Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan

by Seanan McGuire

  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. There's a phantom rider I know who runs a cargo route through there. 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. There's a sort of weird irony to that, because I really don't remember why I thought was so important. 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, 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 just what I'm doing in his car. I know that look. 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, 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 anymore. 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 the outfit I'm wearing leaves me nowhere to hide them. Bikini top, cut-off shorts, rainbow-stripe socks: the very 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." It's too late; I 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 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 the jacket off 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 car that just blazed past slows, hazard lights coming on as it pulls off to the side of the road. I recognize a ride when it's offered to me. Tugging up the collar of the jacket to make it look a little less ill-fitting, I break into a jog.

  It's a bottle-green Ford Taurus with a dent in the passenger-side door. 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, and unlocks 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 lens, 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 tell him--and since this is a day for honesty, I add, "Rose Marshall."

  "Well, 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."

  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, miles turning into dust and memory behind us. The heat of the day 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, an
d taking it off would give me a whole new set of troubles.

  Chris turns out to be a pleasant sort of driver, the kind of man who picks up a hitchhiker not because he wants something, but because he doesn't want to see a girl walking alone along the highways of America. He makes polite conversation and halfway funny jokes, the kind that get funnier the longer you think about them. I realize after we've been driving for about half an hour that I like him. That's rare, these days, when hitchhikers are viewed as either predators or victims looking for a wolf to take them down.

  "So what brings you this way?" asks Chris--a question with no good answer, since "I'm trying to reach a diner that's only accessible to the dead, so I can grill a bean sidhe named 'Emma' on what the hell is wrong with me" isn't likely to go over well.

  "I was visiting friends," I say, as vaguely as I can. The idea of calling the Queen of the North American Routewitches a friend is ludicrous, but it's easier than telling the truth. "I'm just heading home."

  "No car?"

  "Not for a long, long time." Oh, I miss driving; miss the feeling of my own wheels burning down those miles, turning those roads into history and those horizons into possibilities...I shake myself out of it, saying, "Not this trip."

  "Hitching's not exactly safe."

  That's a line I've heard before. I flash him a smile that's more sincere than it might be, and ask, "What is, anymore?"

  He laughs. He's still laughing when we go around a bend in the highway and I forget all humor; forget the sweet chill of the air conditioning, forget the itching in my back. All I can remember--all I can think about or know--is the taste of lilies and ashes, overwhelming the world of the living in a veil of mourning yet-to-be. It's too thick to be coming on this fast, like a hurricane blowing out of nowhere and turning a blue sky black with bruises. But here it is, heavy and hard and thick enough that for a moment, I can't breathe.

  There's only one thing in my world that can bring the taste of inevitable tragedy on this fast, and it's the one thing I'm not prepared to deal with. Not now, with the ink still drying underneath my skin and a man I like enough to save in the driver's seat beside me.

  "What's wrong?" asks Chris, seeing the sudden tension in my face, the sudden whiteness of my complexion.

  "N-nothing," I say, taking shallow breaths to filter the cloying lily air. "Nothing at all."

  The sky on the ghostroads is black with the shadow of an onrushing storm, and there's nothing I can do to get out of its path.

  Bobby Cross is coming.

  ***

  I've been on the ghostroads for three years. I know how to take substance from a borrowed coat, how to beg a ride from a stranger, how to fall from the daylight into the twilight. I can't control my movement from the twilight to the daylight--it happens or it doesn't, according to some pattern of forces I don't understand--but the older hitchers assure me I'll learn, if I can keep to the roads for long enough.

  That's the big concern, the one that's shared by every hitcher I meet: the fear that I won't last enough to learn the things I need to know. I'm dead. I should be nineteen years old, I should be burning rubber out of Buckley, heading for a future too big and wide to even imagine. But I'm not. I'm sweet sixteen and cold in the ground, and the last thing I should be worried about is dying. And still...I am afraid.

  The man who ran me off the road is named Bobby Cross; he's not dead, but he runs the ghostroads just like we do. They say he can cross between levels with a thought, burn rubber from the midnight to the daylight without making any of the usual stops or customary payments. They say he doesn't follow the rules of the living or the dead--and they say he eats ghosts, rips us out of the world and turns us into nothing but the distant scent of incense on the wind. That's why he ran me off the road to begin with. He was hungry, and he looked into my living heart and saw a meal that just needed preparation.

  He has my scent, knows the shape of my soul and the nature of my death. I'm the ghost that got away, and he'll take me if he can. That's what the older hitchers tell me, and I believe them. I don't know who listens to the prayers of the dead--Hades or Persephone or some other screwed-up ghost god I didn't pay attention to in English class--but I pray a lot these days. O Lord who art probably not in Heaven, deliver me from men who've killed me once and would kill me again, if I gave them the chance. O Lady, hallowed be thy name, get me the hell out of here.

  Please. Deliver me from evil and deliver me from darkness, and leave me on the ghostroads for a thousand years if that's what it takes to pay for my sins, but please. Deliver me from the arms of Bobby Cross.

