Sparrow Hill Road

by Seanan McGuire

  “Who the hell are you?” I step toward her, as far as the Seal will let me go. She doesn’t flinch back, just keeps smiling that rattlesnake smile. She knows she has me pinned. “I don’t know why you want me, lady, but I’m not a good house pet.”

  “Oh, I’m not going to keep you. Don’t be silly.” She looks genuinely amused as she settles in her seat. “Keep you. What a ridiculous idea.”

  “Then what—”

  “I’m going to exorcise you. I’m going to read aloud the words of a thousand ancients, and I’m going to rip you from this world one thin thread at a time, until you’re nothing but a thin scream clinging to the memory of pain. And then I’m going to call you back, and I’m going to do it again. And again. And again. Until, when the sun rises, I finish the exorcism and send you to the hell you deserve, you murdering little slut.”

  Her expression doesn’t change once as she speaks. That may be the most terrifying thing of all. She’s talking about murder, about killing me for the second time in my existence, and she isn’t batting an eye. I’m not a person to her. I’m a thing to be exterminated.

  “What-what . . . what are you talking about?” My heart is hammering and my mouth is dry as cotton. That’s the worst thing about this damn Seal—all the downsides of being alive, and none of the benefits, no sex or coffee or cheeseburgers. Just raw terror and every nerve in my body sounding the alarm. “I don’t know who you are, or who you think I am, but I assure you, I am not your girl.”

  “Your name is Rose Marshall. You were born in Buckley Township, Michigan, in 1936—that was a hard one to confirm, by the way. There was no birth certificate on file for you at any of the local hospitals. There was an announcement in the paper, though. I suppose it was a slow news week.”

  “I was born at home,” I whisper.

  “Ah! Well, that explains it, then. You made the news again in 1952 when you decided to drive yourself to the senior prom and confront your boyfriend, who had failed to pick you up. It’s not really surprising. You were only a junior. He probably didn’t want to be seen with you.” This time, her smile is cruel as well as venomous, human snake that knows exactly what she’s doing. “Poor little Rose. I suppose you didn’t know he’d broken down on the way to your house—and by the time he got back on the road, you were so much cooling meat.”

  “Lady, why are you doing this? What do you want from me?”

  She keeps going like she hasn’t heard me—and maybe she hasn’t, not in any meaningful way. You don’t learn to draw a Seal like this on a whim, or in a weekend. You don’t track down the dead for nothing. Whatever strange engine drove her here, she’s not letting it go that easily. “Only you couldn’t stay dead, could you, Rose? You couldn’t rest in peace. That would have been too easy for a spoiled bitch like you.”

  I’ve been called a lot of things, and some of them I even deserved, but “spoiled” has never made the list. My eyes narrow, and I speak before I think, spitting out my words: “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “I know you killed the only man I ever loved.” The accusation is casual, almost offhanded; there’s no heat behind it. She’s just reciting a fact. I still freeze, rooted to the spot as she continues, “For a while, I thought I was chasing a myth, looking for you, but once I had a name, you got a lot easier to follow. Legends and ghost stories scattered across a country—you’ve been a busy little girl, Rose. How many innocent men have you killed? How many have died for your vanity, all because you couldn’t bear to be the one left standing home alone?”

  I’ve heard this accusation before. It doesn’t get any easier to bear. “I’ve never killed anyone. You have the wrong girl.”

  Candlelight glints off her glasses as she lifts her head and looks at me, smile fading into memory, replaced by terrifying emptiness. “His name was Tommy,” she says, in a voice like a crypt door slamming shut. “His name was Tommy, and he was going to marry me, and you killed him. And now I’m going to kill you.”

  Jackson, Maine, 1992.

  Tommy is bleeding out fast, red blood mingling with the black oil that drips from the car’s shattered engine. At least they’re not both suffering. She’s already gone to the ghostroads. She loves him enough to wait for him there, and that’s better than many men will have. Still, he’s alone in the here and now. I keep my hand against his cheek, feeling my solidity waver a little more with every breath he struggles to take, and I wonder when, if ever, the moments like this will stop hurting so damn bad.

