Spooky Story Prompt 2: The Revenge of the Like Button
Hi. I’m Jake. I’m a climber. Specifically I’m a rescue climber now, though I’m still inclined to take a climb with a friend if they ask, I’ve sort of retired now that I work for the park service and have to go out sometimes three times a week on terrible climbs with everything at stake for everyone involved. It takes some of the fun out of it.
Today I’m on a rescue climb for a guy I kind of know. I mean, I don’t know him. I watch his YouTube content like a fiend, though, and I listen to his podcasts on my Amazon account. He’s frickin’ amazing. And somehow seems to have lost his mind or gone down a dangerous rabbit hole high up on the side of A Basin’s Iron Way… somewhere. Jon Ball, who tells spooky and true crime stories is missing. He came here to climb and now just kind of vanished. Like one of his stories.
We’re never really told much. I’m here to climb and then maybe climb for two if the person I’m looking for has taken some injury or can’t climb because they’re exhausted. If I’m not on a body claim. Well, I don’t wanna be on a body claim. My girl talked me into keeping this voice recorder so I’ll try to tell y’all what’s going on and maybe she’s right, I can start my own awesome stories about epic climbs to rescue climbers who got in over their heads, heh… or, you know. Needed a hand to get back down the mountain.
The first thing I did was correct my channel on the wireless headset we use to coordinate. The battery and receiver pack is huge and strapped to my chest, right next to you, dear companion. You’re lighter and purely digital, so even if I fall I suppose you’ll be readable if you don’t fall off my gear. I checked all my gear, patted down my pockets and verified I had everything I needed and everything Jon might need if I found him starving or injured. I climb light. My pack is just a little fanny pack in my lower back. The electronics are a pain in the ass and I keep them because then I can hear from others.
Jon was apparently paranoid. His wife said. He was convinced he was being followed and that he had to come here because he kept getting pictures of this rock face in his YouTube and on his Reddit. Jon hadn’t slept normally or eaten normally in a week, his wife told us. I sighed when my boss relayed this. So he was exhausted, maybe mentally unsure and also not well fed. Great. Fabulous. He was convinced there was a cave in this rock face where something important was hidden. Who the hell knows where he even got that idea? I’ve never seen a cave.
I oriented at his abseiling anchor (either he didn’t tie it well and it came undone or he’d used a slip knot dangerously and had the rope somewhere else because it was empty, well secured but no rope, clip or anything else) and looked up at the rest of the team. “Gonna just go down the way he did, I guess. Is the ground crew still busy across the basin?”
“Nah, they’re headed over now, Jake. Don’t give them anything to find.” My boss, Sean, winked at me.
“Right.” I looked around me as I clipped in to the anchor Jon had clearly used, leaving his empty carabiner as a superstitious sort of offering then checked my harness and my own ropes again. “No rope makes me really nervous. Get that winch, Sean. Lock in, will you? I’m feeling paranoid.”
The descent was normal. No sign along the face of trouble. Rough climb, though. Even a Navy SEAL would have struggled on this climb, so how the hell he didn’t leave any tell-tale signs or marks or extra rings I’m not sure. I’d been down maybe 15 minutes and was struggling with a foothold that refused to catch my toe when I heard the news that I wasn’t on a recovery or body recovery mission. He was crushed up at the bottom of the face about 30 yards up from the bottom on a narrow outcropping that snagged his climbing harness. They were doing retrieval from down there.
“Find that cave, Jake. He’s got no gear. Still has his harness on, but no gear.”
A chill went over me and I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye again. I glanced and didn’t see it. The going went smooth again and in just another half an hour I was nearly out of rope and had also found a narrow toe ledge and damn if there wasn’t an opening a few feet to my left. The pebbly debris had markings in it and I could see white marks where someone had clearly moved across this ledge just like I was doing.
