There isn't a song or fixture of words on earth to answer my questions or calm the restlessness.

The hunger.

The rage.

The nothingness that wants to kill me, the faceless god who wants me to lose it. Have they won? Hell, I don't know. Maybe. This is what my life is now. What a life, a life built upon walking through a broken world with broken people and broken motives. Whatever.

I laugh and keep laughing. My cheeks hurt as I gaze beyond the time machine's crooked doors into the eyes of my tormentor, yet that look in his eyes isn't full of violence and murder. It's calm and a bit irritated. I guess anyone would be annoyed if their prey defeated them but why now?

He has the power to kill me right here but yet he just stands, staring.

"Kill me." I lean my neck over, not a meaningful thought running through my head.

He shakes his head, grey eyes ripping into my soul. "No."

"KILL ME!" I shriek.

The world twists and turns in my vision, cold trapping my body like I'd just been dropped into the ocean as my foot touches the grass. Pure empty black shifts to a world of stone and skies that kiss the battlements of a castle so massive that I struggle to comprehend my existence in its shadow.

Wolfgang hangs a few feet away now, his face as empty as before. "It's time for you to prove your skill, impressive kin of man."

He speaks but it's like I'm dying again. It's like the crowds are trying to kill me before the spirits saved me all those years ago. Yet, here I am, tolling for what could be an eternity with no one, dead or alive to carry me home. I'm not great or impressive or some lionhearted leader pushing through without a doubt or worry.

I'm a car without gasoline.

"I can't. Enough is enough."

He looks off towards the staircase of the castle. "Hell of a good time to give up. Who knows what waits on the other end of this challenge, little human."

"The same as the others, nothing." I shrug. "Why would I trust someone who tried to kill me?"

"The Tower of London is nothing?" He ignores my other question, pulling free a rolled bundle of parchment stained along grey ridges. "I've come to challenge you, to offer myself redemption and you a chance at proving yourself worthy."

I want to force the parchment out of his hands, stomp it into the ground, let the wind snatch up the remains, and send them sailing into the night. I don't in agreement with the shiver running up my skin at just his presence and the weakness in my arms.

"I present you, Ivy with the challenge of finding as many ghosts in this haunted tower as you can but here's the twist, you have to see them." He thunders his message, crunching the parchment into nothing but shards of yellow and brown.

"Oh." I look up at the castle walls. "That's cool."

A wave of silence passes.

"Do I get my powers back? I was a ghost summoner back home."

"No, that would be cheating."

"Oh."

"Just oh?" His fangs flash.

"Oh, okay."

I drag off toward the grey staircase, forcing myself along until I stand at the bottom looking up what could be around forty steps. I move upwards, nearly tripping on the first step. I say a name, wishing that it was a curse formed at every one of them.

One for that plague dude.

Another for Mr. Dev.

The next for my younger self and her stupid face.

A fat juicy one for the vamp.

The last one for her. For HER! The wicked witch who sent me here, the goddess of this world.

I blink.

The black sky no longer crowns my head, instead, I'm surrounded by silver and scarlet walls decorated with beautiful frames and lines that make this corridor look more like an extravagant cage than a tower. Without my powers, my heart drops to my stomach. It's empty, alive by nothing but the dance of artificial flames on scones.

"To death with you!" A roar sounds from above met with a snarl. "Return to the pits of Hell where you come from!"

I fall back, my breathing taking over as flashes of light explode across the floor in sparks of purple, blue, and grey. A huge creature made of fur, claw, and muscle charges ahead at a grey figure with nothing but rage so untamed I swear that they'll both plummet to their deaths. That's if they weren't already dead.

The balcony trembles and I dart from under it. My body shakes for the first time at seeing ghosts. These aren't the kind that throw soda cans behind 7- eleven and tell self-deprecating jokes. These are the real deal, the kind so swallowed up by the past that their death is all that they are.

"TWO." I hear a voice with no face.

"Two." I repeat just as the bear slinks down with a horrible roar and a weapon sticking through its side. It blinks and stands again, charging at the knight with the very same moves as before.

My feet move in a steady and forward direction under the staircase, the sound of the bear and knight going at it over and over slowly fading but keeping effect over me.

A scream sounds from beside me, forcing me to my knees. I face a door painted with a name in a ghostly grey. "FAWKS" appears for a moment before the words blur and I'm face to face with a tear-stricken man, blood and tears smeared from his forehead to chin.

