The Other Side of the String Lights

Trick or Treat

I'd known Emily since we were six years old, long enough to have memorized the particular rhythm of her walk, the way she always led with her left foot going up stairs, the specific pitch her laugh climbed to when something actually delighted her instead of just amused her. I say this because it matters later. Because the thing that came through the park gates that Halloween walked with Emily's exact gait, wore Emily's exact face, and I still knew, in the first half-second of seeing it, that something underneath all of it had changed.

She'd been talking about the costume for weeks. A witch dress, black and dramatic, bought from some new shop on Maple Street she couldn't stop describing — the way the shopkeeper had looked at her a beat too long, the way the broomstick handle felt warm even in the store's cold air conditioning. She'd shown me a photo of it hanging in her closet, and I remember thinking, at the time, that the fabric looked darker in the picture than any black dress should photograph, like the camera flash had simply refused to land on it properly.

We were supposed to meet at the park gate at seven. I got there at ten to, standing under the string lights the town committee hung every October, watching families stream past in their costumes.

Emily was late. That wasn't like her.

At 7:13, I saw her. Same dress. Same hair. She was walking towards me, but too smoothly. As if her feet weren't quite touching the fallen leaves.

"Boo," she said when she reached me. She tried to smile. Her voice did something strange — like two voices speaking at once, one slightly behind the other.

"You scared me," I said, trying to laugh. "You found the hat?"

She touched the pointed hat, frowning. "Did it come with a hat? I don't remember."

Her hand was ice cold. But the dress — when my fingers brushed it — was warm. Disturbingly warm, like skin with a fever.

We started walking the trick-or-treat loop. Something was wrong. Kids avoided her. Not in a mean way. In an instinctual way. A toddler in a pumpkin costume took one look at Emily and burst into tears. A dog started barking and wouldn't stop.

"Emily, are you okay?" I whispered.

She stopped under a streetlamp. The light flickered. "I keep hearing someone else's memories," she said quietly. "A bakery. A song. Waiting for a friend who never came."

A little boy in a ghost sheet pointed at us and said loudly to his mom, "Why does the witch have two shadows?"

I looked down. My stomach dropped.

Emily had two shadows. One mimicked her perfectly. The other — longer, thinner — was standing still, even when she moved.

"Maple Street," Emily whispered, but it wasn't her voice. It was a younger voice. "We have to go back to Maple Street."

We ran. The town square was full of Halloween music and laughter, but the closer we got to Maple, the quieter it got, as if sound was being sucked away.

The shop was there. The one she described. A tiny storefront squeezed between the bakery and the laundromat, with a crooked sign: COSTUMES & CURIOSITIES. The window displayed one single black dress, identical to Emily's.

"We need to return it," I said.

We pushed the door. A bell jingled, but no one was inside. The air smelled of dust and old vanilla. On the counter was a ledger, open. The last entry, in faded ink: October 31, 2006 — A. Finch — Black Witch Dress — Unreturned.

The broomstick Emily was holding started to vibrate.

Behind us, the shop door slammed shut by itself. In the dusty mirror on the wall, I didn't see us. I saw another girl. About twelve. Wearing the same dress. Standing alone in an empty shop, looking out the window, waiting.

"Anna?" The voice came from Emily's mouth, but it was full of tears. "You waited?"

In the mirror, the other girl nodded.

Images flooded my mind, not mine — Waiting on a park bench in 2006. A promise from a friend: "Meet me at seven under the lights." The friend never came. Walking home alone through the park. A cold night. A fall. The dress getting tangled. The lights blurring.

She never got her Halloween.

"She just wanted one more trick-or-treat," the voice said through Emily. "She just borrowed me. She didn't mean to scare."

Emily collapsed to her knees, shaking. The dress was getting hotter, the air colder.

I did the only thing I could think of. I grabbed Emily's cold hands and said loudly, "We will finish your Halloween. Right now. Together."

I pulled out the candy from my bag. I held a chocolate to the empty air where the second shadow was.

"Trick or treat," I said.

For a second, nothing. Then the temperature dropped so fast our breath became clouds. The second shadow solidified into the girl from the mirror. Translucent. Smiling. She was really just a kid.

She took the invisible candy. Her shadow merged with Emily's for a moment, and Emily gasped, her eyes rolling back, then clearing.

"Thank you," the ghost girl whispered, and this time I heard it with my own ears, not through Emily.

The dress unzipped itself and fell to the floor, suddenly just fabric. Cold, ordinary fabric.

When I looked up, the shop was gone. We were standing in an alley between the bakery and the laundromat. A solid brick wall where the door had been. The dress lay empty on the damp ground.

Emily was back. Really back. Her hands were warm. She was crying, but herself.

"The bakery lady said that shop burned down in 2006," she whispered. "A girl died there on Halloween night. She was waiting for her best friend."

We left the dress in the alley. We walked back to the park. The string lights seemed brighter.

Under them, for just a second, I thought I saw a girl in a witch costume, alone, waving at us, before she turned and walked away into the crowd of trick-or-treaters and disappeared.

Emily squeezed my hand. "Don't ever be late again," she said, trying to joke, but her voice was shaking.

"I won't," I said. "Promise."

We never went down Maple Street again on Halloween.

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Author's Note: This is my entry for Halloween Vault 2026 - Ghost Prompt. #halloweenvault2026