Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan (30 page)

I never said that. I said something similar, sure, but I never said that. I'm
opening my mouth to tell him so when I realize what he's planning, and shut it
with a snap. The man—Anton—hands his gun to Jimmy, patting the smaller, deader
boy on the shoulder as he does.

"Sorry, Rose," says Jimmy, and pulls the trigger.

***

I'm getting damn tired of being shot at. You'd think that, being dead, I
wouldn't have to worry about this sort of thing anymore. A finger pokes me in
the shoulder, and Emma's voice says, "Get up, or it's the eels again."

I open my eyes.

Emma is crouching next to me, a brown corduroy coat draped across her knees.
The sun is down; it's dark, and her presence alone is enough to tell me that
Halloween is over.
Bean sidhe
have their own rituals regarding the
holiday, and she'd never leave them early, not even for me. I'm not sure that
she can. Still: "What time is it?" I ask.

"Midnight, on Martinmas. You've been out for eleven days."

"Swell." I stand up, grimacing a little at the swish of the silk skirt
against my ankles. Yup. Definitely back among the unliving. "Did anyone get a
picture of that little punk's face when midnight came and he faded out with the
rest?"

"Not that I'm aware of."

"Damn." I'll have to track him down and provide him with a little private
tutoring in the ways of the road. Such as 'you don't betray your fellow dead to
the living.' He's already learned one of the more important lessons—'always
check the fine print.'

On Halloween, if the living kill the dead, or the dead kill the living, they
get a year in the daylight as their prize. But there's no prize for the dead
killing the dead. Trick's on you, Jimmy, and there are bigger tricks to come,
because news travels fast in the twilight, and the dead never forget.

I take the coat from Emma, shrugging it on, and smile. "Malteds?"

"I thought you'd never ask," she says, and offers me her arm. I take it, and
we walk on together down the road, away from the shadow of the cornfield, and
the smell of burnt pumpkin that still lingers, like a holiday's ghost, in the
sweet November night.

Faithfully
A
Sparrow Hill Road
story
by
Seanan McGuire

Highway run
Into the midnight sun
Wheels go round and round,
You're on my mind.
Restless hearts
Sleep alone tonight
Sending all my love
Along the wire...

They say that the road
Ain't no place to start a family
Right down the line
It's been you and me
And lovin' a music man
Ain't always what it's supposed to be
Oh, girl, you stand by me
I'm forever yours...
Faithfully.

— "Faithfully," Jonathan Cain.

Love—true love—never dies.

Sometimes it just goes to sleep for a while.

***

Her name was Rose. She sat in the second row in Ms. Buchanan's third
grade class. She had hair the color of the cornfields in September, and big
brown doe's eyes that made me want to grab her hand and promise her that
everything was going to be okay forever—double-pinky-swear. I'd known her since
kindergarten, but on the second day of third grade, when she and I got picked to
hand out the mimeo sheets for the teacher, walking down the aisles shoulder to
shoulder...that was when I realized that I loved her. That I was never going to
want to be with anybody but her.

I wasn't always nice to her the way I should have been. But I didn't join
the other kids when they made fun of the patches on her sleeves or the way her
skirts got shorter and shorter, eaten alive by their own mended hems. I didn't
call her "Second Hand Rose" or "poor girl" like the other boys did, and if I
never asked her to the school dances, I never asked anybody else, either. I was
faithful to her before I knew what faithful really meant.

If I've committed any real sin in my life, it's that it took me so long
to ask her if she wanted to go out with me. I fell in love when I was nine, but
she didn't wear my jacket until I was fifteen, didn't smile at me with that
mouth, didn't look at me with those big doe eyes of hers. I let six years slip
through my fingers when I could have grabbed tight hold of every single day, and
the penance for my sin is knowing I committed it. Knowing what we lost.

