Sparrow Hill Road

by Seanan McGuire

  Her name was Rose. She was the only girl I ever loved—the only girl I guess I could have ever loved, the only one that I was designed for loving. She wasn’t perfect. Nobody’s perfect. But she was close enough for a small town boy who dreamed of one day touching something greater. I guess she felt the same way about me. She came back to me, after all, even if it was only once, even if I didn’t know that she was already gone.

  I’ve spent my whole life trying, but I never fell in love again—not the way I fell in love with her, when the world was young and innocent, and silly teenage boys believed their girlfriends were immortal.

  Her name was Rose.

  I’m making my way toward Ann Arbor when I feel the undeniable urge to turn south. It’s like someone is tying strings around my wrists and ankles, trying to use them to pull me the way they think I ought to go. I stop where I am, feet sinking down into the dead dry grass by the side of the road, and try to tell myself that I’m not feeling what I’m feeling. I don’t want this. I didn’t want this the first time that it happened, and I don’t want it now.

  The teasing, tugging sensation doesn’t stop. If anything, it gets worse, small tugs turning quickly into outright pulling, like the whole world has decided that it has nothing better to do than get me to turn around. I close my eyes, trying to feel my way across the twilight to the source of the feeling. Whoever it is, they don’t know what they’re doing. This is a summons without a “return to sender” attached, which can only mean one thing:

  Someone tied to the few short years that I spent among the living is getting ready to join me among the dead, and the universe wants me to play psychopomp for their departure.

  Thanks for that, universe. Thanks a lot.

  The calls don’t come as often as they used to. There was a time when I was making my way back to Buckley almost every year to pull some poor ghost away from the body they’d abandoned and help them find their way to the ghostroads. Irony is a bitter mistress: the fact that these people had me called to lead them to their afterlives didn’t make them road ghosts, and none of them showed any inclination to stay for longer than it took to process the fact of their own death. One by one, I helped them deal with reality, and one by one, they left me. I was allowed to invite them to the party, but I wasn’t allowed to go with them, or ask them if they wanted to dance.

  Sometimes being dead sucks. The parts of it that involve finding the people I used to love and losing them all over again . . . those parts suck more than most.

  The pull to the south is still growing in strength and urgency. I know from past experience that if I try to hitch a ride in this state, no cars will stop for me unless they’re going the right way. Even if I can get my hands on a coat, I won’t fully incarnate; not unless I give in and obey the strange, malleable rules of the road.

  “It’s not like I was doing anything with my night, right?” I mutter, and shove my hands into the pockets of my jeans, using the motion to thrust myself down through reality’s walls, moving smoothly from the daylight to the top of the twilight. The sky flickers, going bad-special-effect black, and the stars become frozen diamonds, not flickering, not doing anything but shining. There’s no wind here to ruffle the corn. Just the fields, and the sky, and the black serpent highway sliding smoothly off into the distance.

  I step out of the grass, back onto the road, and start walking. Giving in to the tugging this easily feels a little like defeat. Frankly, I don’t care. The sooner I can get this over with, the sooner I can get on with my death.

  Like it or not, I’m heading back to Buckley.

  The nurses don’t think I hear them talking outside my room. They would, if they thought twice about it—everything else about this old body may be breaking down on me, and me without a manufacturer’s warranty to my name—but my hearing’s as good as ever. They don’t think I’m going to make it to Christmas. That’s a bit of a relief, if you ask me; I’ve been here without my Rose for long enough now. I’m tired. I’m ready to be done.

  There’s just one more thing that needs to be done. I’ve observed the rituals as much as I can, here in this sterile place where old men go to wait out the last lonely hours of their existence. I’ve poured the glasses of wine, I’ve kept her picture close to me—I’ve even bribed a couple of the orderlies to burn incense outside the building, where the smell won’t attract that busybody of a nurse who keeps the ward. If I’ve missed a step, I don’t know it. I guess I won’t know it until I die.

  I’ve never in my life been a gambler, Rose, but I’m gambling now. I’m gambling on you remembering me, and you caring enough to come. Please, Rose. Please.

  Have mercy on a dying man. Remember that once, you loved me. Remember that once . . .

  Once, I got you home.

  Travel on the ghostroads is difficult to predict. Something that takes a day in the daylight can take a year in the twilight; something that takes a year in the daylight can be over in minutes in the twilight. It’s all down to what the road thinks you need, and how capricious reality is feeling at any given moment.

  Either reality is trying to be helpful, or I’ve somehow pissed it off, and this is how it punishes me. I’ve barely been walking for an hour when the tugging becomes strong enough to yank me clean off the ghostroads, and I find myself standing on the wide green lawn in front of a blocky white building. It takes a moment for me to get my bearings. This part of Buckley didn’t exist in the 1950s. It’s part of the endless expansion of the township, the slow encroachment on the forest that used to keep us from the world. Sparrow Hill Senior Facility says the sign mounted near the small, businesslike front door. That explains the feel of the place, like the whole thing is holding its breath, waiting to see who’ll win—life, death, or none of the above.

