Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan

by Seanan McGuire

  ***

  No matter what form your soul takes when it hits the ghostroads, it has rules it has to follow. I can borrow flesh and blood from the living for the span of a night by putting on the coats and sweaters that they put aside, stealing breath and skin and all the trappings of mortality. Ghost hunters don't see what I am, spirit eaters can't consume me. Those who walk the twilight know me as one of them, but not exactly what that entails. Trouble is, when I'm playing dress-up dolly in a living girl's skin, I'm stuck with the same rules as everyone else. Drop the coat and I'm no more substantial than a sign. Until then, I can bleed, and I can break, and I can walk across a diner feeling my pulse hammer in my veins like an overcharged engine.

  The strigoi who doesn't know he's a strigoi watches my approach with hooded eyes, taking in the blood caked on my fingers, the coffee stains on the wrists of my oversized sweatshirt. "She gonna live?" he asks, curt and unconcerned.

  I nod, trying to look timid, trying to look anything but angry. He's the one with the gun. I'm the one whose bag of tricks consists almost entirely of taking off her clothes and disappearing. "I...I think so. It'd be better if we could get her to a hospital--" His snort answers the question I wasn't planning to ask. "--but I guess we can worry about all that later."

  "You guess."

  "Yeah." I shrug, doe eyed and frightened. "I mean...you want something, right? That's why you're here? Because you want something."

  "Everybody wants something." He reaches out with one hard-fingered hand, grabs my chin and twists my face a little to the side, studying me. His skin is rough and smells like motor oil. I'd never know he wasn't among the living if it weren't for that coat of his. "Do you remember what I want, bitch?"

  "Rose."

  That seems to startle him. His grip falters for a moment, almost losing hold of me, before he tightens up and barks, "What?"

  "My name. It's Rose." I search his face for a flicker of recognition, for anything that says he knows who--or what--I am. There's nothing. Just that anger, anger like a wound, anger deep enough to raise the dead. "Um. R-Rose Marshall. What's yours?"

  "You think I'm an idiot, Rose? You think I'm going to leave you with a name to give the cops when they show up tomorrow?" He taps the muzzle of his gun against my temple, the hand that holds my chin in place not letting up. "Nice try."

  "No! No. I don't think you're an idiot. I just thought..." I shrug helplessly, fighting the urge to rip myself out of his grasp. "I said...I said I'd do whatever you wanted if you'd just let us take care of her. I thought it might be nice to know your name. That's all."

  Confusion overwhelms the anger for a moment, longer this time than it did before. He really doesn't know what he's doing here, poor little strigoi, just as lost as his captives, without half as much reason. Expression hardening, he taps my temple with the gun again, like he was trying to ring a bell for service. "You just want to get me distracted. Give the rest of these assholes a chance to get away."

  I don't know who my laughter startles more: me or him. He lets go of my chin, taking a half-step backward, and stares at me like a man who's just seen a ghost.

  "What are you laughing at?"

  "Like I'd do anything for them?" I wave a hand to indicate the rest of the people in the diner. "I mean, sure, I said I'd do you if it meant we could bandage up the girl you shot before I got here, but that's because I don't want to be stuck in this hole with a dead body. That's unsanitary."

  He keeps staring at me. "Are you crazy?"

  "I've been called worse. Look. I don't want to die in here. You don't really want to kill me, or you would've already put a bullet in my head, and somebody would be mopping my brain off the wall. I don't know why you've decided you want a diner of your very own, and frankly, I don't care. If sex is going to keep you calm enough to not shoot me, I'll do you right here, right now."

  Now he nods, slowly, some private question answered by my reply. "Yeah," he says. "You're crazy."

  "You're the one who took a whole stupid diner hostage." I plant my hands on my hips, looking down my nose at him, trying to look like I don't give a damn what he does. Several of the other hostages are muttering, sending a nervous ringing through the diner walls. At least they're buying my cocky-idiot act. "What do you want it for, anyway? Convenience stores have more money."

  "I'm not here for the money." He rubs his forehead with his free hand, confusion flashing in his eyes like a neon sign. Poor little strigoi. "I'm here...I'm here..."

