“Hey! Don’t go anywhere!” the blonde man yelled to the figure on the top of the mesa.

For his part, the man looked down at the man struggling up the trail in flip flops and a tank top then turned back to staring out over Albuquerque far below.

“Man, we’re up here, aren’t we!” The blonde man said, panting for breath. Then realizing he didn’t have to pant because he wasn’t actually breathing, he gathered himself and said “I knew you were, you know…” he gestured between himself and the stranger “a ghost, like me. Apparently.”

The stranger with a face weathered like cracked stone of the mesa regarded the blonde man again, then scratched his long, scraggly black beard, and again turned back to the view.

“Jake,” the blonde man said. “I’m Jake. Jake is me, I mean… Bro!” he jumped up and down in excitement. Then, getting a hold of himself, “Sorry, man, sorry. It’s just been, you know, so long since I’ve seen another, you know… like us…” he finished with a whisper, “ghost.”

The bearded stranger raised an eyebrow.

“Sorry, man. I didn’t know if using the ‘G’ word was, you know, like some kind of like slur of the afterlife or something. I mean, do you prefer, like, non-living? Or formerly alive? Wandering spirit…”

“Francisco Rodríguez,” the stranger spoke a voice that sounded like stones grinding together.

Jake shook his head in surprise and staggered back against a juniper tree.

“Whoa, whoa… Francisco? That’s you, yeah? You’re Francisco? You speak English?” He added in exaggerated Spanish, “Hablo Ingles?”

Francisco regarded the blonde man with a look that suggested he might have regretted speaking at all. He nodded once. “I speak. We are both energy and you understand what I say. It is not a language of words.”

“Cool, cool, cool,” Jake said, unsure what to follow that up with. The sun shone down on the sagebrush. Jake knew it must be well over a hundred degrees, but he didn’t feel the heat at all. A breeze blew up through the canyons below and swept past them, causing the branches of the juniper to sway lazily.

“So,” Jake broke the silence, “We’re both, you know, dead. I’ll start… I died like… dude… a week ago? I rolled my jeep right over….” He stepped next to Francisco and pointed further down the canyon, “…there. Tyler was already hammered, so he couldn’t drive. I was pretty bad, too, but, you know, someone had to get us back to camp.” He was quiet for a moment. “Guess that probably shouldn’t have been me!” he broke out laughing. After a moment when he noticed Francisco not laughing he stopped. “What’s your story, man? I mean, you’ve clearly been here for a while. You know, I just got here – I mean, you know, the whole ghost, dead thing. What can you tell me, bro? What’s up?”

Francisco settled his dark gaze on Jake for long moments without saying anything. When he spoke Jake had that same sense that the ghost’s voice resonated like a rock slide. “I came with Coronado,” he began. He pointed to the southwest, “We came up from Mexico. 1540 I think. We wintered there,” he pointed due west, “Tiwa Pueblo village. We drove them out, took it for ourselves.” He stayed quiet for a long time. “They killed some of our horses. We massacred them. Burned the last survivors at the stake.”

“That’s some heavy shit, bro,” Jake nodded sagely.

“I was one of the few Spanish casualties. I watched the burning. Coronado leading the men back south to Mexico. The few Tiwa left alive returned. The town below,” he gestured towards Albuquerque, “I saw it founded and watched it grow. Watched the white men take over, build roads, resorts…” He sighed deeply. “I see the desolation.” His eyes bored into Jake “I see the very rock crumble and watch everything blossom and die and rot.”

“Bro,” Jake said quietly but seriously, “You are a serious buzzkill.”

Francisco did something that truly terrified Jake – he smiled. And then he laughed. The sound made Jake take an involuntary step backwards, tripping over the juniper tree. “Jake,” he said, the word sounding decidedly foreign. “You are barely a ghost. You are younger than the flowers on this sagebrush,” he said looking down at the tiny pale yellow flowers.

“Yeah, well, that’s true enough…”

“I pray like this flower you blossom and fade.”

“Fade?”

Francisco looked up at Jake and caught his gaze. “Find your peace, Jake. Find why you are still here. Move on.”

“But, I kind of like hanging out…”

“No,” Francisco said with the decisiveness of a thunderclap. “We are meant to live and die and fade. No one should exist for nearly six hundred years. I have long since cried my regrets to the wind. She is deaf to me. I am fated to remain a part of this wilderness. But not you, Jake. Find your reason. Find your peace.”

Jake regarded Francisco as the ancient ghost stood as stock still as the stone itself. They both stood and watched the sun begin to sink towards the horizon and the shadows lengthening. At last Jake said “Thank you, Francisco. I will take your advice. I will move on. I will find my peace.”

“Good,” Francisco said.

