Ghostwalkers by Jonathan Maberry

to be.
    But Mircalla made a sound of disgust and annoyance. She picked up the card, regarded it for a moment, and then flicked it away into the wind. The card swirled in a circle for a moment and then vanished.
    â€œNot that card,” she said.
    â€œWhy? It’s mine.”
    â€œYou need to pick a new card,” she said. “That one’s been used already.”
    â€œI don’t understand.”
    She laughed again. “Of course you don’t. Pick another card. Pick one that matters to your future.”
    â€œMy future? But the death card…”
    â€œHas already been played. Don’t you know that?” She shook her head. “No, you don’t know it. I can see it in your face. You think you only dream about the dead. You think they’re ghosts of a guilty conscience.”
    â€œThey are—”
    â€œOf course they’re not,” snapped Mircalla. “The dead follow you everywhere you go. You know it on a level too deep for your stupid mortal mind to realize, but it’s why you always move on. It’s why you’re never content to stay anywhere. It’s why you don’t have friends. Not living ones, anyway.” She paused. “It’s why you don’t love.”
    â€œI loved someone once…”
    â€œAnd she follows you, too, Greyson Torrance. Your Annabelle Sampson shambles along with the rest of them.”
    â€œNo!”
    â€œJust because you don’t see her doesn’t mean that she isn’t there.” Mircalla cocked her head to one side. “You never even look for her, do you?”
    â€œShe’s buried in Pennsylvania. I dug her grave. I was there when they spoke the words over her to send her soul to heaven.”
    Mircalla threw her head back and laughed.
    â€œHeaven? Heaven? Is that where you think the dead go? To heaven to play harps and bask in the glory of an eternal God. Oh … mortal man, you are such a fool. Like so many men I have known. Like so many men who still walk this earth. You go about with your guns and your strength and your certainty that the world is what you judge it to be, and all the time the world moves in different gears. You think you understand how the clockwork of the world operates, but you don’t. You’re like monkeys staring at a fine watch and thinking it’s magic made just for you.”
    She turned, lifted the hem of her veil and spat into the dust. For a brief moment he saw her naked flesh. Chin and cheek and lips. And he recoiled from what he saw. They were not the smooth features of a beautiful woman. What he saw was withered and cracked, mottled like the skin of some ancient mummy. Mircalla dropped the veil and turned back to him.
    â€œYou do not understand the world because you are afraid to know its truths,” she said. “Like so many men.”
    â€œYou’re not making sense,” he protested.
    â€œNo? Turn and look.” She gestured to the east and he turned with great reluctance. There, in the direction from which the cold wind blew, there were people. A mass of them, shuffling along, moving slowly. Pale faces and empty eyes.
    He knew them.
    He knew them so well. And she was there. Annabelle. With her torn dress and broken fingernails. Annabelle.
    Oh God, Annabelle.
    â€œThis is a dream,” he said.
    â€œYes,” she agreed. “This is a dream. But they are not.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThe dead follow you, Grey Torrance. They have followed you since you caused their deaths, and they will follow you until you have nowhere else to run. And then they will claim you as one of their own. That is the truth of it. It is the truth you have been running from.”
    â€œThat’s madness,” he snapped. “You’re a witch and a whore and you drugged me. You slipped something into my beer.”
    He remembered the pain in his neck and touched the spot. His fingers came away slick with fresh