Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan (21 page)

"No." Bethany shakes her head, quick, decisive, with no pause for thought. "I
tried to tell him once, but he wouldn't let himself hear me. He didn't want to
know. I think...I think he knew, deep down, that if he listened when I told him
about the way the road can sing, if he believed, he'd have to believe all those
stories about the ghost of Sparrow Hill Road."

Believe that your granddaughter is some kind of witch, believe that your
decades-gone little sister has never been allowed to rest. That wasn't the sort
of choice I'd have wanted to make. "Poor Art," I sigh.

"I deal," says Bethany, and then she's opening the door to the Buckley High
School gymnasium—when did we finish crossing the parking lot? When did we pass
the point of no return?—and stepping onward, into the dark. I hesitate, clinging
to the illusion of choice for as long as I can. Bethany looks back at me,
eyebrows raised in silent question, and with another sigh, I step forward,
following her into the darkness.

***

Prom themes are the universe's way of getting us ready for the endless
indignities it plans to heap on our heads, like fashion trends and bridesmaid
dresses. No one ever seems to admit to being the one who thought that "Rain
Forest Romance" or "A Dance on Mars" was a good idea. They just follow the
mysterious sketches that tell them to put the streamers here, the crepe-paper
flowers there, and the endless buckets of glitter everywhere that glitter
shouldn't go.

Whoever chose this year's theme wasn't feeling particularly creative. The
Buckley Buccaneers will be celebrating the magic of prom night in a gymnasium
transformed into a bizarre combination of pirate ship and South Seas Island,
complete with sand-covered paper mache "dunes." The banners hanging to either
side of the stage proclaim that tonight is a night for Adventure. Where? On the
High Seas, naturally.

"This is the third pirate-themed prom I've been to at this school," I inform
Bethany.

"Look at it this way: it's the third one you've attended, but you've managed
to miss fifteen of them, so the numbers are still slanted in your favor." Seeing
the horrified look on my face, she smirks. "The drama department really enjoys
recycling props. Why don't you go for a walk-around, and see if anything strikes
you as off?"

Everything
about this strikes me as off, from the lighting in the
gym to the poster that greeted me when I stepped off of the ghostroads. The
trouble is figuring out exactly where the problem lies. Maybe it's just
Bethany's doom-saying, but I'm starting to feel like she's right, and something
dangerous is coming. I just have no idea what "something" may turn out to be.

"No problem," I say, and turn, skirts swishing around my ankles as I start my
circuit of the gym. Counter-clockwise, of course—the natural direction of the
dead—and moving slow, trying not to miss anything.

No one could step into this gym and guess anything other than "senior prom."
The decorations are perfect, that magical combination of cheese and class that
somehow tears down social barriers, turning a fractured student body into one
entity, at least until the last song ends. Crepe paper roses hang from the
ceiling, the Buckley Buccaneer leering out of a hundred unexpected corners like
some sort of comic pagan god. There's something wrong with some of the banners.
At first, I assume it's just the differing levels of skill in the high school
art classes coming through. Then I turn a corner, and find myself looking
straight into the eyes of a life-sized, painted pirate. There isn't time to
smother the shout of surprise that pushes past my lips.

The clothes are right, the silly hat and sillier parrot of the Buckley High
mascot painted in loving detail. But the hat is in his hand, rather than being
forced down over his perfect duck's-ass hair, and the look in his painted eyes
is flat, judgmental, like the eyes of a snake somehow granted human form. Bobby
Cross. I'm looking at a painting of Bobby Cross...and that's when I realize
something I should have realized from the start:

I never made it to prom. There were no pictures of me in my prom dress,
because
I never made it to the prom
.

"Shit," I mutter, and take a step backward.

"That took you
way
longer than I thought it was going to," says
Bethany from behind me. I turn toward the sound of her voice, mouth already
starting to shape my first demands for information. Whatever question I was
going to ask is forgotten at the sight of the tin cash box swinging toward my
temple. Then it hits, sending jolts of pain all the way down into my toes, and
the world goes black.

I don't even feel it when I hit the floor.

