Special

Halloween

"Hey," Daniel called out when he saw Matt get off the bus. He had been waiting for him at the bus stop for a few minutes so they could walk the rest of the way to Emily's house together. Since Halloween was on a Friday and her parents weren't there Emily had decided to throw a party. Admittedly it was going to be a small one, and since her parents were very overprotective when it came to alcohol, Daniel was worrying a little that Matt would think it was lame.

"Hey mate," Matt greeted him. He raised his arms as if to hug him as a greeting but then seemed to change his mind and dropped them again. Daniel smiled shyly and shifted his weight from one foot to the other as he looked around quickly to avoid Matt's gaze.

"Uh, so is it far from here?" Matt asked after a stretch of awkward silence between them.

"No, it's just down the road and around the corner basically," Daniel said. He lived relatively close to Emily so he had walked there numerous times before.

He took a quick look at Matt. Matt had painted his face white with dark circles underneath the eyes and wore torn clothes and a plastic dagger, that was strapped to his belt.

"A ghost pirate?" Daniel assumed and Matt nodded. He felt his eyes look him up and down while Matt in turn took in Daniel's costume. Daniel was wearing mostly black and had a dark purple robe slung around his shoulders that was flattering a little in the wind whenever he was walking. In one hand he held a staff that was almost as tall as he was. On the top end of it was a purple ball the size of a fist.

"You are a wizard? So you can put a good curse on me?"

Daniel grinned and wiggled his eyebrows.

"It's kinda chilly tonight," Matt said and just in that moment a stiff breeze rustled through the leaves of the trees on the side of the road to prove his point.

"Wow, creepy," Daniel muttered and laughed, "maybe you are a wizard."

Matt walked closely by his side as they made their way down the road. It was late enough so that the sun had already set and the dark patches between the circles of light from the street lamps seemed to be particularly dark that night. In a few gardens they spotted jack-o-lanterns and garden gnomes that had been turned into improvised witches.

"Do you believe in ghosts?" Matt asked.

Daniel shook his head. As a child he had believed in ghosts, mainly because his brother Adam had often told him scary stories about ghosts haunting the attic of the church building or the graveyard. But that had also been the reason why he had stopped believing in ghosts. The church building was right next to their house so the thought of malevolent ghosts living there had led to many sleepless nights for him. So he had done research. At first it had been in order to figure out how to protect himself from ghosts and whether or not the ghosts in the church would actually pose a threat to him like his brother had claimed. But in the course of that he had found more things that disproved the existence of ghosts than evidence that spoke in favour of their existence.

"When I was very young I did but not any more," he said.

Matt nodded his head enthusiastically. Maybe a little too enthusiastically. "Yeah, I don't believe in them either."

"Very good," Daniel said, deciding not to question Matt's answer, and halted in front of a small house, "this is it."

The gate was decorated with paper cut-outs of ghosts and the short narrow path that led up to the front door was lined with pumpkins. Apparently Emily didn't have the motivation to carve all of them because only the two on either side of the door had illuminated faces on them. Daniel didn't blame her.