I found Jon Ball online like really early in his career. I was in the first 100,000 that is now like 8 million viewers or something. He is hilarious. One of his “things” is to be evil to the like button, though now it’s also the five star review thing… I mean, not for real, it’s not real… but if it was. We all joke, actually, that the revenge of the Like button is gonna be epic. LOL Another one is that he’s kind. Naturally nice, so when he tells terrible stories you feel it because he’s feeling it. Even before all the BS monitors started really watching his content he provided warnings if things were gonna get rough. So we’d know. I like that about him. Liked, I guess, damnit. His wife said he was getting weird, paranoid, and he had a journal filled with all sorts of proof and information. Even if I couldn’t bring him back up the mountain for the millions of us, literally, who don’t want him to be dead, the least I can do is get that book for his wife and kids. Closure.
“I’m on a little ledge, and damned if it doesn’t look like there’s some sort of opening in here.” I let go of the speak button and leaned my face farther around the edge. It’s a trick of the light. And the way the stone forms vertical lines out here. The cave mouth was about two feet wide at this end, but opened wide inside. Easily four feet across back there. And deep enough that once I’d gotten around and in it was almost roomy. Close and smelled dusty, but not damp. No moisture here on this West face after a few hours of sun, I’d guess. And here in the back was a pile of his gear. Rope coiled, clipped to his pack. Pack has food, clothes… map… looks good. Ah… here we go. A black and white composition book, like we used to use in high school. Something moved in the corner of my vision and I turned to look again, rising to my feet from my haunches.
I’d finally found his journal, for sure. It started with episode notes, annotations of things I can only guess were his shorthand for sources and times maybe. Then it started getting more like a diary. An actual journal, like his wife told Sean.
I skimmed the days before today and felt my blood go cold. That thing in the side of my vision floated closer and I spun to face it. Gone again. I turned to the last page of Jon’s journal and shivered, looking down and around me for anything I would be able to write with. Oh no… not one. Jon had written this… there has to be a pen… black… he wrote this… I turned slowly, angling my penlight down to the ground searching and trying to ignore the thing I now recognized even from the corner of my eye, floating next to my face… that icon so easily known to anyone who spent any time on YouTube… “Don’t push me, I promise I’ll make it right… please just don’t…”
I’d been backing away from the impossible enemy that was still there instinctively in my search for the pen that just HAD to be down on the cave floor somewhere. He wrote this entry… it had to… unless… was he holding it when he..?
I felt the maw of the wide open space behind me just a second after I started to put my foot down behind me… too late. I threw myself forward and reached to catch the lip and… there, floating just above my face was the Like button. I felt my fingers slip from the poor purchase I’d gotten and I knew I was going to fall and with my last strength I pushed that damned journal farther into the cave. Maybe the next guy would be faster on the uptake. Or wouldn’t be a Ball fan… wouldn’t have laughed at the Like button. “I’m also too late.” I said as I fell.
The last words Jon Ball wrote: I knew it. I never should have started this fight. I should just have left him alone. If you read this, buy the biggest bouquet of flowers you can find and the most sincere apology note ever written and send it to the Like button, fast. I’m too late. You don’t have to be.
When the ropes caught me I was flatly amazed. Then I was unconscious. I was so freaked that I’d forgotten Sean had me on this one because it was such a weird climb. I wasn’t awake when I bounced up the face of the Iron Way like a doll on a string as the winch whined and complained under my weight. I came to when Sean used salts on me at the top of the ascent.
I threw up, probably shock but also maybe a concussion. “He’s dead, Sean. His journal is actually in the cave down there. I dropped it when I fell. I need a pen and paper.” He kept delaying me and I got adamant as they loaded me into the ambulance. I took a pen and the paper on a clipboard hanging in the back and I started writing. My first YouTube video will be an apology to the Like button. Hopefully that will be enough. I sure can’t climb until I do it. I keep seeing that dot floating out of the corner of my eye that I now recognize as a hand with the thumb up.
1791 words
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MrBallen YouTube (someone had to do it, friend.)
and Stephanie's addition... a meme she made awhile ago... because we're all thinkin' he's in danger.
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