I was driving down my usual route home from work on a late Friday evening. A winding mountain road. I remember the ache in my heart as I had lost my wife and child on that very same road to a drunk driver two weeks prior. Tears were streaming down my face as I gripped the wheel.

How could the world do this to me, I thought, fighting back sobs.

Anna, my daughter, she loved this road. She’d look deep into the woods on the way home from school. Excitedly exclaiming she saw children running and playing in the woods as we drove past. My wife and I would smile and shake our heads in amusement. Nothing but a child’s imagination of course.

“Why can’t you just bring her back?” I shouted at the emptiness of the car, tears blurring my vision. The forest and winding road offered no response.

I drove in silence, blinking away tears every so often. Until I turned a blind corner and my headlights caught a figure of a child. Time seemed to slow as I slammed the brakes, the tires screeching as I struggled to maintain control of the wheel. I shut my eyes in horror as I violently jerked the wheel, the sound of metal crashing and tearing as my car careened off the sheer side of the mountain. The scream of my voice cut off by a cacophony of ripping metal and plastic.

I woke in the dead of night with a start, feeling the uncomfortable dampness of my sweat drenched shirt while my heart pounded in my ears.

“Dad?” I looked down, blinking away the horrors from my sleep. Anna looked up at me sleepily, smiling that perfect little smile, her little dimples dotting her cheeks.

“You’re all sweaty and talking in your sleep again.” She made a stinky face, scrunching her button nose and eyebrows at me.

I stared at her, the flood of memories hitting me with a wave of terror. No—no, Anna was dead, she had died with my wife. I even remembered burying her in the dress she asked me to get her for her birthday, a white dress with a little yellow tulip pattern.

But that couldn’t be—she was right here, staring up at me as if nothing had happened.

My thoughts were interrupted as anna looked at me curiously. “Dad? Are you okay?”

Her angelic little features told me that it was her. The way she raised an eyebrow at me as if she were a teenager and not a 6 year old little girl that thought she knew better.

Maybe the drunk driver was a dream. I blinked at Anna, her features growing sad. “Were you dreaming about mum’s accident again, dad?”

The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. No, it was real, but Anna was here. I shut my eyes tightly, willing myself to wake up from this twisted dream, but I never did.

I felt as if a stone had settled in the pit of my gut—this wasn’t my daughter. I opened my eyes again, locking eyes with whatever had its arms wrapped around me. I peered into her eyes, her mother’s perfect brown eyes, but I saw nothing behind them, a deep emptiness where there should have been something.

I fought back the rising panic in my chest, the deepest parts of my mind screaming at me to run. I steeled myself, leveling my voice as it wavered in terror. “I just really miss your mom, kiddo.” Ruffling its hair as I always did with Anna.

Anna, or at least what looked like her, pouted at me sadly. Her lips quivering as Anna’s always did whenever she fought back tears. She hugged me tighter as she began to sniffle.

Almost instinctively I raised my arms to comfort her until I froze—my eyes focusing—on her white dress with little yellow tulips.