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Walt was right, he was fucking furious.

I came here to die, Walt started. Like saying that to Hollis meant nothing.

This was his last stop. Sam was supposed to get him all the way to the end, but Sam started breaking down before Walt could do what needed to be done.

When Walt met Hollis, he thought he’d won something.

He had one last chance to do what he loved: To make someone’s life better in the place he was born and the place he would die. To shepherd someone so much like him to a future better than he deserved, then settle into the soil of Rose Town like a bad dream and fade.

In 1931, I was a mess. I... stole something I shouldn’t have, and a lot of people died.

Everyone worked at the factory in Rose Town. You had to if you weren’t a grocer or a tailor or whatever else people needed. No one ever had enough money; we didn’t own the land, so we weren’t allowed to farm it. We didn’t have houses the way you do; we had these terrible buildings like apartments, with three to four families on each floor. Children in drawers, packed like sardines. Everyone was always sick, always hungry, whatever. The fruit trees helped, but there were just too many people.

We had two crime families: the Rossis and the Callaghans. They got along better than most; they didn’t feud over territory, and smuggled in low-cost beef and booze. The Callaghans had the police, and the Rossis owned the factory. Of course, they both got a little competitive with entertainment and nightlife. A cat and mouse sort of situation that benefited mostly them and sometimes us.

If you were young and tough, you found other kinds of work. Some people did hard things. Stole, sold parts of themselves, hair, teeth. Me and Toji fought.

You fought?

Yeah. They had betting rings. I was good, but Toji was better. He’s the one who looks like Annie. Maybe a great-great-uncle or great-great-grandpa of hers or something, but they have the same face. Earnest, kind, selfish, and careful. Toji’s ears stuck out just a bit too much, just like Annie’s.

Anyway, we needed cash so we fought. Me more than him.

So, what, you fought and threw a fight? Bet against yourself or something?

No. Who has time to throw fights? If you got too thrown around, you couldn’t get up for work in the morning. Fighting’s technically illegal, so you might even earn a night in jail on top of it. No, Hollis, I didn’t throw a fight, I robbed the Rossi family.

Walt rubbed his palms into their eyes.

Only Toji knew I was going to do it, and he begged me not to. He was scared, but I was determined. I’d been to their main offices; I knew where they kept winnings. I knew the man who handled security would work a double shift and be too tired to be good at his job for one night a month, every month.

I needed cash because I wanted to leave town. No one ever left. You couldn’t because we were paid too little to be able to start over anywhere else. You have no idea how depressing it is to know that hasn’t changed.

Hollis sighed and put a hand over their heart.

I wanted to leave because I wanted to find a new place for my family to live. My pa was getting too old to support us, and they paid women practically nothing back then. If we could move to the city, maybe things would be better and I wouldn’t have to watch them waste away before my eyes.

So. I did it. I got away with it for a while. There was no such thing as security cameras, and detectives were half the men they are today. I got away with two thousand dollars, close to forty grand today, and booked it to Chicago.

I spent a week eating good food and sleeping in nice hotels, lying low, then I called my ma. She begged me to come back and said they were looking for the thief and not being too kind about it. Both families, for whatever reason.

And I was... I just.

You were a coward.

I couldn’t go back. They killed men for this, Hollis. They didn’t just throw them in prison and fine them, you died .

I cut off all contact after that call. I left my ma half, took what was left and split that in half and handed it to a banker for Toji, asked them to call him to pick it up after a year. Then I changed my name. Got a regular job at a meatpacking factory and held my breath.

But thing is, Chicago is a town of connections, and somehow they found me out. Rose Town reached its hand across so many borders and gripped the back of my collar.

I woke up one night with a barrel in my face and a serious man at the end of my bed.

Walt swallowed hard.

They drove me back to town through the night and walked me up the street. They weren’t Rossi or Callaghan, but that didn’t matter, Hollis. I was a country boy, and I didn’t understand favors and connections between crime families.