  “I can’t see.”

  “It’s all right, Tommy. Just keep on breathing. Help is on the way.” That’s a lie, that’s a goddamn lie—help isn’t coming, help won’t get here for hours, not until the raceway is a road again and there’s nothing left of Tommy but an empty shell cradled in a steel-and-chrome coffin. I don’t regret lying to him. Sometimes lies are the only thing I have to give them.

  “Will you find my girl?” His voice is fading, losing strength. He’ll find it again on the other side, when he doesn’t have to fight against failing lungs and a broken spine. Somehow, that’s cold comfort, even to me.

  “Yeah, Tommy, yeah. I’ll find her.” More lies, but they’re the lies he needs to hear. How could I find her, dead man’s living lover? I’d have no way to even start the search. “What do you want me to tell her?”

  The question seems to puzzle him for a moment, leave him fumbling for words. Only the fact that the gravel still digs into my knees tells me that he’s still holding onto life; I’m slipping, but I haven’t slipped, not all the way, not yet. Finally, he says, “Tell her I love her. Tell her I did this because I love her.” A smile twists his lips upward, heartbreaking snapshot of a lover on his way out the door. “I was going to marry her.”

  “I know.”

  “Just tell Laura . . .” His voice falters and fades in the middle of the sentence, leaving him silent. One more hitching breath, two, three, and then no more; his chest is still, his struggling heart finally finishing its fight. The race is over at last.

  His blood falls through my fingers, leaving them clean and pale as I rise. His jacket falls at the same time, hitting the concrete with a soft, anticlimactic rustle. I turn to face the racers still standing clustered behind me. The ones who let me through before—the ones who’ve touched the twilight, or been touched by it—take a step backward, faces going pale. They know what they’re seeing, they know what the fall of the jacket has to mean. The rest only look at me, puzzled and afraid, boys mixed with men in almost equal numbers.

  “This race is over,” I say, my tone leaving no room for argument. “If you must race, do it somewhere else. No more stupid kids who don’t know the risks. Understand? If you let this happen again, I’ll know, and I’ll find you.” It’s an empty threat. But they don’t know that.

  “Yeah?” asks one of the ones who doesn’t look frightened enough to understand who I am, what I am, what he’s seen. “Who the fuck are you?”

  The living are difficult to convince and easy to impress. I fix him with a stare, smile, and say, “I’m Rose.” Then I release my hold on the daylight, and the racers are gone, left in another America, while I step onto the ghostroads where I belong.

  Tommy is there, unbroken, unbloodied, standing next to his car and staring blankly up into a sky the color of ink. There are no stars. Not here; not in the midnight. We’re on the deepest level now, the one where ghosts are the natives, and the living are the strange invasions. He looks toward the sound of my feet scuffling on the surface of the road, eyes wide in his young man’s face. “Rose? What’s going on?”

  “You died, Tommy.” There’s no point in candy-coating it. I step forward, offer him my hand, offer him a smile that almost balances the sorrow in my eyes. I could never have saved him. I have to keep telling myself that until I start believing. “Now come on.”

  “Where?”

  “That’s up to you.” I cast a glance toward his car, which has never looked this good, and never could have, not in the daylig
ht, where metal is constrained by the limits of construction, and not the limits of love. “But I can make a few suggestions.”

  Jackson, Maine, 2012.

  “Oh, fuck.” I never saw a picture of Laura, and Tommy never called her anything but beautiful. Still, she’s the right age to be the girlfriend of the boy I helped through the painful process of dying, and I wasn’t exactly subtle when I told those racers to shut their deathtrap down. “You’re Laura.”

  “Finally.” She shakes her head, stands, moves to relight a candle that’s blown out. “I thought you’d be smarter than this. You’ve been at it for a long time. I suppose I didn’t think dumb luck could carry you this far.” She rakes another look along my body, and adds, “I also thought you’d be better-looking, or at least have bigger breasts. I guess being pretty isn’t required in a dead whore.”