  Careful, now; don't push too hard, or it's back to square one, if not worse. I still don't want to know what happens if he decides to shoot me. "I mean, at least a Denny's would have those really greasy four-dollar breakfast plates with the stupid names."

  "Trina wanted to stop here." He frowns, confusion flickering into anger and back again as he looks around the diner, seeming to really see it for the first time. "Where the fuck is Trina?"

  The hostages exchange anxious glances, draw closer together, confirming with their silence what I suspected all along: Trina, whoever she was, didn't rise with her boyfriend. Maybe she survived the original accident. Maybe she's living somewhere miles away from here, scarred and sorry, but still breathing. Maybe she just found peace after she died, while he missed it by a country mile. Whatever her story is, it's not the same as his anymore, if it ever was.

  "Trina isn't here," I say, quietly. Ashes and lilies. The air smells like ashes and lilies, and the smell of rosemary and sweet grandmotherly perfume is almost gone. I'm not holding back the accident that's coming, and I can't see this road clearly enough to know if that's even possible. I drop my hands, look the strigoi in the eye, and continue, just as quietly, "I don't think Trina's going to come tonight. I don't think you understand what you're really doing here."

  "I'm doing whatever I fucking well want to do," he snarls. Familiar ground, beaten dog that wants to bite.

  "You're holding a room full of strangers hostage like it's going to change anything!" I step toward him, the weight of lilies and ashes crashing down on me, the burning taste of propane--I mistook it for diesel fuel, I didn't know any better, and I died on impact, I didn't burn--filling my mouth as I jab my finger at his chest. "You can't change anything, don't you get that? Don't you get that yet? Trina isn't here because she isn't coming. She left you. After the explosion, she left you, and you're too busy being wrapped up in the drama of your own death to let yourself see that, you--"

  The gun goes off with a bark like one of those big blast firecrackers my brothers used to let off down by the train tracks. The pain comes half a second later, and I look down to see the blood spreading out from the center of my chest, staining the sweatshirt Kyle gave me. It hurts like nothing's hurt since the day I died.

  "You asshole," I say wonderingly, and I touch the wound, and I fall to the floor. My eyes are closed before I hit the ground, and for a little while, the rest is silence.

  ***

  Ghosts can die. That may sound like a paradox, but it's not. Everything that's conscious and aware is alive, in its own way, and anything that's alive can die. Only it turns out that ghosts can't die from being shot in the chest by other ghosts, which is pretty nice to know. My eyes snap open after what feels like only a few minutes, and I sit up, half-relieved, half-furious. My fury grows as I see my hands, the nails buffed and polished just so, the bracelet of jade beads around one wrist. I'm back in my stupid prom dress, again, back in the clothes I was wearing the night I really died, the night my car went off the curve at the top of Sparrow Hill Road.

  I climb to my feet, hearing the gasps and the muffled shrieks behind me, and look down. There, peeping out under the hem of my green silk gown, is the sleeve of the sweatshirt I got from Kyle. I step back. The bloodstain is gone. The bullet hole isn't.

  This time, the sound of the gun going off isn't even enough to make me flinch. Without a coat, without a borrowed skin to tear away, there's nothing a strigoi can do to me. As long as he's shooting, I don't even have to look to kn
ow where he's standing. So I look to the clock instead, the big hand on the five, the little hand on the three. Hours. I was on the ground for hours before my borrowed body figured out that it had to let me go. I wonder how many others he's shot since then. So I ignore the third gunshot as I turn, survey the hostages, try to count. At least two of them are missing, Dinah with her bandaged arm, the college boy with his coffee-colored eyes. The rest are still ciphers to me, frightened shadows whose only role in this little drama is to watch, live, or die. I should feel bad about reducing them this way. I can't. I've been shot, which isn't exactly an experience I was hoping to have, and I'm in a pretty shitty mood.

  "I killed you!" shouts the strigoi, voice tight and strangled. At least the hostages aren't the only ones frightened now. That's something, anyway. "You can't be walking around, you stupid bitch, I killed you!"

