“If Rose was awake when her car hit the ground, that night granted her a single mercy; she didn’t remember it when she came to. The woods were silent all around her . . .”
Buckley Township, Michigan, 1952.
Rose opened her eyes on darkness.
She was sprawled next to the road at the base of Sparrow Hill, her head pillowed on a clump of fallen leaves. She pushed herself slowly up, eyes wide as she stared, disbelieving, at the woods. She’d been falling; she remembered that. After that was nothing but darkness. “There was an accident . . .” she whispered, to no one, to the night. “The car . . .”
But there was no car. Only the road, and the night, and Rose, standing lonely and confused in her green silk gown. Standing? She remembered sitting up, but when did she stand—? She looked down at herself; the dress was intact, no tatters or even stains from the ground where she’d been lying. She brushed her hands against her skirt, disoriented and confused. “I don’t understand.”
“Rose?”
The question came from the left. Rose turned, eyes wide, to see Gary Daniels—her prom date, the one she’d been coming to find—walking toward her with his tuxedo jacket tied around his waist and oil coating his hands. “God, Rose, what are you doing out here? I was going to call just as soon as I got back to a place with a phone—how did you get here?” He paused. “Rose, what’s wrong? You’re shivering.”
“I’m cold.” It was the first thing to come to mind. It shouldn’t have been true, not on a hot June night in the hottest summer of her short life, but it was. It felt like her bones had been replaced with ice, freezing her from the inside out.
“Here.” Gary untied his tuxedo jacket and offered it to her, saying, “I took it off before I started working on the tire. It shouldn’t . . . it shouldn’t stain your dress.”
“Thank you.” She slipped the jacket on, the cold fleeing almost instantly. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she threw herself at him, almost without thinking. “I want to get out of here, Gary, Gary, please, please, get me out of here. Please.”
“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. I’m pretty sure they’ll still let us in.”
“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 sweet 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 barely 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 fire truck 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. But for the moment, she could still lie to herself, and so lie to herself she did. “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 had happened on Sparrow Hill Road.
The Last Dance Diner, 2013.
“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.
“And their initials are there, written in lipstick,” contributes a third.
“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 the best part of a year 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 before she knew what she was, that driver would have had her.”
I feel myself go cold. Not the crushing chill of the ghostroads, but the simple, freezing cold of utter 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. She sounds like she’s won some sort of a prize. “’Cause she can’t make h
erself 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 too 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, their uniform gazes calm and interested, like I’m a cat toy—the best one they’ve had to play with 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. “I mean, she died so long ago. Maybe that’s her out, if she wants to take 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 went with him?”
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’ 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 the look on my face, starting to gather their things, starting to get ready to go.
“It was nice to finally meet you, Rose,” says one of the cheerleaders. Her smile is sweet as summer, but 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, thank her for the ice cream, 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. If I didn’t know her so well, I wouldn’t be able to see her anxiety. “How are you feeling?”
“Tricked,” I spit at her. “I thought better of you.”
“Better of me than what? Better than me arranging for you to have the chance to tell your story to the Valkyries on neutral ground? Their blessing is a good and important thing to have, especially with what you’re planning. And don’t you tell me you’re not planning to go after him. I know you better than that.” 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 passed the exit.” I sigh, walking back to my stool and sitting. The air smells like ozone in the wake of the Valkyries. “Start the grill back up.”
“Am I paying for deception with cheeseburgers?” I nod, and Emma smiles. “Okay. That’s fair enough. I’ll call Tommy back after you eat.”
“Why? Am I going somewhere?”
“Yes. You’re going to the Ocean Lady. You just told your story. It’s time that you heard his.” This time, when she snaps her fingers, the jukebox spins 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 time to kill the pain . . .
... and the dancing never ends.
2013
The Ocean Lady
YOU START TO LEARN things after you’ve been walking the ghostroads for long enough. There are no formal schools in the twilight; the old schoolyard chant of “no more pencils, no more books, no more teachers’ dirty looks” applies more completely than most people can possibly imagine before they slid between the cracks. Things look different in the twilight. Things are different in the twilight. The rules aren’t the same here. The old patterns won’t protect you.
The twilight is another country, a layered series of Americas where the sun never rises, and the people who wind up here have two choices: adapt or die. Some chase a mythical third choice, and spend their time on the ghostroads trying to claw their way back into the light. I sometimes think they’re the saddest ones of all, because they never let themselves accept the reality of their situation. There’s no way to escape once you’re fully in the twilight. Get out while you’re in the shallows, or never get out at all. That’s just the way the ghostroads run.
