Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan

by Seanan McGuire

  There was time to scream. There was time to think Oh God, oh God, I'm going to die, this is it, I'm going to die, oh, God...

  And then there was nothing.

  ***

  Silence reigns in the Last Dance Diner. Silence, and the sound of the rain. The cheerleaders stare at me in open-mouthed silence, waiting for the story to continue. I take a breath.

  "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..."

  ***

  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 at the woods in disbelief. She'd been falling; she remembered that. "There was an accident..." she whispered. "The car..."

  But there was no car. Only the road, and the night, and Rose, standing lonely and confused in her green silk gown. 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 she remembered, 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."

  "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 just 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 just 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 firetruck 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. "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 happened on Sparrow Hill Road.

  ***

  "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.

  "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 years 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, that driver would have had her."

  I feel myself go cold. Not the crushing chill of the ghostroads, but the simple, freezing cold of 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. "'Cause she can't make herself 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 scared."

  "Poor little ghost."

  "Doomed to walk the Ea
rth as a restless shade, hunting for Bobby Cross."

  All the cheerleaders are looking at me now, gazes calm and interested, like I'm a cat toy--the best one they've had 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. "Maybe that's her out, if she wants 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 waited?"

  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's 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 my expression, starting to gather their things, starting to get ready to go.

  "It was nice to finally meet you, Rose," says one of the cheerleaders. When she smiles, 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, 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. "How are you feeling?"

  "Tricked," I spit at her. "I thought better of you."

  "Better of me than what? Giving you the chance to tell your story to the Valkyries? Their blessing is a good and important thing to have, especially if you're still planning to go after him." 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 started." I sigh, walking back to my stool and sitting. The air smells like ozone in the wake of the Valkyries. "I need you to tell me what the tattoo on my back means. And I need you to get the grill started back up."

  "Am I paying for deception with cheeseburgers?" I nod, and Emma smiles. "Fair enough."

  The lights come back on when she snaps her fingers, the jukebox spinning 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 dance to kill the pain...

  ...and the dancing never ends.

  Do You Want to Dance?

  A Sparrow Hill Road story

  by

  Seanan McGuire

  Do you want to dance and hold my hand

  Tell me baby I'm your lover man

  Oh baby do you want to dance?

  Do you want to dance under the moonlight

  Hold me baby all through the night

  Oh baby do you want to dance?

  Do you want to dance under the moonlight

  Kiss me baby all through the night

  Oh baby

  Do you want to dance?

  -- "Do You Want To Dance?" Bobby Freeman.

  The dead keep their own calendar, celebrate their own holidays. Every ghost is a sovereign nation, unbound by the laws of the nations around them. We have our commonalities—Halloween is universal, for reasons that should be obvious—but on the whole, every one of us marks time in our own way, measuring by the dates that matter to us. Some of them we choose. Some of them we don't. But all of them bind us, using the laws of our nations against us, and forcing us to conform to whatever our deaths have made us.

  There are holidays on the ghostroads, too. Forgotten holidays, holidays that have slipped between the cracks of the daylight world. The people in the twilight pray to dead gods, building temples to religions that were lost so long ago that no one really remembers what they were. Living faiths have no comfort to offer to the dead, so the dead go seeking comfort from their own. Saint Celia of the Open Hand, who keeps the phantom riders running true along their routes. Danny, God of Highways, whose given name has been forgotten, and who guards the gates between the twilight, the darkness, and the light. There are hundreds of ghost gods on the ghostroads, and their faiths are as faded and tangled as back country roads.

  I've met a few of them. I still refuse to believe in their existence, just as a matter of principle. It doesn't seem to matter, either way.

  ***

  "It's a mistletoe branch surrounded by white lilies and—I think that's white asphodel, actually, which makes a lot of sense, if you think about it." I'm not wearing a coat right now. I'm not wearing a shirt of any kind; it would cover my tattoo, which would defeat the whole purpose of this exercise. Emma's fingers trail underneath the surface of what should be my skin, sending cold shivers all through me. I hate being touched by the living when I'm not solid. The fact that Emma isn't technically quite alive doesn't change that.

  "I'm thinking about it, and it doesn't make any fucking sense at all." I'm snapping at her. I know that, and I don't particularly care. Emma sprung the Valkyries on me. The fucking Valkyries. I think I've earned a little snapping after that. "What the fuck is asphodel?"

