The Maggy Dhu backs up, clearly intending to charge the barrier. Then its paws pass outside the open spot in the circle. The expression on its face is almost comic as it realizes that it isn't captive anymore. And then it's chasing me again, and laughter is the last thing on my mind.
***
I have to wonder what this looks like from inside the diner. If the ghost-hunters are smart, they've surrounded themselves with salt and are staying as far from the windows as possible. Judging by the shadows I keep seeing in the glass as I run past, they're not being smart.
The Maggy Dhu, on the other hand, is remaining good and pissed. I would envy its single-minded devotion to its purpose, but since that purpose is eating me, I'm not in the mood to root for it just yet. It side-steps the second Seal of Solomon—great, the demon dog has a learning curve—and keeps coming after me, gaining speed all the time.
One of the patches of rapeseed is right up ahead. Nothing I've ever heard has implied that Maggy Dhu are bothered by things like that, but hell, any port in a storm, right? I charge into the middle of it, stepping as high as I can to keep from scattering the seeds. If it doesn't work—
The Maggy Dhu stops at the edge of the field of rapeseed, nose dropping to the pavement. I don't know how good dogs are at math, but if it follows the same rules as every other ghost that's bothered by that sort of thing, it has to count every seed before it can come after me again.
"Thank God for stupid folklore," I mutter, taking a deep breath before I walk, much more slowly now that there isn't a Maggy Dhu on my ass, toward the piled-up spirit jars.
Three of them haven't been triggered yet. "And thank God for over-prepared college students," I say, picking up the largest of the jars and peering inside. It's definitely empty. It should work. Maybe. Possibly.
Okay, probably not. But lacking any alternative that doesn't result in the Maggy Dhu chowing down on Jamie and his little band of lunatics, it's the best chance I've got.
The Maggy Dhu is still sniffing the ground as I walk back to the rapeseed field. I whistle low, the way I used to whistle for the dog we had when I was little. The Maggy Dhu's head comes up, a growl vibrating from the depths of its chest. "Hi, puppy," I say. "Catch."
The spirit jar hits the Maggy Dhu in the middle of the chest. It yelps, a surprised look spreading across its face.
And then it's gone.
***
Jamie and the others are scattered around the diner, doing a frankly piss-poor job of hiding themselves under broken tables and behind the remains of the counter. Only one of them, Angela, is huddling in an unbroken circle of salt. The rest of them would be easy pickings for the Maggy Dhu if it were still running loose.
Good thing for them the Maggy Dhu is currently having a nice nap in the spirit jar under my arm. I stop in the doorway, watching them watch the windows. Not one of them is bothering to watch the door. That's the sort of sloppy short-sightedness that can get a person killed, especially on a night like this. Placing two fingers in my mouth, I whistle.
The reaction in the diner is nothing short of electric. Physicist Two scrambles to position herself in front of Physicist One. Angela crosses herself, muttering in frantic, high-pitched Latin. Marla slams back against the wall, raising her hand-held EMP device like the weapon it so clearly isn't. Jamie just stares.
"Hi," I say, amiably. "Having a nice night? It's a little warm for me, but hey, it takes all types, right? You're from Ohio, you must be used to it, right?"
Angela squeaks out something else in Latin before catching her breath and asking, "R-Rose? Are you...are you okay?"
"Winded and cranky, and I could really use a milkshake, but that weird dog didn't bite me, if that's what you're asking. It chased me around the parking lot a few times, and then it went running off down the road. Don't you people do any scouting before you start hunting for dead stuff?"
Marla lowers her EMP device. "I thought I saw...it ran away?"
Given a choice between the believable—a big black dog tried to eat us all and then ran away into the night—and the terrifying—a big black ghost dog tried to eat us all, until I managed to suck it into a clay jar from Pottery Barn—even the most enthusiastic ghost-hunter is going to go for the mundane explanation. It's a matter of self-preservation where the sanity is concerned. There are things the living just aren't meant to deal with knowing.
