Excerpt from the diary of Justin Stewart
October 11, 1996
It finally happened. They gave me a roommate. Things were just fine here when I was living all by myself. The next thing I know, they moved this five year-old in. I've got to take care of him, keep an eye on him, and basically be his big brother. That's bad enough, but now he's started playing with my stuff. I came back to my room the other day, and my Blue Zeo Ranger figure was moved all the way from one side of my dresser to the other. I asked him about it, and the little pest, Roger, his name is, had the gall to say that he didn't do it! Who did, monsters? I just wish someone would get this kid out of here.

Justin sighed. It had been almost a week since Roger had been moved into his room, and he hadn't had any peace since. At night, when he was trying to sleep, knocks would sound inside the walls, as if someone were trying to get out. It made it very hard for him to sleep. Now he was sitting at the kitchen table, trying to do his homework on only four hours of sleep. He wasn't making much headway.

"Justin?" He looked up to see Roger standing next to his chair and staring at him with large dark eyes.

"What?" Justin grumped. He was always grouchy when he hadn't slept well.

"There's a man in our closet. He's just standing there staring at me."

Justin groaned. "Oh, for crying out loud!" He looked over at Roger, who was still giving him those puppy dog eyes. "All right, all right. Look, I'll check it out, okay?" Rising from the table, he climbed the stairs to the room that Roger and he shared. As he entered, he frowned.

"Roger, did you leave the window open? It's freezing in here?"

Roger shook his head. "Uh-uh." Justin shrugged it off and walked over to the closet. As he did so, he realized that the cold was getting stronger, as if it was flowing out of the closet door.

_Don't be ridiculous,_ he scolded himself. _It's a closet, not a refrigerator._ Still, he could not shake the feeling that he was being watched, or that there was indeed something horrific in the closet. Plucking up his courage, he put his hand on the door and threw it open. Row after row of blue shirts and pants were the only things that greeted his eye. He crouched down to look under Roger's clothes as well. Empty. He turned back to his young roommate.

"See, Roger, there's nothing in here." The younger boy just stared at the floor, and Justin felt his annoyance evaporate. "Hey, don't worry about it," he continued sympathetically. "I used to have my dad check for monsters under my bed every night before I went to sleep. This happens to everybody at one point or another."

"But I saw him! I really did!" Roger protested.

"And I really saw those monsters. But that doesn't mean they were really there. Now I'm gonna go try to finish my homework. You go find something to amuse yourself with." With that, Justin turned and walked out of the room, leaving Roger to stare at the closet fearfully.

"Roger, knock it off," Justin complained, turning over in bed.

"Huh?" his near-sleep roommate snorted. "What're you talkin' 'bout?"

"Stop making noises."

"Not makin' noise," Roger mumbled, barely awake.

Justin decided that Roger must have been kicking the foot of his bed in his sleep. The kid obviously wasn't lying, but he was definitely making noise. It was just a steady thumping that seemed to come from the foot of Roger's bed, which coincidentally enough, was right in front of the closet door. Justin groaned unhappily and pulled the covers over his head to deaden the noise.

Justin was yanked out of sleep, early the next morning, by Roger frantically shaking him. "What, what?" Justin snorted, sitting upright in bed.

"Look!" Roger cried, pointing a trembling finger at the closet.

"What?" Justin complained.

"The closet door is open!"

"And?"

"It opened by itself!!!"

"Roger, it did not."

"Yes it did, Justin! I swear it did!" The boy was obviously shaken up over something. Justin theorized it to be a nightmare. "I think our closet is haunted, Justin!"

Justin didn't even try to hold back the chuckle at that. "You are goofy sometimes, you know that?"

"But-..."

"Our closet isn't haunted, you just dreamed the closet is haunted," Justin said. "I promise."

October 29, 1996
This kid is something else. He seems friendly enough, but I think he's nuts. Actually, I guess he's just a normal kid with a very active imagination. My only real complaint against him is that he's always bothering my stuff.

Today, all of the clocks in the room were turned to the time 11:44 p.m. I thought maybe we had a power outage, and that made them mess up, but the power wouldn't do that. I think Roger reset them for some stupid reason and forgot to do it right. I set them right, but still... why would he do something weird like that? Of course the little muppet denied it.

