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Display a printable version Do You Want to Dance?
Do you want to dance under the moonlight Do you want to dance under the moonlight -- "Do You Want To Dance?" Bobby Freeman.
There are holidays on the ghostroads, too. Forgotten holidays, holidays that have slipped between the cracks of the daylight world. The people in the twilight pray to dead gods, building temples to religions that were lost so long ago that no one really remembers what they were. Living faiths have no comfort to offer to the dead, so the dead go seeking comfort from their own. Saint Celia of the Open Hand, who keeps the phantom riders running true along their routes. Danny, God of Highways, whose given name has been forgotten, and who guards the gates between the twilight, the darkness, and the light. There are hundreds of ghost gods on the ghostroads, and their faiths are as faded and tangled as back country roads. I've met a few of them. I still refuse to believe in their existence, just as a matter of principle. It doesn't seem to matter, either way. *** "It's a mistletoe branch surrounded by white lilies and?I think that's white asphodel, actually, which makes a lot of sense, if you think about it." I'm not wearing a coat right now. I'm not wearing a shirt of any kind; it would cover my tattoo, which would defeat the whole purpose of this exercise. Emma's fingers trail underneath the surface of what should be my skin, sending cold shivers all through me. I hate being touched by the living when I'm not solid. The fact that Emma isn't technically quite alive doesn't change that. "I'm thinking about it, and it doesn't make any fucking sense at all." I'm snapping at her. I know that, and I don't particularly care. Emma sprung the Valkyries on me. The fucking Valkyries. I think I've earned a little snapping after that. "What the fuck is asphodel?" "It's a flower." She pulls her hand away. "This isn't the kind of asphodel you'd find in a botany textbook. This is white asphodel. Real white asphodel, and that only grows in one place." "Where's that?" I stand, rolling my shoulders and calling my clothes back into existence in the same motion. White tank top again, phantom recreation of the shirt I once borrowed from my only living boyfriend. Gary never wore this shirt, but it's a comfort all the same. Emma walks back around the counter, eyes glinting a brief, feline green before she turns to start dishing up a slice of apple pie. "The Asphodel Meadows, in the Greek Underworld. The land of the balanced dead. If you're not good, and not evil, you go there when you die." "Great, so it's what, a moral judgment?" "Of sorts." She turns, setting the plate of pie in front of me. "The center of the design is a pomegranate, sliced to show the seeds at the center. I can't be sure, but it looks to me like there are six seeds missing. It's Persephone's blessing. I think, anyway. It's not like the Lady of the Greek Underworld has me on her speed dial." "Meaning what?" She produces a button-up sweater from behind the counter, handing it to me. Coats are the traditional attire of the hitchhiking ghost, but any outerwear will do, providing it belongs to the living. Somehow, Emma manages to count. "Meaning Bobby Cross has no claim on your soul as long as Persephone is tasked with watching you. Not unless you do something monumentally stupid." I shrug on the sweater before reaching for the pie. "Again, meaning what?" "I'll be completely honest with you, Rose. I'm an Irish death omen and collector of the unquiet dead. I was born when the Roman calendar still looked like a fad that couldn't possibly last. And I haven't got the slightest idea." Emma shrugs. "You want a malted before you hit the road?" "Why the hell not?" I pick up my fork. "Make it a double." "On the house," says Emma, and smiles. *** Time runs differently when you're in the twilight. Sometimes, hours there can be minutes in the daylight, or days, or weeks. Once, I spent what felt like a weekend at the Last Dance, bussing tables and bumming cigarettes off one of the cooks, and when I stepped back into the lands of the living, two years had gone slithering by like snakes vanishing into high grass. So it isn't really a surprise when I shrug off the last traces of the ghostroads and find myself standing on the long country highway that leads into Buckley Township, looking at a candy-colored poster stapled to a telephone pole. "BUY YOUR TICKETS TODAY FOR A WONDERFUL NIGHT!" it screams, in electric yellow letters. Underneath that, smaller, is the legend, "Buckley High School Senior Prom." There's a price?more per ticket than I paid for my dress, once upon a couple of decades ago?and a date. It wouldn't matter if the date wasn't there, just like it doesn't matter that I don't have a calendar. The dead have their own holy days, their own ways of marking the time that passes after they've passed on, and for me, the holiest of holies is the Buckley High School Senior Prom. It's like Easter. It moves around the calendar, always within a small range, always subject to its own rules...but it always comes as the school year is drawing to a close. A formal dance for girls whose lives won't offer many opportunities for formal dancing; a night for spiking punch, losing virginities, and dreams. Such big dreams. Real life almost never lives up to the dreams of a senior prom. It tries. It just can't compare. I've attended thirty senior proms in the years since I died. Five of them were right here in Buckley. They're...magnetic, I guess is the word. Once I get