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Twinkling stars in the distance, twinkling stars coming closer.  Shine bright shine strong shine everlasting.  Twinkle, twinkle little star.  The stars swirl and move, migrate and blur soon they are everywhere at once making the world around very, very bright.  Then they stop, but there are no more twinkling stars in the sky—there is no more blur and no more light.  It is all dark.

A shadow, within a shadow—fear.  Fear of what?  The unknown, the unseen, the darkness, the shadow itself—what could create a shadow where there is nothing?  Jessie looked up, it was hard to focus on something so huge and vast and metallic.  But there it was, some sort of floating mammoth.  A ship, a ship in space.  But this spaceship didn’t seem to be working, everything about it was dark—huge holes filled it sides and scraps hovered around the beast like it spit them out but they were unable to fly far.

A derelict ship, some forgotten mammoth lost in the void between worlds.  The beast was very blocky in its build and could be miles long, its actual length unseen.  The abandoned craft had heavy weapons mounted on its shell, some as large as half a dozen people stacked on top of each other.  Its surface wasn’t smooth, it had indents and protrusions at random, boxes of metal welded on the outside, and exterior pipes covering its exterior. 

The massive grave seemed to have no color to it except the dull gray years of exposure to harsh environments must have given it—ripping any shred of joy and happiness off the creature years ago.  The ship rolled slowly in space, a perpetual spin it must have gotten right before it finally died.  A side with writing appeared.  It was in a strange language, but somehow she could read it.  The symbols turned and twisted with the abandoned deathtrap transforming into words she could recognize, “Celeste One”.

Celeste One, though destroyed and floating through space, didn’t feel empty at all.  Its abandoned insides were filled with thousands of souls—maybe the minds of those slaughtered on the vessel, maybe something else.  But she couldn’t see inside to be sure, the massive wreck had no windows, not even at its front.  But it was teaming with life-force, none of which could escape the grasps of the metal. 

Celeste One continued its roll, finally showing its bottom.  Everything was missing—almost as if the ship had its bottom sliced off like a slice of cheese.  The entire inside of the vessel was visible from its neat cut, parts of rooms and halls of varying sizes.  These rooms and halls had white apparitions walking through them as if the ship’s crew was continuing on its daily activities.  These ghosts were everywhere, some sleeping some moving through the halls; others were sitting in the maimed bridge of the ship, as if they were still flying the wreck. 

These ghosts communicated with each other, ate their ghostly food together and pretended to run Celeste One.  The hundreds of white ants moved around the ship as if its insides haven’t been exposed to the ailments for what could be decades. The moment the exposed part of the ship was completely pointing at her all the ghosts stopped.  Their heads all slowly twisted up and their separate existences began to merge and fuse together, trying to reach out into space. 

The human-like appearances they had before transformed into a generic blob then into five lines as they reached closer and closer to her.  Jessie tried to get away; she tried to swim though the nothingness to escape the fingers.  The ghosts had merged themselves into a massive hand that was trying to reach out and snatch her out of the sky.

As she struggled against the frictionless space her eyes rolled down over her body, she wasn’t in one of her dresses, she couldn’t see her legs. In fact, she didn’t even look like herself.  She had a heavy black coat on and large boots.  Her legs were long as if she was fully grown and she felt heavy.  Suddenly she could feel her hair standing up on her head and a trench coat lightly tugging at her body.  She moved her hands in front of her to see not her hands, but someone else’s.  A filthy gagged metal claw had replaced one of her fingers.  She realized she wasn’t really even her.  This wasn’t her place, this wasn’t her body.  This was Sean.

She felt something warp around her stomach from behind her and pull her just as the massive ghost hand was nearly completely around her.  The lifeline from behind her yanked hard, forcing all the air out of her stomach and pulling her back at incredible speeds, far enough away the massive hand coming out of the ship looked like a small spot in the distance that could never reach her.

But that small dot wasn’t alone.  It wasn’t the only ghastly hand reaching out from the darkness.  Oh no, there were hundreds, thousands, all spread across a thin line as far as the eye could see in either direction.  This thin line of derelict ships went on forever, and ships of every make and design of every shape and size filled its depths. 