Her name was Rose. She was the only girl I ever loved—the only girl I
guess I could have ever loved, the only one that I was designed for loving. She
wasn't perfect. Nobody's perfect. But she was close enough for a small town boy
who dreamed of one day touching something greater. I guess she felt the same way
about me. She came back to me, after all, even if it was only once, even if I
didn't know that she was gone.

I've spent my whole life trying, but I never fell in love again—not the
way I fell in love with her, when the world was young and innocent, and silly
teenage boys believed their girlfriends were immortal.

Her name was Rose.

***

I'm making my way toward Ann Arbor when I feel the undeniable urge to turn
south. It's like someone is tying strings around my wrists and ankles, trying to
use them to pull me the way they think I ought to go. I stop where I am, feet
sinking down into the dead dry grass by the side of the road, and try to tell
myself that I'm not feeling what I'm feeling. I don't want this. I didn't want
this the first time it happened, and I don't want it now.

The teasing, tugging sensation doesn't stop. If anything, it gets worse,
small tugs turning quickly into outright pulling, like the whole world has
decided that it has nothing better to do than get me to turn around. I close my
eyes, trying to feel my way across the twilight to the source of the feeling.
Whoever it is, they don't know what they're doing. This is a summons without a
"return to sender" attached, which can only mean one thing: Someone tied to the
few short years that I spent among the living is getting ready to join me among
the dead, and the universe wants me to play psychopomp for their departure.

Thanks for that, universe. Thanks a
lot
.

The calls don't come as often as they used to. There was a time when I was
making my way back to Buckley almost every year to pull some poor ghost away
from the bodies they'd abandoned and help them find their way to the ghostroads.
Irony is a bitter mistress: the fact that these people had me called to lead
them to their afterlives didn't make them road ghosts, and none of them showed
any inclination to stay for longer than it took to process the fact of their own
death. One by one, I helped them deal with reality, and one by one, they left
me. I was allowed to invite them to the party, but I wasn't allowed to go with
them.

Sometimes death sucks. The parts of it that involve finding and losing the
people I used to love all over again...those parts suck more than most.

The pull to the south is still growing in strength and urgency. I know from
past experience that if I try to hitch a ride in this state, no cars will stop
for me unless they're going the right way. Even if I can get my hands on a coat,
I won't fully incarnate; not unless I give in and obey the strange, malleable
rules of the road.

"It's not like I was doing anything with my night, right?" I mutter, and
shove my hands into the pockets of my jeans, using the motion to shove myself
down through reality's walls, moving smoothly from the daylight to the top of
the twilight. The sky flickers, going bad-special-effect black, and the stars
become frozen diamonds, not flickering, not doing anything but shining. There's
no wind here to ruffle the corn. Just the fields, and the sky, and the black
serpent highway sliding smoothly off into the distance.

I step out of the grass, back onto the road, and start walking. Giving in to
the tugging this easily feels a little like defeat. Frankly, I don't care. The
sooner I can get this over with, the sooner I can get on with my death.

Like it or not, I'm heading back to Buckley.

***

The nurses don't think I hear them talking outside my room. They would,
if they thought twice about it—everything else about this old body may be
breaking down on me, and me without a manufacturer's warranty to my name—but my
hearing's as good as ever. They don't think I'm going to make it to Christmas.
That's a bit of a relief, if you ask me; I've been here without my Rose for long
enough now. I'm tired. I'm ready to be done.

There's just one more thing that needs to be done. I've observed the
rituals as much as I can, here in this sterile place where old men go to wait
out the last lonely hours of their existence. I've poured the glasses of wine,
I've kept her picture close to me—I've even bribed a couple of the orderlies to
burn incense outside the building, where the smell won't attract that busy-body
of a nurse who keeps the ward. If I've missed a step, I don't know it. I guess I
won't know it until I die.

I've never in my life been a gambler, Rose, but I'm gambling now. I'm
gambling on you remembering me, and you caring enough to come. Please, Rose.
Please.