"Spare me! Spare me!" His voice echoes through my body, disappearing as my feet take me to joint rooms of dazzling purple and grey. It reminds me of the man's bruised face and the darkened eggplant coloring of his lips. I look back but all I'm met with is the gnawing wish to return, to reach for his hand even though I can't change his fate.

"THREE!"

I cover my ears and grunt. Silver swishes in the air, back and forth as a scream shifts the axe blade in a million directions. A woman races past me, hands outstretched and covered in blood. The axe turns right behind her, digging into her back.

Attached to her neck is a sign like she's some sick attraction that reads: M POLE.

"FOUR!"

I reach for the axe but I find myself fighting back warm water in my eyes as my fingers slip through the flying object.

I keep going. I tell myself it's nothing I can do and fight the urge to crawl up and cry. Shadows loom over me but I push my way through a set of black doors that welcome me before closing. Two guards stand huddled against the door frame with empty eyes and broken spears.

An empty dining room with nothing more than a table laid with not an ounce of food. My stomach growls.

"SIX!"

"Take a seat, Madam." A ghost appears from thin air, a face made of grey, and a giant dress tailing behind her like a shark's tail. Her form moves around me, face blurring to no coherency.

"I wish I could, but I can't."

"Why?"

"I can't."

"Why not?" Her voice fades along with her body into a light flare. "I only show myself to other women, women who know suffering. It is we who have to suffer!"

"THE GREY LADY" forms above her head in cursive before she's gone in a flash of white and silver.

"SEVEN!"

The smell of smoke drags my eyes to a new figure of ghostly light, a roll of tobacco in one hand while a bowl of potatoes covered in puke is in the other. He walks back and forth with a whimsical gait while more figures rush to his side offering more tobacco and potatoes.

All wear matching outfits of black and white like housekeepers, begging for attention in incoherent voices. His sign says: RALEIGH.

"FOURTEEN!"

I step away to another room, books towering over me on walls that seem to crack open for two massive paintings that shiver and shake like illusions on either side. Blood drips down from behind both canvases, soaking two figures bowing before each one.

Jesus stares down at the male figure who holds a bloody Bible in his trembling hands.

"Christ, why didn't you save me?" His voice fills with agony that turns my stomach.

The image makes no movement, just holds prayer hands without a saving word.

The floor reads his name in paper shards of the Bible, "HENRY IV".

On the other side of the room, a headless figure stays at the bottom of a King's picture.
Henry VIII. Her shoulders tremble as if she'd be crying if she could. Not a sound leaves her.

"ANNE B."

"SIXTEEN!"

I run as the walls twist and my eyes weight under tears. No dead person should have to suffer like these are and turned into some game of victory. These were people who lived, suffered, and continue to.

I puke.

A set of young boys run along a staircase overhead, their hands bound by some kind of leash with "DEAD PRINCES" on a hanging tag between them. Bones glow through their tunics, hanging guts free from their sides. Their eyes look as if they were gouged out, the blood left in the empty spots.

I scream. I cry. I puke again.

"No!"

Nothing happens, no spirit loses a bind. They stay in their own worlds, not a tiny bit of violet filling my palms with magic.

"EIGHTEEN!"

"Fuck off."

"EIGHTEEN!"

"I don't want them to be like this, they're children."

"EIGHTEEN!"

A pain shoots through my heart, leaving me without the will to eat a bite after the horrid sight.

I'm numb. Nothing matters.

I slink through the castle walls, aimlessly seeking ghosts. I'm laughing again at the stained glass, at the ghost of soldiers standing at doors, and the blood-stained walls.

"THIRTY-EIGHT!"

The woman's voice cries at the end of the row of guards.

A ballroom full of the dead weakly dance to silence, their limbs bent and twisted.

"SIXTY-FIVE!"

I shrug and pass through battlements filled with the same showing of a young blond woman wailing in agony while a man with a hovering head tries to break through an invisible force. They both cry black tears that stain their already bloody outfits.

"Oh, too bad." I find myself saying after leaving the floor.

"SIXTY-SEVEN."

I read their ghostly signs that simply read: "GREY."

I'm at the bottom floor again, staring down at what could possibly be the thing to yank me from this numbness I've achieved. The opening yawns to a dim light thrown awkwardly over the chipped stone and rusty scones that either burn with an intense flame or has none.

