Deadroads

by Robin Riopelle

  She tried again—connection to earth, hand to heart, declaration of intent, open the road—and again the path failed to appear.

  Deliberately, Sol took Lutie’s left hand, pulled it to the ground, covered it with his own. He met her eyes, but said nothing.

  A shiver ran through their combined hands, a connection, and Lutie could feel the slow rumble of Sol’s heartbeat loud in her own ribcage. Deliberately, he brought her hand to his chest, through the opening in his denim shirt, skin warm, almost hot, too intimate, and his head dropped for a moment before she felt it, so strong it was like a voice in her head, but there were no words, just a declaration of hope, of release, pure as sunlight. Pure as fire, and it was strange, that Sol had said fire was unpredictable, because here it was, intent and dedicated, within him to direct.

  Then he brought her hand to his lips, dry and featherlight, scratch of beard—like Papa, remembered goodnight kisses—and breath of life across her fingertips. He’s making this seem so easy. Like a current of water or the air out an open highway window, miles flashing by in mid-summer, the road opened right across her hand, and she felt Sol bend it to his will: this way, the exit.

  The road opened and the ghost melded with it like two pieces of quicksilver joining on a flat surface, and then Sol took Lutie’s hand, bent down all her fingers except for forefinger and middle which he held together, the ghost gone now, and he tapped her fingers three times against the ground. Done. Closed. Goodbye.

  The road melted into the ground with an almost imperceptible sound of flow, too low for human ears to hear.

  Lutie stared at Sol for a long minute, and he seemed to realize that he was holding her hand, and he let it go. Then all the color drained from his face, and Lutie found herself grabbing a handful of his coat, just to keep him from falling over backwards. He put one hand out to steady himself, rocked onto his knees, the other hand to his head.

  Baz crouched beside them, but he didn’t touch, didn’t ask questions, seemed to know better, or know that questions were pointless.

  “Okay,” Sol said after a minute, muffled, still in a ball. “Maybe next time.” He raised his head, motioned up, and Lutie helped him to his feet. His lips were bone white. Baz seemed about to say something, but Sol’s attention was on their sister. “You good to go?”

  That wasn’t the real question and it was the only question, so Lutie nodded. She was so far from being able to do what Sol had just shown her. Might as well watch the sun to learn how to hang in the sky. They should get out of here, because there was no way she could face off against a ghost, let alone a ghost like Lewis.

  They both had momentarily forgotten about Baz, and that was the second mistake.

  Perhaps he saw opportunity, or misinterpreted Sol’s words, thinking that Lutie needed a little back-up, some way to lull the ghosts enough so she could easily guide one on its path. In any case, Baz picked another song, happy again, something daffy that might have been by Donovan or Arlo Guthrie, Lutie didn’t know which.

  Lutie had her arm on Sol’s, steadying him because although he wasn’t admitting it, would never admit it, he was sore and beat up and shouldn’t have been doing this, not today. With the first note out Baz’s mouth, Sol tensed, took one step but Lutie was in the way and he had to take a second to get around her. No imprecation was going to stop Baz, because once started, Lutie suddenly remembered, Baz was extraordinarily difficult to stop.

  When the light came, no one was expecting it, not for some lame hippy song.

  Baz didn’t notice it, not at the same time as Lutie did. It had no epicenter, no point of origin, it just was. The light nominally came from the vague area of ‘above’, but was without heat, without source. It filled the whole, was everywhere, and Lutie grabbed Sol’s sleeve in fright, but he was already moving to Baz, was finding his way in the washed out landscape. For the first time that she’d witnessed since meeting him, Lutie saw fear naked in Sol’s face, and it was all for their brother, no one else.

  The light played havoc with sound as well, because Lutie watched Sol pull Baz to his knees, instinctual, go to ground, and maybe Baz stopped singing immediately, the song fading out, but the light stayed. She couldn’t tell, because she couldn’t hear. Sol covered Baz like there was a blast, shielding him—hiding him—and there was no doing that, it was hopeless.

  Lutie, only a few steps away, crept to their side, hunched over, one arm across Baz’s back, and Sol took the opportunity to look up, eyes trained beyond the wash of light, letting Lutie protect Baz a little.

