Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan (4 page)

He plants a hand between my shoulder blades and shoves me forward. I'm almost
glad to go staggering away from him, away from the gun in his hand. One of the
people at the counter, a middle-aged man in a white apron and a fry cook's paper
hat, catches my arm before I can fall. "You shouldn't have come," he whispers
harshly.

I meet his eyes. There's no recognition there. He's a daylighter, plain and
simple, and I start to hope that maybe this is a daylight problem; maybe the
smell of death is just the natural result of what's happening here. The blood on
the waitress's uniform isn't enough to explain the blood on the floor. Someone
has already died in this room--maybe more than one somebody--and that happens in
every America. Death is not the exclusive province of the darker levels.

"Hey. Look at me."

The man at the door sounds completely at ease. That's enough to slice through
my fear and turn it into anger. Anger that he's managed to scare me. Me. I've
been dead longer than anyone in this room has been alive, and here I am, captive
with the rest of them. I turn, ready to give the man with the gun a piece of my
mind, and I see him for the first time.

He's in his early twenties, older than I look, but still so damn young. He's
dressed like a thousand other roadside runaways, ripped jeans, combat boots,
beat-up old leather jacket over a stained red flannel shirt. It's the jacket
that gives him away. It should have been the eyes, but it's the jacket, because
after fifty years following the rules that bind the hitchers to the road, I know
my outerwear. I can only take jackets from the living. And the man in the
doorway, the man with the gun, the man holding this entire diner of terrified,
living human beings hostage?

Yeah. He's dead.

***

His eyes skip up and down the length of me with forced hunger, a leer
twisting one corner of his mouth at an angle that's more pathetic than
predatory. He's trying to make me uncomfortable. He's succeeding, but not
because I'm afraid he'll take advantage of the fact that I'm female, smaller
than him, unarmed. No; what makes me uncomfortable is the gun in his hand, which
looks as solid as I do. It's clearly solid enough to wound the living--the
bleeding waitress and the body or bodies I haven't seen are proof enough of
that--and I don't know what a gun like that could do to me. I've never
encountered anything like this before.

"Aren't you a pretty one?" he says, rhetorical question with a sneer
underneath it. There's a quaver to his voice that all his painted-on confidence
can't quite conceal. "So are you here for a cup of coffee, or for a cup of
cock?"

The people behind me are silent, all the fire frightened out of them. The
waitress in the bloody uniform is close enough that I can feel her shaking, the
terror coming off her skin in waves. None of them will raise a hand to save me.
That realization cuts through my own fear, turning it into fury. How dare he?
This is the
daylight
. He has no business here.

"Coffee," I reply, canting my chin up, a challenge in my eyes. "You the fry
cook on duty?"

His snort of derision is too quick, too tight with his own terror. I am not
the only frightened ghost in the Starbright Diner tonight. "Do I look like a fry
cook, lady? Maybe you should try talking nice to me. I have enough bullets for
everybody here."

I'm running down the encyclopedia of the dead in the back of my mind, trying
to find the round hole that connects to this square peg. He's not a hitcher;
that coat's his own, and has no heat to loan, no solid skin to clothe a shadow
in. He's not a pelesit, either; if he had a master, they'd know me, and they
wouldn't be letting us talk. Too bad that leaves a couple of hundred options for
what he might be, how he might have died, how he can be laid to rest and get the
fuck out of my face. "No, you don't look like a fry cook." I cross my arms, cock
my hip, level a flat stare in his direction. "You look like an idiot. Is this
any way to hold up a diner? I mean, really. The door isn't even locked. I just
walked in here like nothing was the matter. You have enough bullets for the
entire highway? Because that's what it's going to take if you keep on this way."

Brief disquiet flashes across his face, there and gone like a cloud sliding
past the moon. "You really think it's a good idea to sass me?"

"You really think it's a good idea to leave those doors unlocked?"

One of the hostages grabs my arm--a white-faced college boy with eyes the
color of day-old coffee. There's blood splattered across the front of his
University of Michigan sweatshirt. None of it's his. "Shut
up
," he
hisses. "You're making it worse."
 