He's also moving my stuff around. I found my Bible at the back of the closet. I'm not really all that religious, but my mom gave it to me before she died, and it means a lot to me. I'll tell Gina if he hurts anything. Fortunately, it was just out of place.

If he ever gets ahold of this journal, I'll skin him alive. I told him that too, after I found the Bible, but he got all defensive and said he hadn't touched anything of mine. I just remind myself that he's five years old, and that reasoning with a little kid is like trying to polish a turd. That's courtesy of my dad's sister. She's hilarious.

It had been a while since Roger had bothered Justin, but the disturbances themselves were still going on. Despite his scientific bent, Justin was beginning to wonder whether or not there might be something to Roger's allegation that their room was haunted. Justin could no longer spend time in there without feeling as if he was being watched, and the cold in the room was becoming pervasive. Normally, he would have brushed off the idea of a haunting without a second thought, but this WAS Angel Grove. Strange things happened there as a matter of course. After giant flying monkeys and superheroes in giant robots, ghosts no longer seemed quite so impossible.

Justin was possessed of a growing certainty that Roger was not behind the disturbances. He might be an annoying little kid, but he certainly wasn't mean, and the odd events that seemed to be centering around them were getting nastier all the time. Finally, one night after dinner, Justin was convinced, in a very forceful way.

He and Roger had the job of doing the dishes that night, just like every kid in the shelter had to do in turn. At first, everything had seemed normal, including a short dishcloth fight that had Gina chewing them out and fighting not to laugh. Once they had settled down, things had began to turn weird.

Up to his elbows in soapy water, Justin suddenly shivered. "Roger, is it getting cold in here, or is it just me?" he asked. The younger boy shrugged. Suddenly his eyes widened.

"Justin, look out!" the five year-old cried. Justin didn't think, he merely reacted. Years of martial arts training kicking in, he dropped into a split on the floor. As he hit, he heard a whiffing sound as several somethings flew past his head, and then a series of thunks as they struck home in the cabinet in front of him. Justin looked up and swallowed. Six steak knives from the shelter's good silverware were embedded in the wood, still quivering from the force of their flight.

Justin was suddenly glad that he was on the floor already. All the starch left his knees, and if he had been standing up, he would most likely have collapsed. He knew from experience that the knives were razor-sharp, and if he had been standing, or had turned to see what was behind him, they would most likely have buried themselves in his torso. Taking a deep breath, he looked up at Roger. "Thanks, kid," he breathed. "Was there anyone behind me?" he asked, already knowing the answer.

Roger shook his head. "Uh uh. They just- pulled themselves out of the drawer."

Justin swallowed again. "Yeah, that's what I thought." Standing, he yanked the knives out of the cabinet with more force than was strictly necessary, dropping them back in the drawer from whence they came. "Look, Roger, we're not going to tell Gina about this, all right? She'll think we're nuts."

"What about the cabinet?"

Shrugging, Justin turned back to the dishes. "That thing is twenty years old, plus. No one is going to notice a few more scratches. Now come on, you're supposed to dry, remember?" As Justin began washing the dishes, he fervently hoped that his shaking hands wouldn't cause him to drop one.

"This little light of mine," Roger sang softly to himself, "I'm g-gonna let it shine... this l-little light of m-mine, I'm gonna let it shine... this little light of mine, I'm g-gonna l-let it shine, let it sh-shine, let i-it shine, let it sh-sh-shine..."

"Roger," Justin complained. "Please..."

"Sorry Justin," Roger whispered, sounding truly ashamed. The two boys were silent for a moment before Roger added, "My mama told me that if I'm ever scared, I can sing that song and she and Jesus'll be with me."

"What happened to your mom?" Justin asked.

"She died having my little sister," Roger answered. "She died, too."

"What about your dad?"

"He died in a car wreck before mama died. What about yours?"

"My dad?"

"Both of your parents."

"My mom died of cancer a little while ago. My dad... my dad is... well, it's kind of hard to explain."

"What were their names?"

"Alicia and Dean," Justin sighed.

"Really?" Roger asked happily. "My mama's name was Lekeisha. That's sort of like Alicia."