  He put his hand down on the ground and Lutie knew that when the light left, as it would now that Baz had stopped singing, there would be ghosts. There would be a lot of ghosts.

  SIXTEEN

  GANG’S ALL HERE

  He’d always been told not to let Baz sing, that it was bad, that for whatever reason it was bad. It called notice to them. It called notice to Baz, and what was the very last thing that his father had said to Sol, but to look out for him. Keep him safe. Don’t negotiate.

  The light was neither good nor bad, it just was, and it bathed them in warmth on a cold winter’s day, which most people would interpret as ‘good’. Sol didn’t. Sol couldn’t. The light fell under the heading ‘attention’, it was like a searchlight picking out an escaping prisoner, and there was no way he could hide Baz from it.

  Not when Baz had invited it.

  “Ta gueule, ta gueule, ta gueule,” he whispered into Baz’s ear, pressing him to the earth. Baz’s hands were clamped over his ears, his face screwed up in pain or alarm, hard to tell which. Then Lutie was there, and she sensed enough to know what was in need of hiding, and she covered Baz with her coat, her arms, her long blonde hair.

  It left Sol with enough time to prepare for what would come next, because Lutie had said last time that the ghosts had come on the heels of the white light. With them, a devil, and Sol should have known that it was a stupid idea, bringing Baz with them.

  He did not know how to best a devil, did not know how it was done, but he sure as hell knew what to do with a bunch of ghosts. First things first.

  It would have helped if he’d had a decent sleep, if he’d had something to eat, if he hadn’t been so beat up, if he hadn’t had a raging hangover, but there was nothing to help any of that, nothing of remedy in the offing, so he would just have to go forward.

  He was sure the ghosts would swarm Baz, as Lutie said they’d done last time, and so he stayed close, would not be able to draw them away, a pitiful distraction, given that Baz was right there. Not a distraction, then, but a weapon. Hand on the ground, making a connection, rumble of water, thrum of earth, matched to his beating heart.

  Life.

  He imagined floodwaters, and the need to divert them, and he touched his heart before he saw his first ghost, opened the path, held it while the fickle light played over the ground, and Sol wanted to believe that the light was benevolent, that it had an interest in keeping them safe, but that was the way to disappointment at best, madness at worst.

  When the light left, the cold was brutal, and Sol held the path even as Lutie cried warning, his name, once. Then he saw them, legion, so many at once, as it had been that night with Aurie’s ghost, when his father had once again demonstrated how dangerous it was to have Baz sing.

  Sol was ready but not prepared, and many of the ghosts rushed past him, missing or avoiding the path even as others found it. The path was necessary, but also a drain. To hold it, he had to attend to it, which meant he couldn’t deal with the ones that got past him.

  “Lutie!” he shouted, hand trembling against the ground, frayed handhold to life, to what moved under the skin of the earth. “Lutie!” Voice hoarse in juxtaposition to his brother’s, hoping she’d know, that she’d understand.

  Hoping that she’d know to protect Baz, to keep him safe while Sol was occupied by the ghosts. But what could she do? What had he shown her that had any practical use right now?

  Keeping his hand on the ground,
Sol crabbed backwards until he felt Lutie and Baz against his back. The strain of keeping the path open was tremendous, was like holding a live wire fallen on the ground. His bones sang, black spots danced in his vision.

  Then the ghosts were gone. Some down Sol’s road, still shining in the dust and the cold, but others blinking out, not fully gone, but away again. Last conscious act: he closed his road, three taps. Behind him, Lutie’s arm snaked across his chest, keeping him close. He collapsed into her, unable to keep upright anymore. The three of them, in a huddle on the prairie grass, embraced by a thread of iron, and one of water.

  Lutie’s breathing was ragged, catching, but Sol couldn’t hear Baz at all, which was worse. He turned, tried to turn, but his bruised hip protested, and his breath caught through teeth suddenly clenched in pain.

  There, to Sol’s right, just beyond where they lay, black against the silvered wood of the sagging barn, a rickety form, legs and burr-pocked body, like something dragging itself out of an oil spill. Its eyes glowed acid from the mass, but it came no closer.

