The Girl in the Green Silk Gown

by Seanan McGuire

  “I am, thanks to Laura,” I say, and nod my head toward the woman who holds my hand, her own expression a mix of hope and fear and disbelief. “She paid a pretty high price for helping me, though. You think you could give her a ride?”

  “Shoot. I’ll give her a ride anywhere she wants to go.” Slowly, Tommy pulls away from his car and walks around the front to where we wait. I let go of Laura’s hands. She leaves them where they are, suspended in the air, like she doesn’t know what to do with them anymore. She doesn’t have to hold them up for long. Tommy takes them, wrapping his fingers through hers and holding fast.

  “Hi, Tommy,” she whispers. Her voice is heartbreak given form, and I take a step back, giving them this space. It’s not much. In the twilight, you make do with what you have.

  “Hi, Laura,” he answers. “You and Rose made your peace?”

  Silent, she nods.

  His smile is bright as all the neon in the world. “You look just like I remember you.”

  And she does, she does. Somewhere between the thumb and the ride, her clothes have changed, slipping out of date, until they match the young woman she appears to be. She and Tommy are of an era, and it was nothing more than an unfair accident of mortality that he got here so far ahead of her.

  They stare into each other’s eyes like there’s no one else in the world, and it’s a shame to interrupt them, it really is. Unfortunately, I’m not sure where in America we are, but I am sure that I’m not currently in Maine, not standing on the Ocean Lady, and that means the people I care about don’t know whether I’m alive or dead. Literally. I clear my throat.

  Tommy turns to look at me, eyebrows raised in silent question. Laura glares. This was supposed to be their moment, and here I am, butting in.

  Tough. She’s going to be dead for a long time, and now that she’s here, Tommy is finally ready to go past the last exit, to find out what comes next. He’s going to rest in peace, Laura by his side, and I’m . . . well, I’m not.

  “I need a ride,” I say. “Hence the thumb.”

  “Where are you heading, Rose?” He sounds almost amused.

  “Calais. I need to get back to the Ocean Lady, tell Apple and the others what’s happened.”

  “I can do that.” He glances to Laura, looks back to me, and asks sheepishly, “Do you mind riding in back?”

  I don’t mind.

  Tommy drives like what he is, beloved son of the ghostroads, died and reborn behind the wheel. He also drives like a man in love, taking his eyes off the road to run them over Laura like he doesn’t fully believe she’s real. It would be cute, if not for the part where I’m actively afraid he’s going to plow into a cornfield or take the wrong exit and dump us in one of the Bradburys, some deep slice of sweet Americana that wants to keep us there forever and ever and ever. I resist the urge to kick the back of his seat. Laura squeaks every time he takes a curve too fast, her fingers clenching against the dashboard. I lean forward.

  “You’re dead,” I tell her, as kindly as I can. “You’re dead, and Tommy has you, and unless I’m missing my cue here, he’s not going to let you go. A little crash won’t hurt you. It won’t even knock you away from him.” Best of all, now that she’s here, in this car, with him, it doesn’t matter what the road might want to make of her. She’s safe in a Phantom Rider’s passenger seat, and there are some traditions even the twilight can respect.

  “Dead,” Laura echoes, hands relaxing. “I’m dead.”

  “Yes.”

  “This is . . .”

  “This is what we call the twilight. It’s one of the places where the ghosts go.”

  “There are so many places where the ghosts go,” says Tommy. “Been waiting in this one. It’s where the roads are. It’s where I knew you’d be, when the time came.” There’s a hitch in his voice.

  Laura puts her hand on his arm. I look away.

  We drive, on and on, down smooth highways and twisting backroads, and it’s all the ghostroads, and it’s all home. The sky changes above us, a kaleidoscope sliding through a hundred types of twilight, now dark as velvet, now pale as silk, and the sun never rises, because the sun never truly sets, not here. We are the heroes of our own stories, riding into our eternal twilight, running on the memory of the people we were and the potential of the spirits we’ve become.

  We drive past fields of corn and wheat, past orchards lush with apples. Occasionally we see farmers in the distance, ghosts whose lives and deaths have left them rooted to the land, and they might wave, and we might wave back, but they stay where they are, and we race on. Road ghosts never stay for long, no matter how much we want to, no matter how hard we try. We drive, and Tommy barely has to steer, because his car remembers the way. That’s good. More and more, his attention is going to Laura. They have so much to talk about. Once I’m gone, they’ll be able to begin.

  As if the thought summoned the destination, Tommy pulls up at the mouth of a road that’s a little broader, a little older, than the one we’ve been racing down. “This is your stop,” he says, an apology in his tone, and I hear it for the good-bye it is, the one we’ve been working toward since the night he died.

  That’s all right. Phantom Riders never stay forever. Someday, they’re always going to want a bigger road. So I lean forward, between the seats, and I plant a kiss on his cheek, chaste and sisterly and grateful. More grateful than I could ever say.

  “I’m going to miss you, Tommy,” I say, and he blushes and ducks his head, like he’s already said the last words he had to say to me. All the words he has left are for Laura, and he doesn’t want to share them.

