Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan Read online

  Sparrow Hill Road 2010

  By

  Seanan McGuire

  Let me tell you about Rose Marshall...

  Where do urban legends really come from? Everyone knows the one about the girl who asks for a ride home; the one who turns out to have been dead all along. But where did she come from? Who was she? And how did she die?

  Meet Rose, the girl who crashed and burned on Sparrow Hill Road in 1945. She was sixteen years old, pretty as a picture, and in the wrong place at the wrong time. A midnight drive turned into a fight for her life—a fight that she lost. Her story could have ended that night, but a well-timed ride set her on another path.She's been running down the ghostroads ever since. A lot of people have said a lot of things about her; she's been called everything from angel to devil, from ghost story to myth to something more. They whisper her name everywhere from Michigan to Maine, from Wyoming to Washington...but no one knows what really happened that long-ago night at the top of Sparrow Hill.

  Not until now.

  Welcome to the midnight America, the one that exists parallel to the "real" world. It's a dark country, one where men with hooks haunt Lover's Lane and scarecrows walk on moonlit nights. It's the place where people go when they slip into the cracks between light and darkness, a world of routewitches and oracles, demons and ambulomancers. It's the place where a man named Bobby Cross sold his soul to live forever...and where one pretty little dead girl is racing to save her soul and stop the killings that began on Sparrow Hill Road. The rules are different here, and everyone's playing for keeps. Be careful. Be cautious. And listen to the urban legends, because they may be the only things that can save you from the man who waits at the crossroads, hunting souls to keep himself alive.

  Welcome to the ghostside.

  01 - Good Girls Go to Heaven - Everyone on the road knows the story of the Girl in the Diner, but how many know the truth behind it? One man, Larry Vibber, is about to learn exactly how the story goes as he rides with Rose Marshall down the midnight road that runs between the layers of America.

  02 - Dead Man's Party - When a dead man takes a diner full of living people hostage, it's going to take a miracle to get any of them out alive...a miracle, or someone who doesn't need to be afraid of dying. Enter Rose Marshall, who was looking for a cup of coffee, and found herself a heap of trouble.

  03 - Tell Laura I Love Her - When Rose helped a racer named Tommy find his way to the ghostroads, she never expected to have his girlfriend come seeking vengeance. Caught in a trap she can't break out of and accused of a crime she didn't commit, is there a way for Rose to escape the punishment ahead of her?

  04 - Building a Mystery - Still reeling from her brush with an amateur exorcist, Rose Marshall has finally admitted that it's time to stop messing around and get back on the trail of the most dangerous foe she's ever faced: the man who put her in the grave in the first place. Can the routewitches steer her right, or will the Atlantic Highway claim her as its own?

  05 - El Viento del Diablo - An accident pulls Rose into the path of Bobby Cross, the man who killed her. She's not ready to face him...but with the soul of an innocent man at stake, she may not have a choice.

  06 - Last Dance with Mary Jane - It's a rainy night at the Last Dance Diner, and Rose Marshall has no choice but to tell a ghost story--the only ghost story that she knows. The story that begins in the summer of 1945, in Buckley Township, Michigan, and ends on Sparrow Hill Road...

  07 - Do You Want to Dance - For Rose Marshall, prom nights are holy nights, and observing them takes precedence over everything...even her own existence. Back in Buckley Township and confronted by strangers who could be either friend or foe, will she make it to the night's last dance?

  08 - Dead Man's Curve - What started as an amusing evening has the potential to turn deadly for everyone involved as Rose Marshall finds herself caught up with a group of ghost-hunters stalking a very familiar urban legend...her own.

  09 - Last Train - On the ghostroads your word is sometimes the only currency you have. A promise comes due for Rose Marshall and it is a promise that she must keep even though it brings her face to face with the niece who once tried to sacrifice her to Bobby Cross.

  10 - Bad Moon Rising - It's Halloween night, and the dead are walking the earth. Walking...and running for their lives. Halloween brings with it a deadly game, one that Rose must survive. Because if she doesn't, it could end her afterlife forever...

