Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan

Sparrow Hill Road 2010
By
Seanan McGuire
 

Let me tell you
about Rose Marshall...

Where do urban
legends really come from?  Everyone knows the one about the girl who asks for a
ride home; the one who turns out to have been dead all along.  But where did she
come from?  Who was she?  And how did she die?

Meet Rose, the girl
who crashed and burned on Sparrow Hill Road in 1945.  She was sixteen years old,
pretty as a picture, and in the wrong place at the wrong time.  A midnight drive
turned into a fight for her life—a fight that she lost.  Her story could have
ended that night, but a well-timed ride set her on another path.She's been
running down the ghostroads ever since.  A lot of people have said a lot of
things about her; she's been called everything from angel to devil, from ghost
story to myth to something more.  They whisper her name everywhere from Michigan
to Maine, from Wyoming to Washington...but no one knows what really happened
that long-ago night at the top of Sparrow Hill.

Not until now.

Welcome to the
midnight America, the one that exists parallel to the "real" world.  It's a dark
country, one where men with hooks haunt Lover's Lane and scarecrows walk on
moonlit nights.  It's the place where people go when they slip into the cracks
between light and darkness, a world of routewitches and oracles, demons and
ambulomancers.  It's the place where a man named Bobby Cross sold his soul to
live forever...and where one pretty little dead girl is racing to save her soul
and stop the killings that began on Sparrow Hill Road.  The rules are different
here, and everyone's playing for keeps.  Be careful.  Be cautious.  And listen
to the urban legends, because they may be the only things that can save you from
the man who waits at the crossroads, hunting souls to keep himself alive.

Welcome to the
ghostside.

01 - Good
Girls Go to Heaven
- Everyone on the road knows the story of the
Girl in the Diner, but how many know the truth behind it?  One man, Larry Vibber,
is about to learn exactly how the story goes as he rides with Rose Marshall down
the midnight road that runs between the layers of America.

02 - Dead
Man's Party
- When a dead man takes a diner full of living people
hostage, it's going to take a miracle to get any of them out alive...a miracle,
or someone who doesn't need to be afraid of dying.  Enter Rose Marshall, who was
looking for a cup of coffee, and found herself a heap of trouble.

03 - Tell
Laura I Love Her
- When Rose helped a racer named Tommy find his
way to the ghostroads, she never expected to have his girlfriend come seeking
vengeance.  Caught in a trap she can't break out of and accused of a crime she
didn't commit, is there a way for Rose to escape the punishment ahead of her?

04 - Building
a Mystery
- Still reeling from her brush with an amateur exorcist,
Rose Marshall has finally admitted that it's time to stop messing around and get
back on the trail of the most dangerous foe she's ever faced: the man who put
her in the grave in the first place.  Can the routewitches steer her right, or
will the Atlantic Highway claim her as its own?

05 - El Viento
del Diablo
- An accident pulls Rose into the path of Bobby Cross,
the man who killed her.  She's not ready to face him...but with the soul of an
innocent man at stake, she may not have a choice.

06 - Last
Dance with Mary Jane
- It's a rainy night at the Last Dance Diner,
and Rose Marshall has no choice but to tell a ghost story--the only ghost story
that she knows.  The story that begins in the summer of 1945, in Buckley
Township, Michigan, and ends on Sparrow Hill Road...

07 - Do You
Want to Dance
- For Rose Marshall, prom nights are holy nights, and
observing them takes precedence over everything...even her own existence.  Back
in Buckley Township and confronted by strangers who could be either friend or
foe, will she make it to the night's last dance?

08 - Dead
Man's Curve
- What started as an amusing evening has the potential
to turn deadly for everyone involved as Rose Marshall finds herself caught up
with a group of ghost-hunters stalking a very familiar urban legend...her own.

09 - Last
Train
- On the ghostroads your word is sometimes the only currency
you have. A promise comes due for Rose Marshall and it is a promise that she
must keep even though it brings her face to face with the niece who once tried
to sacrifice her to Bobby Cross.

10 - Bad Moon
Rising
- It's Halloween night, and the dead are walking the earth. 
Walking...and running for their lives.  Halloween brings with it a deadly game,
one that Rose must survive.  Because if she doesn't, it could end her afterlife
forever...

11 -
Faithfully
- True love never really dies.  As a man she once new
lies dying, Rose Marshall must ask herself how much love really endures...and is
there really such a thing as "forever" on the ghostroads?

12 - Thunder
Road
- When her oldest friend in the twilight is taken hostage by
Bobby Cross, Rose Marshall must bet everything she has.  It's a race across the
midnight side of America, winner takes all.  Has Rose learned enough to face
him?  And will it matter if she hasn't?

Good Girls Go to Heaven
A
Sparrow Hill Road
story
by
Seanan McGuire

And no one said it had to be real
But it's gotta be something you can reach out and feel now
It ain't right, it ain't fair
Castles fall in the sand and we fade in the air
And the good girls go to heaven, but the bad girls go everywhere...

-- "Good Girls Go To Heaven (Bad Girls Go Everywhere)," Jim Steinman.

Some people will tell you that there are two Americas: the bright and shining
daylight country where normal people live their lives and count their blessings,
and a second, darker place, a place where men with hooks haunt Lover's Lane and
scarecrows walk on moonlit nights. Those people are full of shit. There are a
lot more than just two Americas, because every inch of ground on this planet is
a palimpsest, scraped clean and overwritten a million times, leaving behind just
as many ghosts. Sure, that daylight America exists, and so do a thousand others
just like it, but the midnight Americas outnumber them a thousand-fold, and
people who aren't careful...people who aren't careful run the risk of slipping
into the cracks between the countries.

