Last night in Vegas for this trip and, man, I’m ready to go home. I mean no disrespect – I do like Las Vegas – but two back to back work trips and I’m ready to head for home tomorrow. But as I haven’t yet left, this story will continue on tomorrow.

Eddie sat atop the stone arch formation known as “Elephant Rock” in Valley of Fire state park. The rising sun making the red Aztec sandstone glow. He sighed as the sun climbed above the horizon and the last cool dawn breeze blew across the desert as he disappeared.

“Knock knock,” Eddie announced just inside the door of Lacey and Georgia’s apartment.

“Oh, hey Eddie,” Lacey’s voice came from deep in her room. “I’m just putting on my makeup for today. You can come in.”

Eddie walked into Lacey’s room and into her bathroom to find her sitting in her makeup chair and… jeans and a black t-shirt with a caricature of a showgirl festooned with pink feathered headdress above the words “Jubilee! Bally’s Las Vegas”.

“Wow, where’d you get that shirt?!” Eddie gaped. “I remember when that show closed!”

“Thrift shop a few years ago. It’s my comfort shirt for when I need to feel safe.”

“Why do you need to feel safe? And you’re not working today?”

“I’m not,” Lacey said with a happy sigh. “Even showgirls need a day off, right?” She blinked to settle her mascara. “And I need to feel safe because you’re taking me on a ghost tour.”

“Wait, I’m what?”

Lacey set down her lipstick and turned to Eddie. “Who is possibly going to give a better ghost tour than a real ghost?” she grinned.

“I mean… I do know some folks…”

“Yes!” Lacey cheered.

They started by going through the Neon Boneyard at the Neon Museum – Lacey had been through the Neon Museum year ago when she first came to Vegas, but never spent time in the Neon Boneyard because those signs weren’t restored. But with Eddie in tow, he would say hi to this unseen ghost here and there and the “dead” neon lights would wink into existence for a few moments to Lacey’s delight.

“I forgot to ask what you were up to today?” Lacey asked. They had parked and were walking down Bonanza Road.

“I rode an elephant!” He smiled too brightly.

“You did not!” Lacey went to punch his arm but her hand went through him.

Eddie laughed. “Well, it was Elephant Rock out in Valley of Fire.”

“Eddie, that’s pretty far out of town isn’t it?”

He nodded sadly. “Just about fifty miles.”

“Is that…”

“That’s my limit, yeah. Any further and I’m instantly back on the strip. He looked back towards the southwest, where the Strip lay hidden by the low buildings and the freeway which still set up a dull constant roar.

“I… I haven’t asked, but…” Lacey paused and then continued, “Are you trying to see other places or… pass on? Whatever that means…”

“I don’t really know,” he said wistfully. “To me it’s been such an impossibility to pass that threshold for so long that it might as well be passing on – and, yeah, I don’t know what that even means either.” They both were quiet for a long time. “I have to say, though, picking up that Labubu costume was the best thing I’ve done since I died. Hanging out with you and Georgia has really made my afterlife.”

“Aww, kid…” Lacey smiled.

“Who are you calling a kid?” Eddie said, mock hurt. “I may look like I’m 16, but I’m actually decades older than you!”

“Sure, kid, call me when you have facial hair.” They both laughed. “What’s out here besides this… empty lot. Oh, wait, wasn’t this where the Moulin Rouge was?”

“You know your Las Vegas history!” Eddie said. “The first racially integrated hotel-casino in the country! Here,” Eddie said, putting his hand on Lacey’s shoulder.

She felt a tingle and her vision swam for a moment before it cleared and she saw… The Moulin Rouge as it must have stood back in 1955. “Oh my gods,” she gasped. “Eddie…”

“Figured you might want to actually see the ghosts I get to see all the time.”

“Oh, we just saw that neon sign at the Boneyard!”

“We did!”

Lacey took an involuntary step backwards as the vision in front of her began changing from the opening glory to a more and more run-down state. “What’s happening?”

“Time,” Eddie said sadly. “You probably remember the state of the Moulin Rouge when you moved here, after the first couple fires gutted the place.”

Lacey could see smoke billowing out the doors and heard panicked screaming. She saw the charred, condemned site, and then she saw what was there now: a sun-bleached empty lot of concrete and weeds. “Wow, that was intense.”

“Try seeing everything like that…” Eddie said quietly.

“Is that how you see everything? The past and present together?”

“I can – like that. I try not to, though. It’s just… too much. So much change… it’s enough to make a ghost insane. And some are!”

