Willful Soul

Corry put on a bed sheet. It fell through him to a crumpled heap on the floor the first time or two. He concentrated, and got it to stay though. He dropped lower, feet on the ground, so the sheet was on the floor. No floating here. Then he stepped outside.

It was Halloween. The sun was setting. Pumpkins and porch lights were lit. Children ran around in costumes, sometimes with parents, sometimes in groups. They went from house to house, knocking and asking for candy.

Some of the houses were lackluster. They gave candy if someone knocked, but otherwise looked like today was any other day. One house, on the other hand, had a fake cemetery set up on the lawn. Complete with headstones, temporary fences, a flashing light, and some scary music. Some of the younger kids were scared to go to that house, while the older ones called each other wimps, and were otherwise mocking, if someone was nervous.

Corry went up to the house himself, and rang the doorbell. He was willing to bet a house like this had good treats.

He was right. The woman who opened the door was older, in a witch costume. She sincerely complimented him on his costume, even though it was just a sheet, and gave him one of those popcorn balls.

Oh score.

Corry moved back to the street and knocked or rang the bell at a few more houses. He got candy at each of them. He even got one more compliment on the sheet, even if it was clearly more strained than the old woman's easy one.

Technically, Corry was a teenager. One who was a little old to be trick-or-treating. But no one could tell that with the sheet. (And because of other reasons.) The most anyone could tell was that he was a little tall, and you'd have to be a real asshole to argue the tall person shouldn't be trick-or-treating.

He went down from a porch and started for the next one. The sheet was still on. He was holding a plain bag in one hand. Then he heard voices behind him.

One of them snicked. "What's that?"

"Is that supposed to be scary?"

Corry slowly turned around. "It's not?"

The boy who'd spoken crossed his arms. "There are way better ghost costumes than a dumb sheet. Even if it's not supposed to be scary, it failed."

From the way he responded, Corry wasn't sure if he'd actually heard him, or was just continuing.

"It's lame," the girl next to him agreed with a nod.

The group of four seemed very assured of this.

"Oh?" Corry asked. "Then what about this?!"

He lifted both his arms, and the sheet lifted up. He knew there was nothing under it, nothing they could see.

The youngest screamed and ran off.

"Is-is that-?"

Corry finally couldn't manage to keep the sheet on any more. He let it drop, falling through his incorporeal form, to a heap on the ground.

"He's a real ghost!" one of them cried.

The remaining three also ran, though one had to grab the bravest boy's wrist and pull him along.

Corry laughed, head tipped up, drifting off the ground and bouncing in the air as he did so.

When his laughter died down, he dropped back to the ground, and looked around. The street was darker now. And emptier. The few people he saw seemed to be adults. Some of them still in costume, but probably going to parties or something, and certainly not stopping at houses. It must be getting late. Time for children to go home.

His sheet and candy bucket were still on the ground. He tried once to pick them up, but his fingers slid through the sheet, and he didn't bother trying again. He couldn't eat the candy anyway.

He floated into the air, drifting through quiet streets. He passed an abandoned house with green light flashing in the top window. Another ghost. He called her Storm. And she was decidedly not a friendly one. Then, a little further away, he found a roof he liked, and "sat" on it.

The thing about being a ghost was that you had no body. Obviously. You were just a soul. Unless you possessed an item. (Or a person, which Corry would absolutely not be doing.) But staying in those for too long also had their downsides.

It was hard to function with just a soul, and no corporeal form to call your own. It was the reason ghosts sometimes had a reputation for being . . . not all there. It wasn't an inherent part of being one. It was just that being able to witness the world but needing to work so hard to interact with it could have an influence on you. Over time. It was also why more recently dead ghosts tended to seem more aware.

(Storm was aware. She was just knowingly malicious and vengeful, and wasn't too picky about taking it out on others, even other ghosts.)

These weren't his own conclusions. He heard about them from one of the few people who could see him after he died. But he could see how those conclusions were reached.

He looked at the sky, watching the stars glistening far above him.

Courtesy of being just a soul, very few people could usually see or hear him. He had to put in a lot of effort to make that happen. It took a strong, willful soul to pull that off. Of which he was arguably not.

Physical objects like the sheet slid through his nonexistent fingers. He couldn't eat. He couldn't sleep. Feeling sensations was wrong. He was vaguely aware there was a breeze tonight. It passed through his translucent body. But his hair didn't move, or didn't move any more than being a ghost naturally made it. And he didn't feel any colder, just sitting in the hoodie he'd died in. There was no difference in sensation between sitting on the roof and floating in the air.

Speaking of. He glanced down. Yes, he'd lifted about an inch off the roof and started drifting to the side.

He moved the other way and plopped himself back on the roof. Drop any lower, and he'd go through the roof to the attic.

He didn't have to exist like this. He could . . . move on. He could feel it, in the back of his mind. Maybe just in the back of him in general, like hands gripping his hoodie. It was a light sensation, but if he stopped clinging to earth and this parody of life, he could simply stop being here.

Could, but he wasn't going to.

There was magic and supernatural and all manner of things beyond normal life. He was a ghost, right now. So it wasn't unreasonably to assume there was an afterlife, or something after death other than being a ghost. But what if there wasn't? That irrational fear came and sunk its hooks in any time he thought of leaving. And that grip was far stronger than any call to move on. He could feel it painfully digging into his arms and sides, pulling him down like weights in the water.

And even ignoring that fear, if there was something after death, what was it? There were a lot of ideas about what happened after you died. Some of them sounded better than others. He'd barely lived this life. He'd been a teenager when he died. If he was still alive, he'd still be a teenager. And now he was expected to just stop living and go someplace else? It wasn't fair. He wanted to exist on earth. He wanted to actually live.

Corry brought a hand up to his head, pushing it through his hair with a bit of force.

Then his view of the stars was interrupted by bricks as he drifted through a chimney. He'd left the roof again.

Corry huffed.

Maybe it was time to leave this spot. Stargazing sometimes went well, but it clearly wouldn't tonight.

So he left. It was like he sank into the ground, and when he rose up, he was somewhere different. That was impressive, seeing as the person he was looking for lived on an island, and Corry hadn't been there before.

There were regular lights on in the new room he found himself in, but there were also some pumpkin lights strung up in the doorway. Decorative bats hung from the ceiling. In the kitchen a room over, he could see cider and spider cupcakes. A Halloween party, then.

And in the current room was Nick, talking to someone Corry didn't recognize. Nick could see and hear Corry all the time, without any of the usual effort it took on Corry's part. Corry couldn't overstate how rare that was. He only knew of one other person who could do that, and he drifted through a highly populated city most of the time.

Even now, before Corry said or did anything, Nick turned around. It was like he'd already sensed him.

"Corry!" Nick greeted him with a bright smile, and stretched out his arms like he wanted to hug him. (Luckily, he didn't try. It wouldn't work.) "It's good to see you! Glad you could make it."

No one else in the room could see Corry, but they didn't act like Nick was crazy either. Corry was pretty sure this was normal behavior for him.

Corry smiled. "Glad I came too," he said.

Nick bounced up and down on the spot a little. "What do you want to do? I mean, I'm not just going to abandon the party, but when it's done. We could stay up and swap stories when it's over. About what we've been getting up to. Or I could show you around town? You've never seen it, right? Or, uh. We could play a game. I could introduce you to the other ghost that lives in-well, he doesn't live in town. He-well, you know what I mean."

Corry laughed at Nick's slight sputtering. "Yeah. I know what you mean."

Corry could move on. He wasn't going to. He still had things he could do here, and a friend he could count on.

And he doubted the gentle trip on his back was going anywhere. It would be right there when he was ready.