  11 - Faithfully - True love never really dies. As a man she once new lies dying, Rose Marshall must ask herself how much love really endures...and is there really such a thing as "forever" on the ghostroads?

  12 - Thunder Road - When her oldest friend in the twilight is taken hostage by Bobby Cross, Rose Marshall must bet everything she has. It's a race across the midnight side of America, winner takes all. Has Rose learned enough to face him? And will it matter if she hasn't?

  Good Girls Go to Heaven

  A Sparrow Hill Road story

  by

  Seanan McGuire

  And no one said it had to be real

  But it's gotta be something you can reach out and feel now

  It ain't right, it ain't fair

  Castles fall in the sand and we fade in the air

  And the good girls go to heaven, but the bad girls go everywhere...

  -- "Good Girls Go To Heaven (Bad Girls Go Everywhere)," Jim Steinman.

  Some people will tell you that there are two Americas: the bright and shining daylight country where normal people live their lives and count their blessings, and a second, darker place, a place where men with hooks haunt Lover's Lane and scarecrows walk on moonlit nights. Those people are full of shit. There are a lot more than just two Americas, because every inch of ground on this planet is a palimpsest, scraped clean and overwritten a million times, leaving behind just as many ghosts. Sure, that daylight America exists, and so do a thousand others just like it, but the midnight Americas outnumber them a thousand-fold, and people who aren't careful...people who aren't careful run the risk of slipping into the cracks between the countries.

  There's a secret language written across the length and breadth of North America, etched out in highways and embellished in side roads. It sweeps from Canada all the way to the tip of Mexico, telling the story too big and too old for any living soul to understand. There just isn't time. You'd need to ride those roads for fifty years or more, just listening, just learning, before you'd start to have a clue. Even then, you wouldn't really know. You'd just be a little bit less ignorant. Me, I've been running these roads since 1945, and I'm still not sure what some of the side roads and interchanges are trying to tell me. I do know enough to understand that every story starts in more than one place, driving anchors into the flesh of the ghostside where stories are born, digging in its claws and screaming for the right to live.

  My story started at a desert crossroads, and at a hairpin curve at the top of Sparrow Hill Road in Buckley Township, Michigan. The roads are still there, if you'd care to go and find them. They'll tell you everything they know. All you have to do is ask them the right way. More importantly, you have to listen the right way, and for most people, that's the hardest challenge of them all. That's what keeps the ambulomancers and the routewitches in business--they already know how to listen, and for most folks, it's easier to pay somebody else than it is to take the time to learn it for themselves. Me, I've got nothing but time.

  They have names for me all over the country. The Green Girl of Route 42. The Woman at the Diner. The Ghost of Sparrow Hill Road. The Graveyard's Rose. The name that I was born with--the name that I died with--is Rose. Rose Marshall. Just one more girl who raced and lost in the shadow of Sparrow Hill Roa
d.

  ***

  The truck stop air has that magical twang that only comes from roadside dives that have had time to blend into their environment, a mixture of baked asphalt, diesel fumes, hot exhaust, and hotter exhaustion. Close to the obligatory diner--the charmingly-named "Fork You Grill"--the smell of grease and lard-based piecrusts joins the symphony. My fingers are cold, and the coat I’m wearing is too thin to really warm them. I got it from a twenty-something on his way to California to be a rock musician; he said it belonged to his little sister. From the quality of the perfume permanently bonded to the denim, she was only his sister if his sister was moonlighting as a prostitute. Who am I to judge? I traded the coat for a backseat quickie, and now my hands are cold, no matter how far I shove them into my hooker's-coat pockets, and I can taste the truck stop air. Being dead is one of those things that really teaches you how to be glad to be alive.

