I thought I was driving to my late wife’s mountain house to finally let her go. Instead, I found two abandoned twin girls standing barefoot on the porch, clutching stale bread like it was the last thing keeping them alive. Minutes later, one of them whispered my wife’s name… and led me toward a hidden trail only Olivia had ever known.

It was Olivia’s scent. The perfume she wore every single day.

The man stumbled backward, his eyes widening as the wind ripped the cap right off his head. “What… what is that?” he muttered, looking genuinely spooked for the first time.

From the darkness of the trail, a pale, white shape seemed to shift. It wasn’t a person. It was a mist, a heavy, swirling fog that moved with an unnatural purpose, pouring down the path like a river of white smoke.

“Get out,” I whispered, though I wasn’t sure if I was speaking to the man or to the memory of my wife.

The man looked from the swirling mist to me, his chest heaving with sudden panic. The iron bar trembled in his hand. Whatever he saw in the depths of that trail, it wasn’t something he could fight with a piece of metal. With a cursed muttered under his breath, he turned and sprinted away, not down the trail, but down the main gravel driveway, disappearing into the dark mountain night.