31 Ghosts

31 spooky tales for October

31 Ghosts 2018: October 2 – When You Meet Yourself

I don’t remember seeing the car that hit us. Hell, I don’t remember being hit… I remember getting in the car with Jeff. I remember heading out to the movie theater. I remember the podcast he put on. And then I don’t remember.

Until I woke up in the hospital two weeks later with my family around me. But not Jeff… After the doctors ran tests, shone lights in my eyes, MRIs… after all of that, they told me about Jeff. But even though I don’t remember what happened – the accident itself – I knew he was gone. I could feel it. And I was told.

Let me back up…

Between the accident and waking up in the ICU, I have a gap in my memory. I can’t tell you anything about the SUV t-boning us at high speed, about the jaws-of-life, the Life Flight, surgeries, transfusions, laying in a coma – I can’t speak to that. But during that time I can tell you what happened.

At one point on that fateful night, lying on the operating table in the trauma center I died. No one told me that. I haven’t asked about it because I was there. I opened my eyes and saw myself lying there on the table, surrounded by doctors running around frantically while that steady whine of the EKG machine flatlining – the same one we’ve all heard in a million hospital procedurals. But you don’t expect to hear it while watching your body on the table. Bloody.

Then I found myself up in the corner of the room, seemingly floating, staring down as they brought in the crash cart, yelled “clear!” and jolted my chest. Nothing. They were charging to try again when I heard a rush like the sound of an enormous wave on a beach – exactly like a wave on a beach! The room brightened to blinding and I had to close my eyes against it.

Opening my eyes, I no longer stood – or floated – in the operating room. It was dark and heavy garments pressed against me. Before I had a chance to make sense of it, the darkness parted as a pair of doors accordioned open in front of me.

“There you are!” my uncle Dave smiled at me. “What are you doing in the closet?” I didn’t know how to answer. I didn’t know what I was doing in a closet myself. He reached a big hand in towards me and I took it, pulling myself past the hanging jackets and scarves and out into the light of the foyer… of my childhood house. I stared around, remembering the multi-colored throw rug that dominated the floor, the fake-thatch textured gold wallpaper… I heard voices down the hall and turned towards them.

“Hey, Amy,” my uncle Dave’s voice turned me around to face him. He stood smiling at me in his beige suede sports jacket, the wide lapels of his shirt overlapping the collar of the coat, the shirt itself unbuttoned far enough to show copious chest hair. “Amy, are you with me, girl?”

“Uncle Dave?”

“Who else?” his face creased into a warm smile. “Look, honey, shit’s gonna get weird here, so I need you to listen to me.” I remembered he was never afraid to curse in front of us, much to the consternation of his sister, my mom. “Can you do that?”

“Uncle Dave, you’re…. you’re dead.”

“Amy, I need you to focus. Okay? Yes, I’m dead. So are you. That’s why I need you to listen to me. Can you do that?”

I nodded. I heard cackling laughter down the hallway – I knew that laughter. It was my grandmother. She died when I was young…

“Amy,” he snapped his fingers rapidly in front of my face, “Earth to Amy. Heh,” he chuckled, “I guess that’s kinda funny. Okay, Ames, look, you’re dead. I’m dead. We’re all dead here.”

“Is this… heaven?”

“Uh…” he held out his hand palm down and tipped it one way and then the other, “yes and no. It’s complicated. Look, we don’t have time to go into it now, but we’ve got to talk. You were in an accident. Do you remember that?”

“Accident?” I said still a little dazed. The memory of my body flooded into me and sucked my breath out. “Oh god. Oh god! Jeff! Where’s Jeff?”

“Honey… Jeff didn’t make it.”

“No, no, no!” I started to cry. I clutched at uncle Dave’s jacket. I was dimly aware that the talking and laughter down the hallway had stopped. “Oh god, no!”

Uncle Dave folded me into his big arms and I remembered his Old Spice and leather smell from when I was a little girl – it calmed me a little.

