Bo tried to listen to the teacher, honest he did. He just couldn’t get that nightmare out of his mind. Kira was hurt. Hurt on purpose too. When he woke up, Luke had been there all worried. He couldn’t tell him about the nightmare though. Luke always got real upset when he talked about Kira. Luke insisted that she wasn’t real. Just an imaginary friend; but why would I make up someone like her? It just wasn’t fair! Here Bo had Uncle Jesse, Aunt Lavinia, Luke, even Daisy. Kira was alone. She said that she gets moved around a lot now. Her mama went away. Not sure where. The place she stays at now is scary with scary mean people. Bo was just glad he only had to see them in the nightmares. Kira saw them all the time. How come grown-ups don’t listen? He tried telling his aunt. She cried for Kira, she did. But she didn’t do anything to help her. Bo finally learned not to tell anyone about his conversations with Kira. It only made Aunt Lavinia sad, Luke mad, and Uncle Jesse seemed to be both at the same time.

So here he was in his kindergarten class, trying to learn his ABCs. He wondered how long it will take to learn to read like Luke. That way he could read to Kira. She’d like that.




And he did too. Bo remembers struggling through ‘The Cat and the Hat’ for the first time so proud of himself. How can memories so clear be of nothing but an imaginary friend? No, not imaginary. Kira was real. Here was proof. He had a sister. But how...? Well maybe that was a question that he should have asked long ago. But he never seemed to need to. In his darkest, saddest moments, Kira had listened to him just as he had when she cried. He knew when she had run away from home and wished that he was old enough to help her. And when Luke went off and joined the Marines, well, she was there too.

Luke. The reason he had started to ignore it when he felt Kira tug at him. He stopped calling out to her, too, for their usual conversations right about the time Luke came back from the Marines. After all, at seventeen, it was time to put all things imaginary aside and grow up.

Bo stared out at the darkness around him. He couldn’t go home yet. Wasn’t ready to listen to reason and to understand the thoughts behind keeping the knowledge of his sister’s kidnapping from him. Oh, he knew Jesse did what he felt was best. He just didn’t want to hear it just now. Bo slid out of The General and walked to stretch out the tension that had built-up into his muscles. Glancing around, Bo figured that the swamp was just as good of place to rest a while until he was ready to go home. Looking up at the moon, Bo let his mind wander just enough. And just as he had done all those years ago, he let out a call that was spoken only by the heart. Bo, however, was more than just a little surprised when his call was answered.




“Now Luke, Ya done looked for hours. It’s well past dark. Ya won’t be able to see a thing if’n you go back out again. Just sit down while I warm your supper. It won’t do Bo no good if you go out half starved and get hurt cause ya’ can’t see where ya steppin. Now sit.” Jesse turned back to the stove knowing that he would be obeyed. He knew Luke was worried about Bo. Daisy was too. He practically had to order her to go on to work and to leave the searching for Bo to he and Luke. Of course Cooter had been enlisted to help too. Still, no one had spotted even one blond hair of his errant nephew.

“Uncle Jesse, I don’t care how upset Bo is! He should’ve been back hours ago. I can’t just sit here.”

“No you ain’t just gonna sit there. You’re gonna eat this here chicken stew, calm down and listen. Right now, I hate to say it but you’re probably not someone he wants to see.” Jesse saw the protest and hurt look in Luke’s eyes as he added, “Cause unlike him, your story so to speak, had a happy ending. As an adult, you’ve gotten a chance to get to know Judd. That’s something he can’t do. You have to sit back and let him grieve in his own way.”

Luke hated it when his uncle made since. He really did. Especially when it got in the way of his reaching out to where ever Bo was and hauling him home whether he wanted to come or not. So instead of going out again looking for a tall blond needle in the haystack of Hazzard, here he sat. Eating his stew without even tasting it. Eating it because he was told to. As he ate, he thought back to bits of his childhood that, only now, gave him chills. Kira was real.

Uncle Jesse explained the first time Aunt Lavinia found Bo talking to Kira. Of course Luke knew about her but the name had meant nothing to him. She was convinced that Bo was talking to the ghost of his missing sister. Especially after the nurse was finally caught when Bo was four. Kira wasn’t with her anymore. When asked about her, the woman merely said she got rid of her. Said she always was off talkin’ to thin air. Claimed that it was just her luck to pick a kid that was totally nuts. It was that lady that was nuts. The jury thought so too and sent her to a hospital for treatment instead of prison. Luke saw the anger in his uncle’s eyes when he had gotten to that part of the story when he’d told him and Daisy. Hearing it come from his uncle, he was half ready to go find that nurse himself. Not sure what he’d do if he found her though.

