Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan (25 page)

"But we saw a ghost, Rose," protests Angela. "It wasn't the one we were
trying for, sure, but we can try again. We can find her. We can—"

"It wasn't a stray dog."

Tom's announcement comes as a surprise to everyone but me. They all turn to
look at him. He's leaning on Katherine, still pale and shaky from blood loss.
He'll live. That's all I promised him.

"What, you saw the owner?" asks Jamie.

"No," Tom says. "It wasn't a dog at all. It was some sort of warning, okay?
We need to leave the dead alone. They don't like it when we mess with them, and
we got lucky tonight. That thing could have killed us all. Maybe there's a
reason nobody's ever caught a ghost. Maybe there's a reason Professor Moorhead
wasn't willing to do this herself. You can keep messing around if you want, but
I'm out, and so's Katherine."

"And so am I," says Marla. "I don't know if it was a...ghost dog...or what,
but this is so not the sort of thing I want to get myself killed doing."

"What about the Girl in the Diner?" asks Jamie, almost frantically. "What
about all the things
she's
done? Now that we know we can do this, don't
we owe it to the world to—"

"To what?" I demand, my already frayed temper finally giving way. "To go
messing with some poor, innocent ghost who's just trying to keep herself busy?
If she was some kind of mass-murderer, don't you think that would be in
every
version of the story, not just the ones you can trace back to some
slumber party or other? I mean jeez, people, do a little more research than 'oh,
the professor says she's bad, let's go catch her, she's eeeeeevil.'"

Now they're all staring at me. Tom and Katherine don't look surprised; that's
to their credit. Jamie and Marla still look confused as hell. And Angela...

Gold star to Angela, because she looks like she's just seen a ghost.

"You were here all along," she whispers. Jamie shoots her a startled look.
Marla takes a step backward. Natural reactions, both of them, although I admit,
I'd been hoping for better. At least a little scream or something.

"Yeah, well. I get bored sometimes." I look levelly at Jamie. He's the leader
of this little group. They'll listen to him. I hope. "Leave me alone, Jamie.
Don't follow me, don't lay traps for me, don't try to track me down. Not because
I'll hurt you—I'm not that kind of a girl—but because you have no idea how many
things could have killed you tonight, and next time, I won't be here to make
nice with them on your behalf. Do I make myself clear?"

He laughs nervously. "Rose? What are you talking about? I know it's been a
weird night, but don't you think you're taking things just a little bit too
far?"

I sigh. "God save me from smart people and college students. You're all such
fucking idiots." It only takes a second to shrug out of my coat, the cold
rushing back into my bones like the tide flowing in to fill the harbor. I'm
still solid, still alive...until I let go of the sleeve, and the coat falls to
the pavement.

"Leave the dead alone," I say. Maybe it's the fact that I'm see-through and
glowing, but this time, they listen; this time, the only sound is Angela hitting
the ground in a dead faint. I'm pretty sure she landed on some of the broken
glass we scattered earlier. "You're going to want to put some bactine on that,"
I add, and disappear. Not the most memorable last words ever, but hey, infection
is nothing to fuck around with.

The ghostroads flow back into place around me. I sigh, shake my head, and
start walking. I want to put some miles between me and Ohio before I venture
back into the daylight.

Wouldn't want a group of familiar faces offering me a ride.

Last Train
A
Sparrow Hill Road
story
by
Seanan McGuire

I ain't a man of constant sorrow
I ain't seen trouble all day long
We are only passengers on the last train to glory
That will soon be long, long gone

I want to hop on the last train in the station
Won't need to get yourself prepared
When you're on the last train to glory
You'll know you're reasonably there...

-- "Last Train," Arlo Guthrie.

There's one thing every haunt, spirit, and shade on the twilight side of the
ghostroads learns early and well, and that's this: your word is sometimes the
only currency you have, and those are the times when breaking it can leave you
vulnerable to the kind of consequences that you don't recover from. The Kindly
Ones watch for oathbreakers. Certain types of shadow only manifest in the path
of liars, and they can cling and catch as surely as tar. If you want to survive
in the twilight, you tell the truth--at least on the ghostroads. Lying to the
living that don't belong in the twilight spaces doesn't come with any
consequences. The living don't count.