“But first I’m going to go over that ridge and scare the shit out of the campers over there,” he said and took off at an awkward run in his flipflops.

Francisco watched him go, rolled his eyes and said, “Kids…”

“We shouldn’t be here,” Darren said. “This place is condemned!”

I gave him by best, “Are you kidding me?” look. “Darren, how many places have we investigated that haven’t been condemned?” He opened his mouth to speak but I cut him off, “Seriously, that Bailey place in Fort Brag was literally falling down when we were there – that rafter missed Alan by inches when it broke loose. And the Orange Hill Sanatorium? The stairway that fell when we started up it?

“Look at this place,” I pointed up to the imposing Victorian looming in the darkness beyond the chain link fence and the “No Trespassing!” and “Danger: Unstable Structure!” signs, “Compared to those places, this place looks practically move-in ready!”

Darren appeared unmoved. I took the bolt cutters from his reluctant hands and cut the lock off the gate myself. The broken lock clattered loudly onto the stone driveway as the gate created open slowly on rusty hinges.

“Voila!” I said, gesturing towards the house.

Darren looked at my face, meeting my eyes for a meaningful moment before he repeated, “We shouldn’t be here. I don’t feel comfortable with this.”

“Darren, you film and I’ll explore, alright?”

Darren scowled, shook his head, and readied the SLR camera. When he was set up he nodded.

“Hey folks,” I started in my best Excited-But-Trying-To-Be-Quiet Paranormal Host voice, “We’re here at Donaldson Manor in Eagle View. This place was condemned years ago and no paranormal team has ever investigated this structure!” I dramatically looked over my shoulder at the house with the missing shingles on the Mansard roof clearly visible in the moonlight. “Join us as we seek to capture incontrovertible proof of ghosts,” I said into the camera. I paused for a moment then said, “Great, Darren, let’s get in there. We can take the drone shots on our way out – the moon will be lower then and the light will be more dramatic, I think.”

“Whatever you say,” Darren sighed and followed quickly as I strode through the overgrown yard, and up the stone stairs towards the columned porch and recessed, foreboding front door.

I shone my light across the broken boards in the porch. If I’m honest, when my flashlight beam showed the dry rot in the rotted wood, I did get a little nervous that maybe we really shouldn’t be entering this place. Boards blocked the heavy front door with several of the decorative stained glass panels broken out. I took my backpack off and pulled the crowbar out.

“Do you want me to film you?”

“Uh, let’s not put the breaking and entering part on film, shall we?” I said starting in on the first board which pulled out too easily, adding to my fears that this dilapidated structure was already a mostly digested termite feast. When the second board popped off the door creaked open to reveal the weather-damaged foyer. I kicked the boards out of the shot and said, “Okay, roll it, Darren.”  He started filming as I started taking out the EM meter and giving the room an initial reading. “We’re in,” I said dramatically. “I’m checking the levels of energy here in the foyer. So far noth–” I stopped moving because the sound of footsteps could clearly be heard coming from upstairs. “Darren?” I whispered.

He nodded vigorously, “I’ve got it, boss.”

“I’m not seeing any elevated EM levels here,” I said. “But you can plainly hear that yourself,” I motioned towards upstairs. “Let’s see if we can find the source of those footsteps!” I said and moved quickly towards the grand staircase.

“Alex,” Darren hissed, “Don’t you want to check the structural integrity of that staircase first?”

But I was already halfway up the first flight in my excitement. “Daren, you heard those footsteps!” I turned to face him, still filming. “We need to get up there to check the–”

That’s when the staircase collapsed.

In the video the whole flight of stairs cracks violently and starts to shift. The steps I was standing on broke suddenly and I drop through the staircase.

From my perspective, I felt the broken wood tear at me as I plummeted through the stairs. My legs buckled as they hit the subfloor which gave way almost immediately and I fell through that and dropped another ten feet to the stone floor of the basement. I felt my back break, but for at least a few moments I was still conscious and breathing. I had time enough to wonder how the hell Darren was going to get down to me. I even had a second to wonder how cool the footage he shot would be. But that thought vanished as hundreds of pounds of broken wood, nails, and masonry followed my path through the floor and everything went black.

I woke up in the study, laying on a moth-eaten, rotted chaise lounge. An old man in a red smoking jacket sat in a high-backed chair with one wing broken off staring at me intently.

“Wh-where am I?” I said, blinking. It was night still and moonlight shone in through the windows, but no other illumination lit the dark room.

The old man just stared daggers at me.

“Who are you?” I said, starting to sit up.

“Stupid, stupid children,” he said as a curse.

“Excuse me?”

“The front door is boarded up. There’s a goddamn fence around the place. There’s signs on that fence declaring ‘No Trespassing’ and ‘Unstable’ and yet you idiots come anyway,” he gestured wildly. “Well, how’d that work out for you? Hmm?”