"I wasn't aware there was anything worse than this." I pull my arm away from
him, still watching the man with the gun, still running silently through the
lists of the dead. He's not a bela da meia-noite; they only come in one flavor,
female, and they don't take hostages. He's not a toyol, they're always the
ghosts of children, and they never seem this solid. Most of them can't even be
seen by the living. "So what do you say? Can we lock the doors?"

I'm not needling him for nothing, however much it might look that way. He may
posture like a living man, but he isn't one, and I need to know how far his
mimicry of the human condition goes. A pissed-off ghost won't care how many
people stumble into this diner; whatever grudge he has will spread to cover as
many of the living as he can catch. A confused one, on the other hand, a ghost
that doesn't know what's going on...

"Yeah." He licks his lips, once, before jutting out his jaw in a display of
exaggerated machismo. "I think this is all the guests we need to have a real
kick-ass party, huh? A real blast."

The other hostages look to me as he turns to lock the door. Some of them are
glaring. Others just look lost. The air is heavy and cloying with the taste of
diesel fuel and shadows, joined now by the funereal scent of lilies and the
sharp-spice smell of rosemary. There's an accident ahead. For the sake of these
people--for the sake of this place--I have to hope that it's an accident that I
can find a way to steer us clear of.

According to the clock on the wall, it's just past ten o'clock. The night is
young. So are these people. And they deserve to live longer than this night.
"So," I say, a little too loudly. "How about that coffee?"

***

The injured waitress is named Dinah. She took the bullet ten minutes before I
walked through the door, when she tried to sneak out through the back. She's
lucky he only shot her in the shoulder. Two other members of the staff--the
other waitress and the busboy, a teenage kid who only took the job to pay for
repairs to his death-trap of a pickup truck--were already dead by the time she
tried to make a break for it. I learn this while she walks me through the
process of making coffee on a machine that I could operate in my sleep. That's
fine. I'm happy to let our rogue gunman think I'm a few sandwiches short of a
picnic, especially if it gets Dinah off her feet.

"He came in here just a few minutes after the sun went down," she says dully.
That's the shock speaking, the voice of a witness at an accident scene. "Josie
went over to take his order. He put a bullet right between her eyes.
Right...right between her eyes." A wondering note overcomes the shock, and she
sounds almost childlike as she finishes, "Bang."

"That's charming." The coffee is thick and hot and doesn't smell like
anything when I pour it into an industrial white diner mug. I made it, I poured
it; nobody gave it to me, and I have no right to it. Coffee is reserved for the
living. "Where do you keep the cream and sugar?"

"Counter," says Dinah, voice still soft and somehow childish. I can't be
angry at her, although I try to be.

"Thanks. I'll try to get him to let us take a look at your shoulder." I offer
her a sliver of a smile, not as encouraging as I'd like it to be, but better
than nothing. I pour a second mug of coffee, place them both on a tray, and then
I'm gone, heading for the door by way of the counter.

The man with the gun is still standing there, one eye trained on the room,
the other keeping watch through the front window. He stiffens at my approach,
trying to look relaxed as he turns to face me. He's thinking now. He sees how
big a risk he's taken by taking this diner--and I still don't know why he's done
it.

"Coffee's ready," I say, holding up the tray. "I didn't know how you take it,
so I brought cream and sugar."

He eyes the second cup and sneers, "So what, you think you get whatever I
get?"

"No. I just thought you'd want to be sure it wasn't poisoned before you drank
any." I shrug a little, doing my best to look unconcerned. If he were alive, I
wouldn't be worried at all. No living man has scared me since the night I did.
Dead men, on the other hand... "If you want to drink them both, that's fine,
too."

"Right." Another flicker of disquiet crosses his face. Maybe he doesn't know
why he's doing this. "Fix them both, bitch. Three sugars, two creams."