  "God, get with the program, will you?" I spin to face him, angry avenging spirit in green silk and second-hand dancing shoes. He takes a step backward, fear written big and bright across his face. "You can't kill me, you asshole, I've been dead for years. Now what is your name?"

  He's too startled to lie to me. "P-Paul," he stammers. Catching himself, he brings the gun up, pointing it at the center of my chest--the spot where he shot me once before. Some people just never learn. "Don't come any closer!"

  "Or what? You'll shoot me like you shot me before? Like you shot poor Dinah? Like you shot the propane tank?" I don't have any bullets of my own. He still winces like he's the one who just got shot. I step closer to him, ignoring the gun, focusing on his eyes. "You're dead, Paul. Trina's gone. Maybe she's dead, and maybe she's not, but she's gone. She's not coming back for you. You can hold this place hostage a thousand times, a million times, and she's still not coming back. You're in the twilight now. You're too far away for her to reach."

  "I don't know what you're talking about," he whispers, and his words drop into the silence like stones into a lake, sinking fast, ripples spreading. "You're lying."

  "It's one or the other, Paul." Another step forward, another set of ripples. "You died here. You shot the propane tank, and it blew sky high, and you died here."

  "Shut up."

  "The fire ate up the walls and melted the skin off your body and ate the flesh off your bones, and you died here. The insurance money paid for new paint and a new kitchen and everyone forgot your name, everyone except the people who had to watch you burn, and you died here."

  "SHUT UP!"

  The bullet passes cleanly through the center of my chest. There's a yelp of pain from behind me. I keep walking forward, toward Paul. "There may have been a funeral, if they could find your next of kin, if there was enough of you left to identify. Maybe they just cremated you, stuck your ashes in a box in the police station for somebody to come claim, someday. Either way, you died here, and you have no right--"

  "Please," he moans. There's no gunshot this time. Just the pleading, just the prayer that maybe I'll stop.

  "--no, Paul, no, because you have no right to take these people's lives away from them." I'm in front of him now, and so I reach out and take the gun. I reach out with my ghost fingers that shouldn't be able to touch or take anything, but they wrap around the metal all the same, and when I tug, he lets go. Poor little strigoi. More gently now, I say, "You're dead, Paul. I'm sorry."

  His eyes fill with tears as he looks at me, and past me, to the huddled hostages clinging to each other in the shadows of this suddenly-haunted diner. Two ghosts for the price of one. Welcome to the ghostroads.

  "How long?" he whispers.

  "Twenty-one years."

  That takes all the strength out of him, and he hits his knees as the smell of ashes and lilies fades from the air, replaced by the normal array of diner scents, apple pie and bubblegum and scrambled eggs and coffee. I put the gun on the nearest table, where it wafts away into nothing before any of the hostages can make a grab for it.

  "No no no no," he moans, rocking back and forth.

  "Yes." I crouch, grab his wrists, pull him halfway back to upright. "Yes. It was a long time ago, and yes."

  "We were--we were pulling into the driveway, and there was this flash, and the sun was going down and Trina and the bike were gone." He lifts his head, studying my face like he thinks he'll finds the answers there, somehow. Best of luck to him. I've been looking for the answers for fifty years, and I haven't found them yet. "I still...I had the gun, and I came in here, and it was all wrong, it was just so damn wrong, and it made me so damn mad..."

  I want to be angry with him. I want to be furious. He shot me. He killed people.

  He died here. Poor little strigoi, who didn't know what he was doing when he woke up; who didn't even know that he'd left the daylight twenty years behind. He died in fire. Maybe that's punishment enough for what he's done tonight. Maybe not. Either way, it's not my place to judge. I tug him to his feet, keeping hold of his wrists, not letting him go.

  "You're coming with me," I tell him quietly. "But first, you're going to wait here."

  A flash of arrogance in those eyes. "And what if I don't?"

  All I have to do is smile and the arrogance crumbles, replaced by confusion, fear...and relief. No one wants to haunt the living forever. At least I'm offering him another way. "You will," I say, and let him go, turning my back.