  The air inside the diner is hot and dry and sweet with coffee and apple pie and the distant ghosts of greasy breakfasts past. Half a dozen truckers sit belly-up to the counter on stools twice the size of standard; this is a place that stays alive on the trucker trade, and isn't above admitting it. Another half-dozen patrons are sprinkled through the place, seated haphazardly at booths and tables. That tells me what the deal is even before I see the hand-written sign that reads "PLZ SEAT YOURSELF, B RIGHT WITH YOU." From the expressions of the folks who aren't too tired to enjoy their food, the staff here cooks better than they spell. That's for the best. Killing your customers with food poisoning isn't a good way to stay in business very long.

  There's something not-right about one of the truckers, a barrel-chested man with a neat little goatee and the hands of an artist. Those artist's hands are wrapped around a coffee mug, stealing heat through the porcelain like a small child stealing cookies from the cookie jar. Most of the eyes in the diner skitter right off me, frightened mice catching the scent of a cat, but not him. He doesn't look at me for long, but when he does, he sees me. That, even more than the scent of ash and lilies that lingers in the air around him, tells me that he's the one I've come here for; he's the one that called me, made me give up a perfectly good ride westward to come to this middle-of-nowhere dive with nothing but the coat on my back and the frostbite in my fingers. I know him, or at least, I know his kind. He's in the process of sliding into the space between two Americas, this one, where the air tastes like apples and the jukebox plays Top 50 country hits, and a quieter, colder America, one where the kisses pretty girls sometimes give never taste of anything but empty rooms and broken promises. He's falling into my America, and there's not a damn thing to be done about it--that's not the sort of trip that you recover from.

  The record on the jukebox changes as I walk toward the counter. Blue Oyster Cult, "Don't Fear the Reaper."

  I hate it when the inanimate pretends to have a sense of humor.

  ***

  He looks up when I sit down, flicker of interest in eyes the color of sun-faded denim. The blue-eyed boys have always been my weakness. I meet that brief look with a smile that's more sincere than I intended, flash of white teeth between candy-apple-red lips. It's hard, dressing for the truck stop circuit. Can't be too wholesome or they're afraid to even talk to you, too much chance that you're some sort of lure set out by the local cops. Sandra Dee doesn't play with the long-haul boys. Neither does her evil twin--going too far the other way makes you look like you're just another lot lizard, not worth the cost of conversation. So here I am in flannel shirt under denim jacket over too-tight wife-beater tank top, faded jeans worn as thin as paper, hiking boots, and makeup that would verge on slutty if it wasn't so inexpertly applied. I know my audience. I've had a lot of time to study it.

  "Hi," I say, questioning lilt blurring the remnants of my accent, blotting out the route signs leading to my origins. "I'm Rose. Do you, um, come here often?"

  He looks my way again. His eyes are kind. That makes it a little easier. We're about to get to know each other real well. "Honey, let me stop you right there. You're way too young for me. Hell, you're way too young to be out here. Don't you have a home to go to?"

  "Not for a long time."

  "I see." Disapproval overtakes the kindness like the sun going down--but it isn't directed at me, and that makes what has to happen next easier still. "When's the last time you ate?"

  This time I don't have to fake my smile. "Too long ago." It's true. I'm always hungry--one more consequence of being what I am--and I have to follow certain rules. If the living choose to feed me while I'm material, the food has flavor and substance. If I try to feed myself, it's only air and ashes, like chewing on nothing.

  "Can I buy you a burger?"

  "Sure."

  ***

  The burger tastes like Heaven on a sesame seed bun with ketchup and raw onions, and if Larry wonders why I ask him to pass me the condiments before I put them on, he doesn't say anything. The coffee is even better than the burger, and the apple pie is so damn good I could weep. The living don't know how lucky they are.

  Larry finishes his food while I'm still demolishing mine. After that, he just watches, until I'm chasing crumbs with the tip of my index finger and wishing I'd thought to chew a little slower. He clears his throat. "I was thinking, Rose..."

  "Yeah?"

  "I don't think a girl your age should be alone in a place like this. Now, you don't have a reason to trust me, and I'll understand if you don't think it's a good idea, but I'm rolling for Detroit tonight. I'd be happy to take you along, get you to a place where maybe...you could find somewhere to stay."