"Got it." I put the tray on the nearest table, start doctoring the coffee,
keep running through lists in my head. He's not einherjar; they like to fight,
but they don't take hostages, they don't abuse the innocent. He's not deogen.
They can turn visible, they can make their presence known, but they can't touch
the living, and they don't like to interact when they can just watch. He could
be working for the deogen...but it's a clear night. There would be fog if the
deogen were near here, a heavy fog, and there's nothing.

"Hurry up."

"I'm done." I lift the tray. "You get first choice."

His jaw juts with pride that barely masks his fear. "Damn right I do." He
grabs a mug, jerks his chin toward the other. "Better enjoy that, bitch. It
could be your last."

Enjoy it? Not likely. I put down the tray, wrap my hands around the second
mug to steal its heat, and sip the liquid that tastes like nothing but ashes. It
doesn't even burn my lips or throat. It isn't mine.

The man with the gun watches until I've finished my third sip. Then he
thrusts his untouched mug out toward me, commanding, "Trade."

"What?" I make doe's-eyes at him, looking as confused as I can.

"Gimme your coffee, bitch. I know that one's clean."

No, you don't; you know I'm willing to drink poison if it takes you out.
The thought barely has time to finish before I realize something a lot more
important. I hold out my mug, asking slowly, "Does that mean you're giving me
yours?"

"Damn right." Coffee slops onto the side of my hand as he jerks my mug away,
replacing it with his. The scalding sting is almost sweet, because it comes with
the smell of sugared coffee, and the knowledge that when I take my next sip,
I'll taste it. "Got a problem with that?"

"No," I say. The list of the dead has stopped running. I know something he
doesn't. I know what he is.
He doesn't know. How is it that he doesn't know?
How do you not
notice
something like that?
He's looking at me
sidelong, suspicion in his eyes. I take a sip of coffee flavored with cream,
sugar, and paradise. "No problem."

"Good." He runs his eyes over my breasts again, trying to make me
uncomfortable. It isn't working. All I have left to feel for him is pity, poor
little ghost who doesn't even realize that he's dead and gone. "So you've got
your cup of coffee. Ready for your cup of cock?"

The other hostages are watching us with silent trepidation, mice caught in a
cat's cage, watching the one mouse too stupid to stay out of reach of the cat's
claws. As long as I'm making myself a target, he's not focusing on them. Two
dead already. One wounded. I'm the last one to the party. As far as they're
concerned, I'm the expendable one.

"Sure." His eyes widen. That wasn't the answer he expected. "I want to ask
for a favor first."

He blinks, surprise hardening quickly into irritation. "What's that?"

"Let them patch her up." I nod toward the waitress, take another sip of
coffee, and say, "Dead bodies are depressing, and she's bleeding pretty bad.
I'll do whatever if you let them give her a little first aid. Deal?"

Suspicion sits at the front of his expression as he considers my proposal,
looking for the double-cross. He doesn't find it. It isn't there. "Sure," he
says, finally. "Whatever."

***

Strigoi. Some people say they're a kind of vampire. Maybe they are, in some
places, on some layers. Here on the ghostroads, they're one more breed of the
unquiet dead, angry spirits tethered to the world of the living by something
they didn't finish doing before they passed into the twilight. They're normally
intangible, as trapped in the twilight as most of the dead, but once in a
while...once in a while...

Once in a while they can fight their way back into the daylight levels,
dragging the twilight with them. Only on special occasions, nights like
Halloween, Epiphany--and the anniversary of their deaths. I look over Dinah's
shoulder as I help the fry cook and the college boy clean out her wound,
assessing the cut of his clothes, the style of his jeans. Now that I'm looking,
I can see how far out of fashion he is. Not as far as I would be, if I dressed
myself the way the ghostroads sometimes tell me to, but far enough. He's a
traveler from another country, a country called "yesterday," and I don't think
he knows it. Poor little lost ghost, in under his head.

I pitch my voice low, ask the fry cook the question I most need answered:
"How long ago was the accident?"

There's a momentary confusion in his expression, like I'd just asked him when
water became wet, or when the second "r" in "February" fell silent. The
confusion clears, and he gives the answer I'd been hoping for, the one that
comes as a question: "How do you know about--?"