Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan (19 page)

"Sure, honey, sure." He hesitated, finally stroking the back of the jacket as
soothingly as he could. It was his coat; if he wanted to get it greasy, he
could. "I've got the tire back on. We can go anywhere you want. We can even head
for the prom, if that's what you want to do."

"No. Not the prom." Rose pulled away, wiping at her eyes with the back of her
hand. "Let's just drive, Gary. Can we do that tonight? Can we just drive?"

Gary Daniels looked into her eyes, and realized two things all the way down
into the bottom of his heart. He would go anywhere this girl asked him to...and
he loved her. He wasn't halfway there. He loved her.

"Sure, Rose," he said, and smiled. "Anywhere you want to go."

***

They stopped at a service station, where he washed the grease from his hands
and filled the tank to the very top with gas. Enough to go just about anywhere,
especially for two kids with nowhere else to be. They were together, and it was
a beautiful night, and that was enough. That was enough for the both of them.

It was one of those nights that every summer should have, especially for a
girl who's just sixteen and very much in love. The roads were clear, and every
star in the sky was shining just for them. He kissed her down by the old river
bridge, and she let him. She kissed him behind the drive-in theater, where the
flickering light from the soundless screens turned the sidewalk into something
just this side of a dance floor. It was perfect. That was how Gary would
describe it later, when people called him crazy. "Perfect," he'd say, and look
away. Sometimes, if they pressed, he'd add four more words--four more words that
silenced everyone who heard them.

"It was worth it."

Only two things tainted the perfection of that night. The first was the sleek
black car that followed them, once, twice, three times, tracking them for a few
miles and then sliding into the shadows. Rose wouldn't get out when that car was
there. She clung to Gary's hand, staring out the windshield, and refused to let
him go and start a scene. "Just drive," she said, all three times, and because
he loved her, and because the night was perfect, Gary did.

The second was a commotion on Sparrow Hill Road. They saw it when they drove
past; what looked like every police car and firetruck in the county, all
flashing their lights and lighting up that hill like a beacon.

Gary slowed, squinting up at the center of the fuss. "What do you think
happened up there?"

"I don't know," said Rose, who was becoming slowly, dreadfully afraid that
she did know; that she knew all too well. "Let's not bother them, okay? I bet
they're pretty busy."

"Yeah, okay," said Gary, and kept on driving.

They drove the night away, measuring it in kisses and parking places, miles
and moments. The sky was getting light when Gary pulled up in front of her
house, stopped the car, and got out to walk around and open the passenger-side
door.

"Thank you for bringing me home," said Rose, and smiled--a sweet,
heartbreaking smile, the sweetest he'd ever seen from her. She ducked her head
forward, pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth, and whispered, "I love you,
Gary Daniels. Always remember that."

Then she was gone, heading up the narrow pathway toward the door. Gary stared
after her, one hand going to touch the place where she'd kissed him. He closed
his eyes, reliving the moment for just a few seconds more.

When he opened them again, Rose was gone...and when he got home, the police
were there, waiting to tell him what had happened.

Waiting to tell him what happened on Sparrow Hill Road.

***

"Wait--I know this one," says one of the cheerleaders, breaking the trance I
was close to falling into. "Doesn't he go back to her house to be all, dude,
what the hell, and then there's his coat, folded on her pillow?"

"I thought it was on her tombstone," says another cheerleader.

"She doesn't
have
a tombstone, dummy, she, like, just died the night
before. So it has to be on her bed." The cheerleaders look to me, waiting for me
to answer them, to choose a winner in this strange little contest.

Most of me is still on a hot summer night in Michigan, Gary's arms around me
and the truth of my own death still something I can deny. "I don't know," I say,
simply. "That isn't part of the story. Rose walked back up the pathway wearing
his coat, and somewhere between the car and the door, she was just...gone. She
was gone for a long time after that. But eventually, people started seeing her
again. Standing on Sparrow Hill Road. Looking for a ride home." It took me years
to learn that I didn't have to make that loop over and over again, that I could
go elsewhere if I wanted to. Hitchers are only bound by geography when they want
to be. And all I ever wanted was to get out of Buckley.