  Oh, Larry. He won't be getting anywhere near Detroit tonight. I know that, I've known it since I saw him across the diner, but that doesn't matter, because this is what I wanted; this is what I came here to do. I push my plate away, and if he sees that my smile is painted on over sorrow, he's polite enough to ignore it. He's trying to help. Most truckers are essentially good people, living one of the few vagabond lifestyles that's survived into this new world of electronic mail and cellular telephones. They help each other when they can, and they like to be seen as shining knights riding dragons instead of snow-white chargers.

  "Thank you." I tug my borrowed coat tighter, smelling old perfume, old sex, old lies. My lies are some of the oldest of them all, but I tell them for the best of reasons. "I'd really appreciate a ride." Rides are what I unlive for, after all.

  The waitress who takes Larry's money looks at me a little too hard, a little too intently. She knows me, she's deep enough into my America to know me, but she's still in the shallows; she's still too close to the daylight to understand why she knows, or what, exactly, it is that she's seeing. I flash her a smile and she steps backward, counts Larry's change wrong twice, and finally--once the register is closed--flees into the back. She won't be here much longer. She'll go back to the daylight, leave this blacktop twilight to the people who can breathe its air and not worry about suffocation. That's good. People like her should get out while they still can.

  Then Larry leads me out of the diner to his rig, and the waitress doesn't matter anymore.

  ***

  Most truckers have permanent addresses, places they sleep when they're not rolling down the midnight miles, eating distance and turning it into dreams. Very few truckers consider those addresses to be anything like home. They live and breathe for their iron darlings, their eighteen-wheeled wives who carry them so faithfully and understand what it is to be one half of a marriage that goes deeper than passion, all the way down into true, undying love. Larry's truck shines like a beacon through the outside dark, glittering with a light he's never seen. If I asked him, if I had a way to frame the question, I bet he'd tell me he's felt it. That he feels it every time he crawls into his little wandering-man's bedroll and closes his eyes: the arms and the protections of his lover, soothing him into sleep.

  He sees me staring at her, rapt, and reads the message on my face for what it is, even if he doesn't see the reasons for it. "Isn't she a beauty?
" She shivers when he puts her hand against her door, loving bride welcoming her husband home. She's missed him so. If only he could see how much she loves him.

  "She is," I say solemnly, and he opens the door for me, and I step into the open arms of his lover.

  She knows me, like the waitress knew me, like the routewitches and the crossroad charmers know me. She knows what's coming as soon as the door closes behind me, and the question hangs heavy in the cabin air: Is there another way?

  I press the palm of my cold hand flat against the worn leather of her dashboard. It's warm, like a beating heart. The heat spreads through me, wiping out the frost. I'm riding. Even if the truck isn't rolling yet, I'm doing what a hitchhiker is supposed to do: I'm riding, and I'm wearing a stranger's coat, and my belly is full of diner food eaten alongside a good man's last supper. That's enough to bring around the thaw. No, I tell her, and she sighs, deep, shuddering sigh that even Larry feels as he's getting in on the driver's side.

  "Now, don't you be that way," he says, and pats the steering wheel. "I just had your shocks looked at."

  "You talk to your truck?" My palm stays warm after I pull it away from the dash. I try to sound curious and amused at the same time, like the idea strikes me as funny. All I really manage is wistful.

  "Spend more time with her than I do with anybody else," he says, and slides his key into her ignition. The engine comes alive with a muted roar, lioness ready to defend her mate from the wilds surrounding them. Larry pats the wheel again, the gesture seeming to come automatically. "She's a good girl. She's always done her best by me."

  "She always will." I lean back into my seat, pretending not to see the curious look Larry sends in my direction, keeping my eyes on the road. The headlights come on, and then we're away, and it's too late for anything beyond the open road.

  ***

  "So, Rose," says Larry, as he guides his truck around a gentle curve, the night closing in around us on every side. "What were you doing back there? A girl like you, in a place like that, well...it's just not safe. Not everyone is out to help. You're old enough, you should know that."