Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan (27 page)

"Bitch," Bethany mutters, picking up her pace a little more in order to draw
a step ahead of me.

"Guess it runs in the family," I say, and keep on walking.

***

The cornfield extends for what feels like miles. We eventually come out on a
wide dirt semi-road beaten into the corn, worn by years of farmers' footsteps as
they checked their harvests. I know the road as soon as I step onto it, feel the
electric tingle in the soles of my feet; I've never been here before, and I've
been here dozens and dozens of times, because this is the first spoke on the
crossroad wheel. If it isn't the first road, it's the road that will lead us to
the first road. The first road will lead to the second road—they have to cross,
after all—and then Bethany can make her bargain. Whatever that bargain might be.

Bethany steps onto the road behind me, and stops, letting out a deep sigh of
relief. "Oh, thank God. This is the right road."

"This is part of the right road. Don't get too excited."

She shoots me a glare that reminds me that of the two of us, I'm the one who
looks like a teenager, but she's the one who actually is a teenager. "Why are
you like that?"

"Like what?"

"A spoiler. Spoiling things. This is the right road. Why won't you just let
it be the right road?"

"Because maybe it's the wrong road. Maybe it's the road that leads to the
road that leads to the right road, which doesn't mean this is the right road.
Maybe I'm walking through a cornfield in the middle of the night with the niece
who tried to hand me to my personal devil, and maybe that's not the sort of
thing that puts me in a good mood. Maybe being dead for the better part of a
century has made me a realist. Or maybe I just don't like you. Did you consider
that?" I look steadfastly ahead, and keep on walking. "Next time, try asking one
of the other routewitches."

"I did. They all turned me down." There's a wistful edge to Bethany's voice
that makes me stop and turn to look at her. "They said...they said I got what I
deserved. That I shouldn't have been messing around with things I didn't
understand. That I shouldn't have been messing around with you."

"Routewitches and road ghosts have an arrangement. You don't mess with us, we
don't mess with you." I start walking again. Bethany follows. "Most routewitches
wind up road ghosts when they die. I guess they view treating us with respect as
an investment in their own afterlife."

"Were you a routewitch?"

The question floors me for a moment. I think about it as I walk, and finally
answer, "I think I might have been. Maybe. But I never had the opportunity to
travel, and it's supposed to be travel that makes a routewitch understand what
the roads are saying." I'd wanted to travel. Gary and I used to talk about it
all the time. That didn't mean it ever happened, and then I was dead, and travel
became a fact of--for lack of a better word—life.

"You could ask for that. At the crossroad."

"Ask for what?"

"The chance to be a routewitch."

I wheel around, walking backward as I demand, "You mean the chance to be
alive again? Is that it? I could go to the crossroad and ask whatever...whatever
fucked-up horror movie version of a fairy godmother it is that makes bargains
there to bring me back from the dead?" I can tell from her face that she means
exactly that. She's trying to make me
want
to go to the crossroad, like
that will somehow transform this from a chore into the world's most bizarre
family outing. "I should leave you. I should leave you right here and let you
find your way without me."

Bethany's eyes widen in alarm. "Don't do that! I just...I just thought..."

"You thought I'd want to be alive again. Right. See, there was a time when I
wanted to be alive again. There was a time when I would have sold my soul for
the chance to be alive again. But that time passed. My world got old and moved
on, and I kept on being sixteen years old. The phantom prom date. The girl who
never grew up. My parents died. My brothers got married. My classmates graduated
and got lives, and I was still sixteen, and I was still on the road. If you'd
explained the crossroad to me when I was a year, five years, even ten years
dead, I would have jumped at the chance to get my world back. My world isn't
there anymore. It's never going to be there again. So asking me if I want to be
alive again isn't just insulting. Isn't just superficial. It's mean. Now shut
the fuck up and just keep walking."

"I'm sorry," Bethany whispers.

"Yeah. So am I."

The cornfields and the smell of the green surround us on all sides. And we
just keep on walking.