***

Hitchers are a weird little off-shoot of the ghost world: we mess up the
rules, just by being what we are. We're dead and buried. We don't age, we don't
sleep, we don't need to eat or drink when we're on the ghostroads, and we have
the option—even if very few of us ever choose to take it—of moving on to
whatever destination waits beyond the last freeway off-ramp. At the same time,
give one of us a coat, and we're alive again, all the way through. A lot of
ghosts turn solid on the anniversaries of their deaths, but only hitchers
transition all the way back to the lands of the living. Combine that with a
coat, and well...

There's a reason that I'm not happy when I open my eyes to find myself tied
to a chair, and it's not just because she didn't buy me dinner first.

Just on the off chance that it's past midnight, I try letting go of the
strings tying me to the wrap Bethany so "charitably" provided. Nothing happens.
It's still prom night in Buckley, and that means I'm anchored here, whether or
not I want to be. "Fuck," I mutter.

"Language," says Bethany sweetly, stepping around the corner, into view.
She's still wearing the T-shirt and jeans she had on when she picked me up. Why
didn't that strike me as strange? Decorating committee or not, she should have
at least had her foundation makeup on, should have done
something
with
her hair. "This is a place of learning, Auntie Rose. Mind your tongue, or you'll
wind up getting detention."

"When I was a student here, we knew enough to mind our elders," I snap.
"Untie me right now and I might be able to write this off as a funny, funny
prank."

"You're not my elder tonight, Aunt Rose. You were sixteen when you died, and
I'm seventeen now. I'm an upperclassman." Her smile isn't nearly as chilling as
the six girls who come walking up behind her, each of them carrying a candle in
one hand, and a silver carving knife in the other. "I really thought you'd be
more of a challenge than this."

"Did someone contact all the crazy bitches of the world and say I was in the
market for a good fucking-over?" I demand. "First Laura, now you—
God
!
Can't you people just leave me the hell alone?"

"To be fair, I got the idea when I heard what Miss Moorhead had managed to
do. I mean, catching a hitcher? That's not easy, not even when you know the
things that call them. Things like the story of their death...and the fact that
they almost always have a thing for haunting family." Bethany reaches up and
tugs one of the ribbons free of her hair. "You were so set on chasing the things
that bind you that you didn't even notice that this wasn't a real dance."

"Like anybody decorates the
gym
anymore?" asks one of the other
students, wrinkling her nose. "Ew. That's what the community center is for."

"Vicky?" says Bethany, in a voice like honey.

"Yeah?"

"Don't talk." Bethany keeps her eyes on me. "There's a bounty on your head,
Auntie Rose, and the man who wants you—you have no idea how much he's willing to
pay. I won't ever have to worry about anything ever again. Not me, not my
mother, not even Grandpa. We'll be set for life."

"And all you have to do is kill me," I say, bitterly. Maybe I didn't see that
the prom was a decoy, but I was distracted, and I've never encountered anything
like this before. "So what do the rest of them get out of the deal? Cash on the
barrel? Bragging rights? What?"

"Your terminology sucks. I can't
kill
you. You've been dead since
before my father was born. All I'm doing is handing you over to someone who has
a purpose for you. As for what my friends get...there's not much for any of us
in this podunk little town. We're getting out."

"By making deals with Bobby Cross?" There it is: there's the name, hanging
out in air between us like roadkill, like something dead and rotten and
stinking. "You should know better. Arthur should have taught you better."

"How? He never knew what happened to you. No one ever knew, not until the
night the asphalt up on Sparrow Hill started talking to me, started telling me
all about it. I think I was supposed to sympathize with you. But Bobby..." Her
eyes go distant, star-struck. "He knew what he wanted, and he found a way to get
it. I respect that in a man."

I stare at her, disgusted and aghast. "Please tell me you're not hot for
Bobby Cross." When she doesn't answer, I gag, only exaggerating a little. "He's
a monster! He sold his soul!"

"But he got what he wanted, didn't he?" She smiles again, brightly. "And so
will I. Bobby's on his way here now. He's coming to collect his payment, and
then he'll take us all to the crossroads, and show us how to make his bargain."