“You said I’m dead, too?” I squeaked.

“Eh,” he started, “That’s not so cut and dry.”

“Dave? Honey, did you find Amy?” I heard a voice float down the hall. I knew that voice. It was my aunt Gale.

“Yeah, I’ve got her. We’re talking. I’ll be back in a few.”

“And Amy?” the voice asked.

Uncle Dave looked down at me, patted my hair and called back, “I don’t know yet.”

“Can I see him? If we’re both dead, can I see him?”

“Honey, that’s the thing. He died instantly. He’s here…”

“Here?!” I cut him off excitedly.

“Here… sort of. Not exactly here-here. But on this side. You’re… what do you remember?”

“We were going to the movies… Tabitha was with the sitter… Oh god, Uncle Dave, how’s Tabitha?!”

“She’s fine, Ames, she’s fine. Keep going…”

“I was in an operating room. My body… flatlining…” I looked up at him, “I was dying”.

He nodded sympathetically. “Yeah. The important part there is the ‘dying’ part – active. You’re… in between.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, that’s up to you. You have to decide. Down that hallway,” he nodded past the macramé owl hanging, “is Gale, your Nana, everyone.”

“Jeff?!” I asked quickly. He nodded and I tried to jerk away to run down the hallway, but he held me firmly.

“Whoa, Ames, hold on there!”

I wriggled to get free but he held on.

“Amy!” he said stridently and I stopped. “Listen to me! You go down that hallway and you’re here. Do you understand? You’re here for good. No more living, no more Tabitha.”

That got my attention. The tears started down my cheeks before I was aware I was even crying. “I have to choose?!” I sobbed.

“Ames,” he said petting my hair again, “I know it fucking sucks, girl…”

“I have to choose?” I cried.

“Yeah,” he said sadly. “And what’s worse, Ames, is you have to do it quickly. I’m sorry. I don’t make the rules….”

I pushed back from him enough to look up into his eyes. “Tabitha,” I said. “I have to be with Tabitha.”

“I thought you’d say that.”

Laughter rolled down the hallway… this time it was Jeff’s. I knew that laugh so well…

“Will you tell him…” I broke down sobbing.

“I got ya, Ames. I know,” uncle Dave held me again. I let myself be enveloped and I closed my eyes.

The voices from the hallway ceased. I looked up and uncle Dave was with me standing in the trauma center.

“Clear!” I heard the doctor yell, then watched my body jerk under the shock from the defibrillator. And the flatline evaporated into the “beep! Beep!” of a heartbeat.

“I’m alive?” I said.

Dave held out his hand and made that so-so gesture again and nodded towards a figure I hadn’t noticed before. She stood behind the doctors and stared on. I almost jumped.

“That’s me!”

“Technically, that’s your ghost.”

“Who meets their own ghost?!” I yelled back.

The figure turned and regarded me with black eyes. I felt a chill run through me.

“Uncle Dave…. What the hell?” I asked, but Uncle Dave was gone. Ghost Me started across the operating room towards me. I’m not ashamed to tell you I freaked out a little bit. I moved quickly to put the knot of doctors and nurses – and my body – between me and Ghost me. She circled as I did, staring at me with those empty eyes. I first thought it was ridiculous running away from my own ghost. But as she fixed on me with those empty, black eyes, I knew in my core this wasn’t good. I don’t know how long we circled like that, but it seemed like forever. Eventually the doctors stabilized my body and they moved me to a gurney. Ghost me stopped as we both regarded me – our? – body, following the nurses pushing our body through the corridors.

At some point I lost track of Ghost Me or she dematerialized… I don’t know. I stayed with my body and saw my family and Tabitha visit and the sun come up outside my window. Ghost me came back once or twice and hovered around, but never approached or even regarded me. After a few days – they didn’t seem like days, time just… flowed – the ghost didn’t return. I started to get tired and I closed my eyes for just a moment…

And I woke up with my family around me. Mom, Dad, Tabitha… but not Jeff.