Some of these ships were small and preemptive, others appeared advanced and massive—a few could be the size of small planets, arcs of life sent off dying worlds to never get a chance to see a new sun.  She couldn’t believe it, was this place real—were those people real? So much death, so much destruction.  Is this what space exploration looks like?  Is this why alien crafts have never visited Earth before? 

What is this place, what happened here—was it a war?  A war bigger than any a planet could imagine?  How many have died here, how many suffered?  And what where the white beings that filled the ships—echoes of the innocents slaughtered in the wake?  But what kind of war in space would make this perfect line—why would massive spaceships line up like traffic on a highway and rot.  What was this graveyard?

The hands continued to draw closer to her, even with her distance.  As the arms grew longer more of the white mist filled the space in front of her, soon foreheads and eyes started to come out, faces of white smoke hundreds of miles wide.

No. It can’t be, there was a word, no a phrase or name she heard once, it was something she heard spat out of a boy’s mouth as he had her defenseless against a wall—the only person she felt could have defeated her in battle as if she was a rag doll.  What did he say, what did he mention?  It was in an office, the President of the United States, his office, back before she killed him.  Back before she was Jessie.  Back when people knew her as Lilly.  It was something to do with how they looked.

Yes, she knew what this was—she knew exactly what this was… The Ghost Fleet.  The dead ships turned, all of them, the entire line as far as the eye can see, and started moving towards her.  No engines sparked, no sound was heard and she knew she wasn’t moving closer—they all just floated towards her, their massive hands trying to grab her. 

What was holding her back? What kept her from that fleet?  She tried to see what had her by the stomach but couldn’t pull her clothing away enough; whatever pulled her back was under her coat. Failing to twist her head she tried to spin her entire body and was able to get herself to budge.  Behind her was a massive gray blocky structure, it was very close and its gray walls seemed to go forever in every direction, but there was one thing she could see—the massive metal wall was still very well alive, completely intact, and a huge mural painted on its side.

The painting was that of a girl, her face was pale and bland and her expression blank, her teeth were hidden behind her small rosy lips and her eyes were wide open and a solid black.  She had brown hair and looked as if she was forever judging all those who dared look upon this ship.  Her, that was a picture of her.  What was a picture of Jessie doing on a spaceship in Sean’s dream?  Above and below the portrait was transcribed, “Ghost Wrecker.  Planet Breaker. The Earl of Earth.  REDE CONFESSOR.

Jessie took in a massive breath.

“I showed you.” A voice echoed. 

She looked around, she wasn’t in that terrifying place anymore, she wasn’t watching those ghosts move in on her and the hands reaching for her throat.  She was somewhere else.  It was dark and she was covered, she could feel wool over her body and a soft surface under her.

“You finally slept, you finally rested as you and not something lost.  You’re finally back.” The voice spoke again.

There was a roof, there was a light with black spots on it, she turned and saw a chair, the other direction was two bodies, one laying in its own blood and the other up against the wall its heard nearly severed off.  “What happened?” Jessie questioned, slowly pulling the blankets part-way off her body.

“I showed you where I was, were I’ve always been since you sent me away.  I showed you where I am—right now, but where I could never be.”

She turned to the voice, Sean was sitting on the side of the bed with his head over hers—she could see through him right now, but when he fully came back she took a good look into his eyes.  There she saw the white hands, hundreds of them, reaching out at her.  He blinked and the image changed, the faces were out now and the REDE Confessor seemed to be turning with the hands bent towards the Confessor’s changed course.  The hands were still reaching those faces still looking, he turned away.

Then Jessie knew her calling.  She knew what she had to do.  She remembered that thing she wanted.  She looked up into his eyes, “Do you know which way?”

He looked at the nearly decapitated body next to the one she fed off of; that man probably wasn’t fully under her command when she went blank—he probably came to consciousness and started to make a scene.  Jessie was numb to the gore now and didn’t even give that body a glance, it hardly even bothered her—she’s been surrounded by it for far too long.  Sean turned back to her, after his moment of thought, “Yes.”