“Uh,” I started, “Pretty good if I’m still here…” I said, then noticed that I wasn’t feeling any ill-effects of that plummet through the stairway. I looked at my hands… and saw right through them. “Oh shit,” I said. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” was all I could repeat.

“That’s right, it got you killed. Idiots!”

“Oh my God, I’m dead!” I said agog.

“He gets it in one,” the man waved his arm. “Brilliant soul, this one!”

I struggled to get my breathing under control – or at least what I thought was my breathing. I mean, I guess there wasn’t actual panic breathing going on. “Who are you?”

“Andrew Donaldson,” he said getting to his feet and walking to the window. As he moved I heard his footsteps.

“Those were your footsteps I heard!”

He laughed and looked over his shoulder, “Brilliant deduction, kid. Welcome to the afterlife.”

We both remained silent for a long time.

Finally, I said, “Actually, this is great!”

“Come again?”

“If I’m dead, then surely some other paranormal team will come along and I can make contact with them – this is my chance to actually communicate to the living!”

“Heh,” Andrew said, “You think you’re the first person to have that idea?” he shook his head. “Knock yourself out, kid.”

Turns out, I didn’t have to wait long.

Though it felt like no time had passed between falling through the floor and waking up in the study, it turns out several months had passed. In that time, police showed up, and construction workers cut their way into the basement from the back of the building and recovered my body. Services were held, my friends mourned. Life moved on. Darren showed the footage with some friends, and someone uploaded it. The clip of me falling through the staircase went viral and the YouTube channel of our paranormal investigator group shot to the top of the algorithms. Darren had millions of views and tens of thousands of subscribers on his hands.

I was standing at the window of the study looking out when I saw the flashlights come up the hill. They stopped at the fencing before continuing forward. “They’re here!” I said to Andrew who sat in his chair.

“Who’s here?”

I squinted at the figures making their way towards the stone stairs. “That’s Darren!” I said. “I’m going to make contact!” I started out of the study.

“Yeah, you do that, kid!” Andrew waved after me.

I had learned I could just disappear and reappear anywhere on the grounds, but that still felt, well, unnatural. I preferred to “walk” the proper route even if my feet didn’t actually make contact with the ground. I hurried down the stairs, avoiding the hole I fell through even if I could no longer fall through.

I reached the foyer just as Darren pushed open the door, his flashlight beam shining right through me. “Darren!” I yelled. “It’s so good to see you!”

He kept silently shining his light around as he stepped inside.

“Umm,” the person behind the camera started, “Is that, uh, the staircase?”

“Yeah, Leti, that’s where Alex fell through, God rest his soul,” he crossed himself.

“I’m right here, Darren!” I yelled inches from his face.

“Do you hear that?” Leti asked.

“Those are the same footsteps we heard when we were here before – the ones that led Alex upstairs,” Darren said.

“That’s Andrew,” I said loudly. “He’s a little crotchety, but he’s a good guy.”

“I heard that!” Andrew yelled from upstairs.

“Come on, Darren!” I jumped up and down. “I’m right here! Check the EM meter! That things gotta be off the chart!”

“What’s the EM readings look like,” Leti asked.

“Yes! How spiked is that EM meter, Darren?” I asked encouragingly.

Darren pulled his handheld meter out of his backpack and turned it on waving it around. “Nominal,” he said finally, a little disappointed.

“Are you kidding me?!” I yelled.

Darren and Leti cautiously padded through the main floor checking EM readings and noting minor temperature fluctuations. They did capture Andrew walking around upstairs, but nothing of me screaming at them waving my hands violently, trying to move objects.

“Let’s head back outside,” Darren said.

“Yeah, it’d be nice to go upstairs, but…” Leti trailed off.

“Yeah,” Darren shuddered at the memory of me falling through.

Outside, down the stone steps with the building – my new permanent home – looming in the moonlight, Darren stared into the camera. “Well, that’s it for my emotional return to the Donaldson Manor. You all have been asking for it, and here we are. As you can see, we captured some of the same footsteps Alex and I heard, but that was about it. No elevated EM readings, no other paranormal activity. If Alex is still here…”

“I am! I am, Darren!”

“…He wasn’t interested in making contact. Thanks for watching. Hit the like and subscribe buttons and we’ll catch you on our next paranormal investigation.”

I did this a few years back on a short day. Thought I’d offer up three more bite-size spooky haiku.

1.
Warm days to cold nights.
Shadows lengthen, darkness grows.
The veil grows thinner.

2.
Creaks in empty house,
Footsteps loud without real feet—
Someone’s there; none alive.

3.
Doors close, faucets run,
Knocks on walls, crash in the night—
Mischievous haunt.