It’s been months now and I just got home. It’s going to be a long road back, but my baby girl is with me. That was my choice. I still don’t know what the ghost wanted with me in the operating room. I think she wanted to… merge? Does that make sense? But I’d made my decision to live and no ghost was going to take that from me again. I haven’t seen her since I came out of the coma and I don’t think I will, but when I catch my shadow on a wall, sometimes I swear it twitches on its own…

31 Ghosts 2018: October 1 – Things That Go Bump In The Night

Photo by Greg Panagiotoglou on Unsplash

In 1981 my parents lost the house they had owned and we moved into a new house in a new (to me) town. It wasn’t too far – I didn’t change schools or anything like that (well, immediately anyway). But when you’re young and you’ve only known one house your whole life, even moving one town over seems like a major upheaval. And while I was too young to understand concepts like mortgage defaults or foreclosure, the sense around every aspect of the move felt like defeat. So, you can imagine my surprise – and delight – when the house we moved into was a hulking mission-style 1920’s place on top of a hill with a view of the Santa Clara valley; it hardly seemed like a downgrade!
As an adult I look back on the time in that place – let’s call it the Oakridge house – with an adult perspective recognizing things like how we had to convert the formal (enormous) dining room into a make-shift apartment so we could take a boarder and make rent, or how when my dad was a kid he and his family stayed in a place not far away in Los Altos Hills and that, in some ways, renting this majestic, decaying place was a way of keeping his pride intact even after he felt he’d utterly let his family down. Those are Adult Details. But seven-year-old Jordy saw an incredible adventure palace! And if I try I can suspend my Adultness and see the place through his eyes. More often I see our time there with the mystery and adventure braided in with adult hindsight; one doesn’t diminish the other, but rather each perspective highlights and contrasts different aspects.
My sister Jill and I had to share a room, but I didn’t care. We got along great and we had our own balcony! And there was so much to explore! You want to defy danger? We had that in spades – we’d sneak down the steep hill to make forts in the bushes bordering the country club golf course. Or the annual rattlesnake infestation that came with the heat of summer.  One of our neighbors was an elderly woman and her husband – Peggy and Paul, if I recall correctly. I remember they seemed ancient, but I realize now she must have been in her late sixties early seventies (funny how that doesn’t seem so ancient anymore). Jill and I would visit her with my mom for long talks – Peggy gave Jill and I rolls of lifesavers. One summer she told us she had been tending the fruit trees in a clearing on the property when an eight foot rattlesnake slithered by. Part of me remembers she killed it herself with a hoe, but part of me remembers that she didn’t – live and let live. I’m sure my family will correct me, but for now I’m okay remembering both outcomes. Every evening her husband Paul would take a walk along the road that bordered the golf course. I drove those roads not long ago when I was back that way, and that was a not insignificant walk, let me tell you! And then one night he didn’t make it home on time. He was found, but I remember hearing the word “Alzheimer’s” for the first time. I know Paul was around for some time, but in the way that childhood time speeds up in the mind’s eye I see him fading into a ghost himself before disappearing entirely.
I learned to ride a bicycle on the wide circular driveway there. Just when I felt like I had a hang of it I’d lose my balance and crash into the same damn Cyprus tree (that winter, a particularly windy storm toppled that tree. I like to take some of the credit). We raised a small garden in a bed adjacent to the house – I ate my first home-grown tomatoes at the Oakridge house. I remember we had chickens for a short while – that was less a deliberate act and more a begrudging accepting of the chicks that hatched under the incubator at Jill’s kindergarten class.
The house was also haunted.
Let me pause for a moment and get a little meta. First, welcome! It’s October 1, and that means it’s the first day of 31 Ghosts 2018!! Looking back on the stories last year, particularly the true ones, I noticed stories about the Oakridge house were absent. There’s a reason that nicely illustrates one of the difficulties inherent in this theme: for the most part, ghost stories can be, well, boring. Okay, not exactly boring, but unless you’re living on the corner of Hell and Damnation, real paranormal activity has its own pace and it rarely makes for a compelling tale. From a writer’s perspective, stringing the rare, spooky beads onto a narrative thread in a way that’s engaging can be quite the challenge. Taken another way, we go to horror movies and read scary stories because we inherently know life isn’t that spooky. And that’s good. Reality is scary enough as it is (the way real life facts and episodes are spun into grotesque horror stories intended to keep us afraid is whole different story in itself).