Lying to your fellow dead, on the other hand, or, God forbid, lying to the
routewitches or the ambulomancers...that's playing the sort of roulette that the
house always, always wins. Never make a promise you don't intend to keep. Never
incur a debt you don't intend to pay. Never double-cross a routewitch. We may
not have much of a life here, among the dead, but what we do have is too
precious to gamble on a hand that can't possibly be won. Exorcism would be
kinder than some of the tools the routewitches have at their disposal.

I was pretty honest before I died. A good girl. I'm not as good as I used to
be, but I'm a lot more honest, because the stakes are a lot higher than getting
grounded or missing a school dance. The stakes are death and worse-than-death,
and I like my current state of being.

That's me. Some people still make bargains they can't keep; some people still
make promises that they don't intend to honor. Some people still let the bills
get higher than they ever meant to pay. And some of them, Persephone give me
strength...

Some of them are my own flesh and blood. Such as it is.

***

This particular stretch of Indiana highway is familiar; I've walked it
before, and I'll probably walk it again, the world being what it is, and people
being a little reluctant to stop in the middle of a corn field to pick up an
unfamiliar teenage girl. Thanks for that one, Stephen King. You and your goddamn
children of the corn can go piss up a rope for all the walking that you've made
me do over the course of the last twenty years.

Still. It's a beautiful evening, with that sort of purple-bruised sky that
only the American Midwest ever manages to conjure. It's almost the sort of sky
we had when I was alive, before pollution gilded the world's sunsets in all the
pretty shades of poison. There are even fireflies, dancing above the corn, and
the whole world smells like green and good growing things. A night like this, I
almost don't mind walking. Besides, my last ride was recent enough that I still
have a coat to keep me warm, anchoring me in this world for as long as I choose
to stay...or until that setting sun comes up. Whichever comes first.

I'm so busy walking through the growing dark that I don't hear the engine
behind me, the crunch of wheels on roadside gravel, the rattle of the truck's
back gate, held up by rope and bailing wire as much as by the memory of what it
used to be. I'm lost in my own little world, right up until strong arms grab me
around the chest, hoisting me up and off the ground almost before I can squeak.
Then I'm in the hay and corn husk-filled bed of the truck, and we're
accelerating away from the place where I was grabbed, and all I can think is
that we're about eight seconds away from someone getting slapped.

***

Common sense wins out for once, and I decide to forego slapping in favor of
the more sensible option: letting go and dropping back down into the twilight.
So I release my hold on the coat that binds me to the mortal world, and it falls
through the memory of my flesh to land with a rustle in the chaff surrounding
us. Then
I
let go, and
I
fall...

...right into the bed of a clapped-out old junker of a pickup truck, the bed
filled with hay and corn husks. The man who grabbed me is watching with obvious
amusement. Slapping still sounds like a good option, but if these people can
drive straight from the daylight to the twilight, that might not be the best
idea.

I straighten, trying to look like I'm not scared enough to bolt for the
deepest, darkest hole I can find. "Okay, does somebody want to tell me exactly
what the fuck is going on here?"

My abductor laughs at that—actually laughs, like I just said something
unbelievably funny. There's an answering chuckle from behind me, and I glance
over my shoulder to see the first man's virtual twin. They're both sturdy blond
Minnesota-looking farmboys, so cliche that they could have walked out of the
pages of a L'il Abner adventure forty years ago. "Miss Rose, I think you don't
quite understand what's going on here."

"Yeah, well, I'm dead, not psychic, so when you want me to know something,
you need to tell me." It's getting easier to suppress fear in favor of anger.
There's not much I hate more than I hate to be laughed at. "Why did you grab me?
Where are we going?
How
are we going?"

