Gossamer Ghosts

In between houses and chants of trick or treat, Jordan swept his sea-green eyes toward his friends and called to Noah, Cody and Chad “Where’d that kid go now!”

“What kid?” Chad asked, perplexed.

“The kid, the one that asked to hang with us and you all said yes, remember?”

The boys gave their friend a look but before Jordan could react, he spotted the boy, who called himself Damien, down the road, bathed in silver light under the fog-shrouded full-moon.

“There he is! Damien, wait!”

Then the noise of screeching tires and screams of pain filled the darkness.

His face as white as the ghost floating from the child’s mangled lifeless body, eleven-year-old Jordan stared in frozen horror as the gauzy-shadow landed in a tree… and became… Damien. Seconds later, Damien was beside him again, horsing around; his friends laughing at his antics.

Jordan watched him high-five everyone and was about to do the same when the kid just… vanished.

“He disappeared again,” Jordan mumbled to Cody, quietly now.

“Who?” Cody asked, brushing his striking-blonde hair out of his equally-striking-blue eyes.

“Damien, that’s who. Come on boys, he was just here,” Jordan’s words, wrought with frustration, evaporated when he caught a glimpse of Damien on a rooftop giggling, a haunting sound like tinkling wind chimes.

That was how it all started on that cursed-Halloween.

The relentless ghosts appeared every October 31st, surrounding him wherever he went.

“We need you, Jordan,” they cried. “You’ll be chained to us forever.”