"Yeah, it sort of is," Justin agreed. "I bet they would like each other."

"Everybody liked my mama," Roger said proudly.

"Mine too."

"Boys," Gina said as she knocked on the door.

"We're going to sleep, Gina," Justin informed her. They heard her footsteps as she walked down the hall, making sure everyone else was asleep or at least in bed and quiet.

"Justin? What do you think is going on?"

"I don't know, Roger," Justin admitted. "I don't know."

Thunder seemingly rocked the entire world. Justin sat bolt upright as the last remnants of a wicked bolt of lightning faded away. Justin's eyes landed on the red glow from his alarm clock. It read 11:44 p.m. Before the gears of Justin's mind could correlate the repeating time, the closet door screaked open.

Justin was about to call out for Roger, when he realized that the kid was still asleep. Even though he desperately wanted someone else standing next to him, he didn't feel right waking his roommate up just so he could be as scared as he was. _You're the man in the room, Justin,_ he told himself as he lifted the covers from the bed and let his feet swing to the floor.

He quickly found a flash light and flicked it on. A supportive beam of light shone forth, and Justin slowly walked toward the open closet.

_It's just a closet, it's just a closet,_ he repeated over and over in his mind. The closer he got to it, the colder the air felt. Goosebumps rose all over his bare forearms as the chill intensified.

He directed the beam of light at the floor of the closet. His Bible was propped up against the back wall, but it wasn't in good condition. Numerous pages had been ripped out; some were only partially ripped out and they stuck out of the leather-bound book in a disconcerting manner. The pages that were free from the book, however, were the ones that concerned him. There were twelve, and each had a single letter burned into the page. They were arranged in three rows, and the burned letters spelled out a word.

BREAK MY BONDS

Justin repeated the message to himself, and suddenly, a cold wind shot out of the closet with such force that it knocked Justin off of his feet and the flashlight from his hand. It hit the floor and shattered, plunging the room again into darkness. Justin was about to cry for help, when he felt the cold surround him. Then, everything was still.

It was the cold that woke Roger first. Despite the blankets piled on top of him, he was freezing. "Justin, close the window," he muttered, sitting up. As he did so, he noticed that the closet door hung open, and Justin was nowhere to be found. The door to their room was open, however, which it had definitely not been when the two had gone to sleep.

"Maybe he just went to the bathroom," the five-year-old thought aloud to himself. Even so, he climbed out of the bed and headed into the hall, being careful to skirt the open closet door.

Out in the hallway, the pervading cold stopped, as if someone had flipped a switch. The sound of rain beating against the windows was curiously soothing. On the other had, the intermittent flashes of lightning gave the whole scene a slightly eerie quality. During one particularly bright flash, Roger saw that the door leading up to the attic was open, and he could faintly hear the slow tread of feet on the stairs.

"Justin?" he whispered, crossing to the attic stairs. Only the darkness answered. Summoning all his courage, Roger followed the sound of footsteps up the darkened stairs into the attic. In the blackness, he clung desperately to the handrail, trusting it to lead him up safely.

The Little Angel's Haven was located in an old, restored Victorian house that had been donated to the city a very long time ago by it's previous owner. The attic was huge, and filled with the collected junk of years upon years of orphaned and abandoned children. Roger swallowed as the lightning made the heaps of junk around him seem to dance ominously in the darkness. Suddenly he saw a window on one end of the attic. It was open, with the wind and rain lashing in. Crossing to it, he looked out and gasped at what he saw. Justin was walking along the spine of the roof, headed for the edge. He moved as if one in a trance, and he was getting perilously close to the place where he would run out of roof. Forgetting everything he had ever heard about sleepwalkers, Roger cried out in terror. "JUSTIN!"

"Huh?" Justin jerked awake suddenly. His bare feet slid on the rain-soaked shingles and he fell, sliding faster and faster towards the edge of the roof. Desperately reaching out for anything to stop his fall, he grabbed onto a gargoyle that was fountaining merrily down to the ground below. A long way below.

"What am I doing here?" he asked himself, trying to get his bearings. "I'm soaked to the skin, in my PJ's, on a roof, hanging onto a gargoyle!" He slid a little, and quickly pulled himself back up. "Think about it later, Justin," he ordered himself. "First order of business- get back inside. I could call for help- no, I don't want Gina putting me on suicide watch. Roger!" he called, seeing the younger boy looking down at him with huge wide eyes. "Find me a rope!"

