Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan

by Seanan McGuire

  Sometimes we're excited, eager, yammering "Are we there yet?" and demanding the driver to hit the gas a little harder, begging the storyteller to feed us the hints and tastes of what's to come a little faster. Sometimes we're reluctant, like children on the way to see an adult they already know they don't like visiting; we drag our feet, we whimper and cajole, we do everything we can to stretch things out a little farther. Whichever way we go, we know there's no real point to it; we know that we can't change anything. Journeys end. Stories end. Everything ends.

  The only thing you can do when the ending looms is roll down the windows, let the wind blow back your hair, and drive your hell-bent, hell-bound ass to where it needs to go. Everything ends. So suck it up and face it with a little dignity already.

  ***

  Gary's engine hums contentedly as we blast down the ghostroads, his radio playing a succession of Top 40 Billboard Hits from the year that I died. Maybe we're in the honeymoon period right now, both of us trying to be worthy of the other, but I honestly don't give a crap. I spent seventy years dead without him, and he spent just as much time living without me. If we want to be sappy and stupidly in love for a little while, that's our business.

  I do have to wonder whether Gary really understands what he's managed to get himself into. Having a car is wonderful, but it doesn't change my nature. I'm still a hitcher, still have that need for flesh and contact worked deep into the ghosts of my bones. Eventually, I'll have to drop from the twilight into the daylight, find someone who smells like ashes and empty rooms, and convince him to give me a ride to where he thinks I need to go. I can skip the joyrides, the embodiments just for the sake of cadging a cheeseburger or kissing a stranger, but there are always going to be times when the living world calls me and I have to go. It's what I am. I can't change it, and I don't think I would even if I knew how. The girl who was willing to change everything about herself for love died a long time ago. I still look like her, sweet sixteen forever, but let's face it: I grew up.

  Then again, maybe Gary did some growing up, too. He did get old, after all, which usually requires a certain measure of maturity, and he did figure out how to get his soul re-smelted into something that could stay with me. I don't know whether turning yourself into your first girlfriend's car is romantic or creepy, but since we're both dead, I also don't know whether the distinction between those things actually matters.

  "Just call me Morticia," I say, hitting the gas a little harder. The radio dial spins without any help from me, and as the theme from The Addams Family blasts through the cabin, I swear it's undercut by the sound of my first, last, and only boyfriend, laughing.

  ***

  We pull into the parking lot of the Last Dance as the eternally twilit sky is fading into another false gloaming, eternally taunting the dead with the thought that someday, the sun might actually rise. There are whole cults devoted to measuring the gloamings, like every little scrap of light has meaning. Personally, I think it just happens because whoever or whatever is in charge of the ghostroads likes fucking with us.

  "I'm going to go talk to Emma," I say, getting out of the car and tucking the keys into my pocket. They feel solid there, almost as real as a coat. I've already experimented with changing my clothes, remolding myself to suit my environment. No matter what I do or how I change, the keys travel with me, sometimes in a pocket, sometimes on an elastic band strapped to my wrist, sometimes tucked into the front of my bra. Again, romantic, and marginally creepy.

  Gary flashes his headlights once, which I interpret as a gesture of understanding. I mean, I have to interpret it as something, and "Sure, Rose, go take care of your business" is as good an interpretation as any. He doesn't turn himself back on or go all Christine in order to stop me, and so I walk across the parking lot, hearing the gravel crunch beneath my feet. The Last Dance is pretty damn real, no matter what level you're standing on.

  I'm almost to the door when the sign flickers, neon shadows shifting from green and gold to a bloody sunrise red. I stop where I am, feeling like the world stops with me. For a moment, everything is frozen in the gloaming, silent except for the soft, insectile buzzing of the neon sign illuminating our night that never ends. I take a step back, tilting my head upward, and look.

  Last Chance Diner, says the sign, in that familiar looping cursive. The letters blaze crimson, almost violent in the way they split the darkness. Last chance. Everybody out. The tattoo on my back is abruptly burning like a brand, until it feels like it should set my clothes on fire, burn them right off me, spontaneous after-death combustion.