***

The cornfield road gives way to a slightly larger road. This one comes with
bonus haystacks, and the unending magnetic pull of the crossroad somewhere in
the distance ahead. It knows we're coming. It's waiting for us. I just hope it
understands that only one of us is actually coming to deal.

Bethany's having trouble keeping up. The walk is taking its toll on her, but
I don't dare slow down. There's only so much distance between here and midnight
at the crossroad, and if we miss the deadline...Bethany's going to have a lot
more nights of achy joints and trouble breathing ahead of her. She's stupid.
She's stupid, and short-sighted, and stubborn, and most of all, she's young.
She's the kind of young I never had the chance to be. And yet a part of me
understands her. She got into this mess because she wanted to get out of Buckley
so badly she was willing to ransom her soul in order to do it. There was a time
when I wanted out of Buckley just as bad. Admittedly, I was going to do it by
marrying Gary and moving someplace big and exotic, like Ann Arbor, but hell. Who
understands kids these days?

"Are we almost there?" she asks, wheezing.

"Maybe. Probably not. I have no idea. It's a beautiful night. Enjoy it."

"Easy for you to say. You're never going to get old."

"I'm also never going to get married, have children, or go to Europe. Think
of this as a preview."

"Oh, wow. Great pep talk, Aunt Rose."

"Cheering you up isn't my job. Getting you there is. So keep on walking."

Bethany mutters and keeps on walking. That's all I want at this point. The
road is humming more and more strongly under my feet, and the distant taste of
copper is beginning to cling to the back of my throat. We're getting closer. If
we just keep moving, we've got a good chance of making it.

The road curves, bending back into the cornfield. Then it splits, the wider,
smoother avenue continuing in one direction, while a narrow dirt trail branches
off to the right. The ground is pitted and broken, making the first dirt road we
walked down seem like a boulevard. Of course, that's the way we have to go. I
actually slow down a little to let Bethany catch up. The increasing pull of the
crossroad tells me that this is probably the first road—a conviction that only
grows when I set foot on it. If the previous two roads were electric, this is
like grabbing hold of a live wire. Bethany feels it, too, even more than I do.
She gasps when she steps onto the broken ground. Then she starts walking faster,
rapidly outpacing me. I let her. This is her journey, not mine.

She walks faster and faster, the corn closing around us like a series of
green and growing curtains. I feel the second road almost before I can see it up
ahead of us, a clean slash through the cornfield. This must be why the Queen
wanted me taken from a place with corn. The spot where I left the daylight would
determine where I'd tumble back into it, and if she knew the crossroad was going
to be in a cornfield, doing it this way saved us a lot of time.

"We're here!" Bethany almost shouts, and breaks into a run, old woman racing
through the corn. I'm half-afraid she's going to fall and break her neck. I
still don't try to stop her. The crossroad has her now. If she dies in the
process of getting to her goal, my part of the deal is still done.

Then Bethany steps from one road onto the other, standing at the point where
the two roads cross. Too late to turn back now. She's committed.

***

"I am come to the crossroad with empty hands and a hopeful heart," chants
Bethany, with the faintly desperate sing-song of a schoolgirl reciting a lesson
she hasn't really learned. "I am come to the crossroad to bargain with all I
have and all I am. I am come to the crossroad with nothing to refuse. Please,
please, please, hear me, heed me, and give me the chance to pay for what I
need."

Silence falls around her, blocking out all sound from the crossroad. I don't
see anyone come to join her, but there is a sudden increase in the shadows
clinging to the corn. Whatever happens between Bethany and the crossroad is
going to be a private thing. No voyeurs allowed, living or dead.

Someone steps up next to me. I didn't hear him coming; I don't think he was
there to hear. He feels like an absence in the cornfield next to me, a space
that happens to be shaped like a man. A man who, when I look at him from the
corner of my eye, could have been one of the younger teachers at my high school,
but who, when I look at him directly, isn't there to see. I keep my eyes turned
resolutely forward, watching Bethany talking to the open air.

