Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan (22 page)

My breath catches in my throat; until that moment, I hadn't really realized
that I was breathing. I've heard of things like this, ghost-catchers, tokens
that the living have held onto for too long, imbued with too many memories, but
I've never seen one. It just figures that if there was going to be a
ghost-catcher tuned to me, it would be in the hands of my crazy grand-niece with
the Bobby Cross fixation. I put my hands up, palms turned toward her.

"Come on, Bethany. Let's think about this, all right? You don't want to deal
with Bobby Cross. He's..." A bastard, a madman, a murderer. "...he's not a nice
man, and he's not going to play fair just because you hold up your end of the
bargain. I'm family. Doesn't that mean something?"

"Family didn't mean anything to you when you decided to go off and get
yourself turned into road kill. Grandpa's been mourning you as long as I've been
alive. He even wanted to name me 'Rose.' Don't you think it's time to rest?"
Bethany starts toward me, the bug-zappers that spark and flash around the edges
of the school roof sending glints of blue light off the knife in her left hand.
"It doesn't have to be this hard. You've had so many years, and I'm sorry,
Auntie Rose, but I have to do what I have to do. You, of all people, should
understand.  You remember what it's like to be trapped here."

The corsage smells like lilies and ashes, or maybe the smell of lilies and
ashes is rising from the parking lot around us, routewitch facing off with
road-ghost fifteen minutes after midnight on prom night. This is the sort of
thing that's rare enough to have power all its own, and in the far distance, I
can hear the sound of an engine, screaming.

Bobby Cross is coming to collect what he's been promised.

I'm running out of time.

***

Bethany's friends—minions, whatever they are to her—are still inside the high
school, probably sealing the exits with salt and watching through the windows,
smart enough not to get involved now that the odds aren't in their favor. The
ash-and-lily smell is getting choking, Bobby burning road between him and
Buckley.

"Come on, Bethany," I urge. "The doors are closed. You haven't taken anything
from him, you don't
owe
him anything. Go inside, and don't look back.
This doesn't have to happen."

"This always had to happen," she says, and takes another step forward.

She's taller than I am, more solidly built. She's probably on the track team,
a sport where she doesn't have to count on anyone else to support her.
Routewitches like things that let them cover distance. She looks utterly
confident as she closes on me, and she should look confident, because I'm a slip
of a girl in a confining silk dress, doe-eyed and breakable.

It's too bad she isn't really thinking this through. I'm a slip of a girl
who's spent the last fifty years in and out of truck stops, riding with bikers
and arguing with fry cooks on exactly how much they get to slap me around before
I start slapping back. And I don't have to worry about getting hurt for keeps.
She goes for my ribs, sharp stabbing motion, all her momentum behind it.

I go for her eyes, nails hooked into claws, and the fight is on.

There's nothing sexy about two girls really going at it, especially not when
they're in a parking lot in the middle of a summer night. Bethany shrieks when I
scratch her and starts swinging wildly; the knife misses, but her elbow doesn't,
and sends me rocking back a few feet. The gravel underfoot makes it hard to keep
my balance. I scramble to get upright and charge forward, burying my shoulder in
the pit of her stomach. The air goes out of her in a hard gust, and she lands on
the pavement on her ass, gasping.

"Stay down," I snap, already half-winded. Bethany snarls, sounding more
animal than human, and scrabbles to her feet, lunging for me again. I'm not
prepared. Her hand catches my hair, and then she's whipping me around, sending
me flying away from her. I land hard on the pavement, skidding to a stop at
least six feet away.

I'm barely back to my feet when I hear the sound of two hands, clapping
slowly. For the first time, I realize that I'm tasting wormwood, and I turn
toward the sound, already sure of what I'll see.

Bobby Cross meets my eyes, and smirks. "Nothing like a good chick fight to
start a night off the right way, is there, Rosie-girl?" he drawls. Bethany is
struggling to get her breath back, raking fingers through her hair, making
herself presentable. The irony of Bobby Cross being her dream date hasn't
escaped me. "You're a sight for sore eyes. Or maybe just a sight to make eyes
sore. Tired of playing hard to get?"

