I have been running for thirteen nights. When the sun goes down, I run, and I cannot stop until dawn. If I do, someone else pays the price.

I will not last much longer. In the beginning, I could hide for an hour here and there and catch my breath. He no longer allows that. I am lucky if I can slow to a walk before he catches up and says “Run.”

For the first time in my life, I find myself wishing I had not been raised in comfort as a solicitor’s daughter. If I were a farmhand or a housemaid, perhaps I would have built the endurance for this. I have not. I am weak, and the only question now is which will break first—my body or my mind.

To run all night requires not only strength but the food and rest to maintain that strength. I had no time to empty my hidden money box before I took flight. No time to grab the jewels I inherited from my mother. I fled with only the handful of coins I kept for thanking delivery boys and messengers.

The money is long gone, and I must rely on the kindness of strangers who take pity on a young woman in a bedraggled dress and wild hair, her cheeks already growing gaunt.

Those who do take pity are those who barely have enough to share. They know want and desperation and fear. Like this small family who insisted I join their camp and share their evening meal. The mother is already wizened, though she cannot be more than forty, her sons both being younger than me. They are traveling in their mule-drawn cart, and when they passed me dozing under a tree, the woman insisted I join them.

There is danger in accepting kindness, but I have found the trick of it. As long as I am gone before the sun disappears, they are in no danger. As I eat, though, I grow weary, every muscle crying out for more rest.

We are in a grassy field where they will spend the night, with their cart and mule and elderly dog. The two young men have lit a fire for cooking and warmth on a dreary autumn day. The flames mesmerize me, sparks dancing into the air, and I find myself drawing closer. Soon, though, the sun starts toward the horizon.

“I really must be going,” I say as I try pushing to my feet.

The woman lays a hand on my knee. “It is still early. My boys have not yet played for you.” She waves to them. “The young lady would like some music.”

“N-no,” I stammer, stumbling over the word, my tongue thick. “I really must go before dusk.”

She waves at the sky. “The sun has barely begun to drop.” She passes me a fresh-picked apple. “Eat and let my sons play for you.”

The young men have a fiddle and a set of pipes, and they play so beautifully, I could weep, at the music and the kindness. My mind slides back to our home only a few years ago, my mother holding one of her music salons, my father grumbling about the noise but staying close enough to listen as he worked, my younger sister dancing in the middle of the room as I smiled and flirted with the handsome pianist.

Gone now.

My parents. My sister. Even the handsome pianist who had kissed me behind the house.

I do not know how I drift off to sleep. I am so careful. I must be, for the sake of those who have given me shelter. When I startle awake, the music is gone and I am covered in a blanket, firelight dancing in the darkness. I try to leap up, but my limbs feel leaden.

“Shh,” the woman says. “I gave you something to help you sleep.”

I bolt up, my heart hammering.

She catches my arm. “There is no danger here. My sons are good boys, and they would never touch you. I’m only giving you the rest you so sorely need.”

My chin jerks up as I stare into the sky, only barely shot through with the last rays of daylight.

“N-no, you do not understand,” I say. “I must go. Now.”

“In the morning, if you insist on leaving, I will see you off with a bucket of food.”

“No. I must go now. He will find me.”

Her gray eyes shadow with pain. “A man. That’s what you flee. Of course it is.”

“I need to go. Now.” I try to scramble up, but I am so groggy that her grip shackles me. “Please.”

“Boys?” she calls. “Get your pistols. This girl is being pursued by a man. If he comes tonight, he’ll regret it.”

As the two young men solemnly pull pistols from their packs, I want to laugh wildly. Guns? Guns will not help them.

“Just let me leave,” I say. “Please. I will be fine.”

“What did he do to you?”

I convulse at the words, and her face goes rigid.

“You don’t need to tell me,” she says. “I know what he did.”

“It was not—” I swallow the words. There is no time to explain. No point either. “Please, I need to leave.”

“He pursues you even after he hurt you,” she says. “He must be stopped.”

“He pursues me because of what I did to him.”

“You fought back.”

“No, I killed him.”

One of her sons inhales sharply.

The woman’s face crumples. “You think his ghost pursues you? You poor, poor child.”

“It does. You do not have to believe me. Just let me go before—”

The dog starts to bark. It is a mangy creature with yellowing fangs and soft eyes, and I had fed it scraps of my dinner earlier. Now it whips into a frenzy, yanking against its chain and nearly pulling the cart along with it.

The woman shouts at one of her sons to control the beast, and I use her distraction to wrench from her grip and push to my feet, only to have her grab my ankle. In my groggy state, my legs tangle with my ragged skirts, and she lets out a cry of alarm as I fall.

“Run,” the voice says.

I scramble around to see him bearing down on us. In life, he was not tall, but in death, he towers over the boys as he stalks toward us, his face twisted with a malicious glee that makes me want to howl with rage.

“Run!” he commands.

I try to rise, but the woman has my hand again, gripping it tight and whatever she gave me steals my strength and fogs my mind.

“There is nothing there,” she says to me, her voice low and soothing. “My cousin suffered as you do, and I know it is not your fault. There is medicine—”

“Run!” he roars.

“I cannot!” I shout back.

He grabs the younger son, a boy of no more than sixteen.

I let out a scream. The woman still does not release me, as she stares at what must seem like her son rising from the ground, struggling and waving his gun, not knowing what to aim it at.

I claw and kick the woman, frantic to get free before—

He rips open the boy’s throat with his bare hands. Blood spurts. The woman screams, and I would say it was like no scream I have ever heard, but that would be a lie.

She screams like I did when he killed my sister.

The woman releases me then, and I stagger and stumble away.

“I am running!” I shout.

His laugh rings out, clanging through my head. Then he gives chase.