"Gosh, Rose—I mean, you could have been seriously hurt." Jamie takes a step forward. He's starting to realize that he left me to face the Maggy Dhu alone, and even if his conscious mind is rejecting the reality of the Black Dog, part of him knows exactly what he did. "Are you all right? Did the dog hurt you?"
"Like I told Angela, I'm fine. How's Tom? Did you manage to stop the bleeding?"
Deflection is one of the most useful tools in my particular toolbox. "No," says Physicist Two—Katherine, she's Katherine, she's the one who's terrified but not currently in danger of dying. She steps aside, giving me my first clear look at her pale, shivering companion. "I keep thinking I have, and then he starts bleeding again. We need to get him to a hospital."
A hospital isn't going to help him; not at this point. I can see the shadows around him, gathering like a burial shroud. If Laura were here, I'd kill her. I don't care if she's Tommy's one true love, there's a reason the living don't interfere with the dead.
This is where I should walk away. And I can't. "Hold this and stay here," I say, thrusting the spirit jar into Jamie's hands. "Whatever you do, don't drop it. Angela, I need you to clean up as much of the salt as you can. Make sure there's nothing left that can be considered a circle."
"What are you going to do?" demands Marla.
I sigh. "I'm going to beg."
***
"I stand here open-handed and begging for your mercy, I stand here hopeful and contrite. I stand here ready for your judgment." I hate begging. It always feels so much like...well...like begging. I ball my hands into fists, plant them on my hips, and demand, "Well? You owe me. I let you out of that damn jar. Now get your spectral ass over here."
The air chills, fills with the scent of dried corn and harvest moons, and the haunt appears. She gathers herself out of the night, wrapping her translucent body in the semblance of a cotton nightgown. Her hair is long and glossy, stirred by a wind that I can't feel. She's on a level of the twilight that I'm not native to. For right now, that's fine by me. "Who are you?" she asks. I can barely hear her. That's fine, too.
"I'm Rose Marshall, I'm the one who let you out of the jar, and I'm the one you're about to do the favor for. We clear?"
Haunts aren't the smartest things on the ghostroads. Something about the transition between the living and the dead seems to burn out about half their brain cells. It makes them shitty company, but it also leaves them suggestible, which is a bonus from where I'm standing. She frowns, perplexed, and asks, "What favor?"
"There's a man inside the diner. He and his friends conjured a Maggy Dhu by mistake, and he got bitten. He's not supposed to die yet. He doesn't have the right smell. I need you to fix it."
I'm right about this haunt being new, because she just looks more confused. "Fix it?" she asks. "How?"
"He's dying." I shrug, gesturing toward the diner. "Kiss him."
A kiss from a haunt can kill the living or heal the dying. It's one of those nasty double-edged swords the twilight is so fond of. Kiss the haunt too soon and it's goodbye, you silly mortal coil. Put it off too long, and all the kiss will do is guarantee that you'll be coming back as a haunt yourself. I'm gambling a little--Tom could be further gone now than he was when I left him—but I don't think so. He was holding on pretty tightly when I came outside.
"No more jars?"
"No more jars," I promise, and just like that, the haunt's gone, soaring toward the diner. She vanishes through the window, and the screaming inside starts all over again.
This time, I don't bother hurrying as I walk toward the sound of screams. I'm done with good deeds for the night.
"It was amazing," Angela says, grabbing my hands for what feels like the seventy-third time. "This...this glowing figure came right through the wall, and she kissed him, and his arm just healed! Like it was never hurt in the first place! It's a miracle!"
"Uh-huh," I agree. Katherine and Tom have the spirit jar that contains the Maggy Dhu. They've promised to seal it and drop it into the nearest lake without telling the others, and that's good enough for me. If they decide to play Pandora, well, they can't say I didn't warn them.
"And Jamie got the whole thing on film!"
No, he didn't. "Uh-huh."
"I'm sorry I was such a bitch before," says Marla, walking over to us. Jamie is half a step behind her. They both look shaken. Shaken enough not to do this sort of thing again? I guess only time will tell. By the time it does, I plan to be as far away as possible. "I thought you were just looking for cheap thrills. I didn't realize you knew more about this than we did."