  I take a breath I don’t really need, changing my clothes as I start walking toward the door. The basic nurses’ uniform hasn’t changed much since I died. Wear basic white and sensible shoes, and people will almost always assume you know what you’re doing.

  There’s no one to notice as I walk through the wood of the front door and into the entry hall. The place is practically deserted, nothing but the night shift skeleton crew and the inmates locked in their individual cells. I walk a little quicker, following the feeling of being pulled. I’m rarely glad to have died. I can’t really say I miss the chance to get old enough for a place like this one.

  I still don’t know who I’ve been called here to escort. My brother’s the only living relative I have left, and I’d feel it if it were him. All the other blood kin close enough to call me back died years ago, and I never had that many friends. I wasn’t exactly a social butterfly; coming from the poor side of town was bad enough, but my unladylike ways and fascination with cars really put the nails in my reputation’s coffin. Not many people cared enough to look past the judgments and make their own decisions about what kind of girl I was. That was fine, because for the most part, I didn’t want them to.

  I had my dreams and my cars and my brothers. I had my shot at a better life. I had Gary.

  The tugging leads me to a specific door, in a specific hall. I hesitate for a moment, unable to shake the feeling that I’m missing something—something I’ll be sorry about later. I can’t figure out what it is, and so I step through the wood, just one more ghost in a building that should be dripping with them.

  The man in the bed in front of me is so old and worn that he’s practically a ghost himself, barely anchored by the prison of his own skin. But his eyes are open, and his smile is warm as he watches me slip into the room. I should know him. He’s the one who called me here, with his need and his dying, and I should know him.

  The framed picture on the nightstand next to his pillow is of me, junior year, lemon-bleached hair rendered gray by the black-and-white film, forever young, forever a shadow of a shade. There’s only one man who’d still be displaying that picture like this. There’s only one man who ever loved me enough to care.

  “Hello, Rose,�
� says Gary. “It’s been a long time.”

  She came. Oh, God, she actually came. It wasn’t just a story. I wasn’t out of my mind. She still looks as young as she did the night she died. I’ve missed her so much. I wonder if she even remembers who I am.

  I can’t believe she actually came.

  I freeze in place, too stunned to speak, too stunned to do anything but stare at this worn-out mockery of the only boy I ever fell in love with, the only boy I ever kissed with living lips. I’ve kissed a lot of boys since the summer that I turned sweet sixteen, but his was always and forever the only kiss that counted. Now that I’m looking, really looking, my eyes refuse to lie to me; this is Gary Daniels, this is the boy who picked me up when I was newly dead and shivering by the side of the road on Sparrow Hill. This is one of the last men on earth with the power to call me back to Buckley, and the one that I least want to see right now. This is Gary.

  This is Gary, and he’s dying.

  Even the smile on his face looks like it pains him, like the joy of seeing me again is too heavy for his aged shoulders to support. “You look . . . God, Rose, you look amazing.” Confusion flickers in his eyes—his eyes. I should have known him the second I saw him, if only by his eyes. “What have you done to your hair?”

  The question is so completely, perfectly wrong that it crosses the line into completely, perfectly right. I laugh out loud, shaking my head. “That’s the first thing you have to say to me, after more than sixty years? ‘Hello, you look great, what have you done to your hair’? Gee, Gary, you’d think you might start out with ‘it’s nice to see you,’ or even a ‘how’ve you been.’”

  “I’ve missed you so damn much, Rosie.” Gary settles deeper into his nest of pillows, joy mellowing into something sweeter: pure contentment. “I was hoping you’d come for me, when the time got close, but I couldn’t really be sure. It’s gotten so you can’t tell the real routewitches from the charlatans, and it’s not like I could go comparison shopping.”

  I blink, staying where I am for the moment, just inside the door, ready to run if I have to. “What do you know about the routewitches?”

  “Not nearly enough,” he says, earnestly. “I was a ghost-chaser for a lot of years, Rosie. I’m not proud of it, but that’s what I was, because I was hoping that if I chased long enough, I might catch up to you. I met this redhead little piece of a girl just across the Minnesota line—I suppose ‘met’ might be too generous a word. I got found by her, and she told me that you were a road ghost, and that I had to let you be.” His smile turns wry before smoothing back into serenity. “She told me you were real. That the night we had was real. That was all I really needed to hear.”

  “Was her name Emma, by any chance?”

  Gary nods, once. “It was. She said you were doing as well as could be expected, and that I couldn’t help you.”

  I can almost picture it, Gary, still young, if not as young as he was when we were together, sitting across the table from one of my only real friends in the twilight while Emma sipped over-sweetened coffee and avoided answering as many questions as she could twist herself away from. She did it to protect me. She did it to give Gary his life back. But part of my heart is still aching, and wishing she’d left things alone long enough for him to catch up to me . . . long enough for him to catch me.

  “Oh,” I whisper.

  “She also told me how to find the routewitches . . . and that, if I asked them nicely enough, they’d tell me how to send a message to you.”

  “You mean they’d tell you how to call me back here when it was time for you to die.” I can’t keep the bitterness out of my voice, and so I don’t even try. First Bethany selling herself to the crossroads for the illusion of youth renewed, and now my first and only love, dying old and alone in a room that smells of bleach and ashes and age. No one ever told me life would be easy, but no one ever told me death would be this hard.