"Come get me, and find out," I suggest. I'm not breathing hard. I look down,
and see the shredded petals littering the pavement around me, like the leavings
of a flower girl at a funeral. It would have bound me here, kept me flesh and
blood, but Bethany left it on the ground when we started fighting. One or both
of us must have stepped on it, shredding it and destroying its power over me.
Amateur mistake for an amateur routewitch.

It's the last one she's going to make. Bobby takes a step forward, one hand
half-raised in my direction. Then he stops, and snarls. "You were supposed to
cut it off her," he says, finally turning toward Bethany. "I came here because
you promised she'd be meat when I arrived. That you'd cut that warding off her
body. You trying to welsh on me, girl?"

"No!" protests Bethany, eyes widening. For the first time, she seems to know
that she's in danger...and it's too late for me to do a thing about it. "She
fought back. I didn't expect she'd be able to fight back."

"Fifty years, you didn't think she'd have a trick or two?" His boot heels
click as he closes the distance between them, fast, so fast it's like he barely
moved at all. Bethany screams when he grabs her wrist, and screams again when he
jerks her against him. "You're going to learn, girly. You can't break a deal
with me."

"Aunt Rose!" She twists to look at me over Bobby's shoulder, and her eyes are
the pleading eyes of a trapped animal. "Please, help me! Don't let him—"

"You're the one that said family didn't mean anything, Bethany," I say. Her
eyes widen, hope draining out of them. I feel like I'm going to be sick. But I
can't save her from Bobby, not here, not now, not when she made the bargain of
her own free will. The only thing I can do is offer myself in her place...

And she's not worth it.

Bethany screams as I walk out of the parking lot, out of Buckley, down into
the twilight, where the ghostroads hold no surprises anymore. Even as the
daylight fades around me, taking the smell of ashes and lilies with it, I think
that I can still hear Bethany, screaming. I'll be hearing her for a while, I
suppose. And I walk on.

Dead Man's Curve
A
Sparrow Hill Road
story
by
Seanan McGuire

Well, the last thing I remember, Doc, I started to swerve,
And then I saw the Jag sliding into the curve.
I know I'll never forget that horrible sight.
I guess I found out for myself that everyone was right.

You won't come back from dead man's curve
Dead man's curve
Dead man's curve
Dead man's curve...
~"Dead Man's Curve," Jan Berry and Roger Christian.

The preachers that walk and talk and trade their snake oil sermons among the
living talk about death like it's some sort of vacation. "Going to your eternal
rest," that's a popular one. So's "laying down all worldly cares," or my
personal favorite, "at peace in the fields of the Lord." I've seen more than a
few fields since I went and joined the legions of the dead. Most of them didn't
have any Lord to speak of, and the few that did were dark, twisted places,
controlled by ghosts who'd gone mad and decided that they were gods.

If there's some peaceful paradise waiting on the other side of the twilight,
no one has ever been able to prove its existence—not in any way that I'm willing
to accept, and this is my afterlife, right? I get to make requests every once in
a while. I know the daylight exists, and I know the twilight exists, and if
there's anything beyond that, I'd like to see a road map and a tourism brochure
before I agree to go. The ghostroads aren't Heaven. They aren't Hell, either.
They just are, eternal and eternally changing, and I've been here a lot longer
than I was ever anywhere else.

The preachers that sell their snake oil to the dead don't preach about
paradise. They preach about the sins of the living, and the silence of the
grave, and the unfairness of our exile. But they never say what we've been
exiled from, and if you're fool enough to ask, you won't be welcome in that
church for very long.

Alive or dead, the world turns on faith, and on the idea that someday,
somehow, we're going to get the chance to rest. I didn't believe it when I was
alive. These days, I'm just happy if I have time to finish a cheeseburger before
the shit starts hitting the fan.

***

The air conditioning is turned just a little bit too high, raising goose
bumps on the tourists who walk, unprepared, out of the muggy Ohio summer. Most
of them turn right around and walk back out again, unwilling to deal with this
two-bit diner where the music's too loud and the air's too cold. They won't be
missed. The folks who stay seem to know the deal they're getting when they come
through the door, because they all bring coats, and they all seat themselves. I
fit right in.