"Uh-huh," I agree again. It's safer than any of the alternatives I can come up with, most of which involve laughing in her face.
"I wanted to say thank you," says Jamie. "I really don't know what would have happened if you hadn't been here to distract that dog. I'm just sorry you missed seeing the ghost. That was...it was amazing. It was life-changing. It almost made all this worth it."
"Only almost," adds Marla.
"No more ghost-chasing, right?" I ask, folding my arms. "This was a one-shot deal, it didn't work out, and now you're going to remember that your mothers taught you not to play with dead things?"
"But we saw a ghost, Rose," protests Angela. "It wasn't the one we were trying for, sure, but we can try again. We can find her. We can—"
"It wasn't a stray dog."
Tom's announcement comes as a surprise to everyone but me. They all turn to look at him. He's leaning on Katherine, still pale and shaky from blood loss. He'll live. That's all I promised him.
"What, you saw the owner?" asks Jamie.
"No," Tom says. "It wasn't a dog at all. It was some sort of warning, okay? We need to leave the dead alone. They don't like it when we mess with them, and we got lucky tonight. That thing could have killed us all. Maybe there's a reason nobody's ever caught a ghost. Maybe there's a reason Professor Moorhead wasn't willing to do this herself. You can keep messing around if you want, but I'm out, and so's Katherine."
"And so am I," says Marla. "I don't know if it was a...ghost dog...or what, but this is so not the sort of thing I want to get myself killed doing."
"What about the Girl in the Diner?" asks Jamie, almost frantically. "What about all the things she's done? Now that we know we can do this, don't we owe it to the world to—"
"To what?" I demand, my already frayed temper finally giving way. "To go messing with some poor, innocent ghost who's just trying to keep herself busy? If she was some kind of mass-murderer, don't you think that would be in every version of the story, not just the ones you can trace back to some slumber party or other? I mean jeez, people, do a little more research than 'oh, the professor says she's bad, let's go catch her, she's eeeeeevil.'"
Now they're all staring at me. Tom and Katherine don't look surprised; that's to their credit. Jamie and Marla still look confused as hell. And Angela...
Gold star to Angela, because she looks like she's just seen a ghost.
"You were here all along," she whispers. Jamie shoots her a startled look. Marla takes a step backward. Natural reactions, both of them, although I admit, I'd been hoping for better. At least a little scream or something.
"Yeah, well. I get bored sometimes." I look levelly at Jamie. He's the leader of this little group. They'll listen to him. I hope. "Leave me alone, Jamie. Don't follow me, don't lay traps for me, don't try to track me down. Not because I'll hurt you—I'm not that kind of a girl—but because you have no idea how many things could have killed you tonight, and next time, I won't be here to make nice with them on your behalf. Do I make myself clear?"
He laughs nervously. "Rose? What are you talking about? I know it's been a weird night, but don't you think you're taking things just a little bit too far?"
I sigh. "God save me from smart people and college students. You're all such fucking idiots." It only takes a second to shrug out of my coat, the cold rushing back into my bones like the tide flowing in to fill the harbor. I'm still solid, still alive...until I let go of the sleeve, and the coat falls to the pavement.
"Leave the dead alone," I say. Maybe it's the fact that I'm see-through and glowing, but this time, they listen; this time, the only sound is Angela hitting the ground in a dead faint. I'm pretty sure she landed on some of the broken glass we scattered earlier. "You're going to want to put some bactine on that," I add, and disappear. Not the most memorable last words ever, but hey, infection is nothing to fuck around with.
The ghostroads flow back into place around me. I sigh, shake my head, and start walking. I want to put some miles between me and Ohio before I venture back into the daylight.
Wouldn't want a group of familiar faces offering me a ride.
Last Train
A Sparrow Hill Road story
by
Seanan McGuire
I ain't a man of constant sorrow
I ain't seen trouble all day long
We are only passengers on the last train to glory
That will soon be long, long gone
I want to hop on the last train in the station
Won't need to get yourself prepared
When you're on the last train to glory
You'll know you're reasonably there...