close, they draw me in, just like a moth being drawn to a bug zapper. Not the most flattering comparison. Too bad it's an accurate one. I sigh, reaching out and brushing my fingertips through the paper. Just to test, I try to reach for the ghostroads, and find nothing but the shadows. I'm here until the last dance is over, the punch stains have been wiped off the gymnasium floor, and the drunken, giggling cheerleaders have been chased out of the janitor's closet. "Bully for me," I mutter, before shoving my hands into the pockets of my jeans. It may be the day of the senior prom, but the dance itself is still far enough away that I can wear jeans if I want to, rather than being locked into a homecomer's endless, pointless struggle to get back to a place that isn't there anymore. One eye scanning the road for a ride, I turn and begin trudging my way down the sidewalk. No matter how inconvenient it might be, this is a holy night, and on holy nights, good girls?alive or dead?follow the rites of their religion. I have one small advantage over the breathing girls of Buckley, the ones for whom tonight will be the first, last, and only senior prom. Unlike them, I don't have to worry about what I'm going to wear. I just have to worry about how many of them will be dead before morning. On second thought, maybe they should be worrying about that, too. *** Buckley Township: the more things change, the more they stay the same. The town has grown since I lived here, slowly spilling out into the surrounding fields and farmlands. The forest is still mostly intact, the trees standing sentry against intrusion. The lake and the swamp are exactly as they've always been, dangerous, foreboding, and deadly to the unprepared. I used to wonder how many bodies were buried there. Now that I've met a few of the ghosts who haunt the waters of Buckley, I can say with authority that I don't want to know. The land around Buckley has never been tamed, not really, and it doesn't suffer fools lightly, if it suffers them at all. The storefronts have altered to fit the time, but they still seem to lag behind the outside world, the towns and cities that aren't struggling to survive in the hand of the forest, that aren't trapped under the shade of the nearby hills. It's a little strange to walk these streets and see signs offering computer repair and cellphone services where the record store and the five-and-dime used to be. Time stops for no one, I guess. There's another Buckley nestled deep down in the twilight, one where it's still 1945, one where all the little details still match the little details hidden in my heart. That's a dead town, a place that only exists because I do?there are no other Buckley ghosts from my generation still wandering the ghostroads. When I move on, if I move on, that dead little town will fade away. Maybe that's not such a bad thing, because this is the real Buckley, this changing, increasingly strange place, and it deserves to be fresher in my mind than its own time-locked reflection. I've managed to walk halfway to the school when a car pulls up next to me, blinker flashing the brief staccato rhythm that means, in the secret language of the road, "You've got a ride." I stop where I am, turning toward the car, a battered old Toyota in that shade of middle-class brown that hides the rust better than just about anything else. The passenger-side window creaks down, revealing a teenage girl with hair almost exactly the color of her car's paint job. I don't get many rides from girls. Something about me says "there but for the grace of God," and they keep their distance. She has red and yellow ribbons in her hair?the Buckley High School colors?and flecks of coppery rust in the brown of her eyes. "Get in," she says, with a small lift of her chin. It's more command than request, and I find myself obeying without stopping to think about it. "I'll fill you in on the way." Prom night isn't like Halloween, when the dead live again, but it's something similar for me, anniversary of my death, pagan ritual in school colors. I can feel solidity falling into my bones like night falling on the forest, turning me physical from the inside out. I slide into the seat, almost taking comfort in the way my feet dip just below the floorboard?still dead, still free, at least for the moment. It's too late to run away, but it's too soon for the music to start. "Thanks for the ride," I say, old ritual, new target. "I was going your way," she replies, with ritual calm, and I realize that I never told her which way I was going. She hits the accelerator, eyes on the road as she adds, "There's a wrap for you in the back. I looked through some of the old yearbooks to make sure I had the right color." I hesitate, and she sighs, heavily. "It's just a damn coat, okay? You need it if you don't intend to go walking through any walls in the next few hours. I feel more comfortable when I know my passengers are actually gaining some small measure of protection from their seatbelts." "I?wait?what?" "Although I guess if you're dead already, the seatbelt thing is sort of moot." She stops at the light on Pierce and Robinson?there wasn't a light there when I was alive, just one more sign of how the town has changed?before turning to look at me. "I'd feel better if you were corporeal in my car, okay? And since I'm the driver, I get to choose the radio station and dictate the physical state of passengers." The look in her eyes finally snaps into focus. I can't stop myself from frowning as I ask, "You're a routewitch, aren't you? What are you doing in Buckley?" What