  I turn to her. She’s watching me, a little warily, a little ill-at-ease. I guess decades of thinking someone is the enemy can’t go away as quickly as all that, and she did try to betray me.

  But she didn’t do it. That’s what matters now. “Take care of him,” I say.

  “That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do,” she says.

  I smile, and Laura smiles, and I climb out of the car, green silk gown tangling around my ankles, and I stand by the side of the road as Tommy floors the gas and they roar away, dwindling as they race toward the horizon, until they’re nothing more than a glittering speck, as small as any of the shining stars above us, until they’re gone.

  Until they’re gone.

  Chapter 23

  The Girl in the Green Silk Gown

  I WALK.

  After a while, the swirl of my skirts gets tiresome, and so I whisk them away with a thought, replace them with blue jeans and a white shirt, with comfortable walking shoes. The breeze that blows against my suddenly bare neck feels momentarily colder. I keep the corsage. It doesn’t go with the rest of my outfit, but the smell of the asphodel is comforting, and more, I’m not sure I’ll be able to summon it back once I’ve given it up. Clothing among the dead is more about idea than actuality, hence my tendency to revert back to the dress I died in whenever I’m not really concentrating, but this is a gift from a goddess: this is something to treasure, for however long it lingers.

  I walk.

  The Ocean Lady has to know I’m coming. Technically, this slice of road is part of the ruins of the Old Atlantic Highway, the twilight side of it anyway, and she knows whenever someone sets foot on what’s hers. Which means she could shorten the distance if she wanted to, and she doesn’t want to. I wonder if she’s mad at me for deciding to go back among the dead. Apple might have seen me as a rival, but Apple’s a human, she thinks like a human thinks. The Ocean Lady is a highway, and a goddess. Who knows what she wants? She might have seen me as a resource—a resource I took away without her permission. So she’s making me walk.

  I can walk.

  It’s almost soothing, after a while. Yes, I’ve spent the last several days walking all over the damn place. I walked into the Underworld and I walked back out of it again. But I did that in a living body, a body tha
t tired and tore and needed to rest. Now I’m myself again, and I could walk forever, if I had to.

  I hope I won’t have to.

  “Remember that thing where I wanted to punch you in the face?” I ask the air. “We’re coming up on that again.”

  The road bends beneath my feet, subtly guiding me around a curve, and in the distance, I see the neon lights of the rest stop where my friends—my family—will be waiting for me. Emma, Apple, Gary. They’re there, just ahead, hoping I’m going to make it home. They’re so close I can almost see them. I am almost home. I am almost ready to begin doing all the things I have left to do. I owe so many favors. To a girl with apple blossoms in her eyes; to a goddess; to a child who became a homestead when her house burned down. Paying them back begins with making it home.

  I can walk. I’ve always been able to walk. But now, under the twilight sky, under those stars, with asphodel around my wrist and the outline of Hades’s hands still burning on my skin . . .

  Now, I run. I run all the way home.

  The Price Family Field Guide to the Twilight of North America

  Ghostroad Edition

  THE LIVING

  Ambulomancers. Characterized by their reluctance to trust themselves to any form of vehicular transit, these born wanderers are eternally on the move, gathering strength and power from the distance they have traveled. A novice ambulomancer will be able to control the road in small ways, finding food, shelter, and protection even within the harshest environments. An advanced ambulomancer will actually be able to interpret the language of the road itself, using this information to predict the future and manipulate coming events. Ambulomancers can be of any species, human or non-human, although humans and canines are the most common.

  Routewitches. These children of the moving road gather strength from travel, much as the ambulomancers do, but the resemblance stops there. Rather than controlling the road, routewitches choose to work with it, borrowing its strength and using it to make bargains with entities both living and dead. The routewitches of North America are currently based out of the old Atlantic Highway, which “died” in 1926, and are organized by their Queen, Apple, a young woman of Japanese-American descent who matches the description of a teenage girl who mysteriously disappeared from Manzanar during World War II. The exact capabilities of the routewitches remain unclear, although they seem to have a close relationship with the crossroads.

  Trainspotters. Very little is known. They have been called “the routewitches of the rails,” but no direct information has yet been collected.

  Umbramancers. These fortune-tellers and soothsayers are loosely tied to the twilight, but the magic they practice is more general than the road-magic of the routewitches and the ambulomancers. It’s unclear exactly what relationship the umbramancers have to the twilight. Although they have been seen visiting the crossroads, there are no known bargains involving an umbramancer.

  THE DEAD

  Beán sidhe. The beán sidhe are alive and dead at the same time, which makes them difficult to classify, but as they prefer the company of the dead, we are listing them here. These Irish spirits are associated with a single family until that family dies out, and will watch their charges from a distance, mourning them when they die. They regard this as a valuable service. We are not certain why.

  Bela da meia-noite. The bela da meia-noite, or “midnight beauty,” is an exclusively female type of ghost, capable of appearing only between sunset and midnight. They enjoy trendy clubs and one-night stands. They’re generally harmless, and some have proven very helpful in exorcising hostile spirits, since they’d prefer that no one get hurt.