But let’s go back to the Oakridge house when I was small and the cracked whitewashed stucco walls towered above me to the master bedroom turret. The house even had a basement – a feature all but unheard of in California! The washer and dryer were down there in that perpetually dim space. I didn’t go down there much — a fact that surprises me because I should have loved it! Maybe it spooked me more than I care to remember, but I only have vague memories of the chill dampness. There was a stairway down from the outside, but we mostly used the narrow steep stairway that led down there from inside the house. With at least three of us kids and my dad, my mom hefted some serious laundry baskets down those rickety stairs. Years later she admitted that on numerous occasions lugging baskets down there she would lose her balance and feel herself start to pitch forward only to physically feel something take hold of her and steady her until she got her balance under control. Maybe it was the repeated benevolence of the act that kept her from talking about the events until years later. More likely, she took it as it was, felt grateful for the assist and kept going – there was always laundry to do, kids to feed, etc, etc. No time to worry about ghosts…
On a number of occasions, we heard unexplained footsteps. I remember waking one night to a sound downstairs. The wan glow of the AM radio alarm clock let me know it was the middle of the night, and with Jill and my door open I could her my dad snoring down the hallway and up the short stairs to their turret bedroom. But there was that sound: one of our kitchen chairs pulled out from the table to accommodate someone taking a seat. I waited in the darkness, breathing shallowly, quietly, lest I miss a sound. I listened hard. Nothing but my own heart and my dad’s snores. Then the sound again! The chair moved! And then footsteps started slow and deliberate on the creaky wood floor of the kitchen. Step by step, and I hoped for a moment it was Dave who lived in the apartment downstairs and he’d just go into his room and it’d be quiet again… but these were boots. Dave didn’t wear boots. And the slow footfalls moved from the kitchen into the tiled entry way and didn’t stop at the door to Dave’s room. No, I heard the first booted foot start up the stairs. I was breathing fast, trying to control my fear now. The footsteps climbed the curving stairway, step by step by step. I could hear my heart beating in my ears as the boots came up onto the landing. My bed was in direct line of sight of the top of the stairs. Whoever – or whatever – was at the top of the stairs could no doubt see my outline under my beadspread, pulled tight now over my head. I didn’t dare peak. I heard the steps come closer to my open doorway and then pause. I heard a doorknob turn and quietly I heard the door to my brother Jay’s room open…pause… and then gently close. But it wasn’t Jay. No, the steps moved the few feet to our open doorway before they paused again. Whatever it was, it was in the freaking doorway and it was staring at my bed and Jill’s bed. I didn’t move. I lay as still as I have ever done in my life before and after. I held my breath. And then the steps moved down the hallway… only to take the few steps up to the landing leading to my mom and dad’s room. There, too, I heard the door open… pause… and then close again. The steps came back down the stairs. I started breathing again, shallow, fast, and quiet, oh god, so quiet, as the footsteps started down the curving staircase. I listened to every receding footfall grateful with each stair that I might live to see the next morning. When the steps reached the bottom of the stairs, the heavy boots again crossed the tiled foyer. And then… they faded out. I waited. I listened. I listened more. Nothing. When I was certain there wasn’t another step, when I knew it had been long enough, I bolted from my bed down the hallway, up the short stairs to my parent’s room and leapt into bed with them. I don’t remember what I said or what they said, but I do remember laying there between them, safe, and drifting off to sleep.
For the record, Jill? I’m sorry I left you in the bedroom that night after that, though I’m pretty sure the ghost was done for that night.
There were other occasions where I heard – and Jill and I together heard – the footsteps. They always terrified us. I remember one time eventually screwing up the courage to peek my head out from under the covers when the steps reached the landing, when whatever it was would be in plain sight of me – and it would see me. And I remember seeing… nothing. Seeing nothing, I leapt out of bead and into the empty hallway. Nothing. I took a few tentative steps down the stairs to look the length of the curved stairway down to the foyer. Nothing. Don’t get me wrong, that didn’t make it any less terrifying, but it sparked a lifelong curiosity about what it was exactly that went bump in those long nights in the Oakridge house.

