“And death on the road is the best way to get us,” I say, very softly.
“Unless you’re a routewitch, yes,” she says, and the look she gives me is level and calm. “Routewitch ghosts are always road ghosts. It’s the last gift the road can give to us. So he picks his victims carefully, and he runs them off the road when they seem most likely to leave a shade behind. After that—”
I hold up my hand. “I know what happens after that.” I’m not always fast enough, that’s what happens after that. I don’t always see the accident coming in time, I’m not always in the right place, they don’t always believe me before the time runs out and I have to turn and run. Bobby’s still out there, because I’m not always good enough to save them, even after they’re dead. “How do I stop him?”
“You have to take his car from him.” The Queen of the Routewitches looks at me calmly. “Separate the two of them, and age will catch up with him. He’ll live, but he won’t be able to stalk the ghostroads any longer. Not without his car to carry him.”
“Is that all?”
“It’s harder than it sounds.”
“I’ll believe that. If it were easy, I’d have done it by now.” I rub my arms, trying to warm myself back up. “Just take his car away, huh?”
“Yes. As for the how, well . . .” She smiles again. “I think we can help you with that.”
Tattoos and piercings are the only things I can’t fake when I change my clothes and shift my hair around to suit the places that my travels take me. I can do clip-on jewelry, magnetic nose studs, fake belly button rings, but nothing that actually changes the body that I died with. That sort of thing was a lot less common when I was still among the living. My mother told me once that she’d die before she saw any daughter of hers scribbled on like a carnival hoochie dancer.
Good thing she’s been dead for a long time.
The room the Queen leads me to has been turned into a makeshift tattoo parlor, with white sheets on the walls and a pillow on the narrow wooden table. One of the younger routewitches—a boy who looks no more than ten—stands next to it with a tattoo artist’s full kit spread out on a folding TV tray next to him.
“This is Rose, Mikey,” she says. “She’s the one we were talking about.”
He nods earnestly. “Evening, ma’am,” he says, and his accent is Midwestern, and out of date by at least thirty years. No one here is what they seem to be. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”
“Same here, Mikey,” I say. I look to the Queen, unsure what the etiquette is here.
She smiles. “Get up on the table, Rose, and let Mikey work. He knows what you need to have done. The Ocean Lady’s agreed to let you carry your protection with you when you leave here.” She must see the hesitation in my face, because she puts her hands against my cheeks and says firmly, “Trust me. We know we’re to blame. We want Bobby stopped as much as you do.”
So I get onto the table and stretch out on my stomach, eyes turned steadfastly toward the wall. The boy Mikey pulls up my dress, begins wiping something cool across my back. This is not what I expected when I set out to walk the Atlantic Highway.
The Queen of the Routewitches circles the table, crouches down next to me, and says softly, “The one who comes to claim the favor will tell you that I sent her, and give you my name.”
“What is it?”
“Apple,” she says, and I know where the shadows in her eyes came from—a town whose name means “Apple Orchard,” a place where the whole damn country fed ghosts into the darkness—and then the needle bites my skin, and like Sleeping Beauty with the spindle, I don’t know anything anymore.
The Old Atlantic Highway ran from Calais, Maine to Key West, Florida. I wake up at the Key West end of the road, sprawled in a truck stop parking lot, back in the jeans and tank top that I wore when I started walking the Ocean Lady in the first place. I’m chilled to the bone, back among the dead, but the small of my back aches like it hasn’t caught on to that fact just yet. It hurts like I’m still among the living.
I climb to my feet and start for the diner, making small adjustments in my appearance as I go, fitting my looks to my environment. Time to see if I can’t talk someone out of a sweater and a plate of bacon, and maybe see if I can’t get a fry cook on his way off-shift to strip me down and tell me what the Queen of the Routewitches ordered written on my skin.
Look out, Bobby Cross. Your diamond days are coming to an end, and I’m coming for you at last.
Book Three
Scary Stories
Now she’s a pretty little dead girl in a coup de ville,
And she’s looking for a drag race up on Dead Man’s Hill,
And if you’ve got a brain, boy, you’d better drive on by (bye-bye, bye-bye!).
Because she looks real sweet and she smiles real nice,
But you’d better take some well meant good advice:
If you race with Rose, then you’re probably gonna die.
—excerpt from “Pretty Little Dead Girl,” as recorded by the Rosettes.
... It was a hot summer night, and these two teenagers, see, they were parked up on Dead Man’s Hill. Now, everyone in town knew you didn’t want to park on Dead Man’s Hill if you didn’t have to, because the place was haunted. Only this girl was new in town, and she said she didn’t believe in ghosts, and any boy who wanted to take her out should be man enough not to be afraid of some little urban legend. Maybe he would have said thanks but no thanks, only she was totally hot, right, and everyone said she put out. So he told her he didn’t believe in ghosts either, and she was like, prove it, and he was like, how, and she was like, take me to Dead Man’s Hill.
Yeah, she was a real idiot.