There isn't much of a vocabulary to bridge the worlds of the dead and the
living. When you're living, you don't need it, and once you're dead, you have
better things to worry about. The farmboy who grabbed me seems to understand,
which is something of a relief; he nods, once, and says, "Well, Miss Rose, I
grabbed you because if we stop this ol' truck, she's not likely to start up
again until after the solstice, which seemed a bit long to wait. We're heading
to the Rest Stop," I can hear the capital letters, like he's talking about the
only rest stop in the world, "and we're traveling by magic, I suppose. Magic,
and combustion engine."

"Okay, why are we traveling to 'the Rest Stop' via magic and combustion
engine?"

"Now there's a good question." He smiles, and there's a glint in his eye that
whispers "routewitch." I would have seen it before, if I hadn't been so annoyed.
"We're going to see the Queen."

The tattoo on my back hasn't burned since I left the Last Dance, but with his
words, it starts burning again. The Queen of the Routewitches has summoned me,
and that means my debt to her is coming due. This is a lot sooner than I thought
it was going to be.

I hope like hell that I'm truly prepared to pay, and the truck drives deeper
and deeper down into the twilight, away from the lands of the living.

***

The transition between layers of the twilight is silken-smooth, like peeling
the nylons from a hooker's legs. The drop from the twilight onto the asphalt
shores of the Ocean Lady is something else altogether. The truck jerks and
shudders like it's hitting the world's biggest pothole, and the sudden pressure
in my chest tells me that I've been slapped back into solidity,
back—temporarily—among the living once again. I pick myself up from the bed of
the truck, dusting straw off my arms and glaring at the routewitch thugs
surrounding me. "You know, I think I've spent more time incarnate in the last
year than I have in the last
decade
."

"Congratulations," says one of the routewitches.

I cast a glare in his direction, wishing I'd lived long enough to reach an
age where my glares could be considered more cutting than cute. "That wasn't
intended as a happy statement."

Now it's time for the routewitch to glare. He's not cute, exactly, but his
L'il Abner haircut and bib overalls render the expression impotent. "You've been
invited to the Ocean Lady, Miss Rose. That's an honor most ghosts never get."

"And me without my party dress." The words are out before I realize how true
they are: I'm not in my party dress. My coat is discarded in the chaff, but I'm
still wearing the clothes I conjured for a day on the Indiana road, blue jeans
and an old workman's shirt with Gary's name on the breast pocket. I'm incarnate,
back among the living whether I want to be or not, but I'm still in ghost's
array. I don't know whether that's a good thing or not, and I don't have time to
know, because here comes the Rest Stop on the Ocean Lady, blossoming in front of
us like the last neon oasis in the desert of the dead.

If the Last Dance Diner is every diner that's ever been or ever will be, the
Rest Stop is something more, something bigger and more profound. It's every
roadside dive, every truck stop, every place where a weary traveler has ever had
cause to stop and lay their head. I didn't see it clearly the last time I was
here; the Ocean Lady didn't know me yet, and didn't yet speak the language of my
heart. She does now, after a fashion, and the structure ahead of us is every
good thing about every good place the road has ever offered me. It's the diner
where Gary kissed me for the first time, nervous teenage affection that tasted
like chocolate soda and tomorrow. It's the truck stop where Larry bought me a
burger and let me show him the way he had to go. It's a thousand places, a
thousand moments, and it hurts my heart, makes it skip a beat it shouldn't be
taking. Looking at the Rest Stop, I understand why the routewitches don't
encourage the dead to come here. In its own strange way, the truth of the Ocean
Lady's soul might kill us.

L'il Abner the first scoots up behind me, warm and solid in the slightly
unreal twilight dark, and says, "We're almost here, Miss Rose. You might want to
get yourself ready."

"Are you going to tell me what I'm getting ready
for
?"

"That's for the Queen to do, Miss. All we know is that she sent us to find
you, and that it was very important that when we found you, we found you in the
corn."

It doesn't take a genius to know that doesn't sound good. I clutch the edge
of the pickup bed, the heartbeat I shouldn't have hammering in my chest, and I
let the Ocean Lady open her arms and welcome her wayward children home.