"Hello, Rose," says the man. His voice is plummy and warm, and I forget what
it sounds like almost as quickly as I hear it. "It's been a while."

"True," I say. "I haven't had cause to come."

"Everyone has cause to come."

"That's a matter of opinion."

"Oh, Rose, Rose, Rose. You went to the routewitches. You could have come to
us."

"To help me against Bobby Cross? Isn't it your fault he's on the loose to
begin with?"

There's a momentary silence, made deeper by the absolute still of the
cornfield around us. Finally, chidingly, he says, "That isn't fair. He asked, we
gave. That's the nature of commerce."

"Uh-huh."

"We would have been glad to grant you aid."

"And charge me what, exactly?" Bethany is still waving her hands at the air,
a look of naked desperation on her face. Whatever they're asking, whatever she's
offering, I can't shake the feeling that she's fighting for her life right in
front of me. This is all her fault. I shouldn't feel sorry for her. But I do. I
guess Marshall girls just have a way of getting themselves into trouble.

"Ah. Now that's the question."

"Kinda figured." I shake my head, the man-shaped hole in the world flickering
around the edges every time he comes almost into view. "I know it's your job to
sell. I'm not buying."

"That will change," he says, and he's gone, taking the feeling of gnawing,
alien absence with him.

"Hope not," I reply, and stand alone in the silence, waiting for Bethany to
finish making her deal with the crossroad, and whatever angel, demon, or worse
waits there for people like us. If I'm lucky, and the ghostroads are kind, I'll
never have a reason to find out which one it is.

***

Midnight comes and midnight goes; that's what midnight does. Bethany stops
gesturing, her hands falling to her sides as she slumps, defeated. She nods,
just once. Sound returns to the cornfield, crickets chirping, an owl hooting in
the middle distance, a train whistle sounding somewhere further out. The
crossroad time is ending. I can even, for just a moment, hear Bethany breathing.

And then she falls, face down on that old dirt road, and doesn't move.

"Bethany?" I ask, just once, before I start running toward the crossroad.
"Bethany, are you—" But she's
not
okay, she's not, she
can't
be okay, because as I run, I feel my solidity drop away, and her coat, powerless
now, slips through me and drifts to the ground. Only the living can grant life
to the dead. If Bethany's coat has stopped working, that means...

"Behind you, Aunt Rose." Her voice is young as springtime, young as a bell
ringing on the first day of the school year. I stop running, eyes still on the
body she's discarded like I discarded my coat, and I turn, and I look into the
eyes of my no-longer-living niece.

Bethany is herself again, all teenage cockiness, ribbons in her hair now
natural, and not decades out of place. She smiles a little, shame and cockiness
and joy all mixed together in her expression, and says, "They couldn't give me
back my life, so they gave me back my death, instead."

She had life, and she threw it away. A shorter life than she might have had,
sure, but it was still life, and it was still hers. I want to shake her. I want
to slap her. Now that she's on my side of the ghostroads, I could do it.
Instead, I swallow, and ask her, "Why?"

"Because it was good enough for you."

I never said that,
I never said that
, but if that's what she chose
to hear, it's too late now. For either of us. "What are you?"

Now she looks uncomfortable, if only for a moment. "Crossroad guardian," she
says.

"What? You'll be the one making bargains?"

"No. I'll be the one making sure that only the right people get here to make
them."

"Sounds like a cushy job."

"It's better than nothing."

No, Bethany, no;
life
was better than nothing. "If you say so." I
look around the dark cornfield; listen to the train whistle blowing in the
distance. "I should go."

She looks relieved as she nods. "Yes, you probably should. Midnight's over,
and you didn't come to make a deal."

"Be sure you send someone to tell the Queen that I did my job."

"She already knows," Bethany says, and smiles, just a little, an expression
of joy poisoned with grief. "She knows whenever a routewitch dies."

The words hang between us for a moment, heavier than they should be. I take a
step back. "Great," I say. "Enjoy your afterlife, Bethany."

"Be careful, Aunt Rose," she replies.