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49 | The Ghost at San Elizario, Texas The shadow moves inside the old adobe jail, swirls into the wall and disappears in front of me. Who died here and who got away? The ancient cells are locked, their dirt floors below ground. I saw someone in there when I walked up to read the historic marker. The shape scratched the wall with names of those who were imprisoned to hold the walls up. I walk around the small building, whispers hissing below my feet, buried movement down there, though the dead prisoners escaped through the roof, bodies flying above the cottonwoods, the broken beams mistaken for the hanging tree. I hear the rattling chains, the song ringing through centuries of mud, my careful circling noticed by two Mexican men across the dirt lot, one of them shaking his head at me, the other pointing to the road, warning me to move along because he has been inside and seen. ...

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