This is definitely my kind of place.

Best of all, one of the busboys is a routewitch, probably clearing tables to
get his bus fare to the next stop on his private pilgrimage. He pegged me the
second I walked through the door. The jacket I'm wearing is his, Varsity prize
from some high school I've never heard of, and every time he passes the counter,
he slides another plate of fries my way. If I believed in Heaven, I'd be willing
to write this dirty little diner down as a suburb.

The sound of the door opening doesn't even get my attention this time. I'm
too busy sizing up the waitress on duty, trying to figure out how I can talk her
into giving me a milkshake—of her own free will, of course, since it doesn't
count otherwise. Someone takes the stool next to me.

"How's the pie?"

It's an innocent question, a way to strike up conversation with a stranger.
I've heard it before. I still smile as I turn my head toward the man beside me.
"I wouldn't know. I'm just passing through, and I haven't had the pie yet."

That look is enough to let me take his measure—I've got some experience in
this situation. Mid-twenties, brown hair, eyes the color of hard-packed median
dirt. He's cute enough to know it and be cocky, but not cute enough to be
arrogant about it. There's a difference. I like it.

His smile travels half the distance to a smirk as he asks, "Well, then, how
would you feel about letting a stranger buy you a piece of pie?"

"Only if he's willing to stop being a stranger." I offer my hand. "Rose."

He takes it, shakes once, and lets go. "Jamie. So you're not from around
here?"

"Nope. I just rolled in from Michigan, and I'll be heading out as soon as I
find a car that's going my way." This is another familiar script; I could recite
it in my sleep. "I'm taking some time to see the country, you know?"

"Yeah. That's cool." He pauses while he flags down the waitress and orders
two slices of pie, one peach, one apple, both ala mode. She heads for the
kitchen, and he looks to me, asking, "So is there any chance you have local
friends? Relatives? Anything?"

"Sorry, but no. Why do you ask?"

"Oh—I'm in town with the rest of my crew, and this is the part where we all
fan out to talk to the locals about, you know, local legends, hauntings, that
sort of thing. We're from the University of Ohio." He leans closer, lowers his
voice, and says, conspiratorially, "We're here to catch a ghost."

For a moment, I just stare at him. He stares back. And then, in unison, we
start laughing.

Oh, this is gonna be too good to miss.

***

Jamie wasn't kidding; he's here to catch a ghost, along with four other
students from the University of Ohio. Two are physics majors; one is in
folklore; one, for no apparent reason, is in physical education. I'm not so sure
what Jamie's major is. I'm just sure that he's in charge, and that his little
squad of junior Ghostbusters isn't very happy that he came back from his
scouting expedition with a date.

"You do understand that this is a serious scientific expedition?" asks one of
the physicists, for the sixth time. Their dialog is practically interchangeable,
a long checklist of questions that all boil down to "you are an intruder, you
aren't supposed to be here, get out, get out." I'd probably be unable to tell
them apart if it weren't for the fact that they look nothing alike, and one of
them is a guy. Instead, I take a perverse pleasure in refusing to remember their
names.

"We're staking out an abandoned diner somewhere off the highway in hopes of
seeing a ghost," I say, dryly. "I'm not seeing the 'serious.'"

"But we're going to get something no one else has ever managed to get," says
the folklore major. Angela, I think her name is. She looks like an Angela.

"What's that?" I ask. I love ghost-hunters. They're so hopeful, and so
willing to walk wide-eyed into the places where angels—if not Angelas—fear to
tread.

"We're going to catch a ghost," says Physicist One.

I start to laugh, stop as I realize that they're serious. "I—wait—
what
?
You can't
catch
a ghost. I mean, nobody's even all that absolutely
certain that they exist. How are you planning to pull this off?"

"We had a little help," admits Jamie. His tone says that he doesn't want to
tell me, and his face says that he's been praying for this opening. People like
to brag. I think it's an essential part of the human condition. "Marla, get the
book."