Anyway, right around midnight, they’re, like, getting real hot and heavy—if you know what I mean—and he’s thinking, score, I’m going to get all the way tonight. And then there’s this noise out in the woods. Not like, screaming, or chains, or anything, but like, music. This real old-timey big band stuff, like they used to play at school dances back in the olden days. The chick, she’s like, what the hell? And the dude, he looks out the window, and there’s this girl, right, this gorgeous stacked blonde in like, a tight little green dress, and she was all, come on, let’s dance, and he got out of the car, and she led him into the trees.
They found the chick’s body still in the car, only it was all burned up and gross, like she’d been in a wreck or something, even though the car was parked the whole time.
The dude’s body was never found.
Don’t go up on Dead Man’s Hill, man. The Phantom Prom Date’s real. And she will really fuck you up.
—transcribed from a recording of Chris Hauser, Buckley High Class of ’12.
2013
The Devil in the Wind
THE SECRET OF the palimpsest skin of America is that every place is different, and every place is the same. I guess that’s probably the true secret of the entire world, but I don’t have access to the world. All I have is North America, where the coyotes sing the moon down every night and the rattlesnakes whisper warnings through the canyons. Here the daylight, the twilight, and the midnight are divided and divided again into thousands upon thousands of realities that never seem to touch—barely even seem to exist in parallel—while secretly they’re like horny teenage lovers who can’t keep their hands off of each other. They’re stealing kisses at the drive-in, the midnight girls with their daylight boys; they’re slipping love notes to their twilight sweethearts, they’re telling lies to keep their friends from ever figuring out. They’re ripping holes in the world every day, every hour, every second, and they’re doing it because people are just people, no matter what onion-skin level of the world they think of as their home. People are just people, and people don’t like being fenced in.
The true secret of the skin of America is that it’s barely covered by the legends and lies it clothes itself in, sitting otherwise naked and exposed. It’s a fragile thing, this country and this world of ou
rs, and the only thing it can do to protect itself from us is lie.
Things that happen in the daylight echo all the way down to the midnight. It works the other way, too. What happens in the midnight will inevitably make itself known in the daylight, given enough time to echo through the layers, to pass hand to hand down all those chains of secret lovers. What happens in the dark always shines through into the light.
There are times when I wish we weren’t all so good at forgetting that everything is connected to everything else. Because those are the times when people get hurt.
The itching at the small of my back is a low, constant burn, the sort of thing that hasn’t been a problem since that hot June night when a man who was neither living nor dead ran me off the road at the top of Sparrow Hill. My car went up in flames, my body went with it, and things like the itch of healing flesh ceased to be my problem. Try telling my back that. It’s been itching for three weeks now, ever since the Queen of the North American Routewitches decided that dying in the 1950s shouldn’t deny me the right to have a tramp stamp tattoo of my very own.
I squirm against the seat of the battered El Camino that’s currently devouring miles along I-75 North, the highway that runs between Key West and Detroit. I’ll hop out when we hit the Michigan state line, catch another ride, and make my way toward Buckley Township. Tommy passes through there every few weeks. He can give me a ride along the ghostroads to the Last Dance, where Emma can hopefully tell me what the hell the sore spot on my skin really means. Hopefully. Fifty years dead and gone, and I’m still no better at some aspects of this ghost shit than I was the night Bobby pushed me into the ravine.
I squirm again, attracting the attention of the man behind the wheel. I try to turn my squirm into a seductive wiggle, smiling at him from under coyly lowered lashes. I couldn’t tell you his name if you paid me, but I’ve met his kind before. He’ll keep me in the car as long as I don’t make trouble, or until we hit the state line. Then he’ll put his hand on my thigh and ask whether I want to make a few bucks to help me get wherever it is I’m going. I’ll tell him the ride’s worth more than the money, and things will proceed from there. Same dance, different partners.
I was a virgin when I died, and I lost my virginity shortly after. There’s a sort of weird irony to that, because I really don’t remember why I thought it was so important for me to stay “pure.” I just wanted to be loved. I still do, I guess, but it isn’t an option anymore, so I have sex with strangers in truck stop parking lots and rest stop bathrooms in exchange for the life they let me borrow and the rides they’re willing to give me. It’s not a living—not exactly—but it’s the only thing I’ve got, and that makes it good enough for me.
The smile didn’t do the trick. The man looks at me oddly, brow furrowed, like he’s no longer sure what I’m doing in his car. I know that look, too. That’s the look a man gives a girl when he picked her up hoping for sex without strings, and has suddenly realized that sex without strings isn’t always a good idea. I don’t normally get that look until after the fucking ends, when they decide that “a pretty girl like you” who does the things I’ll do must be nothing but a whore. Styles change, music gets hard to listen to, and hemlines bounce up and down like kids on a trampoline, but hypocrisy is the one thing that never goes out of style.
“Where did you say you were going again?” he asks, sudden suspicion in his words.
I bite back a sigh before it can get away from me, trying one more smile as I reply, “Toward Detroit. I gotta get to my aunt’s place before Sunday, or she’ll call my folks and tell them I’m late. They’d be pissed if they found out I went to Florida for Spring Break, you know?” It helps that I’m sweet sixteen forever, a dewy-eyed peaches-and-cream girl, no matter what I do to myself. Death has its privileges.
