Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan

by Seanan McGuire

  This is something new. I don't like new. I haven't liked new since the days when I was sixteen for real, frightened little phantom running rabbit down the ghostroads.

  Half the moths that flutter in the glow of the streetlights are translucent, ghost insects overlaying the living ones for a second at a time. That's not right, either. That sort of melding only happens when the ghostroads are bleeding through, and I haven't been here long enough for that to start happening. I watch them as I walk toward the diner, trying to count the ghosts, trying to figure out how bad the bleed is. They move too fast for me to get an exact number, but what I get is enough to tell me that there's trouble. The kind of trouble that makes me glad you can't die twice--not under normal circumstances, anyway.

  Death doesn't smell like anything, not like an accident does. Death is more of a feeling, fingernails being dragged slow and sharp down the skin just above your spine. It's hard to feel until you're right on top of it. That's why I don't realize what's really wrong until it's too late, until the diner door swings open at the touch of my hand and sets the bell above it ringing wildly. There are a dozen people here, all of them clustered around the counter, eyes wide and terrified. The night waitress is wearing a pink and white uniform. The left side of her blouse is stained Chuck Berry red with her own blood. I freeze just inside the door, feeling the nails along my spine, realizing why I tasted diesel fuel and shadows, understanding, too late, what the ghostroads were trying to tell me. It was a warning.

  "Looks like we have another guest at the party," says a voice behind me, whiskey-rough and a little shaky, like even the speaker isn't sure how things are going to end. The gun barrel is cold where it digs into the skin on the back of my neck. I can't stop myself from cringing. Maybe that's the right response, because the speaker sounds pleased when he says, "Well, little party crasher? Go on and join the others."

  He plants a hand between my shoulder blades and shoves me forward. I'm almost glad to go staggering away from him, away from the gun in his hand. One of the people at the counter, a middle-aged man in a white apron and a fry cook's paper hat, catches my arm before I can fall. "You shouldn't have come," he whispers harshly.

  I meet his eyes. There's no recognition there. He's a daylighter, plain and simple, and I start to hope that maybe this is a daylight problem; maybe the smell of death is just the natural result of what's happening here. The blood on the waitress's uniform isn't enough to explain the blood on the floor. Someone has already died in this room--maybe more than one somebody--and that happens in every America. Death is not the exclusive province of the darker levels.

  "Hey. Look at me."

  The man at the door sounds completely at ease. That's enough to slice through my fear and turn it into anger. Anger that he's managed to scare me. Me. I've been dead longer than anyone in this room has been alive, and here I am, captive with the rest of them. I turn, ready to give the man with the gun a piece of my mind, and I see him for the first time.

  He's in his early twenties, older than I look, but still so damn young. He's dressed like a thousand other roadside runaways, ripped jeans, combat boots, beat-up old leather jacket over a stained red flannel shirt. It's the jacket that gives him away. It should have been the eyes, but it's the jacket, because after fifty years following the rules that bind the hitchers to the road, I know my outerwear. I can only take jackets from the living. And the man in the doorway, the man with the gun, the man holding this entire diner of terrified, living human beings hostage?

  Yeah. He's dead.

  ***

  His eyes skip up and down the length of me with forced hunger, a leer twisting one corner of his mouth at an angle that's more pathetic than predatory. He's trying to make me uncomfortable. He's succeeding, but not because I'm afraid he'll take advantage of the fact that I'm female, smaller than him, unarmed. No; what makes me uncomfortable is the gun in his hand, which looks as solid as I do. It's clearly solid enough to wound the living--the bleeding waitress and the body or bodies I haven't seen are proof enough of that--and I don't know what a gun like that could do to me. I've never encountered anything like this before.

  "Aren't you a pretty one?" he says, rhetorical question with a sneer underneath it. There's a quaver to his voice that all his painted-on confidence can't quite conceal. "So are you here for a cup of coffee, or for a cup of cock?"