Luke had just finished his stew when there was a knock at the door. Jesse opened the door to find Rosco standing there with his hat in his hand. “Bo! Somethin’s happened hadn’t it. Rosco? Where’s my boy?” Luke came in after hearing Jesse’s words.

“No. Jesse. He ain’t hurt. Not physically anyway. I just saw him a while back up at Junction Road. I pulled up and found him sittin’ on the side of the road. He’s taken it pretty hard. I kinda wish he didn’t have to know.”

“Junction Road, Uncle Jesse I-” Luke had already started to grab his coat ready to go fetch his cousin.

“Now Luke, Bo ain’t there no more. When I suggested for him to come home, he took off like a windmill in a tornado. No tellin’ where he is. But at least you know he’s alright. I almost used the CB but figured it best not to let the whole county know what’s goin’ on. I’ll go out and help look for him in the mornin’; Enos too. We’ll make sure Bo gets home don’t you worry none.”

“Thank ya Rosco. For lettin’ me know you saw ‘em and for the offer to help find ‘em. I’d be lyin’ if’n I said I wasn’t a mite worried right now.”

“Well, I guess I’d better get goin’. I just wish it could’ve had a different kind of endin’. Bo’s a good kid with a good heart. I kinda hate to see it broken like I did today.” Rosco left, head held low. He felt the same way as he did when he deliver the news to Jesse and Lavinia that the woman claimed she had gotten rid of the child that been stolen from her family.

Luke stared after Rosco for a moment before closing the door behind him. Looks like all this is bringing up awful memories for the sheriff just like it was the family. Well, if his uncle won’t let him go back out tonight, he’d best go on and get some sleep so he could get an early start on the morning chores. Least wise so he could get out and find Bo at first light.




Bo stopped in his tracks. It had been years but not so long that he couldn’t remember the tug his heart felt when he and Kira had talked. Had he really been talking to a ghost? It hadn’t felt like it. But if she wasn’t imaginary, didn’t that mean she had to be a ghost?

‘Bo? What’s wrong?’

‘You really there Kira?’ Bo could feel a smile coming from his sister. His sister. Ghost or not this is his sister. Funny how that isn’t freaking him out just thinking about it.

‘Of course I am. Have I ever NOT been here when you called? What’s wrong?’ Kira paused for a second while Bo tried to figure out where to start. How do you tell your sister that she’s a ghost? ‘On second thought, where are you?’

Bo looked around at the swamp. Shouldn’t she know where I am? ‘I’m at the swamp. Off Crowler’s turn off. Why?’

‘I coming there. I’m only twenty minutes away.’

Bo knew he didn’t hear that right. As little sense as it made, Bo knew he’d stay and see just what would come his way. He went back to The General for his old coat he kept in the trunk. It was just the cool night air that had set a chill to his bones. That’s all; really.

Bo climbed up on the hood of The General. Resting on the orange stock car, leaning back on the windshield. Again, Bo fingered the envelope that he had tucked into his jacket. Life had been so much simpler when he had woke up in the old farm house in the room he shared with his cousin and best friend Luke. Was it only just this morning that he had joked with his cousin about all the relatives that would, in just a few days, come in like an invading army to the Duke farm for Thanksgiving? It just didn’t seem possible to have gone from a carefree, happy guy to the broken shell of a man he felt like now after opening a seemingly harmless envelope. Now his simple life has been replaced by one that included kidnappings, ghosts and apparently a looser hold on his own sanity than he’d always thought he had a firm hold on.

Now sitting here, listening to the sounds of the swamp around him, the emotional toll of the day finally began to set in as he felt the weight of his eyelids grow far too heavy to remain open. In a matter of moments, Bo was sound asleep in a dream filled sleep that offered little rest.

A short while latter, a dark green pick-up pulled in just behind the orange stock car with an 01 painted on the doors. The driver got out and walked up to the car. There on the hood, using the windshield as an uncomfortable pillow, lay a tall blond whose features were so familiar though she had never seen him a day in her life. Those features now were drawn in a face of discomfort. It was obvious that the young man was lost in a nightmare of some kind. Leaning over, she placed her hand on the left shoulder of the man and began to wake him from his private horror.

“Bo. Bo wake up.”

Bo heard someone say his name. He knew that voice. Great. He leaves one nightmare only to be woken up by a ghost. He wasn’t ready to wake up and face reality yet so he tried to ignore the voice and the pressure on his shoulder.