  Thirty feet away, that was all.

  A creaking noise, haunted house rusty hinge, fork on stoneware, and Sol recognized its laughter. Despite his fire-lanced hip, Sol came up onto one knee, used his hands to push all the way up so he was on his feet, put himself between that which was loved, and that which was despised.

  “Oh, my,” it said.

  “Lutie,” Sol called softly over his shoulder. “You okay?”

  A moment, and the thing scuttled sideways a few feet. Sol moved with it, knowing it was faster than he was, even if he’d been having a good day. Toying with me.

  “Yeah.” Her voice was hushed; she saw what he saw.

  “Baz?”

  Cloth against cloth, then, “I’m okay,” and Sol closed his eyes, relief radiating through him.

  It didn’t last.

  “Gang’s all here,” the devil said. “Bonjour, tout le monde!” It sounded like a French-language kid’s show presenter. “We have some accounts to settle.”

  “So we do.” Sol’s voice dropped and he took a step forward, hadn’t the first idea of how he was going to fight this thing.

  “Sol,” Baz said from behind, “I can—”

  “Not a chance,” Sol said. “Don’t you try it, we can take our time with this one,” and that seemed the most absurd thing he’d said thus far. He trusted Baz to know what he meant. Singing was what had gotten them into trouble in the first place.

  Then Sol understood what the devil had implied with its greeting. It grinned as though Sol had subtitles, rows of gray teeth like a shark’s, angled inwards. Gang’s all here.

  A crashing from far away, scent of ash now in the air, the threat. They were at the Megeath crossing, where Lewis had died and the ghost would be more powerful here than anywhere else on earth. Maybe the devil couldn’t physically harm them, but other things could. “What do you want?” Sol asked, but he knew, finally. He’d literally seen the light, and he would have laughed, had it been in him.

  “I want to touch God,” the devil bowed its head piously.

  “Fuck you.” Coming from behind, Lutie’s voice was bone hard. She knew God from God, apparently. Sol had never had religion, not in the usual sense, but she had. This would be hitting her in ways he couldn’t quite wrap his head around, not given the when and the where.

  One thing was obvious, though: she’d get in the middle of it if he didn’t do something.

  “Get to the truck, both of you.” As if they’d do it, they wouldn’t, neither of them were listening to him anymore.

  The devil tsked, skitched and clattered to the side, circling them. The sky darkened. Ash cloud, and Sol approached the thing, held his hand out behind him to ward off anything Lutie might try. There was silence behind, no sound of Baz nor Lutie moving, getting into the truck, nothing.

  “He don’t sing for you, p’tit diable.”

  It sighed. “How many times do I have to say it? I don’t care about the singing. I’m probably the only one that doesn’t give a damn about the singing.” It laughed, a saw cutting through metal, all hot oil and spark. “Me, give a damn. That’s a good one.”

  The crashing was close now, and Sol was sure if he turned around, the ash would be thick enough that he wouldn’t be able to see Baz and Lutie. It don’t care about the singing, it cares about the company the singing brings and that would be—

  Considering the scope of what the devil was after opened far too much in Sol, something too big for them, for any of them, a cosmic chess board laid out in all directions. I want to touch God. He, and Baz, and Lutie, they were of the firmament, not sky, not fire. They were not angels. But Baz could call them, and that had been enough.

  Sol dropped to his knees, hand out, knowing he’d have to stop the ghost first. A ghost bound not to a fortuneteller, but to a devil, and Sol was certain this would be what would kill him.

  Hand splayed against the hard dirt, nourishing generations of wheat, sun and water and buffalo. Usually, it worked. Any other day, it would have worked. But he was depleted, was out of balance. Everything was out of balance and Sol needed his hand on the ground not to start any process, but to keep himself from falling flat on his face.

  Fuck it, I’m tapped.

  The devil laughed, clattered forward like a handful of cutlery thrown at a wall and Sol’s eyes widened as he realized he’d left himself too apart. It was like one of those appalling nature shows where the wolves cut the sick caribou from the herd and brought it down. Thinking this, Sol’s head came up, finding what he needed from the earth, just as the ash shadow covered them all: Sol, devil, ghost, brother, sister.