"Right!" After a long moment, Roger reappeared at the window. "I couldn't find a rope, so I knotted some blankets together. That should work! I saw it in a movie once."

"Great," Justin grumbled. "Tie it to something secure and throw it down here!"

After another pause, a line of white blankets came flying out the window- and stopped ten feet short of Justin's position. "It figures," the boy grumbled. "All right, I'm just gonna have to climb." Carefully, he worked his body around the gargoyle until he was lying on the roof with his feet propped against its stone base.

"Remember what Dad always says. Focus, don't let your fear take over," he breathed. Slowly but surely, he began to inch his way up the roof, using the shingles as hand and footholds, letting the slope of the roof support his weight. More than once, he lost his grip and almost fell, but finally, he managed to get a hold of the rope. "Okay, arms, don't fail me now," he grunted. Bracing himself against the roof with his feet, he pulled himself up the roof, hand over hand, until he reached the attic window. Roger pulled him inside, where he collapsed in exhaustion. Roger shut the window and sat down beside him.

"What just happened, Justin?"

Justin shook his head slowly. "I have no clue. Come on, let's go back to our room."

The two boys walked across the attic, both grateful for the other's company. "Justin, are you-?" The sound of something crashing against the floor behind them interrupted him. Both turned around quickly, looking for the source of the crash. "Justin?" Roger asked warily.

"I don't know what that was," Justin said. "Wanna check it out or get out?"

"Get out," Roger said quickly.

"Yeah," Justin agreed. However, before the two could bolt for the attack, a literal explosion grew into being at the back of the room. Both Roger and Justin cried out in alarm as the floor at the back wall was ripped free, exploding in a shower of wooden shards. Red light began to glow beneath the boards, moving from the back wall and traveling towards them. The floor began to be ripped apart, sending the wooden panels and the objects resting on them high into the air. A giant fireball shot up and incinerated the airborne objects. "Run!" Justin shouted.

Screaming, Roger bolted away, running for the attic door. Justin was close behind. Chaos personified grew up behind them, first shattering and then disintegrating everything in the cluttered attic. "We're almost there!" Justin yelled to Roger. However, their path was blocked when two old, couches, covered with musty, white sheets, moved from their prone positions and stood in the only path to the door.

"Justin!" Roger cried.

"Over!" Justin shouted. He took Roger's hand and leapt to the top of the couch, practically dragging Roger with him. Justin pulled Roger along for several steps before the younger boy finally got to his feet and continued running. He glanced behind him just in time to see the two couches hurled up into the air.

Justin glanced down at his feet and saw that the red glow had caught up with them. All throughout the attic, red light was shining up through the cracks in the floorboards. He pulled Roger into the stairwell, and he tripped. The two rolled down the stairs in a tanglement of arms and legs.

Suddenly, they stopped rolling when they collided with a pair of legs. "Boys?" Gina asked, looking down at them with her arms crossed.

"We didn't do it!" Roger cried.

"What were you doing in the attic?" she asked. She stepped over them and started to climb the stairs.

"No!" Justin and Roger cried.

"You can't go up there!" Roger added. He latched onto her left leg, acting like dead weight.

"Roger, what's gotten into you," Gina said sternly. She continued to walk up, dragging Roger with her. He let go of her leg halfway up the stairs, not wanting to go back in the attic. She reached the top, paused, and said, "So... what were you doing up there?"

"We didn't do it!" Roger insisted.

"Didn't do what?" Gina asked incredulously. "I swear... were you two boys having a nightmare or something?"

Justin crept past Roger and hurried up to Gina's side. He looked out over the attic, not really surprised to see that everything was back to normal. "Yeah, that's what it was," Justin lied. "A nightmare."

"I can't believe we actually got back to sleep last night," Justin remarked. "I thought we were going to have nightmares for sure."

Roger shrugged. Standing in the bright sunlight, waiting for the bus, the thought of ghosts, monsters, and disappearing explosions seemed silly. Justin knew quite well, however, what would happen if he wrote the whole thing off as a nightmare.

