Sometimes the worst possible thing happens.

He leaves.

She dies.

They won't.

It ends.

And all the light disappears and the temperature drops and as you shiver,

you wish it hadn't ended like this.

This is a story about what happens in the darkness,

in the gaping chasm that follows what was,

the unwelcome abyss that supplants what should have been.

It's a story about loss and about the dashing of dreams.

And it's a story about bad endings that may not be endings at all.

I'm Justin Gerhardt.

Welcome to Holy Ghost Stories.

I'm Justin Gerhard. Their whole life is strapped to these donkeys.

Their whole life is strapped to these donkeys.

Every gust of thirsty wind blows a bit more topsoil away.

In the fields, the meager excuses for crops bake in the sun, brittle and inedible.

Naomi squints past the edge of Bethlehem into the horizon, pray for rain.

Her clavicle pushes against the skin below her neck, her humorous, visible in the curve of her shoulder, as if her bones are trying to escape

and strike out on her own in search of food.

We must escape this barren place.

...