  The people behind me are silent, all the fire frightened out of them. The waitress in the bloody uniform is close enough that I can feel her shaking, the terror coming off her skin in waves. None of them will raise a hand to save me. That realization cuts through my own fear, turning it into fury. How dare he? This is the daylight. He has no business here.

  "Coffee," I reply, canting my chin up, a challenge in my eyes. "You the fry cook on duty?"

  His snort of derision is too quick, too tight with his own terror. I am not the only frightened ghost in the Starbright Diner tonight. "Do I look like a fry cook, lady? Maybe you should try talking nice to me. I have enough bullets for everybody here."

  I'm running down the encyclopedia of the dead in the back of my mind, trying to find the round hole that connects to this square peg. He's not a hitcher; that coat's his own, and has no heat to loan, no solid skin to clothe a shadow in. He's not a pelesit, either; if he had a master, they'd know me, and they wouldn't be letting us talk. Too bad that leaves a couple of hundred options for what he might be, how he might have died, how he can be laid to rest and get the fuck out of my face. "No, you don't look like a fry cook." I cross my arms, cock my hip, level a flat stare in his direction. "You look like an idiot. Is this any way to hold up a diner? I mean, really. The door isn't even locked. I just walked in here like nothing was the matter. You have enough bullets for the entire highway? Because that's what it's going to take if you keep on this way."

  Brief disquiet flashes across his face, there and gone like a cloud sliding past the moon. "You really think it's a good idea to sass me?"

  "You really think it's a good idea to leave those doors unlocked?"

  One of the hostages grabs my arm--a white-faced college boy with eyes the color of day-old coffee. There's blood splattered across the front of his University of Michigan sweatshirt. None of it's his. "Shut up," he hisses. "You're making it worse."

  "I wasn't aware there was anything worse than this." I pull my arm away from him, still watching the man with the gun, still running silently through the lists of the dead. He's not a bela da meia-noite; they only come in one flavor, female, and they don't take hostages. He's not a toyol, they're always the ghosts of children, and they never seem this solid. Most of them can't even be seen by the living. "So what do you say? Can we lock the doors?"

  I'm not needling him for nothing, however much it might look that way. He may posture like a living man, but he isn't one, and I need to know how far his mimicry of the human condition goes. A pissed-off ghost won't care how many people stumble into this diner; whatever grudge he has will spread to cover as many of the living as he can catch. A confused one, on the other hand, a ghost that doesn't know what's going on...

  "Yeah." He licks his lips, once, before jutting out his jaw in a display of exaggerated machismo. "I think this is all the guests we need to have a real kick-ass party, huh? A real blast."

  The other hostages look to me as he turns to lock the door. Some of them are glaring. Others just look lost. The air is heavy and cloying with the taste of diesel fuel and shadows, joined now by the funereal scent of lilies and the sharp-spice smell of rosemary. There's an accident ahead. For the sake of these people--for the sake of this place--I have to hope that it's an accident that I can find a way to steer us clear of.

  According to the clock on the wall, it's just past ten o'clock. The night is young. So are these people. And they deserve to live longer than this night. "So," I say, a little too loudly. "How about that coffee?"

  ***

  The injured waitress is named Dinah. She took the bullet ten minutes before I walked throu
gh the door, when she tried to sneak out through the back. She's lucky he only shot her in the shoulder. Two other members of the staff--the other waitress and the busboy, a teenage kid who only took the job to pay for repairs to his death-trap of a pickup truck--were already dead by the time she tried to make a break for it. I learn this while she walks me through the process of making coffee on a machine that I could operate in my sleep. That's fine. I'm happy to let our rogue gunman think I'm a few sandwiches short of a picnic, especially if it gets Dinah off her feet.

  "He came in here just a few minutes after the sun went down," she says dully. That's the shock speaking, the voice of a witness at an accident scene. "Josie went over to take his order. He put a bullet right between her eyes. Right...right between her eyes." A wondering note overcomes the shock, and she sounds almost childlike as she finishes, "Bang."