I step forward.

I descend in a matter of seconds, leaving the antagonizing wails upstairs. They get lighter but not loud enough to penetrate the dense walls. I make it to a dirt floor covered in scattered hay and torn remains of cot bedding.

It's alive with death but here the spirits wail in their own silence. They open their mouths to let out sound but none comes forth in the row of cells. The hair on my arms lifts and I pull my jacket closer, relishing in the heavy cloth against my skin.

Every cell is occupied by a ghost, some staring into nothingness while others hit and reach out between bars with blurry faces and no names.

I come to first with a name attached to the cell by a rope. The words look like clipped letters from crinkled parchment.

"DUDLEY".

His face and body are hidden under torn remains of sheets, scattered about the cell. In his hand is a dull fork and above his head is blood and a crookedly cavered "JANE." He shivers for a moment before falling into a motionless slump.

I feel nothing. The young boys have still numbed me.

Some ghosts lay covered in blood while others do not have a blemish on them. The unlucky ones wear their death scars like badges, heads twisted off their bodies or swords plunged through their torsos.

I walk on, my path straight towards the last cell to the very end of the row.

"EIGHTY-FIVE!"

Is this what comes of all the dead who stay in the living world after they become a name only a few say with less than fond memories? Will I become like this, just a name stuck to a life that the public knew was real, attached to a label, or maybe none at all?

I grab my stomach.

People being born. People dying. The world ending. All without the dead.

I stop at the end, swamped by a chill that washes me like no other. Life in the form of a ghost, the bright golden and white glow flowing from it's core. A feeling I haven't felt since I stood in the middle of a Walmart parking lot watching spirits enjoy their life after the end.

Heat flows from my chest to my cheeks, tears filling my eyes at the love, joy, and mystery stuck to it. Enough to clear this castle of the darkness but it's trapped.

The light dulls as I get closer, turning to just a feeling. A strength.

A plate waits on the inside of the rusty bars, a full meal covered in mold so thick that I can't name a singular item on the plate. It glows, shining both grey and green.

"I assume you've made it to the end. Let it be the end of this castle, the end of some personal yearning, the end of your life, or the end of the end." I grin at the voice of the figure of light, two beautiful sky-colored eyes, and awkward jutting bones.

I don't know why I'm grinning though.

She doesn't match my energy.

"The end doesn't exist. Nothing ends." I whisper.

"Everything ends." Her eyes stay soft.

"Why don't you have a tag?"

The figure shakes. "I know what I was called. These ghosts here forgot who they were and became their deaths. They fear change and the fact that the world goes on without us, leaving with nothing but stories."

I want to tell her about my power or the beam on her chest.

"Who were you?"

"A woman who starved to her death. I was Arabella, one who has seen the evil of mankind and good."

Her name sparks nothing in me but her words touch me.

"No, who were you?"

Arabella shakes, sparks of light rising. "Everything."

"So do you think that more lays beyond this? More than being a trapped spirit?"

"Nothing awaits you at death. No God, no horde of ancestors. It's just toiling agony of watching the world forget you." Her voice stays the same, monotoned.

"I don't believe that."

The spirit trembles again. "Has the world changed?"

I pause before speaking. "Yes but I'm sure you're in a great share of high school history books."

The spirit says nothing.

"Er, records."

The spirit gazes at a diamond ring on the floor and looks away. A wedding ring?

"I wanna know what is beyond." The spirit whispers.

"A whole lot."

"More than the hunger for revenge and endless rotations?"

I reach out to the spirit. "We might not agree on the end but I know firsthand that limits don't exist."

My head hurts as the heat from her soul rushes across my fingers. Then I'm yanked away and dragged by the horrible scent of perfume. It pulls me away from the light, from Arabella who watches through saddened eyes.

I become even more restless fighting against my urge to run as nails dig into my skin.

"FOURTEEN! FOURTEEN! FOURTEEN!"

The creature screams, the walls vibrating at her cry which forces my hands to my ears.

"I had more than that!"

"THE OTHERS DON'T MATTER! THEY ARE WORTHLESS SHADOWS NO ONE REMEMBERS."

The faceless creature drags me up the stairs like a dog howling the number and her alias to the stone rafters.

"I AM THE WHITE LADY! FOURTEEN!"