“You’re not,” Lacey smiled.

“Not yet… But I could feel myself starting to get cynical before I picked up the Labubu.”

“All roads lead to Labubu,” Lacey laughed. “Where to next?”

Eddie thought and then got a funny look in his eyes. “How much Las Vegas history do you know?”

“I mean… well…,” Lacey scrunched her brow in thought. “Mobsters?”

“Are you up for going way back?”

“I drive, you direct?”

“Let’s go all the way back!”

First stop, they went to the Las Vegas Springs Reserve where they walked around the original spring that started Las Vegas. Eddie touched Lacey’s shoulder and the neat gardens and restored water derriks and green buildings faded away. A deer-like creature looked through them as it surveyed its surroundings before dipping its head to the cool green pool. In a heartbeat it snapped to attention and then bounded off, chased by – Lacey gasped – an honest-to-god saber-toothed tiger.

Next, they drove to the Old Mormon Fort where they sat with their backs against the old adobe walls and Eddie rested his head on Lacey’s shoulder as they watched wagon trains pass on their way from the New Mexico territories to California.

From there they drove out to Fremont Street where they stepped into the El Cortez. Eddie touched Lacey’s arm and three men brushed past them, one tall and in a perfectly tailored suit. He was shadowed by two much larger men in more ill-fitting suits – clearly muscle.

“You were saying something about mobsters?”

“Oh!” Lacey caught her breath.

“That’s Bugsy Siegel in front. And that’s the start of modern Las Vegas. The town just doesn’t know it yet…”

They finished after the sun had set with their backs to the Las Vegas Convention Center, staring at a dark parking lot.

“It’s a parking lot…” Lacey stated the obvious.

“It’s where the Riviera stood,” Eddie said matter-of-factly.

“Oh! That’s right! I watched it implode! That was so cool!”

“For you… and for everyone watching, yeah, it was pretty cool… but for some of us – and for those of us still here, it was a symbol.”

“Of? It was an old run-down casino.”

Eddie smiled and the twinkle in his eyes belied his baby face. “We’re actually full circle. The Riviera opened the same year as the Moulin Rouge. But where the Moulin marked a movement in racial equality, the Riviera was the first high-rise hotel casino on what would eventually become,” he gestured to the glittering buildings to the south, “The Strip. It was the biggest, tallest… for a few years. Then bigger casinos were built. The Riviera kept reinventing itself – a new 12-story tower. Then a 17-story tower, then a 24-story tower. And then bankruptcy… but they came back. But time catches up to everything here and by the time you watched it implode the Strip had outpaced the Riviera.”

Lacey squinted at the empty parking lot. She thought, for a moment she could make out figures walking around. “Eddie, are you touching me? I think I can see… ghosts.”

“I’ve had you look through my eyes a lot today. Probably some lingering effects. Plus, this place really hums with ghostly energy. Between everyone that came and went at the Riviera and energized by the transient energy of thousands upon thousands of people coming and going to conventions here every week… I wouldn’t be surprised if you saw them regularly around here.” They were both quiet for a moment. Eddie watched the shimmer of headlights slide across the asphalt, the glow of the Strip just out of reach. “Vegas builds itself over its own bones. Every hotel you see out there? It’s sitting on the ghost of the one that came before it. That’s the trick of this place — nothing ever really leaves. It just changes costumes.”

Lacey smiled softly. “Guess that’s kind of what you did, huh?”

He looked down at his hands and for a moment saw Labubu paws and gave a little laugh. “Yeah. Maybe I just haven’t found my next act yet.”

The air shifted, colder, sharper. The sound of a single person slow clapping broke the quiet. And then a voice, quiet but absolute spoke. “Such touching sentimental drivel. Lamenting over the churn and the ever-grinding course of ‘progress’” the voice sneered.

Lacey turned towards the voice, but unlike the translucent but defined Eddie, and even the faint but recognizable ghosts in the lot, this ghost looked more like shifting static. Lines shifted form and blurred into nothing then moved back into place as it sauntered towards them. “What… is that?” Lacey asked.

Eddie stiffened, and took in a deep breath. “Lacey, you need to leave. Now.”

“Eddie? No, I’m not leaving…”

“Lacey, go,” he said with a finality that chilled her.

She nodded dumbly and then hurriedly backed away before eventually turning and running towards her car.

The wind swept through the empty space where the Riviera once stood, carrying the faint echo of applause that wasn’t there anymore as Eddie faced the nameless entity.