"Why are we going downtown on a Saturday?" Roger asked, looking curiously at Justin's backpack. "I thought you got all your homework done."

"I did," Justin replied. "I kind of lied to Gina. But we need to go to the library and do some research on all of this. Can you read yet?"

"Of course I can read!" Roger replied. "A little."

"Just checking." Justin had known, of course, that he would be the one doing most of the research that day. At five years old, Roger was barely out of the "Dick-and-Jane" stage of literature. But the last thing he wanted was to leave Roger alone in their room. It had been Roger's arrival that had triggered the disturbances, which told Justin that the younger boy was most likely the target of whatever force was stalking them.

"I know how to use a card catalog," Roger informed him proudly. "My mama was a librarian!"

"That's good," Justin replied earnestly. "You can look up books for me, and I can read them. That'll save time." Just then, the bus pulled up and the two boys climbed aboard.

"Hey, Roger, listen to this," Justin called quietly. The two of them had drawn a number of stares as they walked into the non-fiction section, and even more when Roger began bringing Justin a number of old, mildewed books. Many of them were filled with fascinating information that, unfortunately, had nothing to do with their situation. Reluctantly, Justin put those aside for another time. Now, however, he thought he had finally found something.

"It's about the poltergeist," Justin continued. "The word means "noisy spirit," and it's a type of ghost."

"My mama wouldn't let me watch that movie," Roger remarked.

"Yeah, Gina wouldn't let us watch it either, not that that stopped anybody. But I didn't realize it was a real legend. According to this book, the poltergeist is a malevolent spirit that focuses-" Justin stopped. "Focuses on pre-teens and young children, especially those with a history of psychic ability." He nodded. "In that movie, the ghosts were after the little girl, Carol Ann, because she was a psychic."

Roger looked puzzled. "Does that mean it's after me?"

"Seems like it. The question is, what does it want?" Justin shut the book, chewing on his lip thoughtfully. "I wonder- in the movie, the ghosts were mad because a house had been built over their cemetery."

"You think the shelter was built over a cemetery?"

"No, there are a hundred cemeteries in Angel Grove as it is. It's not likely that there would be one more under the shelter. Roger? Do you think you could go get the building records from the librarian? Here's a dollar. Do you know how to work a copy machine?" At Roger's nod, Justin continued. "Get the building plans from the librarian, and make copies of it. One of each."

"What are you going to do?" Roger asked, pocketing the dollar.

"I'm going to see if I can't sweet-talk my way into the microfilm room. I have a hunch that the answer to our question is buried in old issues of the Gazette."

Justin's eyes were beginning to hurt. He had been scrolling through old newspapers for what seemed like hours. The librarian had at first been reluctant to let an eleven-year-old into the microfilm room, but Justin had managed to convince her of his maturity, and she had finally left him alone. So far, he'd read about festivals, fires, and more than a few articles on the Power Rangers. For a brief moment, he thought about trying to get their help for this, then shook his head. Nah. They'd never believe him, and even if they did, this wasn't their area. It looked like he and Roger were on their own.

Suddenly an article caught his eye. It was from the early sixties, and it was about the shelter! Apparently, a boy with a history of emotional disturbance had freaked out and murdered his roommate. At least, that's what the authorities thought had happened. There had been blood everywhere in their room, but the roommate's remains were never found.

Justin rubbed his eyes. Things were falling into place. All that remained was to confirm his hunch about which room the unlucky pair had occupied. It made sense. The book had said that poltergeists were often spirits who had been sent to the next world violently, those who could not pass on. The murdered roommate couldn't find any peace, and so he was raising havoc.

Groaning, Justin dropped his head into his hands. Granted, now he knew what was going on, but that didn't solve his problems. He still didn't have the slightest idea what to do.

Justin and Roger stood about ten feet in front of their open closet door, both wanting to do something and both terrified to do anything. "You know, maybe we should just bring Gina into this," Roger suggested.

"I don't think so," Justin said, shooting that suggestion down quickly. "It's not like any of them would believe us."

"So, what do we do?"

"I dunno," Justin mumbled. A thought occurred to Justin, and he cross over to his dresser. Lying next to his bible was the burned page with the strange message BREAK MY BONDS. "Well, common sense should tell us that this has something to do with it."