"That's not much of a story," says a cheerleader, dubiously.

"It's the only one I have."

"It would be better if, like, the man who ran Rose off the road sold his soul
at the crossroads so he could live forever," says yet another cheerleader. The
others murmur agreement. "Only he didn't catch her ghost before she woke up and
caught a ride, because he was still pretty new at the harvesting business, and
she got lucky. If her boyfriend hadn't been there, and she hadn't been so in
love with him that she manifested, that driver would have had her."

I feel myself go cold. Not the crushing chill of the ghostroads, but the
simple, freezing cold of terror. "That...might be a good story," I force myself
to say.

"Yeah, only because he didn't get her, she's stuck," says the first
cheerleader, jubilantly. "'Cause she can't make herself move on while that guy's
still out there, killing people and feeding them into his car."

"She's still out there. Hitching around the country, looking for a way to
stop him."

"Maybe she's finally found it. But she's not sure yet. She's still scared."

"Poor little ghost."

"Doomed to walk the Earth as a restless shade, hunting for Bobby Cross."

All the cheerleaders are looking at me now, gazes calm and interested, like
I'm a cat toy--the best one they've had in a long time. The lightning flashes
outside, and for a moment, the shadows they throw against the walls have winged
helmets instead of artfully-tousled hair, hold spears instead of ice cream
spoons. The shadows fade, and they're cheerleaders again, just looking at me,
waiting.

"But Gary--poor Gary--he has to be pretty old now, doesn't he?" asks a
cheerleader. "Maybe that's her out, if she wants it. When her true love dies,
she won't have anything else to tie her to this world. She can take him to the
last exit, and go through by his side. It would be so romantic, don't you think?
If she waited?"

I stand abruptly. "I'm sorry, Emma. I'm going to go."

Her eyes flash cat-green in the dark, and she says, "No, you're not." There's
no command in her words, only fact, calm and simple as anything. She raises her
hand, snaps her fingers, and the lights come back on.

The cheerleaders's uniforms have changed again, going from Buckley Buccaneer
black and yellow to silver and red, with "Valhalla Valkyries" written across
their sweatshirts and blazoned on their gym bags. They smile at my expression,
starting to gather their things, starting to get ready to go.

"It was nice to finally meet you, Rose," says one of the cheerleaders. When
she smiles, I can see a thousand years of warfare in her eyes. "It's always nice
to meet someone who knows that you can't win if you let yourself stop fighting.
You have our blessing, for what it's worth. Bobby Cross has denied us our duty
too many times." If her smile was terrifying, her frown is a thousand times
worse. How can he cross these girls? They look like they could pick their teeth
with souls.

But they also look sweet and soft and sugar-candy careless. That's the face
they wear as they hug Emma, offer their farewells, and head out the diner door.
The rain stops as soon as the first one steps outside. No surprise there. If the
stories are right, they have the storms on their side.

"Thanks for stopping by," says Emma, escorting the last of them out the door.
Then she turns, and smiles at me. "How are you feeling?"

"Tricked," I spit at her. "I thought better of you."

"Better of me than what? Giving you the chance to tell your story to the
Valkyries? Their blessing is a good and important thing to have, especially if
you're still planning to go after him." Emma frowns, eyes flashing again. "I've
been dreaming about you, Rose. They're not all good dreams. If you start down
this road..."

"I've already started." I sigh, walking back to my stool and sitting. The air
smells like ozone in the wake of the Valkyries. "I need you to tell me what the
tattoo on my back means.  And I need you to get the grill started back up."

"Am I paying for deception with cheeseburgers?" I nod, and Emma smiles. "Fair
enough."

The lights come back on when she snaps her fingers, the jukebox spinning to
life. Tom Petty sings about a girl taking her last dance, and I sit at the
counter of the Last Dance, listening to Emma moving through the kitchen,
listening to the minutes ticking by. One more dance to kill the pain...

...and the dancing never ends.

