A Ghost

The longer Lois stared, the more defined the swirling, mist-like shape became...a thin, feminine face, hair cut into an orchid bob like an old flapper. Young, barely in her twenties. A too-generous mouth that seemed to be in a perpetual grin. Swirling eyes rimmed as if with kohl. Most of the detail was on the figure's face; the reporter noted that the neck was only a shadow, the shoulders and breasts a mere suggestion of curves in the billowing gas.

"Who are you?" Lois' voice seemed loud in her ears, but the figure released from the bottle smiled sadly.

Ask rather, who I was. The face moved, lips forming out the words, but there was no tongue behind it, no air pushed. It was as if the voice simply appeared in Lois' head. Once, I was like you...a living woman. Once...I was Louise Louvaine.

The reporter blinked. She knew that name. Lois furrowed her brow as she sought to remember the details. "You were a debutante...you died in 1927 or something like that. In the warehouse district. It was part of a scandal..."

Not in ****. In life, I was scandalous. In the days of the Volstead Act I was among the cadre of flappers...seeking escape from myself in speakeasies where the booze flowed freely, when black and white could intermix, where I could dance and enjoy myself...too well, too well! I turned my back on the sick society with its hypocrisy and limitations and I came to the worship of Mater Infernus...I was the altar of the Black Mass, the Red Woman...I loved and was loved...my unborn child was the scandal of my family, though my greatest joy...

The figure seemed to lose coherence at the edges, features fading. Lois remembered more details about it now: a satanic cult operating in the warehouse district, where all the bootleggers congregated. It had shocked Metropolis society, especially how the young daughters of the upper crust had fallen into its sway. But it had all been broken up...a gang war had erupted between the bootleggers, customers caught in the crossfire outside the same building where the club was now.

Lois suddenly remembered a photograph, yellow and faded on the newsprint, a young woman in a flapper dress lying in a pool of her own blood. The stomach of her dress was domed, but blood-splattered. The tommy-gun's bullets had cut right through her...

It is difficult...I have so little strength, and every moment here is a torment you cannot understand. Yet I am bound to this place by my unfinished business.