Sparrow Hill Road

by Seanan McGuire

  “You know that rhyme they have? The one that starts with ‘homecomer, hitcher, phantom rider’?”

  “Yeah,” I say, with a small nod.

  “How does it go?”

  “Uh . . . ‘homecomer, hitcher, phantom rider, white lady wants what’s been denied her, gather-grim knows what you fear the most, but best . . . keep away . . .’” I stop, the words turning to ashes on my tongue, and stare at her. Mary, Buckley girl Mary, who once made me help her kill a highway. Pretty Mary Dunlavy with her crossroads eyes and her hair the color of moonlight on the corn.

  “Gather-grim knows what you fear the most, but best keep away from the crossroads ghost,” says Mary, and I know what she is, and I am so screwed.

  Daly, Maine, 1981

  “You’re Mary Dunlavy.” I try to take a step backward, but the compulsion that dragged me here won’t allow it; moving away from my goal isn’t the plan. Crap. “Uh. Look, I don’t know why you dragged me here, but I promise you, you’ve got the wrong girl. No matter what it is you want, I can’t help.”

  “Pretty sure you’re wrong about that, Rose,” she says. She sounds almost sorry.

  “I’m a hitchhiker,” I shoot back. “Unless you’re looking for tips on flagging down a ride, I’m not your go-to ghost.”

  “You’re a hitchhiker, but you’re also a psychopomp, and I need a psychopomp. A strong one, one who’s actually been doing her job, not just letting the dead figure things out on their own. Right now, in this part of the country, that’s you. So congratulations, Rose Marshall: you’ve just been drafted.”

  I frown. She’s starting to piss me off, which is actually a good thing, at least for me—I’d rather be angry than upset and confused. “Okay, Mary, I get that we’re both from Buckley and that you’re some kind of spooky urban legend and all that crap, but you don’t have the authority to draft me. You don’t look like a road ghost. Even if you were, that wouldn’t put you in some position of power over me. I’m a hitcher. That means I cock my thumb and I am gone.”

  “Then why haven’t you left already?” Mary shrugs. “I’m not the only one holding you here, although I admit, I did have something to do with getting you to come in the first place. Stop fighting with me, and listen to the road. Listen to what it’s trying to tell you.”

  I glare at her for a moment, more for effect than anything else, before I close my eyes and try to figure out what the hell she’s talking about. I can’t drop down into the twilight, but I can feel the road beneath my feet, and I can feel the thousand other roads running under the living one. They’re the ghosts of this place, of this time. Some of them are truly dead; some are lost; some are part of another America entirely. One by one, I filter them out, until only two roads remain. The one that I’m standing on, gravel and neglect and cool vitality . . . and something else. Something sharp and sour and dark, a corpse that hasn’t yet figured out that it needs to stop moving, that the time has come to be still. My eyes snap open of their own accord, and I’m staring at Mary Dunlavy like she’s going to have the answers I need.

  And maybe she is. “Route 14 is near here. It’s an old stretch of highway, almost forgotten by the modern maps. They should probably rip it out, let the forest have the land back and replace it with a loop where fewer people die or disappear.”

  “So it’s haunted?”

  “No.”

  “But—”

  “It’s dead, Rose. It just doesn’t know it yet.” Mary shakes her head. “I need your help. We need to kill a highway.”

  The Last Dance Diner, 2014

  “You can’t be a crossroads ghost,” I say, fighting the urge to go insubstantial and drop through this layer of reality. The midnight is below us, and I’m not a midnight ghost. Worse yet is the thought that maybe Mary is. No one knows what level the crossroads ghosts belong to. I could slide into the midnight and find her there, already waiting for me. “You can’t. They don’t really exist.”

  “The crossroads exists. You’ve been there.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And the crossroads guardians exist. You have to know that. You’ve seen a bargain being struck.”

  “So what?”