“Bo, come on. It’s too cold to stay out here all night. It’s freezing. You’ll catch your death of cold if you don’t wake up,” Death. Yep that word is really the only word that stuck in his brain. A ghost talking about HIM catching HIS death by sitting out here in the swamp. “Come on Bo, you are the one to call me, remember? Wake up… please.”

Okay, please is what did it. How could he not acknowledge his sister, ghost or not, after she asked so nicely? Bo opened his eyes not really ready to see what he found. The face that greeted him was far too familiar. He had been staring at a near carbon copy all afternoon. She looks just like Mom. The thought flitted across his mind along with a muddle of other thoughts that he really didn’t want to give a voice to. Bo sat up but didn’t say anything. He didn’t know what to say. Instead, he just stared at the image of the young woman standing beside him. She had a pale complexion (well let’s face it ghosts don’t get out in the sun that often), long red hair nearly to her waist and (though Bo couldn’t see them in the moon light) he was willing to bet that like most Dukes she had blue eyes. He had to look away. Looking at her was just too painful.

“You okay?” He looked lost. She knew of only one thing that had ever done that to him before. “Luke? Has something happened to Luke? Is he alright?”

Kira slid up on the car beside the man she had both never met before yet knew all her life just the same. If she really thought about it, she really came here to see if she was crazy. Had her imaginary friend from all those years ago really existed? She had been on her way back to Atlanta from a Motor-cross race that she had raced in when she felt herself being called like she hadn’t been in years. She had half way convinced herself that Bo was only a figment of her imagination. That the mind of a scared little girl had created him to help make reality easier to cope with. She was just outside of Hazzard, a county that had always seemed to pull her towards itself but she would stubbornly avoid. Even if it meant taking a long route to wherever she needed to go. So tonight, when she felt Bo call, she fought her own stubbornness and came to the one place she had always wanted to come yet stayed away all her life.

“Bo look at me. What’s wrong?”

Bo turned to look at Kira. ‘I thought ghosts were more transparent.’ The thought crossed his mind and traveled through their link before he could stop it.

“Ghost? You want to explain that one? Last I checked, ghost don’t drive,” Kira glance behind them at her truck as if to show Bo that she had indeed driven here and not had just appeared from thin air. Slight amusement revealed in her voice.

Bo followed her eyes and sees a dark green pick-up parked behind The General. Bo jumped off the hood and walked back to the truck. Now his mind must really be working overtime. How can he be creating so many details out of nothing? Looking in the truck’s bed, Bo even saw a motorcycle strapped down. A racer of some sorts by the looks of it. He may not know motorcycles, but he knew a racing machine when he saw one. He looked back at Kira who is still waiting for him to say something as she leaned one hip against the side of The General.

Suddenly, a realization hits Bo. She’s NOT a ghost. She was real. His sister really was here in the flesh. Bo bound over to her and wraps her in hug so tight that Kira had to shift her weight to loosen his grip just enough so that she could breathe. She wrapped her own arms around Bo’s waist to return the hug of the man who had yet to really say anything to her yet. As Bo sobbed quietly into Kira’s hair, she could only make out one phrase.

“You’re alive. You’re alive.”




Daisy was looking out at the usual Saturday night crowd here at the Boar’s Nest. Well the usual crowd minus two. The search for Bo had been called off until morning. She wondered just how Uncle Jesse had convinced Luke to stop for the night. Knowing Luke, he had fought it tooth and nail. She also knew that Luke wasn’t likely to be getting much sleep tonight. Not with Bo’s empty bed right next to his. He’ll likely be right back out looking for Bo before the sun would even think of shining. Her dark haired cousin was as protective over the rest of the family as a mama bear of her cubs. Especially of Bo. Uncle Jesse and Aunt Lavinia had always been a little bit more protective of Bo than the other two children in their care. Now she knew why. It was as if they had expected for someone to come in at any moment to snatch him away too. To take him to join his missing sister. And Luke, instead of being jealous of Bo, picked up on the underlying feeling that Bo needed extra watching and jumped in with both feet.

Those two had always been so close. Only two things had ever seemed to really put those two at REAL odds against each other. Diane Benson, no need going into all that, and when they were younger it was his imaginary friend Kira. Luke was right about Diane, but it now seems that Bo was right about Kira. She was real, just as Bo had repeatedly claimed when they were all youngens. A shiver ran down Daisy’s spine as she thought about all those hours that Bo would sit there talking with or about his sister’s ghost. A ghost. Daisy couldn’t imagine what Bo was thinking about right now. How would she handle it if they had been in each other’s places? She didn’t rightly know. Not sure she really wanted to think about it either.

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