  He waits.

  ***

  There have been five casualties, all told. Dinah comes the quickest, towing a mousy-looking girl in a uniform just like hers. The mouse is named Elisa. She has a lovely smile. After the two of them have calmed down, a teenage boy fades out of the woodwork, acne on his forehead, hands like an artist. He says his name is Michael. I say it's nice to meet him, and he looks away, mumbles something about better circumstances. I can't blame him for that one.

  The college boy's name is Anthony, and even when he comes to me, he's so faded I can see the walls right through him. The last to emerge is an old man whose cane has crossed to the ghostroads with him, sturdy piece of oak for him to lean on until he realizes that he doesn't need it anymore. I gather them all to me, five little pieces of the twilight, and we turn and walk back to the doorway where Paul is waiting.

  "It's time to go," I tell him, and he nods, resignation radiating from his face like sunlight. Poor little strigoi. Looking back over my shoulder, I meet the eyes of the fry cook, and say, "Don't unlock the doors until we're gone."

  "I won't," he says, voice barely a whisper. Poor everyone. Half these people will never leave the twilight again. The other half may fight their way free, but they'll never dream the daylight. That's the penalty for this sort of deathday party; that's what happens when things overlap this cleanly.

  I turn away, exit through the glass of the door. The others follow me, phantom parade out into the parking lot, and the line dividing the daylight from the twilight fades with every step we take, until there's only the dark, and still we walk on, out of the twilight, into the midnight, where the ghostroads are the only route to anywhere.

  We walk on, going home.

  ***

  "What happens now?"

  "Wait here. Someone will come along and get you soon enough."

  "But--"

  "I don't know who will come, and I don't know where they'll take you." I look at the crowd, tattered little spirits, frightened and lost here in the midnight before their time. Even Paul isn't really prepared, and he's the only one who's been dead for any time at all. Finally, I sigh, and say, "If you're not sure--if you're not ready to take the exit--ask whoever it is to drop you off at the Last Dance. They usually need staff." Dinah, Elisa, and Michael can probably find work there; Anthony and the old man can at least get a good cup of coffee before they continue on.

  Paul looks at me levelly, and asks, "Think they'd take me?"

  I meet his eyes, and answer, "No. But I've been wrong before."

  He nods, and that's the end. I turn and walk away, leaving the six of them standing beneath the bus stop sign at the edge of the ghostr
oad highway that runs between here and there. They'll find their way soon enough; the dead always do. My prom dress dissolves into jeans and a white T-shirt that can't keep out the cold, my hair shedding its careful up-do in favor of the short-cropped bob I favor these days. Changing with the times is sometimes the best that I can do.

  Shoving my hands into the pockets of my jeans, I walk on, down the cold line of midnight, moving toward the distant glow of dawn.

  Tell Laura I Love Her

  A Sparrow Hill Road story

  by

  Seanan McGuire

  No one knows what happened that day, how his car overturned in flames,

  But as they pulled him from the twisted wreck

  With his dying breath they heard him say:

  "Tell Laura I love her. Tell Laura I need her

  Tell Laura not to cry, my love for her will never die..."

  -- "Tell Laura I Love Her," Dicky Lee.

  I spent my first year on the ghostroads in denial, walking the frontage roads that run closest to the surface of the twilight, scaring the living crap out of countless fraternity boys and high school seniors as I flagged them down, begged them to take me home, and then disappeared on them. First stage of grief is denial, even among the dead. I spent my second year trying to find someone I could argue with, someone who'd have the authority to take back what had happened to me. Angels, demons, rumors, I chased them all. I got luckier than I deserved to be: I didn't catch any of them. Instead, I walked the sorrow off my shoes, and walked myself deeper down into the twilight, where I could start to learn the realities of my new existence. It took a lot of years and a lot of walking to work my way deep enough to come back into the light, and maybe that's the biggest secret that the ghostside has to offer; that if you work long enough to reach the darkness, you're almost inevitably going to find your way to the light. They're the same thing, viewed from two different directions, and they can both get you lost, and they can both bring you home.