But something about me is bothering the driver, and whatever I’m trying to sell, he’s not buying. The car slows as he eases off the gas, navigating us toward the side of the road. “I misunderstood. I’m not going that way after all.”
He’s lying. I know he’s lying, and he knows I know he’s lying, and it doesn’t matter, because there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. He’s the one with the car, and he knows I’m not carrying any weapons, because my outfit leaves me nowhere to hide them. Bikini top, cut-off shorts, rainbow-stripe socks: the picture of a party girl trying to get home before she’s missed. He never asked what I was doing in Key West without a bag. They never do.
“Oh,” I say, letting my smile slip away into confusion. “I—I’m sorry? Did I say something wrong? I’m just trying to get home.” That’s the hitcher’s classic line, but it’s too late for the classics; I can see it in his eyes.
The car drifts to a stop on the shoulder of the highway, and I step out before he can ask for his jacket back. Once I’m out of the car, he’ll have to decide whether it’s worth pursuing me. They almost never take that risk. He’s like all the others, because he doesn’t say a word as he leans across the seat, slams my door, and hits the gas, leaving me alone, too-warm and still healing, on the side of the road.
Sighing, I stick out my thumb and start walking. Another ride will come along eventually. Another ride always does.
The best thing about having a jacket is the way it makes me live again, at least until the sun comes up the next morning—dawn to dawn, that’s the longest a borrowed life can last. The worst thing about having a jacket is the way it makes me live again, especially when it’s the middle of the afternoon in the middle of Georgia, and the sun is beating down like it has a personal grudge to settle. The novelty of sweating wore off an hour ago. I wipe my forehead as I trudge along the median, giving serious thought to taking off the jacket and letting myself drop into the twilight, where I may be cold, and hungry, and itchy, but at least I won’t be broiling.
The bottle-green Ford Taurus that just blazed past slows, hazard lights coming on as it pulls off to the side of the road. I tug up the collar of the jacket to make it look a little less ill-fitting and break into a jog.
It’s a middle-aged car, with a dent in the passenger side door deep enough to use as a punch bowl. The man behind the wheel looks like he’s in his late twenties, sandy hair, brown eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses. He lowers the window as I come jogging up, and asks the question that begins this ritual—a question that pre-dates cars, and highways, and even the United States of America:
“Where are you heading?”
Something about the honesty of his expression pulls the real answer out of me before I have time to consider: “Buckley Township, up in Michigan.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
That’s why honest answers are a bad idea. Name big cities, major thoroughfares—places people know. You’re more likely to get a ride if the driver believes you’re heading for a real place. “From here, you just drive toward Detroit.” I muster a smile. “Please? I’ll go as far as you’ll take me.” I don’t tell him any stories, don’t try to sell him any lies. I’m too tired and too hot for that. I just wait.
That seems to be the right approach, for once. After a moment, he nods, leaning over to unlock the door. “Hop in,” he says. “I can get you a good chunk of the way there.”
“Thanks,” I say, hooking the door open and sliding into the smooth, well-worn embrace of the front seat. “Thanks a lot.”
“Don’t mention it,” he says. The engine starts and we pull away. I allow myself to relax, trying to ignore the sweat trickling between my breasts and the constant itching on my back. Maybe this day won’t be so bad after all. I’ve got a coat; I’ve got a ride; there’s even the chance I’ll be able to talk the driver into pulling off somewhere for a milkshake and a cheeseburger. You try being dead for fifty years and see if you can describe a better day.
So why do my nerves feel like they’re on fire, and why do I feel like I’m missing something?
The driver stays silent until we’re back in the flow of traffic, moving through the sea of station wagons, pickup
trucks, and sport cars. Then he glances over, light glinting off his lenses, and asks, “So what’s your name?”
His accent is familiar, all the flat plains and open spaces of Michigan tucked into his vowels and hidden in his consonants. He sounds like home. “Rose,” I say—and since this is a day for honesty, I add, “Rose Marshall.”
“Nice to meet you, Rose. I’m Chris.” His smile is as quick and bright as the light that glinted from his glasses. “I’m heading for Detroit, so I guess I can get you most of the way to Buckley. You have family there?”
“I used to.” My own accent is tissue-thin and faded from the road; I could be from any part of the country or every part of the country at the same time. I offer a smile of my own, and add, “I grew up there.”
“Heading home?”
“Something like that.” He’s the kind of man I would have liked when I was alive. I can tell that already. He isn’t looking at me like I’m an adventure he can have and brag to his friends about; he’s looking at me like I’m a real person, just as alive and important as he is. He’s wrong about at least part of that. It’s still nice to see.
Chris nods. “Well, then, Rose, let’s see if we can get you home.”
It’s a much nicer day when viewed through a car window, flashing by at a speed feet can never match—the speed my hitchhiker’s heart tells me the world was meant to move at, miles turning into dust and memory behind us. The heat is no match for the air conditioning, which cools the sweat from my skin and leaves me grateful for the coat I’m wearing. I sort of wish I had some pants instead of my coquettish party girl cut-offs, but my clothes turned solid when I donned the coat, and taking it off would give me a whole new set of troubles.
Sparrow Hill Road Page 17