are you doing here, on the night of the prom, the one night when I can't cross the city limits? Why did you pick me up? What's going on here? "I was born here," she replies, attention going back to the road. "My grandfather was from Buckley, and when my dad died, Mom decided she'd come here to be close to his side of the family. Her side's nothing to write home about." "Oh." Even routewitches have to come from somewhere, I guess. I've just never given much thought to where they belong when they aren't running the roads or going home to the arms of the Ocean Lady. I lean over the seat, looking into the back. A wispy strip of pale green silk lies puddled on the upholstery. That familiar jolt of solidity races up my fingers as I reach over and pick up the wrap, noting the thin lines of silver running through the fabric. It's beautiful, delicate, and a perfect complement to the prom gown I'll wind up wearing before the night is over. I settle back into my seat, feeling gravity settle over me like a shroud as I wind the wrap loosely around my shoulders. I fasten the seatbelt before looking toward the routewitch behind the wheel. Her eyes are still locked on the street beyond the windscreen. I clear my throat, and say, "Um, thanks. For the coat. And the ride. My name's Rose." She actually laughs at that, the sound easy and clear and eerily familiar. "Oh, I know. You're Rose Marshall. You're here because this is the anniversary of your death, and whenever you're near Buckley during prom season, you wind up crashing the party." "How did you?" "You're here tonight, specifically, because I begged the road to send you. All the signs and portents have been crazy since the start of the school year. Old lady Martin's cat had a whole litter of kittens with no eyes, and somehow, all the scripts for the senior play got replaced with MacBeth. Something bad's coming. I wanted at least a little supernatural muscle on our side when things went south." I blink. "What makes you think I can do anything to help?" "It's prom night, in Buckley, and you're a Marshall. Marshalls always come back to Buckley when they're needed. It's what makes us better than the Healys." Only one word in that sentence really stands out to me, and I'm repeating it before I take the time to think, voice going a little shrill as I demand, "Us?" "Us," she agrees, and slants a smile my way, a wicked gleam in her eye that I remember seeing, too many times, in the eyes of my big brother. "Hi, Aunt Rose. I'm Bethany. I'm your brother Arthur's granddaughter." "Of course you are." I slump in my seat, feeling the prom coming closer by the second, while this girl who is blood of my blood drives us toward the high school. Prom night in Buckley Township. Not exactly the most wonderful night of the year. *** The high school hasn't changed nearly as much as the rest of the town. The squat brick buildings seem to huddle in the middle of their parking lots and athletic fields, glowering out over the students who dare to approach. Some people say schools are cathedrals to learning. Not Buckley High. Buckley High is a prison, and the only way to get parole is to keep your grades up, keep your head down, and pray. Bethany pulls into a spot near the street, using the spreading leaves of the sycamore trees to conceal the car from casual view. "We have about two hours before the dance starts," she says, as she unclasps her seatbelt. "I'm on the decorating committee, so I can get us inside now without raising suspicion." "And the fact that nobody knows me won't be a problem because??" "I'll tell them you're my cousin from downstate, and that your folks made me bring you along." She slants a half-amused glance in my direction. "It's not like it's totally a lie. We are related, and you're from downstate. It's just that you're coming from underground, not points south." "Dead girl jokes. Oh, yeah, those are my favorite." I'm still grumbling as I unclasp my belt and climb out of the car, feeling the hot mugginess of the summer air settle across my skin. Michigan summers. I used to measure my life in Michigan summers. Now I just use them to measure out my death. "Then what? I help you hang streamers, pretend I'm not looking when somebody spikes the punch, and wait to see if some unnamed doom falls on the senior prom?" "Something like that." Bethany starts walking across the parking lot, cocky little routewitch too young to know how hard the world can hit. I hurry to catch up. "Whatever it is, it's going to be bad. I don't think we'll be able to miss it once it starts." "You are way too vague to be a Marshall." "And you're way too dead to criticize." She doesn't sound annoyed; more amused, like my complaints are meaningless. In a way, I guess they are. She's a routewitch, and this is her territory now, not mine. It's prom night in Buckley, which means running away isn't an option for me, and the fact that she's alive means the shots are hers to call. That doesn't mean I have to like it. So I glower at her as we walk across the sun-bleached blacktop, faded white lines that delineate one parking spot from the next criss-crossing like railway tracks under our feet. She thinks we have two hours before the start of prom. I could tell her things about time, the way it bends and twists around the holy moments in your life, but I won't. I don't have the words, and I don't think Bethany has the ears to listen. "How is Arthur?" I ask, just to break the silence. I'm solid as ever, but the hair that tickles the back of my neck is longer than it was when I got into the car. Prom night is rushing