They put me back in that town, handed me right to my maker. Then I was dragged down into hell, to a room where Toji was waiting.

His face was black and blue; he was barely breathing. The way I heard it, he hadn’t said a word. People just knew we stuck together, so he was paying for my crimes.

They took a moment to give me the same treatment. Boxed my ears so hard they took to ringing and I could barely hear their questions. They wanted the money of course, but I had less than a quarter left, and there are things worse than death. I knew I was as good as gone, but I couldn’t let them get Toji’s cut, his family needed it as much as mine.

They broke my ribs and fingers and jaw, cut beneath my nails and burned me something fierce.

But, Hollis, I couldn’t die. I was so angry at being poor and hungry, at fighting for nothing but greed. At seeing Toji’s little sister’s hair getting thin and my own blood, my family get so weak from not having enough meat.

Walt looked up at the sky. The moonlight threaded through the trees, and the hollow filled with light.

When you die, there’s a moment everything goes still in the room.

There’s a door that you didn’t see before and you know that it’s where you gotta go. There’s no singing angels, no bright light. Just the door and the feeling that you’ve got an appointment, and the knowledge that if you keep standing there you’ll be late.

But I stood next to my body and ignored that door. I stared at the man holding the pistol that killed me and I hated . I hated harder than I ever had in my entire life.

Then I walked right into him.

We didn’t shake hands, didn’t make no kind of a deal, I just took him like he was mine. Like I took that money.

I took his hand and I bent it toward his own face and I shot him.

Then I walked into the man who was guarding the door. Bent his screaming body to untie Toji.

And Toji looked into my eyes and saw me .

He wasn’t afraid. Somehow, he just knew.

The body I was in was dying again, quick just like Annie, so I opened the door and found myself another. I wanted to tell Toji that I left him some money. I wanted to tell him sorry, but the bodies kept vomiting and dying too fast.

I slid into your body like putting on an old jacket, Hollis, but I’ve had practice. I’ve had time to learn how to do it right.

Back then, I tore them apart and didn’t even know I was doing it.

I knew this would end real bad, so I left Toji behind. I jumped into enough people to get to a guard and then threatened my way into my first deal. He lasted long enough for me to write out a confession implicating me and the two men they’d kept in the room with Toji. This body was even polite enough not to expire for the length of a car ride back to Chicago.

The early days were such a blur that I don’t count them in my tally of bodies. I can’t.

I was living like a beast.

After a year though, things settled and Toji got his call. I’d figured it out by then, managed to settle in a street cleaner and hung around the bank to see if Toji would come pick his money up.

When Toji walked up the street, I could tell he was different. He was dressed finer, stood taller, looked prouder. He was older, and I knew then that I wasn’t . I knew, looking at him and seeing time on his face, that I was stuck.

Toji went inside and got his money and walked out. Stopped on the curb to smoke. I didn’t even have to call him for Toji to know I was there. He just turned to me and said, “How are you holding up?”

The way he used to after work, when we finished our shifts, still covered in steel dust and aching.

“Fine,” I said. “Just fine.” But I was lying, and he knew it.

He shook his head like he was disappointed in me. Then he told me the Callaghans killed them. Killed them all.

Who?

Everyone. My ma, my pa, my sisters, my grandfather who had been living with us. They wiped them from the face of the earth and there was a new family already living in our house.

Walt was crying. Hollis pushed down his anger and rocked him.

I was an orphan in an old man’s body, in the center of a city I didn’t love. I had no one and I am no one and I should be dead and I’m too much a coward to even do that right.

All this has just been wasting time.

I just... I figured if I came back to Rose Town, I could go to that room and find that door, and if I was lucky enough it would be there waiting for me.

But now, you tell me—you told me—that there are spirits not at rest in this place that I left. Ghosts that are angry and confused and destroying anything that tries to take root there, and it’s my fault. Everything is always my fault.