"Break my bonds?" Roger asked. "What does it mean?"

"I don't really know," Justin mumbled. He hurried over to their small bookcase and pulled out a large but worn dictionary. He read silently for a few minutes before saying, "Listen to this. 'A binding agreement, a uniting or binding element or force, to cause to adhere firmly, or bound in slavery. Do you know what that means?"

"Well, no..."

The gears in Justin's young mind were whirring. That was a possibility he had never even considered. "Someone might be... trapped, in our room."

"I don't get it."

"Like a dead person," Justin said. Remembering their previous discussion about the movie Poltergeist, Justin said, "Remember that movie we talked about?"

"Where the cemetery was under the house."

"Right. Those people were trapped in the house because their graveyard was under it, sort of. Maybe... maybe there's not an entire graveyard, but just one grave. Maybe there's a dead body somewhere in this room..."

"No way," Roger said. "They clean around here sometimes."

"I don't mean like lying under a bed or something," Justin commented. "There might be a body in the wall, or in the floor. I read at the library about a kid who was murdered in this room, but his body was never found. Maybe the murderer hid their body somewhere."

"Really?"

"And... it wants to get out," Justin said.

"Then shouldn't it be nice to us?" Roger asked. Justin couldn't argue with that logic.

"Gina?" Justin asked. "Are there old files of kids that used to be kept here?"

"What do you mean?"

"Are there records, public records, of kids kept here. Like... a yearbook or something?"

"I suppose so," Gina said. "Why?" However, when she turned around to face Justin, he was already gone.

Roger had never been fond of basements. However, considering everything that they had gone through in their room and the attic, being in the basement was a blessing. So far, he was just keeping Justin company as he rummaged through box after box after box. Fortunately for the both of them, Roger got bored, and stumbled across exactly what they were looking for.

"Justin!" Roger cried as he pulled a large photo album out of a worn, cardboard box. "Look at what I found!"

"A photo album?" Justin asked. He took it from Roger, and a quick glance at it revealed that it wasn't an ordinary photo album. It was a scrap book compiled by one of the previous caretakers of the shelter. Justin began to flip through it quickly, finding various snapshots, newspaper clippings, and even a few locks of hair that were probably from very young childrens' first haircuts. However, halfway through the scrapbook, it just ended. He flipped back a few pages until he found the final entry. It was a newspaper clipping and a photograph. They weren't inserted with the same care as the others. It looked as though they were just placed in there as an afterthought.

One was a newspaper article, describing the events that had led to the disappearance of one child and the institutionalization of the suspected murder. However, Justin's heart nearly stopped when he saw the photograph. The murdered child was a black kid, about Roger's age. Other than age and race, he and Roger shared nothing. The suspected murderer, however, looked exactly like Justin Stewart.

"This place looks like a tornado hit it," Roger remarked, climbing onto his bed. "I hope Gina doesn't come in and see us."

"Hmmm," was Justin's only reply. The older boy was looking through the blueprints for the shelter, and papers were scattered all around him on his bed. "I thought so!"

"What?" asked Roger.

"There's a ventilation shaft which runs right behind the closet of our room. They closed it off in the late sixties, when the shelter got air conditioning. Apparently, it was big enough for a kid to crawl into, and they didn't want anyone getting stuck in there."

The two boys regarded each other for a long moment. Roger cocked his head. "Wouldn't they have looked in the vent? I mean, it wasn't closed off when the murder happened."

"But the cops couldn't have gotten into it. A kid my age, though, could have dragged a body down it easily."

Roger looked at the article Justin had brought up into their room. "He sure did look a lot like you."

Justin nodded grimly. "Which explains why our poltergeist has tried to kill me several times. He associates me with the guy that killed him. He probably thinks he's protecting you."

"Makes me feel a lot better," Roger grumped. Justin chuckled. Picking up the article, he scanned it again and froze. According to the write-up, the murder had been discovered on the first of November, 1966, when a shelter worker had gone to awaken the boys in the morning. Psychologists had theorized that the atmosphere surrounding Halloween had triggered the psychotic response in the accused boy. And if the murder had occurred that night-

"Eleven forty-four," he whispered. "Oh man. Thirty years to the day."

