Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan

by Seanan McGuire

  The rain outside keeps falling as the hours trickle by, adding an element of psychological torture to a situation that really doesn't need help scaring the crap out of me. I know what happens if I'm wearing a coat when the sun comes up: the coat loses its power and I fade back onto the ghostroads, dead as always. But what happens if the sun comes up while I'm trapped in a Seal of Solomon that's somehow doing what only a coat's supposed to do to me? Do I get free? Or do I get sucked into a bottle like some fairy tale djinn, Barbara Eden with a bad attitude and better fashion sense?

  "I would kill for a routewitch about now," I mutter, and go back to waiting.

  Enough time has passed by the time the door swings all the way open that I almost don't notice; I'm staring off into space, thinking about how much I'd be willing to do for a cup of coffee. It's the sound of footsteps on the linoleum that makes me realize I'm not alone anymore. I scramble to my feet, the scrapes on my hands and knees complaining at the rough treatment. I don't care. I don't my captor to see me looking that defenseless.

  The woman who's just stepped into the diner doesn't even look at me as she pulls a canister of salt from her pocket and closes the break in the circle. This accomplished, she starts walking around the edges of the Seal, lighting candles I didn't even notice in the gloom. Each one beats back the darkness just a little; nowhere near enough. I turn, watching her, but I don't say anything. I'm not going to be the first one to speak.

  I see her more and more clearly as the candles flicker to life. She's in her late thirties, with long, straight hair that shade of dirty blonde that means she's been blonde all her life, too proud to start dyeing when it started to darken. Her glasses glitter in the candlelight, making it impossible to tell the color of her eyes. She's pretty, in the dark, in the candlelight, but it's hard to focus on anything but the book she's holding under one arm, the thick, leather-bound book with the Seal stamped on its cover. That sort of book never means anything good to midnighters like me, especially not in the hands of someone like her, someone who carries the twilight with her like a sour perfume. She was born a daylight girl, but she's burrowed her way down, I can taste it. I just don't know why.

  I just know that I've never seen her before in my life, or in my death. I've been trapped by a stranger, ghost rat in a ghost cage. That makes it all the worse when the last candle is lit and she closes the diner door, finally turning to study me. She runs her eyes over every inch of my body, measuring what she's caught. Finally, horribly, she smiles.

  "Hello, Rose," she says.

  Shit.

  ***

  I could never have prevented this accident from happening. It was too late before Tommy met me. Maybe it was too late before I got within a hundred miles of this town. I don't know. All I know is that I tried as hard as I could, and that it wasn't enough.

  I'm glad I don't need sleep anymore. After this, I'd be awake for a week at least.

  The racers came just like Tommy swore they would, rolling over the horizon in their cars that were ten times more expensive and half as alive as Tommy's. Some of them were good men, and some of them were bad men, but they were all of them hard men, because they'd chosen a hard aspect of the highway to receive their worship. A few of them tried to tell Tommy not to race, and those are the ones I'll remember to the Atlantic Highway the next time that I walk her borders. Some just laughed. The boy wanted to put down his pink slip and his pride on a race he couldn't possibly win, well, he'd learn a lesson from the losing. Only there are no more lessons for Tommy on this road, or on any other.

  The wheels of his car are still spinning as I run across the blacktop toward him, my breath harsh in my ears, my feet striking hard against the pavement. He's still alive, and so I run to him. Once he dies, slips onto the ghostroads and leaves the daylight forever, the coat he gave me will lose its power to hold me to the laws of the living. That's in the rules. Only live people have substance to share, and you can't steal life from the dead.

  The men who raced against Tommy have realized that something is very wrong; that this isn't the sort of accident someone laughs at and walks away from. Their cars have stopped, and the men are getting out, looking back toward where Tommy's car lies shattered on the road. None of them are moving to help him--to help us, since every one of them thinks I'm his townie girlfriend, the one he's doing this stupid, suicidal thing for. They just let me run, my throat raw with screaming, tears running down my cheeks as I reach for another soul I failed to save.

  They were going too fast and the road seemed smooth, but there are cracks in the cleanest pavement, slick spots, potholes, rocks. I may never know which one hit the wheels of the car ahead of Tommy, and it doesn't really matter; he spun out, adjusted, caught himself and drove on. In the process, he clipped Tommy, and something about that collision was enough--just enough--to send the smaller, lighter Toyota into a spin it never pulled out of. Tommy's car rolled three times before it stopped, twisted metal and smoking engine, a broken body on the road.