"You can't. You need..." Apple said the King of the Routewitches went with
Bobby to make his first bargain. If I'm what they stuff into the gas tank, and
Bethany is in the car—blood of my blood, a powerful charm on the ghostroads—they
might just make it. "You can't. Your Queen gave me Persephone's blessing."

"I heard about that." She reaches into her pocket, produces a Swiss army
knife. It looks very sharp when she clicks it open. "Funny thing: Persephone's
blessing can only protect you against people who are sworn to the dead. Living
routewitches, and high school students who haven't had a chance to make their
bargains yet? We don't count."

She takes a step forward, raising the knife in her hand. The other students
move to follow her. I'm sure they expect me to scream, to beg them to spare me.
It's almost a shame to disappoint them. I can barely hold back my laughter as I
say, "No, you don't count. And you can't count, either."

"What are you talking about?" she demands. She leans down to grab my
shoulder, probably intending some small, ritual cut to begin the blood-letting.
Her hand goes cleanly through what should have been solid flesh. She's still
staring at me, surprise written large across her face, when I cast a glance
toward the silk wrap—now lying on the floor, having fallen right through me--and
offer her a smile.

"You needed to keep track of time, Bethany. It's midnight. That means you
can't hold me here." And, still smiling, I vanish.

***

I don't go far, just from the little room where they had me tied—the old
weight room, I realize now, the equipment put away, out of sight—to the hallway
outside. I want to know what they'll do, how many of her companions will panic
at the first sign of something that's truly unexplained. Talking about ghosts
and selling souls is all well and good, but what do you do when the Devil
actually comes to collect his dues?

Voices drift down the hall, some raised in panic, some in simple confusion.
"—was
right here
, so where did she—" "—oh, God, you mean she was really
a ghost? We really caught a ghost? I thought—" "—was the Phantom Prom Date,
Bethany, I mean, that was the real thing. What if she comes back for us? What
if—"

Bethany's voice cuts across the others, cold as ice and filled with
commanding anger: "All of you, hush up. I can't hear myself think. She won't
have gone far. Tom, Minda, you get the salt and seal the edges of the gym. Keep
her here. Everybody else, stay alert. She's probably pissed."

"At least she's smart enough to get that far," I mutter, and vanish, moving
through the space between me and the gym door faster than my niece's minions can
hope to travel. Salt can bind a ghost, that's true, but it takes a special kind
to catch a hitcher, and I doubt she has the skill to do it.

I almost have to respect her, in a way. Sure, she's probably insane, but I
understand what it is to want out of Buckley so badly that you ache with it, so
badly that you're willing to do just about anything if that's what gets you an
exit. The night air is cool, and tastes like minutes wasted in doctor's waiting
rooms, precious seconds that you'll never get back again. One more prom night,
come and gone. It doesn't really matter that I spent it at a decoy prom, tied to
a chair by my grand-niece. A prom night is a prom night, and this one is
slipping into memory. The ghostroads will open soon, and then I can get the hell
out of here.

"Leaving so soon, Auntie Rose?" asks Bethany behind me. I turn toward the
sound of her voice, reflex as much as anything, and flinch back as the dried
flower corsage she throws at me bounces off the center of my chest, long-dead
flowers filling the air with sour-sweet perfume. Bethany's expression is
triumphant. That worries me. Not as much as it worries me that the flowers
actually made contact.

"Prom night's over, Bethany," I say, tried to keep the shock from showing on
my face. How the hell did she hit me with that thing? I'm not wearing a coat. I
don't have a body to be hit. "Give it up."

"Prom night's never over for you, Auntie Rose. That's why they call you the
'phantom prom date,' isn't it?" She smiles, pointing to the corsage that lies
between us like a roadkilled squirrel. "Gary Daniels bought this for you on what
should have been the night of your senior prom. 'Course, you were long dead by
then, and they'd barely stopped blaming him for being the one who killed you, so
you never got it. It's yours. And that means you're not going anywhere."