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I kept my voice steady by pure force of will. “Caroline, they’re here. ”
I know.
The door burst open in a bent, awkward 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.
I rose from the bed and moved myself as close to the far wall as I could. I positioned myself beside the window and wondered what it would feel like to fall those stories to the ground. It was only a few. People survived worse all the time.
The other blank, wheezing dead things poured into the room after Julene, but they held back in accordance with her wishes. She was the only one who was still angry, and the only one who remembered.
Caroline? I knew it must be an echo of her real voice, but it sounded pure and weirdly sweet. Friendly, even. Caroline, there you are. Still here, after all this time. I thought they sent you away.
The ghost, still seated on the bed, did not answer. I responded on her behalf, since it wasn’t like they didn’t know I was there.
“She came back. She lived and died here. Now she stays here. ”
How did you die here, Caroline? It wasn’t another fire, was it?
She shook her head, no.
How did you die here, Caroline? It wasn’t a bloody murder, was it?
She shook her head again, no.
How did you die here, Caroline? Was it sickness or an accident?
You know it wasn’t. I did it myself. She turned her arms wrist-up, and I saw the long slashes that scarred her remembered skin. It was a mistake, Julene.
You should’ve followed me. You knew where we were. You knew where they put us. And you didn’t even tell our families where to get us, so they could bury us right. Instead, some of us washed up on the other side and lay there in the mud.
It was a mistake.
“What do you want her to do?” I asked the small, furious girl with the chain clinking from her wrist. “What should she say to make up for it? She’s dead, Julene. You can’t kill her. You can’t take anything away from her. Look what you’ve done—look at all these people you’ve hurt to get here. ”
It was a mistake, Caroline repeated. I’m so sorry. I never did get to tell you that.
“And after Caroline, then what? Then what will you do—where will you go? Will it end here, or will you walk out into the sun and let the police blow you to smithereens with a grenade launcher?”
I might as well not have been there. Neither of them looked at me or responded to me, and the horde at the back of the room was sagging as the girl’s attention to them waned. It was possible that through those things was the easiest way out. So long as she ignored me. So long as they all ignored me.
But I couldn’t leave yet—I needed to see. I needed to know.
Even again, after they found us where we washed up on the other side of the river, no one cared. They buried us again. They hid us again, and left us.
Caroline did not stand, but she turned on the bed so that she faced her childhood friend; while seated, she was at eye level with the girl. I was selfish. I didn’t want things to change. But they always do. Everything changes but
us. How long will you be angry with me? What should I do?
Julene looked confused, as I’d expected. There was no magic formula. Nothing for her to take, or give.
“You could go together,” I blurted out. “You could leave together, to wherever it is that neither of you went back to. Your quarrel can’t be resolved here, or now. You’ll have to take it somewhere else. You have no ground to meet on here. You can only stare back and forth and toss your accusations and apologies around. For God’s sake, you two. Leave. Leave together. And let them go, too. ” I gestured at the things waiting patiently by the door and beside the bed.
They’re already gone, Julene told me. I’m all that’s left, and I move them. They are my dolls.
“Then put them down. Put them down and go. ”
