The sun was setting as I drove the few miles between the Lagrange Hospital and Resurrection Cemetery.  Driving up and down Archer Avenue searching for a ghostly girl in a white party dress, I remembered what Bernie Wachholz, the grounds keeper for Resurrection Cemetery, had told me, “If you look for her, you’ll never find her. But turn around, and there she is.”  I had no choice but to look for her. She might be the only hope of stopping John Bowers.

After circling the neighborhood a few times, I stopped into Scorchers bar.  Turk Turkewicz was at the dj booth but hadn’t heard of any recent Mary sightings. I promised to come back and fill him in on recent events, and rushed back to my car.  As I pulled away from the curb I considered breaking into the cemetery again to look for Mary, but decided against it. That plan would take up a lot of time without much chance of success.  Instead, I kept driving around the neighborhood. About forty minutes later, I got lucky.

As I passed the cemetery gates I spotted a figure in white standing near the curb on the opposite side of Archer Avenue. Passing her, I recognized Resurrection Mary from my previous encounters. I pulled my car into a u-turn at the next street and approached the figure.  A blue sedan in front of me got to her first. The driver of the blue sedan pulled over and picked up Mary.

I drove alongside to get a clear look into the blue sedan. The driver was a male in his early forties and wearing a grin a mile wide. His pretty young passenger was staring straight ahead. I honked my horn and they both looked my way. I motioned for the driver to pull over and he looked very disappointed that I was intruding into his encounter with a pretty hitchhiker. Mary looked apprehensive.

The blue sedan pulled to the curb in front of me and the driver got out as I approached. He was a few inches shorter than myself and tried to stretch to his full height.

“What’s the idea, buddy?” He asked me.

“I need to speak with the girl you just picked up.” I said.

“That young lady is a friend of mine and she doesn’t want to talk to you.” He answered.

“My friend, you’ve never met that girl before. If you had, you never would have let her into your car.” I said moving past him and to the open driver’s window. “Mary, I need you to listen to me. I know where John Bowers is. I can take you to him.”

Mary stared at me for a moment. The driver of the blue sedan had come over to stand next to me. As we watched, Mary’s image faded and disappeared.  She reappeared in my car, sitting in the passenger seat. I took that as a sign that I could expect her cooperation.

“Hey, how’d she do that?” The driver asked me.

“She’s a magician. And I’m her lovely assistant.” I said going back to my car. “If you see her looking for a ride again, just keep on driving, friend.”

I got back in my car and pulled away. “Mary, do you remember Wayne Mueller? He was one of the racers that hung around Scorchers.” Mary stared at me, then nodded slowly. “Wayne is in the hospital. He’s hurt pretty badly. John hurt him; Wayne was the one John was racing the night he died.

 “Mary, John is at the hospital. He’s trying to kill Wayne.” She smiled slightly as she turned to face forward. “But, no one else should die, Mary. All these deaths didn’t bring John back…my friend and I brought John back.  We didn’t mean to, but we did. And now maybe, you can be with him again. But you’ve got to stop him from killing.  Will you try, Mary?”

She turned to look at me again, and I got chills when she softly said, ”Yes…I will.”

We arrived back at the hospital and only an hour had passed since I had left to find Mary. I considered myself extremely lucky and hoped that bringing the two ghosts together would do some good. We passed the out-of-order sign on the lobby elevator and headed for the stairs.  We got out at the second floor to check on Lana, but there was no answer when I called to her.  We found her in the hallway on the third floor outside of Wayne’s room. The fire department had rescued her from the elevator car some time before.

“Lana, I’d like to introduce you to Mary Bregovska. Mary this is my friend, Lana.” I said, watching the two women meet.

“Mary, I am very pleased to meet you. Thank you for trusting Carl enough to come here with him.” Lana said, looking slightly amazed at the circumstances: a gypsy medium meeting a ghost in the flesh, so to speak.

Mary didn’t say anything to Lana. I had noticed that she was acting uncomfortably since we had driven out of Justice and away from Resurrection Cemetery.  She was apparently “connected” to that area and was acting like a fish out of water. I thought it interesting that Mary, who had such control and power in her home environment, was so visibly uneasy when removed from it.  Mary’s eyes kept moving, sweeping the hallway from end to end. She kept looking, startled, at Lana and I anytime we spoke.  Mary also kept off to the side, away from us as we moved along the corridor.

The Lagrange police had kept an officer on guard in Wayne Mueller’s room and John Bowers had not been seen.  I didn’t know what powers John had to evade us, if he could turn invisible or move through walls, and when I asked Mary about it, she slowly shook her head. 

“What does that mean, Mary? Can he do those things, or don’t you know?” I asked her and she shook her head again.

“Mary, you said you would help us find John. It would help if we knew what he was capable of.” I said. “How do you think we should find him?”

In answer, she started up the hallway and turned at the first corner.  Lana and I hurried to keep up. We spent the next half hour walking along the various hallways and stairwells of the hospital, searching for John Bowers.  Every hospital staff member and visitor we passed gave us a second or third look. We were quite a group: a dark haired, brightly dressed young gypsy woman, a waifish, female spectre in a white party dress and a rumpled middle-aged reporter whose suit and hat were far from new.