  "That's charming." The coffee is thick and hot and doesn't smell like anything when I pour it into an industrial white diner mug. I made it, I poured it; nobody gave it to me, and I have no right to it. Coffee is reserved for the living. "Where do you keep the cream and sugar?"

  "Counter," says Dinah, voice still soft and somehow childish. I can't be angry at her, although I try to be.

  "Thanks. I'll try to get him to let us take a look at your shoulder." I offer her a sliver of a smile, not as encouraging as I'd like it to be, but better than nothing. I pour a second mug of coffee, place them both on a tray, and then I'm gone, heading for the door by way of the counter.

  The man with the gun is still standing there, one eye trained on the room, the other keeping watch through the front window. He stiffens at my approach, trying to look relaxed as he turns to face me. He's thinking now. He sees how big a risk he's taken by taking this diner--and I still don't know why he's done it.

  "Coffee's ready," I say, holding up the tray. "I didn't know how you take it, so I brought cream and sugar."

  He eyes the second cup and sneers, "So what, you think you get whatever I get?"

  "No. I just thought you'd want to be sure it wasn't poisoned before you drank any." I shrug a little, doing my best to look unconcerned. If he were alive, I wouldn't be worried at all. No living man has scared me since the night I did. Dead men, on the other hand... "If you want to drink them both, that's fine, too."

  "Right." Another flicker of disquiet crosses his face. Maybe he doesn't know why he's doing this. "Fix them both, bitch. Three sugars, two creams."

  "Got it." I put the tray on the nearest table, start doctoring the coffee, keep running through lists in my head. He's not einherjar; they like to fight, but they don't take hostages, they don't abuse the innocent. He's not deogen. They can turn visible, they can make their presence known, but they can't touch the living, and they don't like to interact when they can just watch. He could be working for the deogen...but it's a clear night. There would be fog if the deogen were near here, a heavy fog, and there's nothing.

  "Hurry up."

  "I'm done." I lift the tray. "You get first choice."

  His jaw juts with pride that barely masks his fear. "Damn right I do." He grabs a mug, jerks his chin toward the other. "Better enjoy that, bitch. It could be your last."

  Enjoy it? Not likely. I put down the tray, wrap my hands around the second mug to steal its heat, and sip the liquid that tastes like nothing but ashes. It doesn't even burn my lips or throat. It isn't mine.

  The man with the gun watches until I've finished my third sip. Then he thrusts his untouched mug out toward me, commanding, "Trade."

  "What?" I make doe's-eyes at him, looking as confused as I can.

  "Gimme your coffee, bitch. I know that one's clean."

  No, you don't; you know I'm willing to drink poison if it takes you out. The thought barely has time to finish before I realize something a lot more important. I hold out my mug, asking slowly, "Does that mean you're giving me yours?"

  "Damn right." Coffee slops onto the side of my hand as he jerks my mug away, replacing it with his. The scalding sting is almost sweet, because it comes with the smell of sugared coffee, and the knowledge that when I take my next sip, I'll taste it. "Got a problem with that?"

  "No," I say. The list of the dead has stopped running. I know something he doesn't. I know what he is. He doesn't know. How is it that he doesn't know? How do you not notice something like that? He's looking at me sidelong, suspicion in his eyes. I take a sip of coffee flavored with cream, sugar, and paradise. "No problem."

  "Good." He runs his eyes over my breasts again, trying to make me uncomfortable. It isn't working. All I have left to feel for him is pity, poor little ghost who doesn't even realize that he's dead and gone. "So you've got your cup of coffee. Ready for your cup of cock?"

  The other hostages are watching us with silent trepidation, mice caught in a cat's cage, watching the one mouse too stupid to stay out of reach of the cat's claws. As long as I'm making myself a target, he's not focusing on them. Two dead already. One wounded. I'm the last one to the party. As far as they're concerned, I'm the expendable one.

  "Sure." His eyes widen. That wasn't the answer he expected. "I want to ask for a favor first."

  He blinks, surprise hardening quickly into irritation. "What's that?"

