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Same as you want Why

"Jesus, I do not understand this"

Caroline ca out thethrough the gossa She wasn’t gazing at anything in particular that I could see, not peering down to the streets belohere the dead things crept towards us, only avoidable and not at all stoppable

It was a ain

My sister didn’t really go to marry the newspaper o there, to the church I didn’t know Julene was there

"Julene?" Ah, a name for the small zombie queen "She wasn’t your sister, was she?"

No Her mother worked in the laundry Not "seeirls, but there weren’t too many then, not here

She sounded positively lucid, and it unnerved et this straight--your sister, was she older than you?"

Caroline nodded, not turning away froh it was, almost made her more rounded, more solid, when it hit her face More real

"And you were jealous, or angry, so you told so to marry the newspaper ationalist?" I let the title die in my mouth I didn’t need to say it, she knew it already And the only thing we knew about the old newspaper was that it ned by a black fa footsteps neared

"You were lying, but someone took you seriously And it was someone with connections to the Klan"

Everyone had connections to them back then I shouldn’t have said it It was a mistake Sister wasn’t even there She was on the riverboat with a boyfriend she kept secret And all that time, I’d wished he was mine

And I heard it, in a flash--I saw it, with a flicker Caroline, flesh and blood and maybe twelve years old, all knobbed knees and folded arms "She keeps it secret because she doesn’t want Daddy to know It would make him crazy to know You knoho it is? That newspaperto irls, a door closed quiet, like so the people in the room to know that they’d been heard

It was aourselves then Both of us running out of things to say, but the dead things were still co to slow theic, I think--the kind that says, "If I understand how this works, I can fix it"

But the rew

"What does she want, then, Caroline? Revenge? She can’t very well kill you, if that’s what she wants"

I thought, though, of that moment of contact Julene had er--her hatred Driven like an infuriated child, and I i she’d find would satisfy her Just as a child will screa that when she receives it she doesn’t want it anymore--that’s what this would be like

And I heard a scratching at the door

Caroline backed away from theto sit on the bed The door would hold a uess you could apologize" It was a pitiful excuse for a suggestion, but she didn’t mind it

That won’t work, will it?

"It’s worth a try, don’t you think? You don’t want her to burn this place down around you, do you?" Or around any of the handful of people still here, either, I thought She probably didn’t give a damn who else joined her, but she probably wanted the hotel left standing

Where would I go?

"I don’t know," I shook my head "I don’t knohat happens The only dead people I ever see are the ones like you, who stuck around for some reason Those who leave don’t ever come back to talk about it; not that I know of, anyway"

I’, which turned to beating, and to the disgruntled squeals of hinges being strained to their breaking point I looked at theand thought of the ledge; I wondered if it’d be worth my trouble to try it

I kept my voice steady by pure force of will "Caroline, they’re here"

I know

The door burst open in a bent, aard break where the wood gave out before the hinges and the deadbolt

Julene came first

She ducked her head beneath the battered door and entered the room deliberately, carefully, with one foot firm in front of the next There was a thickly-rusted chain on her right wrist, looped there but pried apart and left to hang Her eyes were still that awful boiled yellow