I’m sitting on the couch listening to an angry wind.

Mateo comes in with the wind, as a ghost.

I sit here, unable to get up, trying to be quiet because Mateo is here. If I move, he’ll notice me, and I keep thinking maybe he doesn’t know I’m here. But I’m not sure. It feels like he comes on purpose, to yell at me, hurt me, maybe even kill me. I don’t know.

Maybe it isn’t Mateo. Lots of ghosts come through here on the wind. All the time. But usually, they’re strangers to me. Adults. Men usually. Children sometimes. That’s always sad.

Man, it’s windy here. The top five windiest states in the U.S. are South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, and Colorado.

I sit on the couch the rest of the night. I fall asleep, afraid to move until morning.

A friend texts me the next morning: Mateo died last night. We don’t know how yet.

I’d only just met him at the start of summer, and here he is, dead at the end of it.

I didn’t know for sure that the angry wind-ghost who visited was Mateo until my friend’s text.

Then we find out he died as the result of a firearm.

Maybe it was an accident. Maybe he was cleaning the gun and it went off. That happens around here. Happens everywhere in the United States. To everybody. All kinds of everybody. Everywhere.

Maybe he came to visit me that night because he wanted to tell me it was an accident. Maybe he was angry about being dead, devastated he won’t get to do all the things he planned to do.

He wanted to do everything. Be a doctor. An EMT. A wildfire fighter.

He was a Dreamer—he had that word tattooed on the inside of his lower lip. He pulled  his lip down to show me at the restaurant the first time we met, when he sat down at our table and said he knew who I was, that I worked at the school. He sat there and said he had so many dreams. So many plans. So many things he wants to make real before somebody takes it all away is what he said.

I told him: yeah, do the most ambitious thing you can do. He said he doesn’t know if he can make it happen, but—

He sold me a hat from one of his projects. He had a lot of projects. When he sold me the hat, he brought it to me and sat on the end of the couch right where he sat when he became a ghost brought in by the wind.

The gun …

I felt it when he sat on my couch, that for sure, he was angry.

He had deleted all but two posts on his Instagram. Just that night. People do that sometimes. Start over with things. Change the narrative. We’re allowed. Especially young people.

He was twenty-three.

About the author:

Part of our Halloween 2025 Issue. New stories, poems, and essays now through October 31, 2025.

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