  “I didn’t kill him! God, what is it going to take to make you believe me? I tried to keep him away from that stupid race!” I stayed with him while he bled to death; I guided him down the ghostroads like he was an old friend, and not just some kid too dumb to listen when I told him to be careful. “I did everything I could to save him.”

  “Well, you didn’t do enough.” She blows out her match and drops it to the linoleum, grinding it into dust with the toe of one foot. “I hope you’re happy with all the lives you’ve ruined.”

  “Laura—”

  “You won’t be ruining any more.” She opens the book, standing outlined in the candlelight like some avenging angel, and she begins to read.

  Her words are ice and fire and acid and the bitter needles of pounding rain turned into a weapon by the driving wind. Her words are the bite of locusts and the sting of wasps, rust consuming steel, poison corroding silver. They blister my skin and rip the screams from my lips, writhing like living things as they flay me open and display my inadequacy to the universe. I don’t know how long she reads; I don’t care how long she reads, because every word is murder, and I die a thousand times before she quiets. There is only the sound of rain and the harsh rasp of my breathing as I pitch forward, sprawling on the diner floor.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Rose, didn’t you like that? Wasn’t that fun for you?”

  I want to say something nasty, want to match the malicious joy in her tone with the acid in my own, but I can’t seem to force my lips to form the words. Everything hurts too badly.

  “Well, I hope you’re recovered enough to continue, because we’re just getting started, and I’m not ready to put you back together again. I thought you’d be sturdier than the ghosts I killed getting to you. Don’t disappoint me.”

  She starts to read again. This time, somehow, I find the strength to scream.

  True to her word, Laura takes me to the very edge of truly gone before pulling me back, changing her wasp-words for milk and honey and the soothing promise of peace. It’s almost worse than the pain, because it means the pain can start all over again, flaying off the layers of my existence until I barely remember who I am. I’m not sure how long she can do this before I lose my mind. I’m even less sure that she cares.

  She stops once the restoration is complete, watching impassively as I struggle to breathe. Then she puts the book down on her chair and begins to walk the edge of the Seal, relighting candles, checking her line of salt. “I bet you’re wondering if I know how much this hurts you. If I’ve considered how cruel I’m being.” She glances my way and smiles, rattlesnake again. “Believe me, I’ve considered it. I just wish I had a way of making it go on for longer.”

  “Yeah, well, forgive me if you’re alone in that,” I whisper. “I didn’t kill him.”

  “You didn’t save him.”

  “I tried.”

  “He’s still dead.”

  There’s nothing I can say to that. I sag into the floor, trying to gather what strength I can from this brief respite. There’s still no escape route presenting itself, no golden “Get Out of Jail Free” card suddenly appearing to tell me which way to run. The Seal is close enough to perfect that I can’t worm out of it, the line of salt clean and unbroken, the candles lined up in triplicate so that even when one blows out, the light endures. I am well and truly fucked.

  “You know, I’ll be sorry when the sun rises. I’ve been looking for you for so long, and I’ve worked so hard for this night . . . I suppose I’ll have to find something else to do with myself after this. Maybe I’ll go into the exorcism business. It’s surprisingly satisfying, when you know what you’re doing.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “No, Rose. That’s where you’re going.” She walks back to the chair, collects her book, opens it. I take a breath, preparing for the pain to start.

  Instead, I hear the sound of tires on broken blacktop, an engine drawing closer and stopping, a car door being slammed. Laura tenses and looks up, light glinting off her glasses. I consider screaming, and decide against it. Most people won’t believe me if I say that I’m a ghost, not right now, when I can’t prove it; they’ll think we’re playing some sort of fucked-up sex game and leave me here, and then Laura will just be angrier. It’s not worth the risk.

  The footsteps start a few seconds after the car door slams, drawing closer with every heartbeat. Laura puts down the book and reaches into the belt of her jeans, producing a Bowie knife which she holds loosely behind her back. I guess when you’ve decided to commit one murder, the second one gets easier, even if that first victim was already dead.