  “So sometimes, someone wants to find a crossroads without finding a road ghost first. Sometimes someone needs a guide. And sometimes a bargain needs to be witnessed by a third party. Someone who isn’t a crossroads guardian, and whose signature isn’t being etched in the dirt.” Mary shakes her head. “I am what I am because of the way that I died, just like you.”

  “How the hell do you die a crossroads death?”

  She looks at me flatly, and her eyes are a hundred miles of bad road. “You die at the crossroads, begging for a second chance, that’s how. It’s no more or less likely than anything else; just rarer. So can we move on, and stop playing ‘you’re not real’ games when there’s serious business to discuss?”

  “Serious business, right. Like how you want to ‘help’ me. Why the sudden urge, Mary?”

  “You’re going after Bobby Cross.”

  “Bobby Cross needs going after.”

  “If you’ve been to see Apple, you know how he became what he is.”

  I nod. “I won’t say that Apple’s a big fan of his, but she knew his basic story. Big star wants to be bigger, goes to the crossroads, buys himself eternal youth at the cost of a whole lot of innocent souls. I’m tired of him. I’m tired of being chased, and I’m tired of running. That means it’s time for me to turn this bus around and ram him with it.”

  “Do you always talk in driving metaphors?”

  “I’m a hitchhiking ghost. It was this, or talk in Disney metaphors.”

  Mary rolls her eyes before she sobers again, a smile I had barely even noticed fading from her lips. “A deal like Bobby’s is . . . well, it’s rare. It takes a lot of work on the part of the crossroads guardian who brokers it, and it takes two witnesses, one living, one dead. The living witness was the King of the North American Routewitches. He stepped down soon after that, and Apple was crowned the new Queen. The dead witness . . .” She hesitates, and I don’t want her to say what she’s going to say next, because I can read it on her face, and this isn’t right, it isn’t fair, she’s just another girl from Buckley, and no matter what I may say about roots, I miss having them. But she speaks anyway. She was always going to.

  “The dead witness was me, Rose. I’m sorry. I’m the crossroads ghost who witnessed Bobby’s deal. I put my name on his contract. And I am so, so sorry.”

  Daly, Maine, 1981

  This is a terrible idea. I would tell Mary that, but I’ve already told her several times, and I don’t think she’s actually listening to me anymore. She keeps ranging ahead through the forest, never far enough to let me out of her sight, but far enough to make it clear how impatient she is. I’m not clear on why she’s in such a rush, and I don’t want to ask. There’s too much of a chance that she’d tell me. As to why I’m following her at all . . .

  I’m curious. I’ve never felt anything like Route 14. It’s a black gash across the ghostroads, and now that we’re getting closer, I can smell it, a weird mixture of burning tires and antifreeze, like an accident that’s simultaneously starting and burning out. It makes my head hurt a little. I could probably stop that by letting go of my coat and the flesh that it carries with it, but since the ghostroads are still outside my grasp, I want to save that particular parlor trick until I actually need it.

  Mary stops walking when she reaches the edge of the trees. I hurry to catch up with her, and my breath catches in my throat as I see what she’s looking at.

  The edge of the forest is about six feet of sloping dirt and stone above the pavement. Whoever built this highway cut it straight through the middle of the landscape, not caring how badly they scarred the earth in the process. And that’s what this is: it’s a scar, it’s something alive and dead at the same time, pulsing with a horrible vitality that makes my teeth itch and my skin crawl. The sky overhead keeps flickering be
tween the bruised black of the twilight and the sunny blue of the living world. Someone who wasn’t dead wouldn’t see that flicker, but I can’t imagine that anyone could possibly be comfortable here. Everything stinks, burning tires and antifreeze, yes, and worse—so much worse—the fading scent of ashes and lilies. There have been so many accidents here. I can’t even begin to unsnarl them.

  Some places turn bad because they’re haunted. I’ve seen it happen to stretches of road before, usually after they’ve attracted a homecomer or a white lady. This is the first time I’ve seen a highway that was actually haunting itself.