31 Ghosts – Day 31: Trick or Treat

 

Happy Halloween! The greatest holiday of them all! Hopefully the Great Pumpkin will bring you something grand this dark and spooky evening. Before I get to tonight’s story, I just want to give a huge thank-you to everyone who’s been reading. If you’ve missed a few, there’s a page with links to all the stories. I don’t have quite as grandiose plans for November, but you can count on a lot of new content and a lot of writing, too! This was SO MUCH FUN for me, and the last thing I want to do is put the brakes on. So stay tuned! Until then, I’ve got one more ghost story for you!

Aiden lifted the mask of his Kylo Ren costume and stared.

Olivia noticed Aiden wasn’t with them and turned. “A, what gives? We got a late start – we’re not going to make it to the Brookeville neighborhood if we don’t hurry, and they’ve got the full size candy bars!” She tapped her staff against the ground in irritation.

Jacob likewise turned and raised his white Stormtrooper mask “What’s up, A?”

“Dude, there’s something seriously wrong with that kid,” he said, pointing his red light saber at the short ghost walking opposite the flow of trick-or-treaters.

“What? The kid with the sheet? Other than being retro, what’s the big deal? Let’s go!” Olivia implored.

“No, I’m telling you there’s something… I don’t know… off.”

They watched the figure stop at the alley between two houses, look around to see if it anyone was watching, then darted down the alley.

“Why’s he going down the alley to the junkyard?” Jacob asked.

“I don’t know. Let’s follow him!” And he rushed forward. Jacob looked at Olivia, shrugged, and followed. Olivia blew a stray hair that had come loose from her Rey triple bun with a frustrated breath and charged after the two boys.

She rounded the corner at a run and found the two boys stopped at the end of the alley peering around the corner. “This is a stupid—”

Both boys in unison cut her off with “Shh!”

She rolled her eyes and edged around herself to at least see what they were so captivated with. The boy (or girl) in the sheet with eyes cut out of it hurried along the chain link fence, his pillowcase swaying heavy with candy from his white gloved hand until he reached the chained gate of the junkyard. Once again, he looked back and forth, and seeing no one, squeezed through the gap left by the loosely locked chain.

“Come on!” Aiden started forward.

This time, though, Olivia grabbed his fluttering cape, bringing him to an abrupt, choking stop. “Wait!” She whispered furiously. “Aiden, what the heck is going on? What did you see about that kid that has you stalking him?”

“I don’t know… I can’t explain it…”

“Well, try,” she insisted.

He gave her his bug-eyed “We have to move NOW” look. She defiantly put one hand on her hip and held fast with her other hand to his cape. He sighed heavily, rolling his eyes, but seeing no reaction from Olivia started, “FINE! Did you see the way he moved?”

“Yeah, he moved like a kid under a sheet with eyes cut out,” she responded.

“No, that’s just it! He didn’t. You’d expect him to bob up and down but he just… glided. The sheet is too long to see his feet. And he’s wearing white gloves – who does that? Even if you’re going as a ghost by wearing a sheet why gloves?”