There's a secret language written across the length and breadth of North
America, etched out in highways and embellished in side roads. It sweeps from
Canada all the way to the tip of Mexico, telling the story too big and too old
for any living soul to understand. There just isn't time. You'd need to ride
those roads for fifty years or more, just listening, just learning, before you'd
start to have a clue. Even then, you wouldn't really know. You'd just be a
little bit less ignorant. Me, I've been running these roads since 1945, and I'm
still not sure what some of the side roads and interchanges are trying to tell
me. I do know enough to understand that every story starts in more than one
place, driving anchors into the flesh of the ghostside where stories are born,
digging in its claws and screaming for the right to live.

My story started at a desert crossroads, and at a hairpin curve at the top of
Sparrow Hill Road in Buckley Township, Michigan. The roads are still there, if
you'd care to go and find them. They'll tell you everything they know. All you
have to do is ask them the right way. More importantly, you have to
listen
the right way, and for most people, that's the hardest challenge of them all.
That's what keeps the ambulomancers and the routewitches in business--they
already know how to listen, and for most folks, it's easier to pay somebody else
than it is to take the time to learn it for themselves. Me, I've got nothing
but
time.

They have names for me all over the country. The Green Girl of Route 42. The
Woman at the Diner. The Ghost of Sparrow Hill Road. The Graveyard's Rose. The
name that I was born with--the name that I died with--is Rose. Rose Marshall.
Just one more girl who raced and lost in the shadow of Sparrow Hill Road.

***

The truck stop air has that magical twang that only comes from roadside dives
that have had time to blend into their environment, a mixture of baked asphalt,
diesel fumes, hot exhaust, and hotter exhaustion. Close to the obligatory
diner--the charmingly-named "Fork You Grill"--the smell of grease and lard-based
piecrusts joins the symphony. My fingers are cold, and the coat I’m wearing is
too thin to really warm them. I got it from a twenty-something on his way to
California to be a rock musician; he said it belonged to his little sister. From
the quality of the perfume permanently bonded to the denim, she was only his
sister if his sister was moonlighting as a prostitute. Who am I to judge? I
traded the coat for a backseat quickie, and now my hands are cold, no matter how
far I shove them into my hooker's-coat pockets, and I can taste the truck stop
air. Being dead is one of those things that really teaches you how to be glad to
be alive.

The air inside the diner is hot and dry and sweet with coffee and apple pie
and the distant ghosts of greasy breakfasts past. Half a dozen truckers sit
belly-up to the counter on stools twice the size of standard; this is a place
that stays alive on the trucker trade, and isn't above admitting it. Another
half-dozen patrons are sprinkled through the place, seated haphazardly at booths
and tables. That tells me what the deal is even before I see the hand-written
sign that reads "PLZ SEAT YOURSELF, B RIGHT WITH YOU." From the expressions of
the folks who aren't too tired to enjoy their food, the staff here cooks better
than they spell. That's for the best. Killing your customers with food poisoning
isn't a good way to stay in business very long.

There's something not-right about one of the truckers, a barrel-chested man
with a neat little goatee and the hands of an artist. Those artist's hands are
wrapped around a coffee mug, stealing heat through the porcelain like a small
child stealing cookies from the cookie jar. Most of the eyes in the diner
skitter right off me, frightened mice catching the scent of a cat, but not him.
He doesn't look at me for long, but when he does, he sees me. That, even more
than the scent of ash and lilies that lingers in the air around him, tells me
that he's the one I've come here for; he's the one that called me, made me give
up a perfectly good ride westward to come to this middle-of-nowhere dive with
nothing but the coat on my back and the frostbite in my fingers. I know him, or
at least, I know his kind. He's in the process of sliding into the space between
two Americas, this one, where the air tastes like apples and the jukebox plays
Top 50 country hits, and a quieter, colder America, one where the kisses pretty
girls sometimes give never taste of anything but empty rooms and broken
promises. He's falling into my America, and there's not a damn thing to be done
about it--that's not the sort of trip that you recover from.

The record on the jukebox changes as I walk toward the counter. Blue Oyster
Cult, "Don't Fear the Reaper."

I hate it when the inanimate pretends to have a sense of humor.

***

He looks up when I sit down, flicker of interest in eyes the color of
sun-faded denim. The blue-eyed boys have always been my weakness. I meet that
brief look with a smile that's more sincere than I intended, flash of white
teeth between candy-apple-red lips. It's hard, dressing for the truck stop
circuit. Can't be too wholesome or they're afraid to even talk to you, too much
chance that you're some sort of lure set out by the local cops. Sandra Dee
doesn't play with the long-haul boys. Neither does her evil twin--going too far
the other way makes you look like you're just another lot lizard, not worth the
cost of conversation. So here I am in flannel shirt under denim jacket over
too-tight wife-beater tank top, faded jeans worn as thin as paper, hiking boots,
and makeup that would verge on slutty if it wasn't so inexpertly applied. I know
my audience. I've had a lot of time to study it.

"Hi," I say, questioning lilt blurring the remnants of my accent, blotting
out the route signs leading to my origins. "I'm Rose. Do you, um, come here
often?"