  “How is this possible?” My voice comes out in a hushed whisper, like I’m afraid that speaking too loudly will somehow attract the road’s attention.

  “Fucked if I know,” says Mary with a shrug. “I just know that it happened, and it’s killing people. I want it to stop.”

  “You knew I’d have to help you if you showed me this.” The ghosts of impacts shudder in the air, distorting it until it creates the illusion of a heat-haze above the yellow dividing line. All those accidents that didn’t have to happen, all those people who didn’t have to die . . .

  If I were actually alive, and not the temporarily incarnate ghost of a teenage girl who died in 1952, this is when I would toss my cookies all over the shoulder. I never thought I’d miss throwing up.

  “I did,” Mary admits. There’s no apology in her tone. “I know this isn’t your usual gig, but it’s not mine either. It’s not anyone’s. It’s just a mess that needs to be cleaned up. I’m hoping that between the two of us, we can figure out a way to do it.”

  I want to ask her what happens if we don’t figure out a way. I don’t say a word, because I know, damn her, I already know. Route 14 has been killing for years, and since there are no ghosts here, it doesn’t set off the usual alarm bells in the living psyche. If we don’t figure out a way to kill it, people will keep using it, maybe as a daily drive, maybe just as an occasional shortcut—and people will keep on dying here. They’ll keep dying in accidents that never should have happened, in a haunted house with no walls or doors or exits. Mary’s right; this has to end.

  I stand on the bluff overlooking Route 14, and I wait for inspiration to strike.

  The Last Dance Diner, 2014

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but that joke wasn’t funny,” I say—and my voice comes out in a whisper, like an echo of that day in 1981 when I stood in front of a self-haunting highway with a dead girl I barely knew. “That’s sick. How can you joke about something like that?”

  “I’m not joking, Rose. I wish I were. I wish I’d refused to witness the contract, even though that would have made me subject to the castigation of the crossroads. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for what he did to you, what he did to all of you, but I was still warm in my own grave, I didn’t know—”

  “You did this to me?” I’m not whispering anymore. “You’re the reason that bastard ran me off the road? You’re the reason that I died?”

  “You would have been dead by now already,” says Mary—and it’s clear almost as soon as she’s said the words that she knows she should never have let them pass her lips. Her eyes go wide, pupils dilating. She presses herself backward against the vinyl cushion of the booth behind her. She’s fast, I’ll give her that, but she’s not a road ghost, and if there’s one thing the road has given me, it’s speed. I’m across the table with my hands locked around her throat before she can get out of range.

  I am not a violent person, for the most part. But like everyone, I’m willing to make an exception, under the right circumstances.

  “I was sixteen! I had my whole life ahead of me! You let him have me! You did this to me!” Emma is suddenly behind me, her hands on my shoulders, yanking me away from Mary. I fight her. I’ll be ashamed of myself later, but here and now, I fight her, trying to squeeze for just a few seconds more, trying to make Mary understand the extent of her crime against me. It’s a cliché to say that someone “ruined your life.” By witnessing Bobby Cross’ contract, Mary did more than ruin my life. She ended it.

  “Rose!” Emma gives me one last yank, pulling me back across the table and shoving me down into my seat. I snarl and strain against her hands. Emma pushes me down even harder. The beán sidhe is surprisingly strong. Or maybe not surprisingly—she isn’t a ghost, after all. The rules for her are different, and they always have been. “You know I don’t tolerate fighting in my place. Really, Rose Marshall. I thought better of you.”

  “Blame her,” I snarl, still glaring at Mary.

  As for Mary . . . she’s sitting where I left her, the outlines of my fingers standing out livid on the white skin of her throat. I should feel bad for hurting her like that. I don’t. I can’t. If that makes me a bad person, then so be it. At least I didn’t kill her.

  “I know what she did,” says Emma. “She told me, when she asked if she could have this meeting here, in the Last Dance. She was hoping that being in a familiar place might make you listen before you tried to hurt her. I’m ashamed of you, Rose, I really am. I thought you believed in second chances.”

