distance away from the mirror, but she could have swore there was breath fogging up the glass. 

She shook her head, thinking the sleep medication was finally starting to kick in. As she left the bathroom, she left the door open with the light on, some of her paranoia of the dark slipping in. She flopped into the bed and started scrolling on her phone, distracting herself from the adrenaline rush that she got when she was spooked. Later, she’d put her phone down, and the comforting glow of the bathroom light was the only thing keeping her from never sleeping again. 

The bathroom light went off, shrouding the room in darkness all of the sudden, the only light in the room was the alarm clock. Abigail felt frozen to her spot, sitting up in the bed. Maybe the power went out. 

Then, the bathroom door slowly shut itself. 

It wasn’t until then that Abigail allowed herself to panic. 

August 21, 1863- 5:43 a.m.

The window shook itself open that night, and the light of the moon poured into the room. But it wasn’t moonlight, it was fire, wasn’t it? Elizabeth had seen it with her own two eyes, the flames eating away at the bank across the street. The hotel was on fire too, downstairs all throughout the front room, gnawing at the edges of furniture and engulfing the room in an orange glow. But for now, she was blissfully unaware of the amount of danger she was in, standing in that upstairs room clutching the sheets she was pulling off of an unmade bed. 

Outside there were gunshots echoing in the night and bullets tearing holes through the sky. People were screaming. But Elizabeth just held tighter to that bedsheet, terrified that if she moved someone would know she was there. Hoping that this was a very bad dream, and that she would wake up any minute now in her own bed, warm from the sun shining on her face and not the fire inching closer to her feet every second she stood stagnant. She was analyzing every second that it took to get her to this moment, trapped in the Freestate hotel as the flames grew around her. It didn’t take much to see the fatal flaw in the tragic end to her story. 

March 12 2021- 2:38 a.m. 

Abigail went to scream, but something stopped her. She wasn’t alone. It wasn’t a ‘spiritual feeling’ that she wasn’t alone, no, there was literally another person in the room. A girl who looked right out of a picture on her laptop for her civil-war history class, folding the towel she had used after her shower that morning.

“Golly, this wouldn’t be near as scary if you could just see me. It’s not fair.” The girl huffed, pluming black smoke into the air from her mouth, then throwing the towel onto a shelf. Abigail really did try to respond, but she was just starting, wide eyed, her mouth hanging open. The girl flicked the light back on, and headed towards the door. 

“Wait-are you-how did you-I-” Abigail fumbled over her words. She didn't know why she wanted the intruder to stay, but she had this feeling. The blonde girl slowly turned back to her, eyes wide. 

“You can see me?” That was definitely a question only a ghost would ask. Abigail was certain that if this girl in front of her was alive, she would not have asked that. She must be dreaming. 

“I-are you a ghost?” the question flew out of Abigail’s mouth before she could really process the weight of the question. She’d seen an ad online that some of the rooms in the hotel were ‘haunted’, specifically room 506, but she thought it was a gimmick to get people in the door. The girl’s face dropped a little, and she wandered closer to Abigail, settling in the desk chair across from her. This had to be a dream. 

“I think I am. Unless it's still 1863 and Lincoln is still the president?” She sat on the phrase for a moment, her face shifting around “Wait, what year is it? Quickly, I don’t have much time, can you answer something for me?,” Abigail stared at her with wonder. 1863? This was fascinating, even if it was a creation of her own mind due to too much melatonin. 

“Um, it's 2021,” Abigail felt like she was strangely calm for seeing a ghost, but she also was convinced this was all her imagination. The girl sitting across from her though, seemed gravely serious. 

“In 1863, this hotel caught on fire, right? Can you tell me how? I seem to only be able to come in and out of these rooms, there are a few other people stuck here with me on this level but they don’t know either. We’ve been confused for, well, centuries I guess. Goodness, it sounds like forever when I put it like that.” The girl seemed impatient, like any moment she would disappear. 

“Do you mean Quantrill's raid? No way. You were here for that? In this hotel?” On the first level, there were pictures and plaques detailing the whole thing, it's the only reason why she knew what it was in the first place. 

“Looks like it. Mary and I have been stuck with a few others for a long time now. We were staff when the hotel went down. What’s Quantrill’s raid?” The girl looked more frantic. Like she wasn’t supposed to be talking to Abigail in the first place. 

“It's… it's why the hotel caught on fire back then. Him and his men came through Lawrence and burned most of it down before the civil war,” Abigail realized the girl wouldn’t even know what the civil war was, or if it was over, or what anything looked like outside of this hotel “ They rebuilt everything though, don’t worry. It's beautiful now. The war ended a long time ago.” 

“That’s good I guess. Wow. There was a war? Did… did Kansas stay a free state even after all that?”

“Oh, yeah. They abolished slavery actually,” It felt strange telling someone that. Maybe this is a sign from her delirious mind that this is what she needed to research. The path that lead to the civil war, the lives lost.

“Elizabeth? Quit dilly dallying, hurry along. We’ve got work to do,” An older woman was suddenly standing next to the ghost girl, smiling at her and grabbing her hand. The girl, Elizabeth, sadly smiled back and took the woman’s hand. 

“Wait, I have so many questions,” Abigail protested, trying to get the ghost girl to stay for more information.

“Just go live your life, okay? Thank you for your help.” 

Suddenly, both of the women were gone.  

Abigail got to typing.