  Coachmen. These archaic ghosts have rarely been seen in the modern day, bound as they traditionally are to phantom carriages, complete with horses. They are happy to give lonely travelers rides to their final destination, and generally fail to point out that this will involve riding in their bellies.

  Crossroads ghosts. Marked by their eyes, which all sightings have described as “containing miles,” these ghosts speak for the crossroads, a metaphysical construct where those who are connected to the afterlife in some way are able to go and make bargains, the nature of which we still do not fully understand. The best known crossroads ghost is Mary Dunlavy, who tends to answer questions with “I’ll tell you when you’re dead.”

  Crossroads guardians. The flipside of the crossroads ghost is the crossroads guardian, a being which was never alive in the traditional sense, but which now represents the interests of the crossroads in all things. When asked about crossroads guardians, Mary Dunlavy’s response consisted of a single word: “Run.”

  Deogen. Also known as “the Eyes,” the deogen are non-corporeal, fog-like, and often hostile. They will lead travelers astray if given the chance, and have been known to form alliances with other unfriendly spirits. A deogen/homecomer team-up is to be feared.

  Dullahan. Like the beán sidhe, Dullahan are alive and dead at the same time, a feat which is even more impressive considering that their heads are fully detachable. They sometimes serve as psychopomps, and are more commonly known as “headless horsemen.” Because that’s something to help you sleep at night.

  Einherjar. These dead heroes are supposed to stay in Valhalla, if it exists, so we don’t know why they sometimes crop up in the living world. They become solid in the presence of alcohol or violence, and they very much enjoy professional wrestling.

  Ever-lasters. These eternal children haunt playgrounds and schoolyards, playing clapping games and going to classes that never end. A surprising amount of knowledge is encoded in their rhymes, for those who find the time to listen.

  Gather-grims. Next to nothing is known about this class of psychopomp; we’re not honestly sure that they exist. We have heard them mentioned by other ghosts, but they are leery about answering questions, and will generally change the subject. Investigate with caution.

  Goryo. These powerful ghosts are most often of wealthy backgrounds, and are commonly of Japanese descent. All known goryo were martyred, or believe themselves to have been martyred, leading to their undying rage. They can control the weather, which is exactly the kind of capability that you don’t want in an angry spirit fueled by the desire for vengeance.

  Haunts. All haunts lost love at some point during their lives, although it may have been decades before they actually passed away. Their kiss can cure all known ailments. It can also kill. Which it does seems to be fairly arbitrary, and based on how close the person being kissed is to death. As haunts are not terribly bright as a class, they often misjudge their affections. Try not to encourage them.

  Hitchhiking ghosts. Often referred to as “hitchers,” these commonly sighted road ghosts are generally the spirits of those who died in particularly isolated automobile accidents. They are capable of taking on flesh for a night by borrowing a coat, sweater, or other piece of outerwear from a living person. Temperament varies from hitcher to hitcher; they cannot be regarded as universally safe.

  Homecoming ghosts. Called “homecomers,” these close relatives of the hitchhiking ghosts want one thing only: to go home. They are typically peaceful for the first few years following their deaths, when their homes are still recognizable. The trouble begins once those homes begin to change. Homecomers whose homes are gone will become violent, and in their rage, they have been known to kill the people who offer to drive them home.

  Homesteads. Sometimes called “caddis flies”—although this term has fallen out of fashion—these stationary cousins of the coachmen loved their homes so much that when their deaths coincided with the destruction of those homes, they found a way to carry them into the twilight. A homestead is the home, and has full control over their own “bodies.” Be wary of these haunted houses given form. They do not easily forgive.

  Maggy Dhu. Black ghost dogs capable of taking on physical form. They can weigh over two hundred pounds, and their bite is deadly to the living. The Maggy Dhu are somewhat smarter than living canines, but th
ey are still animals, and are often vicious. Interestingly, all types of dog can become Maggy Dhu after death; many are believed to have been Chihuahuas in life. They are believed to harvest souls.

  Pelesit. Ghosts bound to living masters through an unknown ritual. They appear normal in the twilight, but have trouble manifesting fully in the living world unless they are at or near the scene of a recent murder.

  Phantom Riders. Speed racers of the ghostroads, these ghosts carry their cars with them into the twilight, but exist as independent beings. They thrive on fast driving and drag races, and have led more than a few mortals to their dooms by asking if they want to take a drive.

  Reapers. These dark-cloaked ghosts seem to exist only to guide the spirits of the recently deceased onto the next stage of their existence. We don’t know why. They do not speak to the living, and none of us has ever been willing to commit suicide for the sake of an interview.

  Strigoi. The strigoi are an interesting case: the dead use the name to refer to a specific type of angry ghost, capable of becoming fully corporeal when it revisits the site of its death. These ghosts have no truly vampiric qualities, and seem to be unrelated to the cryptids of the same name.

  Toyol. The toyol are sorcerously bound spirits of infants who died before or shortly after birth. The less said about them, the better.

  White ladies. These spirits of abandoned or betrayed women can be of any age, united only by the tragedies which killed them. They are not technically road ghosts, but are often mistaken for hitchers, and have been recorded seeking rides as a cover for their violent revenge. White ladies are extremely dangerous, and should be avoided.