  I don't know what the fuck is going on here, but I do know one thing: Whatever this is, there's not a chance in hell that it's good.

  ***

  "Emma?" There's no one visible in the dining room, which is subtly changed, shifted ever so slightly away from the place where I've spent so many hours over the last sixty years. I couldn't tell you what the changes were if you held a gun to my head—which would probably be a waste of time anyway—but I can tell you that the upholstery is ripped in the wrong places, and the scuffs on the counter spell out a new set of unreadable runes. The jukebox in the corner croons softly to itself, some generic love song from the 1970s. It doesn't matter which one. "Are you here?"

  She doesn't answer me. I didn't really expect her to.

  My steps are cautious as I make my way across the unfamiliar floor, watching all the while for signs of a trap. I've always known about the Last Chance. Hell, Emma sells postcards with pictures of the place, and the tacky legend "I made the right call at the Last Chance!" That doesn't mean I've ever been here...or that I ever wanted to visit.

  The Last Chance is the place you go when everything goes wrong.

  Once again, I'm almost to the door, this time the swinging door between the dining room and the kitchen, when something changes. The air suddenly tastes like ashes and empty rooms, like lilies and the sour tears of a hundred weeping parents who can't understand how something like this could happen to their precious little high school star. I stagger, catching myself on the edge of the counter before my knees can quite finish buckling under me, and fight the almost irresistible urge to puke.

  That's another thing I never thought would happen in the afterlife. If there was any real justice in the world, being dead would mean freedom from tossing your goddamn cookies.

  It's while I'm hanging there, keeping myself on my feet solely by clinging to the counter, that I realize what's so terribly wrong. Because Emma's apron is lying on the floor, where I never would have seen it if I hadn't been overwhelmed by the taste of someone close to me preparing to die...and there's blood on the white lace edging. I'm pretty sure she didn't decide to play with raw hamburger for fun. I'm not normally called to the death of cows.

  The taste of ashes keeps getting stronger as I force myself to straighten up, using the counter's edge to all but pull myself along. The kitchen door swings open under my hand.

  What feels like only seconds later, I'm running across the parking lot with Emma's bloody apron in one hand and a half-torn note in the other, shouting, "Gary! Start your engine! We gotta go!"

  The driver's door is open by the time I reach it, and I fling myself into Gary's seat, grabbing his wheel in both hands. He slams the door behind me, and I hit the gas, sending us roaring off in a spray of gravel.

  Oh Lord, who art probably not in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Oh Lady, deliver me from darkness, deliver me from evil, and please, please, let us not be too late.

  Please.

  ***

  "Emma's the redhead you met in Minnesota," I say, tightly, as Gary roars down the ghostroad, letting me guide us toward the distant taste of ashes. It's getting stronger; we're going the right way. "She's a bean sidhe. Not quite living, not quite dead. I mean, to be entirely honest, I've never been sure what she was. Not really."

  My laughter sounds almost hysterical in the confines of the car. Gary's radio flicks on, playing the Doors—"People Are Strange."


  I manage to stop laughing, and reply to the implicit question, saying, "We're all strange here, and it never really mattered, you know? She was my friend. Is. She is my friend. I just...this is bad, Gary. Emma's supposed to be off-limits."

  The radio dial spins, and Jim Morrison is replaced by an old folk song asking me if I know the way to where I'm going.

  "Yeah, I do. A really bad man's got Emma, and that means that we're in trouble." I take a breath. I don't want to do this; I don't want to explain, because if Gary's the only man I've ever loved, then Bobby Cross is the only man who's ever made me feel like this, cold as clay and burning up all at the same time. I always feel like a dead girl. Bobby Cross makes me feel like I'm damned. "I need to tell you how I really died, Gary. Just listen, okay?"

  The radio dial spins again, and the music clicks off. Gary's silence is all the answer I need. I force the words out one by one as I begin, "Robert Cross loved to drive. He loved the speed, and the thrill of the chase, even when all he chased was the wind. He chased that wind all the way to Hollywood..."

