By Ed Staskus

   Stepping outside of the William Mumler Photography Studio in the heart of Boston, Oliver realized three things. Although he had a photograph of Jim Stubbs, it wasn’t much to go on. It was sketchy at best. The second thing he realized was that Boston was much bigger than his hometown of Perry, Ohio. It would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. The last thing was he was 150-some years away from home.

   He knew a century-and-a-half didn’t mean much in the world of monsters, but he was eight-and-a-half years old and it meant a lot to him. There wasn’t a volt of electricity in Boston. Everything was kerosene and steam power. The streets were illuminated at night by coal gas. When the moon was full the pole lights weren’t lit. There were no cars. Everything was horses and wagons. There were piles of horse poop in the gutters. There were no TV’s. Everything was newsprint.

   Oliver was the Unofficial Monster Hunter of Lake County. He didn’t often time travel but had answered William Mumler’s SOS about the great trouble Jim Stubbs was causing him. Oliver wished he had brought Emma, his sister and right-hand man, along with him but it was wishful thinking now. He would have to go it alone. He was brave enough, but even though he didn’t like admitting it, Emma was the brains of the operation.

   He looked around in all directions. Nothing looked familiar, which didn’t surprise him. He tried to think where to start. A young man approached him. “It looks like you be doing some hard thinking, lad,” he said.

   “I’m trying to find a ghost,” Oliver said. “My problem is I am from the future, from the year 2023, and I don’t know anything about 1871. I don’t know anything about Boston, either.”

   “Those are problems, indeed,” the young man said. “Maybe I can help. I know everything about Boston and everything about the city’s ghosts, although I have not heard about your spirit, your Jim Stubbs.”

   “If you can help me, that would be rad,” Oliver said. 

   “Rad?” the young man asked.

   “I mean good,” Oliver said.

   “What be your name?”

   “Oliver.”

   “I be called Lucky Legs.”

   “Can I call you Lucky for short?”

   “You can call me whatever you fancy,” Lucky said.

   When the Puritans settled in Boston it was a rocky scrubland. There were hardly any trees but there were three hills. The Puritans believed their new place was a “City Upon a Hill.” Anybody who disagreed was either whipped or banished, or both. Catholicism was forbidden. Mary Dyer was hanged in Boston Common for defying a law banning Quakers. The biggest earthquake to ever hit the Northeastern United States struck the city in 1755. Five years later a “Great Fire” burned one neighborhood after another down to the ground.

   Boston’s population was more than a quarter million hoi polloi and their betters. The financial elite were the Boston Brahmins. “Here’s to good old Boston, the land of the bean and the cod, where Lowells talk only to Cabots, and Cabots talk only to God,” is how everybody understood it. William Gaston was mayor the day Oliver landed there. The city was the religious, political, and commercial capital of New England. Before the Civil War, which ended a few years earlier, it was the launching pad for the north’s anti-slavery activities. When the Irish flooded the city after 1840 the Yankees made them do the dirty work. Irish women did cleaning work, cleaning up after the Lowells and Cabots.

   “Where should we start?” Oliver asked.

   “There be only one place to start and that be the Central Burying Ground,” Lucky said. “Follow me, sonny boy.”

   The Central Burying Ground was in a corner of Boston Commons. The city’s poorest folk were buried there in mass graves. Most of them were dismayed at being buried in a pit. The Dell, a large tomb, housed the remains of graves disturbed by street construction. “Many who stop there at night to catch their breath report feeling like somebody is standing next to them. They witness flashes of light, floating orbs, and more frightful occurrences,” Lucky said. “It will be twilight by the time we get there so we are going at a lucky time.”

   They passed the Omni Parker House, which was a hotel. “Charles Dickens used to stay there,” Lucky said. “He even lived there for two years. It was where he first performed ‘A Christmas Carol’ during one of their Saturday Clubs. He died just last year, back home in England. Now the rumor is his shade haunts the third floor, which was the floor he always stayed on. Some polite folk won’t sleep on that floor for fear of the Devil.”

   “How do you know so much about ghosts?” Oliver asked.

   “Because I am the under the table son of the Lady in Black,” Lucky answered.

   “Under the table?”

   “Never mind about that. See that island?” Lucky asked pointing to Georges Island at the entrance to Boston Harbor. “That be Fort Warren squatting on the land there. It opened for business just in time for the Civil War, and just in time to kill my mother.”

   Fort Warren was built to protect Boston from Johnny Reb. The marching song ‘John Brown’s Body’ was written at the fort. The music was lifted from an old Methodist camp song. A half-moon battery of cannons protected the north sally port. The 15-inch smoothbore guns never fired a shot during the war. Instead, the fort became a prison for captured Confederates.

   “My mother came to Boston, with me in tow, in 1862,” Lucky said. “Her husband, not my father, was imprisoned at the fort. She cut her hair to make herself look like a man and snuck onto the island. She had a pistol and a pick axe. She was small enough to squeeze through the bars of the window of his cell. They tunneled out of the cell and were almost away when a guard overtook them. He slapped the pistol out of my mother’s hand. When it fell it discharged. The bullet hit her soul mate and ended his poor life on the spot. She was captured, tried, and sentenced to hang. She begged for a white dress to wear at the hanging, but they fitted her out with a black robe, instead. Many there are who see her wandering the island, unhappy and wailing, still in the same black robe.”

   They passed Faneuil Hall. “That place be haunted every which way,” Lucky said. “It was a place where slave traders used to sell darkies from Madagascar. Peter Faneuil made his fortune there at what we now call ‘The Cradle of Liberty.’ You see that golden grasshopper weathervane on top of the hall? There is a slave girl ghost who swings from it some nights, laughing at us passing by, laughing because she is now free.”

   They walked through the Quincy Market, an open air market added on to Faneuil Hall fifty years earlier. It was getting dark. Everybody was going home. When Oliver and Lucky got to the Central Burying Ground there wasn’t a mortal man in sight. A scruffy dog barked at them. Lucky patted him on the head, slipped him a shaving of goose jerky, and the dog joined them.

   Before long the sky got inky, but when a full moon rose Oliver and Lucky could see well enough. They settled down on the ground, leaning back against headstones. Nothing happened. Midnight came and went. Lucky fell asleep. The dog fell asleep, his head in Oliver’s lap. The middle of the night came and went. All of Boston, except for the city’s night watchmen, was asleep.

   It was not yet dawn when their mongrel companion started furiously barking. Oliver and Lucky jumped to their feet. Oliver rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. He looked in the direction the dog was barking. 

  “Hey, that’s him, that’s my ghost,” Oliver exclaimed pointing to Jim Stubbs in the distance. He was more shadow than man. “Let’s go!” 

“Hey ho,” Lucky whooped, hard on Oliver’s heels.

Previously: Resurrecting Jim Stubbs.

Next: The End of Jim Stubbs.

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Atlantic Canada http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. 

A New Thriller by Ed Staskus

“Cross Walk“

“A once upon a crime whodunit.” Barron Cannon, Adventure Books

“Captures the vibe of mid-century NYC.” Sam Winchell, Beyond Fiction

Available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CRPSFPKP

Late summer and early autumn. New York City. A Hell’s Kitchen private eye. The 1956 World Series. President Eisenhower at the opening game. A killer in the dugout.