This is fan fiction. Every character, team, town and event in it is made up. No real school, league, player, referee or game is involved, and nothing here happened.
Cypress Hollow High had lost 23 straight homecoming games. They lost to the Okeelanta Mud Hens on rainy nights and on dry nights, and once in a lightning delay so long the band went home.
Then at 8:41 p.m., the Friday before Halloween, a twelfth man jogged out of the fog.
He wore a blue jersey with no number. He was see-through, like a glass of sweet tea. His head was a pumpkin, carved with a grin that would've made a dentist cry, and a candle flickering where the brain should be.
Referee Earl Tidwell counted the Cypress Hollow huddle. Eleven, plus a pumpkin.
"Coach," Earl said. "You've got twelve."
Coach Delmar squinted. "I count eleven and a decoration."
The ball was snapped. The quarterback panicked and pitched it straight at the pumpkin. The ghost took it and went. The Mud Hens tried to tackle him and passed right through him like a screen door, landing in a heap of shoulder pads and swamp water. Somebody's mouthguard ended up in a cypress tree.
Touchdown. The ghost did a little hip shake in the end zone that the old-timers swore they'd seen before, back in the fall of '82.
Earl threw his flag. Then he stood there, because the rulebook did not have a section for this.
"Illegal participation?" the line judge offered.
"Is he participating, though?" said the back judge. "Legally, is he even here?"
Earl walked over to the pumpkin. The candle flickered. "Son, are you on the roster?"
The pumpkin turned slowly toward the scoreboard, where a faded old plaque read 1982 Homecoming — We'll Get 'Em Next Year.
Earl picked up the flag and put it in his pocket.
"Touchdown stands," he said into the mic. "Upon further review, he's been waiting forty-four years."
Cypress Hollow won 7-6. When the fog lifted after the game, the only thing left on the field was a plain old pumpkin sitting at the 50, grinning.
Happy Halloween from the RummyReports fiction desk.