  "Let them patch her up." I nod toward the waitress, take another sip of coffee, and say, "Dead bodies are depressing, and she's bleeding pretty bad. I'll do whatever if you let them give her a little first aid. Deal?"

  Suspicion sits at the front of his expression as he considers my proposal, looking for the double-cross. He doesn't find it. It isn't there. "Sure," he says, finally. "Whatever."

  ***

  Strigoi. Some people say they're a kind of vampire. Maybe they are, in some places, on some layers. Here on the ghostroads, they're one more breed of the unquiet dead, angry spirits tethered to the world of the living by something they didn't finish doing before they passed into the twilight. They're normally intangible, as trapped in the twilight as most of the dead, but once in a while...once in a while...

  Once in a while they can fight their way back into the daylight levels, dragging the twilight with them. Only on special occasions, nights like Halloween, Epiphany--and the anniversary of their deaths. I look over Dinah's shoulder as I help the fry cook and the college boy clean out her wound, assessing the cut of his clothes, the style of his jeans. Now that I'm looking, I can see how far out of fashion he is. Not as far as I would be, if I dressed myself the way the ghostroads sometimes tell me to, but far enough. He's a traveler from another country, a country called "yesterday," and I don't think he knows it. Poor little lost ghost, in under his head.

  I pitch my voice low, ask the fry cook the question I most need answered: "How long ago was the accident?"

  There's a momentary confusion in his expression, like I'd just asked him when water became wet, or when the second "r" in "February" fell silent. The confusion clears, and he gives the answer I'd been hoping for, the one that comes as a question: "How do you know about--?"

  "Just tell me what happened."

  His gaze stutters toward the strigoi, still standing guard at the diner's locked front door. "It doesn't have anything to do with...with anything."

  "Humor me." The college boy casts a sharp look in my direction, coffee-colored eyes narrowed. I smile and keep binding Dinah's wounds. Right now, he's really the least of my problems. "How long ago?"

  "It was in '89. I didn't work here yet. Tom--he owns the place, only works days now, since he doesn't have to do overnights if he doesn't want to--he told me about it." The fry cook worries his lip between his teeth, abandoning his watch over the strigoi in favor of squinting at me, like I was a blurred image he could somehow make come clear. If he's been working here long enough, that concept isn't too far off the truth. All diners touch on the twilight. People who work in them tend to stumble into shadows whether they mean to or not. "It was pretty bad."

  I look at him calmly, fingers moving smoothly as I tape gauze over Dinah's gunshot wound, feel
ing the cool-clay of her flesh. She's lost a lot of blood. She may not see the morning, no matter how things go from here. "What happened?"

  "This guy and his girlfriend showed up--tried to hold up the place, take the contents of the register. The guy who was working the kitchen, he freaked out, started screaming about demons or something, and they started shooting. One of the bullets hit the propane tank." The fry cook shudders, eyes closing momentarily, as if against a bright flash of light. "Tom said it took two years and all the insurance money to clean the place up enough to open again. He doesn't like to talk about it. The folks who've been here longer than I have say that's when he stopped working nights."

  Twenty-one years ago. I don't need to ask for the exact date of the accident. I can see the awareness stirring in the fry cook's eyes, slowly waking and making itself known. He'll be lucky to pull free of the twilight after this. He's falling deeper with every second that passes. They all are, but thanks to the push I gave him--the one I had to give him to get the information I needed--he's falling faster than the rest of them. Damn.

  "You finish this up," I say, and pass him the rest of the gauze, college boy's coffee-colored eyes still fixed on me with suspicion and with fear. Out of everyone here, he's the one who least belongs, the one most likely to break loose when everything is over. Lucky bastard. I've hated men for this.

  The fry cook takes the gauze with something like gratitude, Dinah still a dumb doll sitting placid between us. "What are you going to do?"

  I let my attention drift back to the strigoi, lost ghost on a road he doesn't recognize, and answer, "I'm going to keep my word."