"Justin?" Roger asked, pulling on the other boy's sleeve. "What's wrong?"

Justin forced a smile. "Nothing, Roger. Come on, get your costume on, or Gina's gonna leave without us. Trick-or-treating starts soon."

Justin lay in his bed, half-wishing sleep would come. He knew, without being able to say how, that the worst of the manifestations would come that evening, at eleven fourty-four. It was that knowledge which had kept him awake for the past three hours.

In the next bed, Roger slept deeply, untroubled by the worries and fears that haunted Justin. Smiling, Justin regarded the boy fondly. Roger had worn himself out trick-or-treating, bouncing from one house to another, one of a veritable sea of Power Rangers surging through the streets. Justin himself had been Indiana Jones, hoping that perhaps some of the fictional archaeologist's courage would rub off on him. So far, it hadn't seemed to take.

Justin's anxiety kept him from sleep, and so he was watching as the numbers on his clock changed to read 11:44. Swallowing, he stared in helpless fascination as the closet door began to swing open slowly. A cold white glow shone from within, and Justin had a feeling that whatever lay beyond the threshold was as inimical to human life as any winter storm.

"Justin?" Roger said sleepily. "Close the window. It's cold in here." As if realizing what he had just said, the boy suddenly snapped awake, sitting up and looking at the closet.

"Let's get out of here," Justin said as calmly as possible. "I think it's going to be a bad one."

Roger nodded, and the two of them hopped out of their beds and headed to the door. Justin reached for the knob, only to draw his hand back with a sharp cry. "It's freezing!" he hissed through his teeth. Quickly, Roger grabbed a blanket off his bed and wrapped that around the handle. Pulling, he still had no luck.

"It won't open!" the boy cried.

"It's probably frozen shut," replied Justin. "Stand back!" His father had taught him to break boards with his feet. Doors weren't much different. Winding up, Justin launched a kick into the door. A bolt of blue energy sent him hurtling away from the surface.

"Are you all right?" Roger cried, running to help Justin up. Justin nodded.

"Now I'm pissed," he growled, forgetting who he was talking to. Getting to his feet, he was suddenly knocked down again as the blankets on his bed formed themselves into a huge serpent, complete with fangs. It struck at him, and he dodged.

A sudden rapping on the door distracted him. "Justin? Roger? What are you doing in there?" Gina's voice asked.

"HELP!" cried Roger. Justin ducked as the sheet-snake struck at him again. Suddenly Roger's toy planes lifted themselves from the floor and came at him. Batting at the planes diving for his eyes, Justin felt ridiculously like King Kong.

Outside, Gina was beginning to bang on the door. Meanwhile Roger was whapping at the snake with his pillow, not doing a whole lot of damage, but doing a fairly good job of distracting it. Casting a glance over his shoulder, Justin saw that the closet was glowing brightly, icy gales blasting from inside. Suddenly an idea occurred to him.

"Stay here!" he yelled at Roger. "It won't hurt you!"

"Where are you going?" the boy wailed.

"I've got a crazy idea!" Justin replied. "Stay HERE!" Gathering himself, he dived into the closet.

The small room was covered in frost. It dripped from the walls, hung all over the clothes, and crunched under his bare feet. He could hear nothing, and looking back, was unsurprised to see a white cloud where the door had been. "Look, I know you're mad, but I'm not the guy that killed you," Justin informed the room at large. His only response was a blast of cold wind.

"You don't get rid of me that easily," he grumbled. Pushing against the wind, he made his way to the back of the closet. His hands roamed the back wall, ignoring the biting cold that sank into his fingers. Then he nodded. He could feel the difference in the wall where the entrance to the vent had been plastered over. Rearing back, he launched a kick into it. The plaster crumbled away with ease, leaving Justin looking at a narrow aluminum corridor, running off into the depths of the building. Taking a deep breath, he crawled inside.

The snake suddenly collapsed, returning to a limp blanket. Roger continued batting at it with his pillow for a few moments, before realizing the danger was gone, at least temporarily. "Roger! Justin!" Gina cried from the hallway.