  Gary holds his silence until I stop speaking. Then the radio clicks on, spinning once through the stations in question. I nod.

  "We're going to get her, and bring her back." I brace my hands against the wheel, trying to ignore the burning, letting go of the thin threads that hold me to the daylight levels high above. "He left directions. Come on, honey. Let's hit the midnight."

  ***

  I don't know anything about Heaven or Hell; I usually figure that they wait beyond those final exits that the drivers I guide sometimes take, but I've never seen them, or talked to anyone who's been there and back again. I do know the ghostroads. There are a thousand highways cutting through the afterlife, ranging from the daylight all the way down to the midnight. My natural habitat is the twilight, where the living are close enough to be remembered and distant enough to be safely ignored. Most road ghosts seem to live there, remembering life, celebrating death. When I can't stay in the twilight, I usually ascend to the daylight, where I can catch a ride, bum a meal, and earn enough credit in the eyes of the gods of the dead to pay the fare for descending.

  What I don't do is descend past the lowest, murkiest levels of the twilight, the places where the dead have been dead so long that I might as well be the living to them. The places where life is a lie, and no one ever reaches the last exit on the ghostroads. I'm not comfortable going even that low; I avoid it if I possibly can. Which is why it feels so wrong to be guiding Gary deeper with every turn we take, the layers of reality ripping away around us. We're going all the way down.

  The radio dial spins, and some modern folk singer offers to let me sleep while she drives. I shake my head once, sharply. "It's not safe," I say. "You haven't been dead long enough to drive these roads alone." The things some of the creatures in the midnight can do to an innocent ghost are enough to give me nightmares. And I don't technically sleep.

  He doesn't have an answer for that. I take a breath, hold it, and shift down one more time.

  The transition between layers of twilight is usually seamless, like walking down a gentle slope. Going from the twilight into the midnight is nothing of the kind. Gary's wheels actually lose contact with the road, and we drop about five feet before hitting the pavement with a bone-rattling thud. My teeth snap shut on my tongue, and phantom blood actually fills my mouth for a moment before my body remembers that it's already dead, it can't bleed anymore. My tattoo is on fire, a burning brand pressed against the small of my back. That's almost certainly not a good sign.

  Then again, neither is the fact that when Gary rolls to a stunned stop, we're on the road outside of Buckley. Not the road of today, with its bright new signs and its expensive billboards; the road of 1945, the way it looked on that last long, hot summer, when we spent the longest nights racing like we thought we had a chance of beating the Devil.

  There are cars parked in the distance, their lights burning like candles through this impossibly black, long-ended night. I glance up through the window. There are no stars.

  "Looks like this is where we're going," I murmur, patting the dashboard once, as much for my comfort as for Gary's. "Let's roll."

  His headlights flick on, slicing the dark like knives, and we roll forward, moving toward the circle of light cast by those unfamiliar headlights. We're halfway there when the taste of ashes fills my mouth. I shudder. Bobby Cross. Some devils never die. Some devils are already dead.

  The man himself is standing just inside the circle of headlights, his feet spread in a classic Hollywood tough-guy stance, one hand in the back pocket of his jeans, the other holding a cigarette. He looks like a still frame from the movies of my childhood, a fallen angel who hit the bottom and kept on falling.

  "Hello, Rosie girl," he says, in a voice as sweet as poisoned candy. "Why don't you get out of that dead boy, and come have a little chat with me?"

  Gary's engine snarls. I lay a hand gently on the wheel.

  "Trust me, baby," I say. "I have to go."

  There's a long moment where I'm afraid Gary won't unlock the door, that he'll just turn and roar away down the road, rather than risking me with Bobby. Then his engine settles, turning off with what sounds like a sigh, and his door swings slowly open.

  "Thank you," I say, and slide out of the seat, going to meet the man who killed me.

  ***

  It doesn't really surprise me when my feet hit the pavement wearing green silk flats, the skirt of the matching dress tangling around my ankles. If I'd known I'd be wearing this prom dress for the rest of eternity, I might have been a little more careful to make sure it was something I could run in. Still, at least I'm used to it; I've learned to work with it, over the years. I square my shoulders, lift my chin, and walk calmly toward Bobby, trying not to grimace at the increasing burn from my tattoo.