“So, we’re stalking a kid under a sheet with gloves on…”

“Trust me on this one, O.”

She studied him for a long moment and then, “Alright, let’s go.” And they raced to the gate as quietly as they could and one by one squeezed through the chain link fence and hurried deeper into the junkyard.

They didn’t get too far before they could hear a crackling fire. Rounding a corner, they ducked behind several 50-gallon drums as they watched the boy walk towards a small campfire in a clearing of the junkyard. The boy in the ghost-sheet walked purposefully towards a make shift bench by the fire. As he did he reached down with his free gloved hand and pulled the sheet up and over his head. The sheet dropped to the ground and just two white gloves and a bag of candy moved towards the fire – there was no boy there. One by one he then stripped off the gloves and if it weren’t for the pillowcase of candy they wouldn’t have known where he was at all. They tracked the floating bag of candy to the bench. After a moment they could make out the translucent outline of a boy, though they could still see the fire through his transparent figure. He sat there and started rifling through his sack of candy.

Aiden, Olivia, and Jacob strained forward behind the barrels to watch. Jacob put his hand on the top of one of the drums inadvertently knocking an empty oil can over which rolled loudly off the top, and banged the side of a drum as it fell to the ground.

“Who’s there?!” The boy jumped up and spun to face them.

The three squeezed together behind the drums, Aiden swatted Jacob, and they all held their breath.

“Hello? Who’s there?”

Olivia started to stand up, but both Jacob and Aiden tried to grab onto the canvas of her costume to hold her down. She slapped their hands away and took a step out from behind the drums. “M-m-my name is Olivia,” she stammered. “These are my friends,” she pointed to the drums, “Aiden and Jacob.”

There was no movement at first but then a shove and “oww!” and Aiden half fell clear of the cover of the drums. As he awkwardly got to his feet, adjusting the Kylo Ren mask perched on his head he said, “Hey.”

Jacob slowly stood up as well and gave a small wave, “Hey.”

“Who are you? Why did you come here?!” the ghost boy demanded.

“We… we… saw you walking and we…” Olivia stammered.

“You looked lonely,” Aiden finished. “We wanted to see who you were, that’s all.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.”

“My name is Stewart,” the boy said. “B-b-but my friends call me Stew.”

“May we call you Stew?”

“Are you friends?”

“We could be,” Jacob said. “Looks like you got a good haul there,” he gestured to the candy sack visible on the ground through Stew.

“Yeah… I did.” He looked at their sacks. “You guys too?”

“We did all right,” Olivia said. “We were going to head over to Brookeville before we came to see you.”

“Oh man, you missed out,” Stew said beaming. “I started over there!”

“Full size candy bars?” Jacob asked enviously.

“Come on over and see!” He gestured to the makeshift benches by the fire. The three walked over to the fire, Jacob, unhesitant, sat down right next to Stew, but Olivia and Aiden sat on a bench a little further around the fire.

The four were deep into discussions about the wonders of nougat and nuts when a voice called out from the shadows. “Hey! Who are these guys?”

“They’re my friends, Eddie,” Stew called back.

“That so?” Eddie replied coming out of the shadows they could see he wore a red velvet cowboy costume, complete with white boots and metal-looking cap guns in holsters. Under his cowboy hat he wore a Lone Ranger-type mask over his eyes and a triangle bandanna tied over his mouth. As he closed in on the group around the fire, he removed his hat, mask, and bandanna revealing nothing underneath. “You sure we can trust them?” the voice came from where Eddie’s mouth should be.

“Don’t mind him,” Stew said, “He’s just old and cranky.”

“Am not old! I’m only a year older than you, Stew.”

“Well you act like an old ghost!”

“We are old ghosts, Stew. What is this? Our fiftieth Halloween?”

“Sixtieth,” Stew mumbled under his breath.

“You’ve been out here trick or treating for sixty years?!” Aiden gaped.

“We have other friends, too!” Stew said.