However, before Roger could answer, a glowing blue form floated out of the closet. Only vaguely humanoid, it was nothing but a bright blue outline with a blue nucleus where its brain would have been. Roger stared at the glowing shape for several seconds. Just when he thought it was going to stay stock still forever, it extended an amorphous arm. Roger tilted his head back and screamed as its blue, glowing outline of a hand stretched toward him.

But then, much to Roger's surprise, the ghostly hand only touched him on the shoulder. Roger looked at the blue hand, not really anything more than tendrils of light, clamped on his shoulder. There was no force there, and if he hadn't seen the blue light there, he wouldn't have realized he was even being touched. Roger slowly looked up, trying to look the ghostly image in the face. In the blue nucleus, he saw the faintest glimmer of a child's face. However, he lost the image when Justin's scream blared out of the closet.

Justin crawled quickly through the nearly darkened vent. It was lighted only with an eerie blue radiance, something he could have done without. However, as he moved forward, he was getting progressively colder. That told him more than signs could have.

Suddenly, he found it. There was an old duffel bag crammed into a crevice of the crawlspace. Justin reached out very carefully and pulled it free, afraid to pull too hard for fearing of destroying it. However, it remained in one piece. He unzipped it, and resting within was exactly what he expected to find.

The human remains crammed into the duffle bag had long since decayed away. A bizarre grayish-dust was crusted against the bones and the fabric of duffel bag. They weren't arranged in any pattern. It was as if they had just been crammed into the bag in... With a moan, Justin closed the bag. He didn't want to think about it much longer. It had taken him a few moments to realize that it was a human in that duffle bag, and that he was the first person to lay eyes on him in exactly thirty years.

Gina finally forced the door open. She put her hands on her hips angrily when she saw the two boys in the middle of the room, Roger in a headlock under Justin's arm. "Justin, let him go," Gina snapped.

"We wuz just playin'!" Roger protested.

"It's almost midnight," Gina said. "Now go to bed."

"Yes, Gina," both boys said in unison. She waited until they were both in bed, and then she shut the door and left. For a moment longer, the boys remained in bed. Then, Justin turned the bedside lamp on, and they both scurried back to the closet.

"That was quick thinking, Justin," Roger complimented.

"Thanks," Justin said as he drug the duffel bag back out into the room. "I found the body."

"Really?" Roger asked, looking first at the duffel bag and then at Justin. "It's in there?"

"Yep," Justin said.

"That's what was making all that stuff happen?"

"I guess so."

"What do we do with it? Tell Gina?"

"I don't think so," Justin mused. "I guess we should bury it."

"Bury it where?"

"Angel's Rest," Justin answered. "We'll wait a few minutes, and then we'll go do it."

"Tonight?" Roger protested.

"You know, maybe I should go alone," Justin said. "You can stay here and cover for Gina."

"No, I'll go with you," Roger told him. "I can help."

Justin slowly nodded as he continued to look at the old duffel bag.

Justin pushed the bag into the shallow grave, situated far into Angels' Rest Cemetery. They had chosen a spot in the old cemetery, where it was entirely likely that the grave wouldn't be found anytime soon. Hopefully, by the time it was found, grass would have already grown over it and no one would be none the wiser. "Will this be good enough?" Roger asked as Justin began to shovel dirt onto it.

"I think so," Justin said. He didn't bother to explain to Roger his own personal theory on the matter : it wasn't where it was buried, it was how it was buried, and the body was being buried with the utmost of care and sacrifice.

"So what do we do now?" Roger asked as Justin finished tamping the dirt down on the grave.

"I guess we go home," Justin commented. Roger turned to walk away, but Justin stood at the gravesite for a few moments longer. "I hope you find your peace now," he said. He turned and hurried up to Roger, and the two boys began the lengthy walk back to the shelter.

High above the cemetery, a star began to shine even brighter. To those with exceptionally perceptive senses, they would have seen two gleaming human outlines of the purest white light drift down toward the earth. The two outlines landed beside the new grave, and the blue figure rose up from the ground. It instantly lost its blue color and became a pure white. The first two figures reached out and surrounded the smaller, child-like outline with their long, ghostly arms. They all rose up into the sky, and they soon faded out of existence. However, some might have continued to hear the childlike voice of newly freed soul, laughing for the first time in thirty years.