  The diner door swings open, and a dead man steps across the threshold, stopping just shy of the circle of salt. “You okay, Rose?” he asks. His voice is young, but the tone is much older, the voice of a man who’s spent a decade running the roads in the midnight, where young is forever and innocence is over in an instant.

  “Not really,” I say, pushing myself unsteadily back to my feet. The world is reeling. I feel like I’m going to throw up. “Hi, Tommy.”

  Laura drops the knife.

  Her shock only lasts for a few seconds. Then she takes a step toward him. “You—you can’t be here,” she says. Her eyes are wide behind her glasses, shock and terror and amazement mingling in her expression. “You’re dead. We buried you. I cried at your funeral. You’re dead.”

  “So is Rose, but that hasn’t stopped you locking an innocent hitchhiking ghost in your little cage.” He glances toward the salt line, his lip curling in unconscious disgust. “I thought a lot better of you, Laura. I knew you were out there looking for her, but I never thought you’d do anything like this.”

  “Wait,” I say. “You knew she was looking for me? Could you maybe have shared that information?”

  I might as well have held my tongue. Laura only has eyes for Tommy, and he’s just as focused on her. “Why didn’t you come to me?” she demands. “I prayed every night for you to come. To haunt me. I needed you so much.”

  “Dead is dead, and living is living, and I’m not the kind of ghost Rose is; I don’t move between the levels as easy. I’d have been haunting you like you were an empty house, and it wouldn’t have been fair. You’d never have been willing to be filled if I were there.”

  “I was never anyone’s home without you,” she whispers.

  Tommy looks at her calmly, an infinity of love and disappointment in his eyes, and says, “That’s not my fault, and my death wasn’t hers. Now open the circle, Laura. Let Rose go.”

  Her eyes stay on him as she crosses back to the Seal, kicks a break in the salt, and bends to slash a Sharpie across the delicate lines of the outer ring. My substance goes the second the binding breaks, leaving me as weightless as fog. I have never in my life been so glad to be dead.

  “Rose?” says Tommy.

  “I’m okay.” I step out of the circle without looking at Laura, and keep my shoulders steady as I walk out the door, to the parking lot, where the rain falls straight through me. Tommy’s car flashes her lights as I approach, offering a warm welcome. The passenger-side door swings open. I slip inside, leaning back into the warm seat, cl
osing my eyes.

  The sky is turning light when Tommy finally comes to join me. The engine starts without him turning a key. “Where to?” he asks me.

  “Take me down, Tommy; take me all the way down.” I shake my head. “The living are too damn dangerous for me.”

  The rain starts to clear as he pulls out, and we drive down through the levels of the world, away from the living and their pains, back into the world where we belong. Back down to the ghostroads, and the dead.

  2013

  The Pretty Little Girl in the Green Silk Gown

  THERE HAVE ALWAYS been way stations on the roads of the dead, places where the spirits and psychopomps can stop and rest a little while before continuing to their final destinations. They’re necessary, especially given that so many psychopomps are dead themselves. If they follow the ghostroads too far into the dark, they lose the ability to turn back. So taverns and temples spring up along the most common routes into whatever lies beyond the ghostroads; boarding houses and hotels, cathedrals and cloisters . . . and in this modern age, truck stops, diners, and seedy little bars with sawdust on their floors. They teeter on the edges of here and there, and even the living can find their way into those in-between places, if they get lost enough, if they need it badly enough.

  Everyone’s way station is different, determined by what we were in life. Most of the souls I shepherd along were drivers, with a spattering of vagabonds, hitchhikers, and people who were just walking home—people, in other words, who were traveling under their own power. I only get passengers when they come with a driver. I guess that’s because, as a hitcher, I don’t relate well to people who let someone else make the decisions about where they’d be when the journey was finished. It may not seem like hitchers have much agency, but we do, really; we decide which cars to get into, we decide which destinations to name. It’s not the same degree of agency that goes to the drivers, but it’s enough for us.