Way back on Halloween 2017 a group of the living met some trick or treating ghosts. You don’t have to go back and read it, just know they’ve been hanging out every Halloween since then.

“Is anyone there?” Aiden called down the alley.

“I don’t hear anything,” Jacob said. “Maybe they’re not here this year.”

“They’ll be here. They’re here every year. Hello!” Olivia called.

Silence.

“It’s them!” a voice came from the darkness. “I told you they’d be here this year! They’re here every year!” Stewart stepped into the streetlight in the simple costume of a sheet ghost. He pulled up the sheet revealing his rosy cheeks. “Hey guys! Eddie owes me a dollar – he said you weren’t coming this year.”

“Well, I figured you guys were getting too old for trick or treating,” Eddie came into the light in his old-fashioned red velvet cowboy costume complete with Lone Ranger eye mask.

Aiden, Jacob, and Olivia exchanged looks. “Well,” Olivia said, “It might be our last. We are getting a little older… But we looked forward to the chance to see you guys again…. Where’s Anthony?”

“I’m here,” Anthony said, stepping forward with his mohawk and gold chains. “Good to see you, Olivia! How are you guys doing?”

“We’re good,” Aiden said.

“Hey, don’t leave without us!” Duane yelled as he and a girl ran into the light. Duane had his Dr. Zaius Planet of the Apes plastic mask on and the girl with him had black and red checkered outfit with black and red tights and one red and one blue pigtail.

“Hey Duane!” Jacob said. Who’s Harley Quinn?

Harley Quinn shied back a bit.

“It’s okay, they’re the good living!” Duane said.

“I’m… I’m Ava,” she said sheepishly.

Olivia stepped forward, “Hi Ava, I’m Olivia. This is Jacob and Aiden. You’re new around here?”

Ava nodded. “I died this year. April,” she said. “I’ve always had really bad asthma and then Covid…”

“I’m so sorry,” Olivia said.

“I really wanted to be Harley Quinn this year,” Ava said.

“And so you are!” Olivia smiled. Ava smiled, too.

“What’s your costumes?” Stewart asked. “Olivia, you look like a doctor!”

“I am!” she said holding the ends of her stethoscope.

“Are you a doctor, too, Aiden?” Duane asked.

“Nurse,” he said pointing to his scrubs.

“I don’t the bottle costume, Jacob,” Anthony said.

“I’m a bottle of hand sanitizer!”

Stewart, Eddie, Duane, and Anthony stared confused. Ava, however broke into loud giggles.

“Hand sanitizer! Ha!” The other ghosts looked at her. “It’s a Covid joke,” she explained. “Is it going to be a weird Halloween because of the ‘rona?” she asked.

Olivia nodded, “It’s going to be strange. There’s a bunch of contact-less candy hand-outs, and a lot of parents decided not to let their kids out at all.”

“Understandable,” Ava said.

“You know what this means?” Anthony asked.

“Yeah,” Duane said pulling his Dr. Zaius mask down over his face, “It’s our year!”

“Let’s go!” Eddie drew his cap-gun pistols. “Hee ha!”

—

The kids were about to head up a driveway when they heard “Fire in the hole!” from the end of the driveway. A woman pulled a lever and a catapult hurled a bunch of Snickers and Milky Way all the way down the driveway. “Andy, there’s a bunch of them in this group – fire the backup trebuchet!”

“On it, Anne!” and Andy pulled a lever and an elaborate arm started swinging around and hurled Almond Joys and Reeses.

Stewart held out his sheet to block a bunch of candy. Anthony was glad no one noticed a snickers went right through him. Ava giggled as she scrambled for candy.

—

A few houses down they looked up at a porch and started up the walkway to the porch when a stop sign popped up in front of them. “Huh?” Eddie said before a whirring noise drew their attention to a pulley system rigged between the light post at the end of the walkway and the kitchen window at the porch. An orange and black lit ghost carrying a small basket traveled with a whirr from the kitchen window over the lawn and came to a stop at the light pole.

“Oh! Your costumes are so cute!” The woman in the window called down to them. “I love the hand sanitizer!”

“Thank you, Ma’am!” Jacob said as he and the others split the candy in the basket.

“Thank you!” they all said to the woman. As they started to walk away they heard the whirr of the zip line ghost traveling back up the wire.

—

The front of the Peterson house at the end of the street was completely obscured by an enormous couch with a huge fifteen foot skeleton perched on it and graves scattered across the lawn. One arm of the skeleton was replaced by a big PVC pipe that extended way out over the walkway.

The lights in the skeleton’s eyes lit up and the mouth opened as a voice said, “Step up to the skeleton chute!”

“That’s so cool!” Anthony said, stepping up to the chute that ended in a fake hand. He put his bag up to the end of the chute and a full-size Twix slid down and dropped into his bag. “Awesome!”

“Ooh, me next!” Eddie moved in.

—

They walked up to one house that had no lights on the porch, but red dots crisscrossed the driveway.

“I don’t understand,” Steward said.

“Line up under a dot,” a voice came from up on the roof.

Jacob scrambled his bottle costume onto the driveway and managed to get a red dot into his bag when he became aware of a cacophony of buzzing before two bags of M&Ms dropped into his bag from the sky. “Whoa!” he said.

Ava followed suit as the drone that had just dropped the M&Ms hummed down to the group of four on the roof of the house where one of the operators re-loaded the candy basket as another drone dropped its cache of Laffy Taffy into Ava’s bag. She squealed as the two Taffys fell in and that drone whirred down for reloading.

It took a couple minutes, but all eight kids got their air-dropped treats and walked away laughing and talking about how Aiden’s Hershey’s missed his bag at the last moment and he scrambled to pick it up, and how Eddie’s Nerd boxes bonked off his head.

They hit a few more conventional houses but it wasn’t long before they all retreated to behind the warehouse where Anthony lit the fire and they gathered around and compared their hauls.

“How’d you do, Ava?” Olivia asked.

“Really good!” she said smiling broadly.

“Glad you came! I mean, I’m sorry you’re a ghost, but it’s nice not being the only girl.”

“I’m glad I could come,” she said.

“Were you guys serious when you said this might be your last year?” Anthony asked.

Aiden looked at Jacob and then at Olivia. He shrugged, “Not likely,” he said. “I forgot how much fun it is hanging around with you guys!”

“Good,” Eddie said, then got really serious and said, “We wouldn’t want to have to haunt you and your families.”

Jacob, Aiden, and Olivia froze.

“I’m just messing with you!” Eddie and the rest of the ghosts started laughing uproariously.

“…Should’ve seen the look on your face,” Duane wheeze-laughed.

Jacob, Aiden, and Olivia were slow to join in the laughter.

“It’s funny,” Stewart said, “Because we’re all treats and no tricks!”