It seems like everyone who walks the twilight has something else they’re looking to learn. The routewitches are seeking the stories of the highways and the byways, the hidden riddles worked into frontage roads and ghost towns where the tumbleweeds hold dominion over all. They practice their little magics, they speak to strangers, they give rides to hitchhikers both living and long dead, and they learn. Even they have their divisions, their strange allegiances, their legends and their laws. The Queen of the Routewitches keeps her court on the old Atlantic Highway, the oldest major artery in North America. Most of it’s gone in the daylight levels, replaced first by Route 1 and later by Interstate 95, but the twilight has a longer memory than the light does, and the old Atlantic is the strongest and the cleanest of the ghostroads. If you cross her palm with silver, she can tell you things not even the highway commission remembers, like why Route 1 cut so far inland when the Atlantic Highway ran through Savannah, Georgia, and what really funded the construction of the Waldo-Hancock Bridge. They’re just stories in the light, but down here, they’re the things that can keep you breathing.
If you were breathing when you arrived, that is.
I didn’t find the ghostroads; the ghostroads found me, looming up out of the dark like the iceberg that felled the Titanic. Everyone in the twilight is looking for something, and I’m no different; I went looking for ghosts, a phantom chasing phantoms through the night that never quite begins or ends. I had to find them. It was the only way to know for sure what I’d become. They were tangled in a thousand half-stitched seams across the fabric of reality, waiting to be found, and I found them. The ghosts of the twilight taught me what I am—a hitcher, a ghost tied not to a physical place or a specific person, but to an unfinished task. We have our rules, just like every other kind of ghost, but we run closer to the skin than most, closer to the daylight, because we got lost by mistake. We were never meant to be here.
The Last Dance moves around. It’s located in one of Maine’s unincorporated townships when Tommy picks me up, a crumbling, dying little settlement that must have been alive and vibrant once, before the heart and the hope leaked out of it like water through a broken vase. From there, we drive the ghostroads to Calais, just on the edge of the Canadian border. This is the edge of his territory, and the closer we get to Canada, the slower he drives, until it’s like we’re moving through molasses. We’re still three miles from where I need to be when he stops the car, shamefaced and sweating, and says, “This is as far as I go, Rose. I’m sorry.”
He’s got nothing to be sorry for, and this is farther than I expected him to take me. I want to tell him that, I really do, but the words slip away when I look into his eyes. There’s something in them that speaks of exits, of road signs that lead to final destinations, and I can’t bear the sight of it. I knew this night was coming—this night always comes. It still hits me like a blow. Tommy is coming close to realizing that the road isn’t forever, that he can drive beyond it, and the knowledge
burns.
How many will that make? How many racers and riders and hitchers and ferrymen who’ve fallen onto the ghostroads, and then found their own way off them, while I’m still here? Too many. And Tommy—sweet, stupid Tommy—isn’t going to be the last of them.
“I’m good,” I say, and slip out of his car, back into the cool, sweet air of the everlasting twilight. The feel of asphalt beneath my feet is centering, a benediction directed only toward the road. “I can walk from here. You can find your own way back?”
It’s a fool’s question, and I want to take it back almost before I finish asking it. Tommy’s a phantom rider, a man who died behind the wheel and carried his car into the twilight with him. He’s tied to the stretch of road where he crashed. His presence makes the road safer than it would have been without him, makes the drunks think twice before they stagger out of the bars, makes the teenage hotheads lighten up on the gas and take the turns a little more slowly.
Phantom riders have their place in the way of things, and they do more than just make good ghost stories. I envy the shit out of them; always have, always will. They have something no hitcher gets to have. They have homes.
Tommy frowns a little, confusion blocking out the exits in his eyes. “Yeah, Rose, I can find my way.” The car’s engine growls, a little roar from a captive lion. We may be old friends, but she doesn’t like me messing with her driver.
I step back, ceding the point. “Good. Now get out of here.” That doesn’t seem like enough, not with the exits so close, and so I add, “Thanks for the ride.”
“It wasn’t anything,” says Tommy, and smiles awkwardly. “Good night, Rose.”
“Good night, Tommy,” I say, and then he’s gone, roaring down the road at the sort of speed that’s only safe on the ghostroads, and even here, only barely. He’ll be back on his own stretch before morning, wheels gripping familiar asphalt, phantom rider riding hard where he belongs.
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