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There’s one difference between reality and the spirit world.

In reality, I think there is a spirit world.

In the spirit world, I know it exists, for it becomes my reality.

~ Jesse Beckett

Jesse

Three months post-apocalypse

I chased the unthinkable, running mindless in my pursuit. Dry leaves crunched beneath my leather boots, and branches tore at my arms. My bow and quiver swung against my back. The tomahawk's handle warmed my palm. My legs heated with exertion, propelling me forward with urgency, following the invisible tracks of a dead child.

Fear of failure spurred me faster, harder. I couldn’t fail. Couldn’t fail her. Drawing in a silent breath, I squinted through the dark hush of the forest.

The silhouettes of skeletal trunks haunted the landscape, threatening trespassers from going deeper. Vines crawled all over the damned place, covered in a thick mist. Where did she go? I couldn’t see shit.

Hell, why had she approached me in the first place? Why did I believe her…believe in her? Things like ghosts and human-turned-insects belonged in folklore. Fucking bedtime stories. The outbreak had really fucked the boundaries between reality and nightmares.

As I slid down a mossy embankment, her melodious giggle tiptoed across my skin, pebbling goosebumps in its wake. The echo retreated to the black sky and the dense foliage, awakening an unexplainable yet familiar feeling in my chest. I held that feeling responsible for why I was there, deep in the Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia, my entire being aching in anticipation of our next conversation.

I couldn’t abandon her. Not now. I needed this untarnished, mystical connection with another being. Loss and love, purpose and potential, all concentrated in an ethereal realm of what if? She was the only connection I had to a promise beyond this miserable life.

Twenty yards away, an unnatural gathering of vapor shifted the fog, dissipating and solidifying into the moonlit shape of the little girl I’d pursued for three long months. Golden hair levitated around her tiny shoulders, every inch of her transparent…yet not.

“Jesse!” She waved, smiling and swinging the hem of her dress, as if she weren’t haunting a world where children no longer existed.

Now that I captured her attention, I locked down the urge to run toward her, afraid she’d vanish like so many times before. “Annie, can we talk for a minute?”

She shook her head, smile faltering, and dug the toe of her red-buckled shoe in the soil. The dirt didn’t move. The silence was deafening. I’d cleared the woods of snarling threats. It was just her and me and this game she played, the rules created by her. The power to end it lay in her unearthly hands. Please, don’t end it.

She was the first ghost I’d ever seen. The elders told stories of such things, but I never believed. Then she appeared.

The first time was the day after the outbreak. The day she died. Her diaphanous form had hovered on the balcony of my Paris hotel room. Once I’d finally recovered from the shock, she told me her name was Annie, speaking in a soundless voice, words I could feel but didn’t understand. Find your people. Follow my brother. Protect my mother.

During the first few weeks of the outbreak, a shocking ninety percent of humanity, billions, perished or mutated. No children survived. No women. But there was something about her that made me believe. Not just her unearthliness. Something about her determination dialed me in, filling my chest with purpose. What that purpose was I didn’t know. It was powerful enough, however, to guide me across the Atlantic Ocean, around the husks of U.S. cities, and now through the dangerous shadows of the forest.

My heart raced for answers as my mind tried to link her intentions to the death and misery that closed in around me, day after day. The imminent extinction of mankind. Concepts she seemed oblivious to.

Movement stirred in the nearby bramble, only feet from Annie. Leaf litter rustled, cautiously, quietly, then silenced with frozen steps. Too smart to be a forest critter. Too controlled to be a mutated monster. Human?

My heart rate elevated, every muscle in my body on high alert as I tightened my fingers around the handle of the tomahawk. The only humans in these mountains were my three Lakota brethren, and they knew better than to sneak up on me.

Annie’s silhouette flickered, her hands waving around her grinning face, not a hint of surprise in her eyes as they locked on the location of the unknown intruder. She didn’t appear worried. Were she and the stranger linked in some way?

Soundlessly, I evened my breathing and lowered in a crouch, waiting, despite the urgent thump in my chest.

The thing was, I’d found my people, the last of the Lakota, just like she foretold. I led them from North Dakota to West Virginia, following another ghost—her brother, Aaron—just like she foretold. But her final prediction was my greatest ache.