As if in reply a voice rang out from the darkness, “Who are you losers talking to?”

Eddie and Stew both rolled their eyes. “That’s Duane,” Stew said as a boy dressed in a green plastic shirt with red and black plastic pants. On his face he wore a plastic ape face held in place with an elastic string. On the right chest above a sash with a curved dagger printed on the shirt a logo read, “Planet of the Apes”. Duane walked over to the fire and took his mask off revealing an empty space as he sat down on a bench opposite Oliva and Aiden. As his features became somewhat visible in the firelight, Aiden could see that Duane appeared to be a few years older than Stew and Eddie and themselves. “I don’t know why you losers go trick or treating – you can’t eat the candy!”

“Shut up, Duane,” Stew shot back. “What did you do?”

“Same thing I’ve done for forty years – scared the little baby kids,” he said. “Baby kids like… YOU!” and he leaned forward suddenly, his eyes literally bulging out of his face unnaturally. Aiden and Olivia flinched at the sight. Jacob kept discussing candy hauls with Stew.

“Give it a rest,” Eddie said.

“You gonna make me?” he asked threateningly.

“No, but I might,” a voice came from the darkness behind them.

Stew and Eddie visibly brightened at the sound. From the darkness came lanky dark-skinned boy maybe a year older than Duane wearing a black mohawk wig above a sponge-makeup beard and row upon row of fake gold chains over blue overalls.

“Hey Anthony!” Eddie waved.

“What’s up, Eddie? Stew?” Anthony moved by the fire and nonchalantly sat on the bench closest to Aiden and Olivia. “Hey,” he said to Aiden, “I’m Anthony,” and stuck out his hand to shake.

“I’m Aiden,” and Aiden reached out to shake hands, but his hand close right through Anthony’s.

Anthony laughed, and Stew and Eddie joined in.  “Heh, I’m sorry, man, I couldn’t resist.”

Aiden pulled his hand back and looked at the spot he had just grabbed. “It’s… uh… okay…” he stammered.

“Why can we see you better than them?” Olivia asked.

“Oh, you mean how come you can see that I’m black and these boys are white as the sheet Stewie was wearing?” Anthony smiled at the translucent Stew who awkwardly smiled back. “I don’t know myself, to be honest. I think it’s based on how old a spirit you are. I’m just over thirty, but that ass over there,” he gestured to Duane, “Has ten years of translucence on me. And these boys,” he nodded to Stew and Eddie, “Are like another 15 years more, so you can barely see them at all.”

“Are you guys here all the time?” Jacob asked Stewart.

“No…” he said sadly. “Usually it’s like a week before and after Halloween.”

“’When the veil gets thiiiiIIIIIiiiin’” Duane sing-songed.

“And the rest of the year?” Aiden asked.

“Well,” Anthony started, “We’re still around… sort of. We just can’t interact with y’all at all. That’s why this we love Halloween!”

An electronic song started playing and Aiden fished his cell phone out of his candy bag and looked at the display. “Oh crap,” he started, “It’s my mom. She’s on her way to pick us up over in Brookeville!” Aiden got to his feet and Olivia and Jacob followed.

Stew looked up at Jacob with sad transluscent eyes, “Will you come back tomorrow?”

“Yeah, totally!” Jacob said, then looked at Olivia and Aiden who looked less positive, “I mean, yeah, we’ll try, absolutely.”

“You’d best,” Anthony said, “because we won’t be here much longer. And then another year….”

Aiden looked at Olivia who said, “We’ll be here.”

Stew and Eddie audibly cheered.

“See tomorrow!” Jacob said as all three started off at a run the way they came in.

When they disappeared out of sight, Duane asked, “Think they’ll come back?”

Anthony folded his arms behind his head and leaned back on the log, “I’d say there’s a ghost of a chance.”

The other three groaned and Duane threw a dirt clod at him, while Eddie and Stew threw their hated boxes of raisins at him.