Haunted Hope

Juniper opened the door to the Halloween store, the poor street child cradled in her arms. She had recently found him laying beaten on the street and felt that he needed something to call his own. Being a witch, she wanted him to have something from Halloween, especially with it coming up, although she had little money.

The shop was dark and Halloween music was playing faintly in the background, a haunted ballade. The owner was no where in sight and she started to scan the walls, spirit cubes and costumes laid there, but she wanted the boy to have something special and most was too expensive anyways.

In the glass cases there was "fake" eyeballs and hands, she knew better, yet at the end their was a small black stone, with faint purple lines... It was magnificent.

"Ahh I see you have your eye on the Life stone." The shop owner appeared out of the shadows, a silk coat wrapped around her shoulders. "It's not much just a few dollars, the price is editable." It should have created red flags, but it didn't. She handed over the money from her purse, six dollars to be correct, and was handed the stone in trade. She tucked it into the boys coat pocket and took him to the shelter down the street.

It was a few days later when she went back to the shelter to look for the boy and to give him a present, she was going to take him home, become his adopted mother, but he wasn't there.

Upon going home she found a note on her door, "Magic is deadly, hope is gone." The magic made her think of the Halloween store and she hurried there, yet it was all closed up, boards over the windows. Through one of the boarded up windows she could make out the faint glowing of the stone she had bought only a week ago for the missing boy.