We made our way through the entire hospital, checking empty and occupied rooms, behind equipment and inside storage areas. If John was still in the hospital, he had an excellent hiding place. The police were conducting their own search and we passed them several times.  Since we didn’t want police scrutiny of our activity in the hospital we tried to avoid them when we could and act innocently when we couldn’t.  Our luck eventually ran out on the fourth floor when we met Officers Dunston and Brown who I had first met coming up the stairs earlier.

“Hey Kolchak, seen any ghosts lately?” Asked Officer Brown with a grin.

“Yeah, who’s your friend, Kolchak? She looks like Resurrection Mary to me.” Said Officer Dunston, chuckling.

I glanced at Mary who had bristled when Dunston mentioned her by name.  Then I stepped in front of her to put myself between them.

“Officer Dunston! How’s your night going? My friend’s and I are hoping the Lagrange police will have that fugitive in custody soon, so we can all go home and sleep a little easier.”

“Yeah, I bet Kolchak.” Said Dunston, while Brown kept his eye on Mary. “We just found out that the guy that hurt your friend downstairs matches the description of the scumbag wanted by the Justice P.D.  If you know anything about who he is or where he went, you better cough it up.”

“You know, officer, I didn’t get very close to him the other night and really couldn’t say for sure if he’s the same man.” I answered.

Brown had pulled a few photographs out of his shirt pocket and had started riffling through them.  “Hey, Greg, don’t you think this is the same girl as the one in these pictures?” He asked his partner.

I had craned my neck to look also and recognized my own photos from a few nights ago, taken on Archer Avenue the night John battled the Justice Police.

“You recognize these pictures, Kolchak?  Every cop in the area has a set like these from the Justice detectives. They show the guy they’re looking for pretty clearly and this young lady following him away from the scene.  Miss, we’re going to need you to come with us.” Dunston said to Mary as his partner moved closer to her.

Mary glared at the officers as they approached her, then she moved quickly up the hall. The Lagrange officers called out their positions on their portable radios, requesting back up, and took off in pursuit.  Mary ran into a dark room on the right and the officers followed her inside.  Almost immediately she came out of the room through the solid wall!  She pushed a piece of equipment through the door’s handle and used a gurney to help barricade it.  The two officers were trapped inside and soon started banging on the door to be let out.

Mary next went to the nurses’ station and started flipping switches until she turned on the public address microphone.  “John, this is Mary,” she said and the amplified sound of her voice gave me chills. “If you hear me, meet me on the roof.” She switched off the P.A. and in an instant, rose through the air and disappeared into the ceiling.

I could hear the Lagrange officers trapped in the side room calling on their radios to send units up to the roof and decided Lana and I should beat them to it. I grabbed Lana’s hand and ran for the stairwell.

We heard the rush of activity in the stairwell a few floors below as we dashed up to the roof.  John Bowers brushed past us just as we reached the roof exit door.  Lana and I stepped out onto the roof and I closed the door behind us.  The door didn’t have any locking mechanism so I braced my back against it and hoped I could buy some time.

John briefly embraced Mary and then turned toward Lana and myself, defensively.  Mary came around him and said, “John, you can trust these people, they don’t want to see us hurt.  I don’t know how you were brought back to me, but I want to thank them for doing it. Please don’t hurt anyone, I couldn’t stand to lose you again.”

John seemed to relax at that, and I spoke up, “John… Mary, you need to leave here, find someplace safe.  I don’t think the police can do anything against you, but the sooner you both stop being a threat, the closer you’ll be to finding peace.”

The police had arrived on the other side of the door and I had my hands full holding them back. Luckily the top of the stairs, inside, didn’t offer much room, so I was only pushing against one or two of them. Also, I had a utility post to brace one foot against for leverage.

Lana took up where I left off, “John…Mary, I want to help you and will if you call on me. But right now, you need to leave here if you can.”

Mary took John’s hand and led him towards the edge of the roof.  We watched as they both stepped off into the night sky and drifted out of sight.  I loosened my grip on the door and stepped aside as several officers stumbled through the door and onto the roof.  Lana and I were quickly handcuffed and led away as a search was conducted for John and Mary.  Needless to say, they weren’t found that evening.

Lana and I were brought to Lagrange Police headquarters and questioned separately for hours by detectives from Lagrange and Justice.  We both told the truth as we knew it and were finally released.  Lana wasn’t charged with anything, but I was given a court date on an obstructing justice charge. Vincenzo came up with an attorney for me and I got off with a slap on the wrist.

In the weeks to come, Lana was kept busy working with John and Mary.  She often met with them and she said they were existing (I can’t use the word 'living') happily.  Lana had stopped trying to return them to the ‘afterlife’ and was treating them as research subjects.  Unfortunately, I didn’t see Lana as much as I would like, she was already working on a book about the experience.

My story didn’t see the light of day for several months. It was carried in the Chicago area in a special supplement around Halloween that year, sandwiched in between lists of favorite horror movies and neighborhood haunted houses.  I got a few calls from local ghost hunters after the story was printed wanting to know if it was all true.  I told them it was and didn’t even care if they believed it.  All my notes and research are safely tucked away in my files.

And what about Resurrection Mary and John Bowers?  The police still have open arrest warrants for them both under John and Jane Doe, which will never be served. There hasn’t been a reported sighting for months.  I’m sure the two of them are frequently seen but not noticed.  They’re just another young couple out for a walk that takes them past the gates of Resurrection Cemetery.