  “Yes.” Gary starts to say something else, and stops as a cough forces itself past his lips. It’s deep, bone-shaking, and it drives home what his age couldn’t: that I’m here, in this room, tonight, because Gary Daniels is getting ready to die.

  I take an involuntary step backward, shoulders passing through the surface of the door behind me. “I can’t do this,” I say. “I’m sorry, Gary, I’m so sorry, but I can’t do this. I just can’t.”

  He coughs one more time before getting his breath back and saying the worst thing he could possibly have said.

  “Please.”

  There’s still a moment in which I almost turn and flee the room; a moment when I almost give in to the need to run. The moment passes. “I guess I still owe you for picking me up on prom night,” I say, and step forward, moving closer to the bed—moving into the field of his need, penitent begging for the attentions of a psychopomp. One step and my hair brushes my shoulders in heavy lemon-scented curls, sun-dyed the color of drying straw. A second step and the green silk skirt swirls around my ankles, fabric dancing with every move I make.

  A third step and I’m standing next to his bed, and mine is the last hand he’ll ever have the chance to hold.

  Gary smiles, still wheezing slightly as he whispers, “Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I like your hair better like this, Rosie.” He raises one frail hand, moving as if to touch my hair. His hand passes right through me. Gary’s eyes widen, and he holds his hand there for a few seconds before letting it fall back to his side. “I should’ve expected that.”

  “It’s okay.” I perch myself on the edge of the bed, putting my hands over his. He can’t feel me there, not yet, but even the illusion can be a comfort for some people. “I’ve missed you.”

  “Oh, Rosie.” He sighs, deep and long as the last breath of winter. “It’s been so hard. You can’t even begin to know . . . they all thought I was crazy. For a while, they even thought I killed you. It was so hard . . .”

  I want to be angry with him, I really do; he was alive, at least, and had the chance to change things. I can’t quite find the strength. This is Gary. This is the only man besides my brothers who really mourned for me. How can I be mad at him over that? “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “Don’t be.” He puts his free hand over mine, holding it just above the point where my phantom skin begins. I can feel him surrounding my fingers, and I can’t help it; I start to cry. “Don’t cry, Rosie. I loved you then, and I love you now, and I need you to do something for me.”

  “Don’t worry, Gary. I know my job. I’ll get you to wherever it is you’re going, I promise.” He’s not dying on the road; he can’t stay with me. He’ll have to move on, and break my heart all over again.

  “I don’t mean that.” His expression is grave. “I need you to go to Dearborn, to Carl’s Garage. He knows you’re coming. He’s waiting for you. Just tell him that I’ve passed on, and he’ll know what to do from there. Can you do that for me?”

  “Gary, I don’t—”

  “Please, Rose? Can you do just this one thing for me?”

  I worry my lip between my teeth before finally, inevitably, nodding. “I can do that.”

  “Thank you.” Gary tightens his hands around mine as he sits up in the bed and kisses me deeply, kisses me with all the longing of sixty years spent apart. He takes me by surprise, and I don’t realize what’s just happened until I feel his lips smoothing under mine, his hands growing young and strong and sure again. He—the essential Gary, the one that fell in love with a girl from the wrong side of town—sat up to kiss me. The body he spent all those years wearing . . .

  ... didn’t. It’s still lying on the bed, like a coat that isn’t needed anymore.

  Gary pulls back, smiling that old devil-may-care smile, and says, “Remember, Rosie. You promised.”

  Then he’s gone, winking out like a candle flame, and I’m the only ghost in the room. Just me, sitting alone with a slowly cooling corpse that no one has any use for anymore. I stay where I am for a moment more, and then fall back into the twilight, sinking down until there
’s no hand under mine, until I’m just a ghost among ghosts once more.

  Please, Rosie. Please, keep your word . . .

  I don’t head straight for Dearborn.

  Let me rephrase that: I can’t head straight for Dearborn. If Gary wants me interacting with something in the world of the living, I have to follow the rules in getting there. It takes me three days and five coats to hitchhike my way from Buckley to the Dearborn city limits. Once I’m past them, I can walk the rest of the way, and so that’s what I do, ignoring the catcalls and the shouts from passing vehicles. As long as none of them offers me a ride, I can go where I need to go.

  None of them offers me a ride. After an hour of walking down increasingly broken and glass-spattered sidewalks, I find myself in front of a rusty converted warehouse with a sign in the window that reads, simply, CARL’S. This has to be the place.

  The coat I’m wearing gives me the substance necessary to open the door and step into the cramped office, which smells like motor oil and stale beer. “Hello?” I call. “Is anyone here?”

  I’m beginning to think this errand ends with me standing in an empty room forever when a man with a handlebar mustache of impressive size—almost as impressive as the beer belly that strains against his coveralls—emerges from the door behind the counter, jaws busily working a wad of incongruously pink gum. “Yeah?”

  “Um.” I blink once, and then ask, “Are you Carl?”

  “Who wants ta know?”