  No time to be the weak one in the field, he told himself. The devil winked and disappeared in a burst of soft charcoal, like iron filings released from some magnetic hold. Lewis’s ghost blew through the shimmer of black powder, flattened Sol with one swing of its wooden club, caught him on his upraised arm instead of his head, which is where it had been aiming. Sol rocketed backwards with the blow, and it was no time to be on his back, in this ghost’s way.

  The ash swirled, and enormous heat rose behind Sol—fire, and that made sense. It wasn’t cleansing, not with Lewis, not for his ghost. It was payback, was part of Lewis’s strength.

  Sol would have to rely on his feet to find his ground, not his hands. His primal connection with the earth, with life, was still there, and he tried to concentrate, but that bat of Lewis’s was a lethal distraction. This thing had created bodies from North Platte to Brule, was in the thrall of a devil, was ten times as strong as anything he’d ever faced before. But if he could get rid of the ghost, he would undermine le p’tit diable. He could hope, anyway.

  One small problem: the ghost was enormous, had Ted Williams’s swing, and they were standing in the very place it had died.

  Time. I need time. Enough time to make his ghost road, just a few seconds. The abandoned barn, some shelter. Five seconds, that’s all I need. He got there before the ghost, sliding between door and frame, and skidding into the darkness, knowing that the opening wasn’t wide enough to let Lewis pass without some negotiation; ghosts tended to forget they were ghosts, followed the same rules they did when they were humans. They didn’t pass through walls, which Sol hoped would allow him enough time. He did not doubt for a second that Lewis would follow him.

  Murderous ghosts usually wanted to follow him. A talent, of sorts.

  The ash floated in the air still, the glow of the ghostly fire through the missing boards, that and the ghastly sound of Lewis’s dragging walk, and Sol backed further into the darkness of the barn.

  He stood breathing hard for a moment, then bent down, sucked air as his hip flared with pain, one hand to the earthen floor, no foundation to this structure, built straight on the prairie. He found his connection, brought his shaking hand to his chest, heart hammering so hard it caused the medic in him concern. Fait attention. Concentrate. The light coming in from the outside, house-fire bright, flickere
d and died, and the barn pitched into blackness.

  Lewis’s ghost might be big and lethal, but it was also noisy, which was about the only advantage Sol had. So he heard the ghost when it shoved open the barn door, using its massive strength, blotting what little light there was. In the darkness, Sol had a sense of its mass in front of him, a presence rising higher than his head, close enough to touch.

  Abandoning all efforts to aim anything true or otherwise, Sol tackled the giant around the waist, getting a firm grip on the moldering cloth, the sinews in his hands ropy and taut like a stringed instrument. The blows it could administer from that close were negligible, so Sol kept pushing, knew he could get it down if he angled and turned. There was nothing to it, really, and then the ghost stepped back with Sol, and Sol lost his footing and they crashed backwards into an ancient stall, Sol headfirst, bearing the brunt of it.

  Dazed, he rolled to the side as he fell, out of the way, far enough so that even with its orangutan’s reach, Lewis wouldn’t get him on the first swing of that bat. Nothing came. Silence. Sol came up on his elbows, scrambled back, listening. Still nothing. Gone. Again. Sol swore.

  It’s gone, goddamn, fucking merde trou d’cul—and he still couldn’t make out anything, only soft darkness, no fire, no ash, no nothing. Not daylight either. En garde. Silence. Then he was picked up from behind and thrown across the dark expanse, a moment of giddy flight. Being tossed across a room wasn’t a novel activity for Sol; based on his trajectory, he had a brief moment to appreciate how hard the landing was going to be.

  He was wrong, though, because he fell into moldy hay, and it was marginally better than smacking his head against a wall, or any of those other hard landings he’d had in his years of putting angry ghosts and drunks and psych patients to bed. Even so, he tumbled immediately, breath knocked from his chest, heard the gutteral rattle of the ghost.

  He dug deep, centered, hand to earth, hand to heart, bringing fingers to his mouth, just taking breath—