  "I always knew you hitchers were kinky, but dating a car, Rosie girl?" Bobby clucks his tongue, shaking his head in mock disapproval. "If I'd known you were that hard up, I might have offered to take you for a ride or two. You know. Before I took what was mine."

  "I'm pretty sure no woman in the history of the world has ever been that hard up, Bobby," I say.

  He smiles maliciously. "I don't know about that. Your little niece seemed to think I was a good enough way to kill an evening."

  "And look how well that turned out for her. It's a nice offer, Bobby, but no thank you." I stop just outside the circle of light, folding my arms across my chest. This close, I can see that only one of the cars is real; the rest are smoke and mirrors, special effects from his Hollywood days. "You have a friend of mine. I'd like her back, if you don't mind."

  "Why, Rose. I have no idea what it is you mean."

  I grit my teeth. "Emma. The bean sidhe who runs the Last Dance."

  "Oh!" Bobby snaps his fingers. "Well, shoot, she just slipped my mind. Probably because she's been so quiet since I had her gagged. Never let a bean sidhe speak her mind if you can help it. Those bitches have tongues that can leave a man bleeding, if you let them run."

  "Give her back."

  "Wasn't aware that she was yours in the first place."

  He's toying with me; he'd never have taken her if he didn't know I'd come after him. He's been toying with me since Bethany, and maybe before that. I force myself not to lunge for him, and say, as calmly as I can, "She's my friend. I want her returned, safely. Now."

  Bobby smiles. It's that same sweet, seductive expression that once won him a million hearts and dampened almost as many pairs of panties, but there's something sour underneath it, something that taints and twists whatever appeal he might once have had. This apple's rotten, through and through. "It doesn't work that way. You know it doesn't work that way."

  "What do you want, Bobby?"

  "What do I ever want?"

  "Didn't we just do this? It won't work. Persephone's blessing says hands off to dead boys who want to hurt me."

  "Maybe so, but Hades outranks her." Bobby reaches insi
de his shirt, pulling out a chain. The charm dangling from its end makes my stomach twist itself into a knot and makes my tattoo burn hotter than ever. "You put this on of your own free will and the Lady of the Dead won't give one good goddamn what I do to that pretty little soul of yours."

  Gary's engine snarls in the darkness behind me. I want to turn and run to him, throw myself into the driver's seat and get the hell out of here, but I can't. Emma needs me. I was a soft touch when I was alive, and Persephone help me, I may be a softer touch now that I'm dead. "So you expect me to just give myself up? I don't think so."

  "And neither do I." Neither of us expected to hear Bethany's voice. That's clear from the way Bobby's head whips around, expression a mask of pure fury. I turn more slowly, somehow resigned to the sight of my recently-dead niece walking toward us through the midnight. The darkness doesn't quite touch her; it skates off her skin like water off a duck's back. She may be dead, but she's not the sort of dead girl who belongs to the ghostroads. They can't touch her. "There are rules for engagements of this kind, Bobby. You know that."

  "What kind of tricky shit is this?" he demands, in the voice of a petulant child. "You can't be here, you dumb bitch. You're too used up to dig your way this deep."

  "That was a different time, and the past is another country," says Bethany, and her voice is the rustle of crows in the corn, the sound of the wind blowing down empty highways. "You're trying to break the rules, Bobby. You've interfered with people who never touched the crossroads, nor made any bargains there. That can't be allowed, I'm afraid."

  He stabs his finger in my direction, snapping, "She isn't protected. Not from me. Not from this."

  "That's true; she has no protections against you that haven't been given to her on her journeys. You killed her, and that gives you the advantage. But the bean sidhe wasn't yours to touch. You never killed her, and she never made a deal." Bethany's smile is sweet, and no kinder than a rattlesnake's. "You can make a wager. You can issue a challenge. But you can't make an exchange."