Haunted streetlights illuminated the town beneath a Halloween moon. Trick or treaters, costumed and zestful, paraded with bags of candy and ecstatic laughter. Among them wandered a girl, Annabelle, innocently dressed in the guise of a fairy, with toffee eyes, fluttering aimlessly.
Annabelle was not like the others; she had a peculiar affability towards ghosts. In her pocket, she harbored an old Ouija board that she’d found in her grandmother’s attic. Tonight, she decided, she’d summon a ghostly friend to join her ghoulish celebration. She huddled, undisturbed behind an ancient oak.
After a spell of hopeful commune with the spirits, a chill wind swept and a figure materialised. A faded astronaut stood before her. Bewildered, Annabelle asked for his name. Scribing in the dirt with a spectral gloved hand; ‘N-e-i-l.’
At that moment, her Dirk Gently obsessed older brother Jim approached, having promised his mother he’d watch over her. He glanced at the inscription in the dirt and burst into laughter. “You’re trick or treating with Neil Armstrong?” he guffawed.
Annabelle looked up at her new astronaut friend, her eyes glowing with intrigue. The astronaut, with an air of otherworldly mischief, winked at her and whispered, “It’s one small step for a girl, one giant leap for girl-ghost friendship.”
And as Annabelle’s laughter echoed the alley, she left her brother dumbfound with his Kit-Kats, under the baffling Halloween moon.