-- "Last Train," Arlo Guthrie.
There's one thing every haunt, spirit, and shade on the twilight side of the ghostroads learns early and well, and that's this: your word is sometimes the only currency you have, and those are the times when breaking it can leave you vulnerable to the kind of consequences that you don't recover from. The Kindly Ones watch for oathbreakers. Certain types of shadow only manifest in the path of liars, and they can cling and catch as surely as tar. If you want to survive in the twilight, you tell the truth--at least on the ghostroads. Lying to the living that don't belong in the twilight spaces doesn't come with any consequences. The living don't count.
Lying to your fellow dead, on the other hand, or, God forbid, lying to the routewitches or the ambulomancers...that's playing the sort of roulette that the house always, always wins. Never make a promise you don't intend to keep. Never incur a debt you don't intend to pay. Never double-cross a routewitch. We may not have much of a life here, among the dead, but what we do have is too precious to gamble on a hand that can't possibly be won. Exorcism would be kinder than some of the tools the routewitches have at their disposal.
I was pretty honest before I died. A good girl. I'm not as good as I used to be, but I'm a lot more honest, because the stakes are a lot higher than getting grounded or missing a school dance. The stakes are death and worse-than-death, and I like my current state of being.
That's me. Some people still make bargains they can't keep; some people still make promises that they don't intend to honor. Some people still let the bills get higher than they ever meant to pay. And some of them, Persephone give me strength...
Some of them are my own flesh and blood. Such as it is.
***
This particular stretch of Indiana highway is familiar; I've walked it before, and I'll probably walk it again, the world being what it is, and people being a little reluctant to stop in the middle of a corn field to pick up an unfamiliar teenage girl. Thanks for that one, Stephen King. You and your goddamn children of the corn can go piss up a rope for all the walking that you've made me do over the course of the last twenty years.
Still. It's a beautiful evening, with that sort of purple-bruised sky that only the American Midwest ever manages to conjure. It's almost the sort of sky we had when I was alive, before pollution gilded the world's sunsets in all the pretty shades of poison. There are even
fireflies, dancing above the corn, and the whole world smells like green and good growing things. A night like this, I almost don't mind walking. Besides, my last ride was recent enough that I still have a coat to keep me warm, anchoring me in this world for as long as I choose to stay...or until that setting sun comes up. Whichever comes first.
I'm so busy walking through the growing dark that I don't hear the engine behind me, the crunch of wheels on roadside gravel, the rattle of the truck's back gate, held up by rope and bailing wire as much as by the memory of what it used to be. I'm lost in my own little world, right up until strong arms grab me around the chest, hoisting me up and off the ground almost before I can squeak. Then I'm in the hay and corn husk-filled bed of the truck, and we're accelerating away from the place where I was grabbed, and all I can think is that we're about eight seconds away from someone getting slapped.
***
Common sense wins out for once, and I decide to forego slapping in favor of the more sensible option: letting go and dropping back down into the twilight. So I release my hold on the coat that binds me to the mortal world, and it falls through the memory of my flesh to land with a rustle in the chaff surrounding us. Then I let go, and I fall...
...right into the bed of a clapped-out old junker of a pickup truck, the bed filled with hay and corn husks. The man who grabbed me is watching with obvious amusement. Slapping still sounds like a good option, but if these people can drive straight from the daylight to the twilight, that might not be the best idea.
I straighten, trying to look like I'm not scared enough to bolt for the deepest, darkest hole I can find. "Okay, does somebody want to tell me exactly what the fuck is going on here?"
My abductor laughs at that—actually laughs, like I just said something unbelievably funny. There's an answering chuckle from behind me, and I glance over my shoulder to see the first man's virtual twin. They're both sturdy blond Minnesota-looking farmboys, so cliche that they could have walked out of the pages of a L'il Abner adventure forty years ago. "Miss Rose, I think you don't quite understand what's going on here."
Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan Page 18