  “I didn’t know,” says Mary. My eyes narrow as my attention goes back to her. She sighs, and says, “I’d barely been dead long enough to know what a contract was, and the guardian kept saying it was fine, it was just fine, it was perfectly reasonable . . . crossroads ghosts are supposed to keep crossroads guardians from letting too much chaos out into the world. We’re what limits their power. A guardian with a fresh ghost . . . I got taken advantage of, Rose, and you paid the price. I am so, so sorry.”

  “Is that true?” I look to Emma. “Is she telling me the truth?”

  “The crossroads isn’t evil, but it’s not of this world,” says Emma. “Not the way you are, or even the way that someone like me is. Crossroads guardians come from the crossroads. They want to help the crossroads get its way. Crossroads ghosts are a . . . a defense mechanism, if you will, the same way ghosts like you are a defense mechanism for the road. You help drivers make it home, one way or the other. Ghosts like Mary help people get what they’re willing to pay for without hurting too many people in the process.”

  “Bobby Cross timed his bargain well,” says Mary, and there’s a coldness in her words that wasn’t there a moment ago. “He waited to go to the routewitches until he knew there was a new crossroads ghost to appeal to. He asked for the crossroads nearest the place I was haunting. He played me, Rose, and you paid. Now you’re hunting him . . . and I want to help.”

  I look at her, the girl who killed me, and I don’t know what to say.

  Daly, Maine, 1981

  It’s a road, and I’m a road ghost. Maybe that’s the answer. I start forward, my feet sliding in the gravel of the shoulder, and in no time at all, I’m standing on that narrow strip of ground between the hillside and the pavement. Mary shouts for me to be careful—at least, I think that’s what she does. She sounds like she’s very far away.

  I’m about to step forward onto the gleaming black surface of the road when I realize that there’s something wrong. Mary shouldn’t sound that far away, and me . . . I can be impulsive, but there’s no way in hell I should be walking headlong into a haunted highway. I turn, eyes searching the shoulder for the pale silver of her hair.

  I’m still looking when the tarry hands reach up through the road, grab my ankles, and pull me under. There’s barely time for me to take a breath; then the whole world is blackness. They’re yanking me down faster than I would have thought possible. Tar is clogging my ears, pressing against my lips, and the smell of it fills my nostrils. I could let go of my coat, abandon the flesh that’s binding me here, but something about the whole situation tells me that this wouldn’t be a good idea.

  If the road can grab me like this while I’m alive, what’s it going to do to me once it realizes I’m already dead? Most threats in the living world can’t touch ghosts. This threat isn’t in the living world. It’s in both worlds, and that makes it a big, big
problem.

  I kick against the hands that hold my ankles, trying to force them to let me go. They respond by yanking harder. I give up on them and start grabbing at the tar around me, dragging myself upward. They’re still pulling me down. I refuse to let them win.

  Then hands are coming down through the darkness, fingers fumbling as they lace with mine, and I’m being hauled back up, into the light.

  It felt like I was yanked down for miles. Mary is able to pull me back to the surface in seconds. We collapse onto the shoulder, me wiping tar from my eyes and mouth as I cough and choke, Mary scrubbing her tar-covered fingers hard against her pants.

  When I’m sure I can talk without inhaling half of Route 14, I cough one last time and demand, “What the fuck was that?”

  “Why do you keep expecting me to know?”

  “Because you’re the one who found this stupid thing!” I’m covered in tar. It coats my clothes, and I can feel it running down the small of my back, sending questing fingers toward the waistband of my jeans. This is disgusting. This may well be the most disgusting thing I’ve experienced since I died. I cast a glare toward the smooth black pavement. “It tried to kill me.”

  “Yes. It failed.”

  “Only because I’m already dead. I didn’t even step on the stupid thing.”

  Mary’s expression turns solemn. “That means it thinks we’re a threat.”

  “Oh, fucking swell, the homicidal highway thinks I’m dangerous. That’s just what I always wanted.”