  She's already gone when I get there. All that's left is cooling death, and a young man cut almost in half by his own steering column. There's blood everywhere. I don't let that stop me. If there's one thing I've learned since the night I died, it's that blood washes off, but no one--no one--deserves to die alone.

  "Tommy? Tommy, can you hear me?" I beat my fists against the glass of the passenger window, trying to catch his attention. I could take off the coat, slide through this door like it was smoke, but then I'd be on the ghostroads again, and I wouldn't be able to hold his hand until the dying finished. He's a fool, yes, and he still deserves to have someone holding his hand while the lights go out. "Tommy!"

  Three of the racers come running up, big men, muscling their way past me to wrench the door open. Then they stop, hands dangling uselessly, as they try to figure out what else they can do for him. Maybe someone's called an ambulance, and maybe nobody will; this sort of race is illegal, after all, and they have to be measuring their own lives yet to come against the death of one boy barely out of his teens and too stupid to know when to find another way. They can't take him out of the car, that much is clear; the way it's wrapped around him is like a lover's embrace, and there's no way of breaking it without breaking him even further.

  If Tommy can't come to us, I'll go to him. It's the only thing left that I can do. I squeeze my way between the racers (and if any of them notice the sudden give to my flesh, the way I seem to be losing substance by the second, they don't say anything; the ones who'd notice are the ones who know the twilight well enough to know me) and kneel next to the driver's-side door, gravel biting into my knees. My hands are blood even before I realize that his blood is on the seat, and it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, blood can't hurt me.

  "Tommy? Tommy, can you hear me?" My fingers almost pass through his cheek the first time I reach out to him. I pull back, concentrate, and try again. This time I can feel my fingers graze his skin, and I don't know if that's because I'm closer to living, or because he's closer to dead. "Come on, Tommy, stay with me. Open your eyes, and stay with me."

  It's too late now. It's all over except for the dying. But I'm still here, and he's still here, and as long as that's the case, I'm going to be here for him. I owe him that much. I owe all of them that much.

  Tommy swallows with obvious difficulty, and opens his eyes. They aren't quite focusing anymore. He won't really see the other racers, or the road, or the blood that's dripping over everything, like the red flag signaling that it's time to leave the finish line. But he'll still see me. We're in the same place right now, he and I. "R-Rose?"

  "I'm here. I'm right here, Tommy."

  "I think I messed up, Rose."

  It's a beautiful night, big white moon and too many stars and the desert around us like an ocean of gold. It's a beautiful night, and Tommy--a boy whose last name I never learned, a boy who did this for a girl I've never met--is bleeding to death with my hand against his cheek. "Yeah," I say, not looking away from him. "I
think you did."

  ***

  "You don't know how long it's taken me to track you down." She pulls a rusted chair with a ripped green vinyl cover from one of the nearby tables, moving it to the edge of the salt circle and sitting primly down. Resting the book on her knees, she smiles at me. "I mean, at first I wasn't even sure that you were real. It took me years just to find someone who could really prove to me that you existed. I appreciated that day. It told me that I wasn't crazy. I mean, I spent three years chasing truckers and visiting psychics and going into every diner I saw to ask if anyone in there knew who you were or had seen you or knew where I might find you." She leans forward and smiles at me, smiles like a rattlesnake getting ready to strike. "You have a lot of friends, Rose. A lot of people looked me in the eye and lied for you. I was impressed by that."

  "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 housepet."

  "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 into this world, 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 as she speaks, not once. 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 1929--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 1945 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 sophomore. 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 been one of them. 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 off-handed; 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. "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."

  ***

  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 loved him enough to wait for him on the ghostroads, and that's better than many men will have. Still, 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's 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.

  His blood falls through my fingers, leaving them clean and pale as I rise. His jacket likewise falls, hitting the concrete with a soft, anti-climactic 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." 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." 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 daylight, where metal is constrained by the limits of construction, and not the limits of love. "But I can make a few suggestions."

  ***

  "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 death-trap down. "You're Laura."

  "Finally." She shakes her head, stands, moves to re-light 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 suppose that 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 diner floor, 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.