  ***

  The second shock of Bobby's approach comes hard on the heels of the first one, the smell of wormwood and gasoline laying itself across the lilies and ashes until it almost washes them away. My teeth snap shut, back arching in a shocked, involuntary motion that makes my tattoo burn like fire. Bobby isn't just coming, he's here, he's here, he's within a mile of us, and the power of his presence is enough to blur the lines of the accident ahead--I can't see the shape of it, can't see whether there's a way to avoid it. He's too big and too loud, and too damn strong. Right now, I can't tell the victims from the bystanders, and the fact of my failure burns.

  Chris all but radiates concern as he tries to watch me and the road at the same time, only a lifetime of good driving habits keeping him from veering onto the shoulder. Poor bastard. He tried to do a favor for a pretty girl on the highway, and what does he get? Some chick having what looks like a seizure in his passenger seat. He can't know that I'm fighting my own urge to flee, to drop down to the deepest levels of the twilight and let him handle what's ahead of us alone. The coat I'm wearing gives me life, until I choose to give that life away, and for his sake--because he was kind to me--I won't let go. Not until I know what Bobby's here for.

  Not until I know whether Chris can be saved.

  "Rose?" It isn't the first time he's said my name, but it's the first time I've heard it, and hearing is enough to snap me back into my own head, the lure of the ghostroads fading. "Rose, are you okay? Do we need to stop?"

  We need to run, run so far and fast that Bobby Cross will never find us. But I can't say that. So I swallow the words, force myself to settle in my seat, and answer, "No. I mean no, I'm not okay, and no, I don't need you to stop. Not yet. Next time there's a rest area? I think I need some water." Some water, an exorcism kit, and a priest or two would be more like it. They don't sell those at the Gas-N-Go.

  "Deal," says Chris--and he sounds like he means it, like he'll go inside with me instead of promising to wait in the car and then blazing out of the parking lot the second my back is turned. He's a nice guy. That somehow makes it worse, and I find myself hoping, hoping hard, that Bobby is ahead because he, like any natural disaster, sometimes strikes without warning, and not because he's on my trail again.

  The first shock is past; I'm beginning to feel my way into the accident ahead. It's a big one; eight cars, at the very least, and death enough to keep the bean sidhe and the doom-crows satiated for years. That must be why Bobby's here. An accident this large is like an all-you-can-eat buffet for him, and the menu will feature all the finest dishes. Not everyone who dies on the road leaves a ghost behind, but enough do...and enough of those ghosts are shaped by the road to make them his chosen fuel.

  I take a breath, hold it until my lungs ache, and let it slowly out again, digging deeper into the accident. We're five miles out, which is good. It's between us and the next exit, which isn't. If Chris were less of a nice guy, this is where I'd say something lewd, suggest he pull off and take me into the trees to pay for my passage--but I know his type well enough to know that won't work. If I try it, he might leave me by the side of the road, which solves the question of how we're getting me away from Bobby, but leaves him undefended. He won't stand a chance if he drives alone into what's ahead. He's a part of it, my nice guy; I can smell it now. The car is filled with the scent of lilies, too strong to be nothing but a warning. Maybe I can stop Chr
is from dying, and maybe I can't, but if I leave him here, nothing will protect him from Bobby.

  There won't be any rest stop; the accident is too close, and the taste of ashes is too strong. "Could we maybe slow down a little?" I ask, doing my best to look sick but-not-that-sick, unsettled by the heat and the speed and the road, but not quite into the territory of serious illness. It's a difficult masquerade, and not one I have much familiarity with.

  Maybe it helps that it's not entirely a lie; I really am feeling sick to my stomach, and the pain in my back is bad enough that it feels like my tattoo is trying to burrow all the way into my flesh. Chris nods, easing back on the gas. "Sure, Rose," he says. "Just let me know when you're feeling better, okay? Are you sure we don't need to stop?"

  "Not yet," I say, and smile wanly. It's the smile that does it.

  He's still looking at me when we come around the bend, moving slower than we were, but not slow enough, and the taste of ashes and lilies takes everything away even before Chris starts swearing, hauling hard on the steering wheel, tires finding no traction on asphalt slick with oil and rough with bits of broken glass and broken futures. He's shouting, and the air stinks like burning rubber, and someone's screaming, and I think it's me--

  And he's lost control of the car, he doesn't know it yet, but the car does. She's trying to help, tires straining for purchase, engine screaming with the effort of survival. She's too young, the bond between them too fragile, and in the end, she's just a machine, barely aware enough to know that she's about to--

  And the smell of wormwood is heavy over everything, the stink of it, like a corpse unembalmed and left to rot by the side of the road, but that's what he is, isn't it? Just a corpse that won't lie still, a corpse that makes more corpses, zombie dragster, bastard son of the silver screen. Bobby Cross is here, Bobby Cross is coming--

  And I'm wearing a coat, and I realize too late what that means, what the onrushing wall of twisted steel that used to be cars means if we hit it while I have this coat on--