The Secret of the Radio Tower

Lavender Town: a small, sad place that few live in and fewer visit, though traffic has gotten busier since the Radio Tower was built. I currently work in the tower, and plan on moving to Hoenn as soon as I save up the funds. Why? Well, you see, Lavender is a town full of memories and secrets...

I had been working at the Radio Tower for a few months, getting along well and just earning a living, when one day the question popped into my head: When the Radio Tower was built…what happened to all the corpses buried in the original tower?

I had always assumed that they were moved to the House of Memories—after all, Mr. Fuji tends the graves there. But the Pokémon Tower held hundreds of graves, on several stories, whereas the House is much smaller, with only one room visible. I've heard that there are other rooms, but I have yet to notice any doors or stairs in the building other than the door leading outside. There is no way that the House could hold all the remains of all the Pokémon that were taken from the tower, or at least that was what I thought. The question nagged at me for weeks, and I finally grew troubled enough by it to do some research.

A friend of mine, Marcus, worked at the Radio Tower as well. One day, I approached him after work, seeking answers, but not willing to discuss my anxious ponderings.

"Hey, Marcus, do you know if there are any records around here about the Radio Tower's construction?"

"You mean like blueprints?"

"No, like a log or something. A journal. That sort of thing."

"Yeah, why?"

"A friend of mine is doing a report on the history of the Tower," I lied. "Since I work here, she asked me to see if I could find any useful information that she could use."

"Oh, okay. Let's see, it's around here somewhere..." Marcus opened a filing cabinet and dug through the drawers, eventually pulling out a dusty, somewhat worn notebook. "You should be able to find something in here," he said, handing it to me.

I thanked him and headed back to my desk, intending to flip through it before I headed home for the night. I opened the notebook to the first page and began to skim, looking for anything of interest. The entries appeared to have been written by one of the men overseeing the remodeling and construction of the Radio Tower, and most of them consisted of standard, everyday progress reports, with nothing of interest to me. Just as I was about to give up for the night, one entry caught my eye. I read over it slowly, and read it again, knowing I had found something important. The entry read:

Some of the men are uneasy about where they're moving the remains. They say it's dangerous, that we'll end up with evil spirits haunting the new tower, that this is disrespectful to the deceased Pokémon. I've told them that the only evil spirits we'll be dealing with are those of the bosses if we don't get this done on time. If they don't hurry up and finish their jobs, we'll have to postpone the project over the winter, till the spring thaw. And then where will we be? Idiots, the lot of them!

I wondered exactly what the author had been talking about, where the remains had been moved to. My eyes scanned down the page, to where it seemed some of the other workers had written their thoughts:

I don't like this at all. Sealing up the corpses where we are… it's not right, and it's scaring me out of my damn mind. I keep thinking I see things out of the corner of my eye, shadows moving, eyes glinting, and then I turn around and there's nothing there. I've been hearing strange cries at night as well… As soon as this ghastly business is done with, I'm moving to Hoenn. I'm pretty sure there are no haunted towers there.

Interesting, very interesting, I thought, but it still didn't tell me where they had buried the corpses. Under the tower, perhaps? In an unused lot somewhere? The notebook didn't say, and I wasn't getting any closer to an answer. I decided to let it go for the night, and was getting up to leave, when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I turned suddenly, wondering if the worker's entry had gotten to me, when I saw a blur in the air, like the "heat haze" that you see above a campfire. I stared at it, and the blur moved down a hallway, as if inviting me to follow.

Against my better judgment, I did, letting it lead me through hallways and down stairs, to a part of the building that I had never noticed, had never known even existed. A short, dimly-lit hallway led to a long, spiral staircase that led down, farther down than I could see. I cautiously climbed down the staircase, jumping at every noise and expecting something to leap out at me at every turn. I finally came to the bottom of the staircase, into a large, dark, mostly empty room. I couldn't see a thing, but I could hear the slow drip of water coming from somewhere nearby. I assumed this was a room from the original Tower, one that had never been redone. Suddenly, as I peered into the darkness, a torch—yes, a torch—sputtered to life, and I jumped and looked around fearfully, seeing nothing that could have lit it.

Before long, the blurred shape I had seen earlier came into view, gliding towards one of the walls, where, strangely enough, a pickaxe lay on the ground, seemingly forgotten. This wall looked much the same as the rest of the Radio Tower, painted plaster, but the rest of the walls remained ancient-looking stone. I slowly approached the blur, bending down to examine the pickaxe. The blur moved closer to the wall, and I looked at it, confused. It moved to me, seeming to hover near the pickaxe, then back to the wall, then back to me. Then I understood.

I swung the pickaxe at the wall, and swung again, and again, until a chunk of the wall, with a final cracking and crumbling, fell away to reveal what was behind. And I looked, and felt sick, and backed away as I stared in horror at what the pickaxe had revealed—the corpses had been walled up within the Tower!