I bit my lip. No, I wouldn’t be lying. I had just spent fifteen minutes hauling my ass up those stupid stairs and I was staying here until I got the dum dums some good ghost tower footage and caught my breath. I held the camera towards the window.
“And there it is. Sixty-seven men and women either jumped or were thrown to their death from that opening. Let me tell you, folks, I’ve been to the haunted slot canyons of Utah and the spirit infested swamps of Louisiana, and they don’t come close to the isolated, death-riddled gloom of this place.”
That’s right, lay it on nice and thick.
“You can literally taste the fear and suffering of those poor souls in here. What Maxwell Borath must have done to their minds is beyond anything I can imagine,” I said as I walked towards the window. Through it I could see the miles and miles of boring green Midwestern plains that stretched out from the tower.
“The view is both spectacular and chilling,” I said, stepping up to the ledge and putting my foot on it. Farmers around here say they can hear the ghostly screams coming from this place almost every night and I believe them. What a sight.”
I felt a finger tap on my shoulder and I spun around.
The room was empty and an icy shiver ran up my spine.
But I’d be damned if I hadn’t felt that. Maybe my own imagination was getting carried away on this one. Might as well run with this.
“I swear something just tapped my shoulder. But again, as you can see, no one is up here with me. I’m going to take a closer look at the markings on the wall.”
I walked over to the far wall and held the camera close to the writing. It was a little freaky. The letters were backwards, slanted, and upside down. They almost seemed to spell out words but it was all gibberish—like the scribbled rantings of a crazed three-year-old.
“Well, they weren’t joking around when they named this the Wall of Madness. I think that—”
I felt a tap on my shoulder again.
I looked back but again saw nothing. Maybe I was due for a vacation after this one was over.
“I just felt a tap on my shoulder again and it feels like the temperature just dropped five degrees. I’m not a betting man but I’d wager a lot that I’ve gotten the attention of something up here—something dark, something empty.”
I snickered quietly. I really came up with some good shit sometimes.
Turning back to the wall I checked the power level on the camera. It had about fifty minutes of juice left, not that I needed it, I’d be out of here in a couple of—
A scream shot across the room that was so piercing it felt like a knife had been stuck in my spine. I spun around and my legs froze, my hands went numb, and the camera slid out of my hand, hitting the floor with a light thud.
Wisps of what looked like they may have once been people stood in the room staring at me. Their faces were nothing more than blurred traces of eyes and mouths and they quivered like they were barely able to be visible, almost like a TV program with a really weak cable signal.
But even without the details, their faces were drenched in sadness. And my heart suddenly felt like a heavy, cold stone.
After thirty-seven shows I’d finally found a location that was the real deal.
A ghost man floated to the window, jumped out, and his scream was like getting hit in the ears by lighting. I dropped to my knees and covered my ears as three more of them jumped through the window. It was like the tower itself was an amplifier of misery and with each ghost replaying its own death I began to feel the cold urge to plunge through the window myself.
I stood up and staggered towards the window. The blank faces watched me with what could only be described as dead curiosity. As I got closer, they started making silent clapping motions with their blurry, pale hands and it felt like I had liquid lead flowing through my veins instead of blood. It would be nice to jump through to get rid of this feeling.
I got to the window and stepped up on the ledge. Would it hurt when I hit the ground or would I feel nothing and instantly join my new friends in the afterlife? I looked through the thin streak of cloud at the soft green grass below.
I’d know soon enough.
One, two, three—
A pair of hands grabbed my shoulders and tore me off the ledge. The room spun around as my new ghost friends stared and shook their heads.
“Grab the camera!” a woman’s voice shouted.
“Got it,” a man’s voice responded.
“OK, carefully now, Chad put his arm over your shoulder. OK, good. Just take it one slow step at a time.”
I felt myself start to descend and after a few steps my head started to clear. The farther away we got the warmer and better I felt. It was like breaking out of a horrible drug hallucination.
“You’re damn lucky we heard you screaming, boss,” Matt said.
We got to the final rounding of the stairs and then a minute later we were back outside. I took my arm off Chad’s back, breathed the fresh air in deeply, and walked to where the equipment was set up.
I put my hands on my hips and looked up at the tower.
“Hope you got some good footage,” Goldie called out holding the mini-cam up.
I popped a piece of Bubbleyum into my mouth as I stared at the tower’s peak. “Nothing but the best for the dum dums. You know that.”
I then turned around and jammed my hands into my coat pockets. “Nothing but the best,” I said again quietly and began the half-mile walk back to the Ghost Trackers van.