Have mercy on a dying man. Remember that once, you loved me. Remember
that once...

Once, I got you home.

***

Travel on the ghostroads is difficult to predict. Something that takes a day
in the daylight can take a year in the twilight; something that takes a year in
the daylight can be over in minutes in the twilight. It's all down to what the
road thinks you need, and how capricious reality is feeling at any given moment.

Either reality is trying to be helpful, or I've somehow pissed it off, and
this is how it punishes me. I've barely been walking for an hour when the
tugging becomes strong enough to yank me clean off the ghostroads, and I find
myself standing on the wide green lawn in front of a blocky white building. It
takes a moment for me to get my bearings. This part of Buckley didn't exist in
the 1940s. It's part of the endless expansion of the township, the slow
encroachment on the forest that used to keep us from the world.
Sparrow Hill
Senior Facility
says the sign mounted near the small, businesslike front
door. That explains the feel of the place, like the whole thing is holding its
breath, waiting to see who'll win—life, death, or none of the above.

I take a breath I don't really need, changing my clothes as I start walking
toward the door. The basic nurses' uniform hasn't changed much since I died.
Wear basic white and sensible shoes, and people will almost always assume you
know what you're doing.

There's no one to notice as I walk through the wood of the front door and
into the entry hall. The place is practically deserted, nothing but the night
shift skeleton crew and the inmates locked in their individual cells. I walk a
little quicker, following the feeling of being pulled. I'm rarely glad to have
died. I can't really say I miss the chance to get old enough for a place like
this one.

I don't really know who I've been called here to escort. All the relatives
close enough to call me back died years ago, and I didn't have that many
friends. I wasn't exactly a social butterfly; coming from the poor side of town
was bad enough, but my unladylike ways and fascination with cars really put the
nails in my reputation's coffin. Not many people cared enough to look past the
judgments and make their own decisions about what kind of girl I was. That was
fine, because for the most part, I didn't want them to.

I had my dreams and my cars and my brothers. I had my shot at a better life.
I had Gary.

The tugging leads me to a specific door, in a specific hall. I hesitate for a
moment, unable to shake the feeling that I'm missing something—something I'll be
sorry about later. I can't figure out what it is, and so I step through the
wood, just one more ghost in a building that should be dripping with them.

The man in the bed in front of me is so old and worn that he's practically a
ghost himself, barely anchored by the prison of his own skin. But his eyes are
open, and his smile is warm as he watches me slip into the room. I should know
him. He's the one who called me here, with his need and his dying, and I should
know him.

The framed picture on the nightstand next to his pillow is of me, junior
year, lemon-bleached hair rendered gray by the black and white film, forever
young, forever a shadow of a shade. There's only one man who'd still be
displaying that picture like this. There's only one man who loved me enough to
care.

"Hello, Rose," says Gary. "It's been a long time."

***

She came. Oh, God, she actually came. It wasn't just a story. I wasn't
out of my mind. She still looks as young as she did the night she died. I've
missed her so much. I wonder if she even remembers who I am.

I can't believe she actually came.

***

I freeze in place, too stunned to speak, too stunned to do anything but stare
at this worn-out mockery of the only boy I ever fell in love with, the only boy
I ever kissed with living lips. I've kissed a lot of boys since the summer that
I turned sweet sixteen, but his was always and forever the only kiss that
counted. Now that I'm looking,
really
looking, my eyes refuse to lie
me; this is Gary Daniels, this is the boy who picked me up when I was newly dead
and shivering by the side of the road on Sparrow Hill. This is the last man on
earth with the power to call me back to Buckley. This is
Gary
.

This is Gary, and he's dying.

Even the smile on his face looks like it pains him, like the joy of seeing me
again is too heavy for his aged shoulders to support. "You look...God, Rose, you
look amazing." Confusion flickers in his eyes—his eyes. I should have known him
the second I saw him, if only by his eyes. "What have you done to your hair?"