  "It's a flower." She pulls her hand away. "This isn't the kind of asphodel you'd find in a botany textbook. This is white asphodel. Real white asphodel, and that only grows in one place."

  "Where's that?" I stand, rolling my shoulders and calling my clothes back into existence in the same motion. White tank top again, phantom recreation of the shirt I once borrowed from my only living boyfriend. Gary never wore this shirt, but it's a comfort all the same.

  Emma walks back around the counter, eyes glinting a brief, feline green before she turns to start dishing up a slice of apple pie. "The Asphodel Meadows, in the Greek Underworld. The land of the balanced dead. If you're not good, and not evil, you go there when you die."

  "Great, so it's what, a moral judgment?"

  "Of sorts." She turns, setting the plate of pie in front of me. "The center of the design is a pomegranate, sliced to show the seeds at the center. I can't be sure, but it looks to me like there are six seeds missing. It's Persephone's blessing. I think, anyway. It's not like the Lady of the Greek Underworld has me on her speed dial."

  "Meaning what?"

  She produces a button-up sweater from behind the counter, handing it to me. Coats are the traditional attire of the hitchhiking ghost, but any outerwear will do, providing it belongs to the living. Somehow, Emma manages to count. "Meaning Bobby Cross has no claim on your soul as long as Persephone is tasked with watching you. Not unless you do something monumentally stupid."

  I shrug on the sweater before reaching for the pie. "Again, meaning what?"

  "I'll be completely honest with you, Rose. I'm an Irish death omen and collector of the unquiet dead. I was born when the Roman calendar still looked like a fad that couldn't possibly last. And I haven't got the slightest idea." Emma shrugs. "You want a malted before you hit the road?"

  "Why the hell not?" I pick up my fork. "Make it a double."

  "On the house," says Emma, and smiles.

  ***

  Time runs differently when you're in the twilight. Sometimes, hours there can be minutes in the daylight, or days, or weeks. Once, I spent what felt like a weekend at the Last Dance, bussing tables and bumming cigarettes off one of the cooks
, and when I stepped back into the lands of the living, two years had gone slithering by like snakes vanishing into high grass. So it isn't really a surprise when I shrug off the last traces of the ghostroads and find myself standing on the long country highway that leads into Buckley Township, looking at a candy-colored poster stapled to a telephone pole. "BUY YOUR TICKETS TODAY FOR A WONDERFUL NIGHT!" it screams, in electric yellow letters. Underneath that, smaller, is the legend, "Buckley High School Senior Prom." There's a price—more per ticket than I paid for my dress, once upon a couple of decades ago—and a date.

  It wouldn't matter if the date wasn't there, just like it doesn't matter that I don't have a calendar. The dead have their own holy days, their own ways of marking the time that passes after they've passed on, and for me, the holiest of holies is the Buckley High School Senior Prom. It's like Easter. It moves around the calendar, always within a small range, always subject to its own rules...but it always comes as the school year is drawing to a close. A formal dance for girls whose lives won't offer many opportunities for formal dancing; a night for spiking punch, losing virginities, and dreams. Such big dreams. Real life almost never lives up to the dreams of a senior prom. It tries. It just can't compare.

  I've attended thirty senior proms in the years since I died. Five of them were right here in Buckley. They're...magnetic, I guess is the word. Once I get close, they draw me in, just like a moth being drawn to a bug zapper. Not the most flattering comparison. Too bad it's an accurate one.

  I sigh, reaching out and brushing my fingertips through the paper. Just to test, I try to reach for the ghostroads, and find nothing but the shadows. I'm here until the last dance is over, the punch stains have been wiped off the gymnasium floor, and the drunken, giggling cheerleaders have been chased out of the janitor's closet.

  "Bully for me," I mutter, before shoving my hands into the pockets of my jeans. It may be the day of the senior prom, but the dance itself is still far enough away that I can wear jeans if I want to, rather than being locked into a homecomer's endless, pointless struggle to get back to a place that isn't there anymore. One eye scanning the road for a ride, I turn and begin trudging my way down the sidewalk. No matter how inconvenient it might be, this is a holy night, and on holy nights, good girls—alive or dead—follow the rites of their religion.