Do You Want to Dance?
A
Sparrow Hill Road
story
by
Seanan McGuire

Do you want to dance and hold my hand
Tell me baby I'm your lover man
Oh baby do you want to dance?

Do you want to dance under the moonlight
Hold me baby all through the night
Oh baby do you want to dance?

Do you want to dance under the moonlight
Kiss me baby all through the night
Oh baby
Do you want to dance?

-- "Do You Want To Dance?" Bobby Freeman.

The dead keep their own calendar, celebrate their own holidays. Every ghost is a
sovereign nation, unbound by the laws of the nations around them. We have our
commonalities—Halloween is universal, for reasons that should be obvious—but on
the whole, every one of us marks time in our own way, measuring by the dates
that matter to us. Some of them we choose. Some of them we don't. But all of
them bind us, using the laws of our nations against us, and forcing us to
conform to whatever our deaths have made us.

There are holidays on the ghostroads, too. Forgotten holidays, holidays that
have slipped between the cracks of the daylight world. The people in the
twilight pray to dead gods, building temples to religions that were lost so long
ago that no one really remembers what they were. Living faiths have no comfort
to offer to the dead, so the dead go seeking comfort from their own. Saint Celia
of the Open Hand, who keeps the phantom riders running true along their routes.
Danny, God of Highways, whose given name has been forgotten, and who guards the
gates between the twilight, the darkness, and the light. There are hundreds of
ghost gods on the ghostroads, and their faiths are as faded and tangled as back
country roads.

I've met a few of them. I still refuse to believe in their existence, just as
a matter of principle. It doesn't seem to matter, either way.

***

"It's a mistletoe branch surrounded by white lilies and—I think that's white
asphodel, actually, which makes a lot of sense, if you think about it." I'm not
wearing a coat right now. I'm not wearing a shirt of any kind; it would cover my
tattoo, which would defeat the whole purpose of this exercise. Emma's fingers
trail underneath the surface of what should be my skin, sending cold shivers all
through me. I hate being touched by the living when I'm not solid. The fact that
Emma isn't technically quite alive doesn't change that.

"I'm thinking about it, and it doesn't make any fucking sense at all." I'm
snapping at her. I know that, and I don't particularly care. Emma sprung the
Valkyries on me. The fucking
Valkyries
. I think I've earned a little
snapping after that. "What the fuck is asphodel?"

"It's a flower." She pulls her hand away. "This isn't the kind of asphodel
you'd find in a botany textbook. This is white asphodel.
Real
white
asphodel, and that only grows in one place."

"Where's that?" I stand, rolling my shoulders and calling my clothes back
into existence in the same motion. White tank top again, phantom recreation of
the shirt I once borrowed from my only living boyfriend. Gary never wore this
shirt, but it's a comfort all the same.

Emma walks back around the counter, eyes glinting a brief, feline green
before she turns to start dishing up a slice of apple pie. "The Asphodel
Meadows, in the Greek Underworld. The land of the balanced dead. If you're not
good, and not evil, you go there when you die."

"Great, so it's what, a moral judgment?"

"Of sorts." She turns, setting the plate of pie in front of me. "The center
of the design is a pomegranate, sliced to show the seeds at the center. I can't
be sure, but it looks to me like there are six seeds missing. It's Persephone's
blessing. I think, anyway. It's not like the Lady of the Greek Underworld has me
on her speed dial."

"Meaning what?"

She produces a button-up sweater from behind the counter, handing it to me.
Coats are the traditional attire of the hitchhiking ghost, but any outerwear
will do, providing it belongs to the living. Somehow, Emma manages to count.
"Meaning Bobby Cross has no claim on your soul as long as Persephone is tasked
with watching you. Not unless you do something monumentally stupid."

I shrug on the sweater before reaching for the pie. "Again, meaning what?"

"I'll be completely honest with you, Rose. I'm an Irish death omen and
collector of the unquiet dead. I was born when the Roman calendar still looked
like a fad that couldn't possibly last. And I haven't got the slightest idea."
Emma shrugs. "You want a malted before you hit the road?"