GREEK

You walk around inside the cemetery for a few dozen paces, trying hard not to actually step on the graves. There’s just so many… and all are packed about as close together as they can be without basically being right on top of each other.

A lot of the gravestones are in various states of disrepair and a few (like this one) are really strange… this is a lone plank of wood with a couple of screws sticking out of it marking the remains with one conclusive, five-letter word: GREEK …and that’s all it says.

It must mean something to someone, but not you. This place is starting to feel really weird, almost noisy.

You beat a hasty retreat, considering the setting sun and all-too-vivid thoughts of ghosts.

Tonopah Plague

It’s kind of hard not noticing this insanely packed little graveyard on your way into Tonopah. There’s several hundred graves, and it looks like they were filled in only ten years.

There’s a metal placard that says some fourteen miners fell victim to the Tonopah-Belmont Mine fire of February 23, 1911. The others all appear to be Tonopah’s pioneer residents who fell victim to a mysterious 1902 “Tonopah Plague”. The placard goes on to say that no one ever could figure out where this plague came from or what it really was, just that it killed most of the town off.

The sun’s going down. You can check out a grave up close or just continue on past the graveyard.

Deserted Hills

As the sun starts to set, the surrounding desert comes to life: coyotes, birds, snakes, all start shifting around the periphery of your makeshift little camp. There are more than a few times that you hear what sounds like that scuffling sound, but you never really see where it’s coming from.

It sounds big, almost like someone shaking an autumn tree… trying to make it drop it’s leaves. Which still doesn’t make it feel any less creepy than what you thought it sounded like earlier: one big-ass spider. But then again you have a serious thing against spiders, so it’s probably just your imagination running wild with the idea.

You try to just not think about it. The dying light looks brilliant for a time, setting oblique shadows dancing across the hills and desert floor.

After the last rays of light shift ever darker purple and violet and then inky dark night, the stars come on in full force. At first only the planets and brighter stars, but then an hour passes by without notice… and yet you can’t stop gawking at the uncountable, distant lights. So many stars!

Nothing really seems to be going on around you on the outskirts of some abandoned desert town, so you finally get over the sounds and the stars and try instead to get some sleep. By tomorrow morning you’ll be well on your way to Tonapah.