me on, and as all the other girls get ready, I'm getting ready, too. Whether I want it or not. "Old. Crotchety. Mean as a snake when he thinks you've crossed him." Bethany's smile is sweet and distant. Maybe I could like her after all. "He took Mom and me in when nobody else wanted anything to do with us. I owe him a lot." And he's still in Buckley, still breathing. That explains why she's here, little routewitch running a fixed route, like a hamster running in a wheel. She'll strike out on the open road one of these days, but even routewitches know the worth of family. She'll stay until my brother goes. "And does he know...?" I wave a hand, jade beads rattling against each other as the bracelet on my wrist slides a few inches down my forearm. I wonder what my clothes look like now, whether anyone who happens to be passing by will see a transparent dress sketched over T-shirt and jeans...or whether the reality is already turned the other way around. "No." Bethany shakes her head, quick, decisive, with no pause for thought. "I tried to tell him once, but he wouldn't let himself hear me. He didn't want to know. I think...I think he knew, deep down, that if he listened when I told him about the way the road can sing, if he believed, he'd have to believe all those stories about the ghost of Sparrow Hill Road." Believe that your granddaughter is some kind of witch, believe that your decades-gone little sister has never been allowed to rest. That wasn't the sort of choice I'd have wanted to make. "Poor Art," I sigh. "I deal," says Bethany, and then she's opening the door to the Buckley High School gymnasium?when did we finish crossing the parking lot? When did we pass the point of no return??and stepping onward, into the dark. I hesitate, clinging to the illusion of choice for as long as I can. Bethany looks back at me, eyebrows raised in silent question, and with another sigh, I step forward, following her into the darkness. *** Prom themes are the universe's way of getting us ready for the endless indignities it plans to heap on our heads, like fashion trends and bridesmaid dresses. No one ever seems to admit to being the one who thought that "Rain Forest Romance" or "A Dance on Mars" was a good idea. They just follow the mysterious sketches that tell them to put the streamers here, the crepe-paper flowers there, and the endless buckets of glitter everywhere that glitter shouldn't go. Whoever chose this year's theme wasn't feeling particularly creative. The Buckley Buccaneers will be celebrating the magic of prom night in a gymnasium transformed into a bizarre combination of pirate ship and South Seas Island, complete with sand-covered paper mache "dunes." The banners hanging to either side of the stage proclaim that tonight is a night for Adventure. Where? On the High Seas, naturally. "This is the third pirate-themed prom I've been to at this school," I inform Bethany. "Look at it this way: it's the third one you've attended, but you've managed to miss fifteen of them, so the numbers are still slanted in your favor." Seeing the horrified look on my face, she smirks. "The drama department really enjoys recycling props. Why don't you go for a walk-around, and see if anything strikes you as off?" Everything about this strikes me as off, from the lighting in the gym to the poster that greeted me when I stepped off of the ghostroads. The trouble is figuring out exactly where the problem lies. Maybe it's just Bethany's doom-saying, but I'm starting to feel like she's right, and something dangerous is coming. I just have no idea what "something" may turn out to be. "No problem," I say, and turn, skirts swishing around my ankles as I start my circuit of the gym. Counter-clockwise, of course?the natural direction of the dead?and moving slow, trying not to miss anything. No one could step into this gym and guess anything other than "senior prom." The decorations are perfect, that magical combination of cheese and class that somehow tears down social barriers, turning a fractured student body into one entity, at least until the last song ends. Crepe paper roses hang from the ceiling, the Buckley Buccaneer leering out of a hundred unexpected corners like some sort of comic pagan god. There's something wrong with some of the banners. At first, I assume it's just the differing levels of skill in the high school art classes coming through. Then I turn a corner, and find myself looking straight into the eyes of a life-sized, painted pirate. There isn't time to smother the shout of surprise that pushes past my lips. The clothes are right, the silly hat and sillier parrot of the Buckley High mascot painted in loving detail. But the hat is in his hand, rather than being forced down over his perfect duck's-ass hair, and the look in his painted eyes is flat, judgmental, like the eyes of a snake somehow granted human form. Bobby Cross. I'm looking at a painting of Bobby Cross...and that's when I realize something I should have realized from the start: I never made it to prom. There were no pictures of me in my prom dress, because I never made it to the prom. "Shit," I mutter, and take a step backward. "That took you way longer than I thought it was going to," says Bethany from behind me. I turn toward the sound of her voice, mouth already starting to shape my first demands for information. Whatever question I was going to ask is forgotten at the sight of the tin cash box swinging toward my temple. Then it hits, sending jolts of pain all the way down into my toes, and the world goes black. I don't even feel it when I hit the floor. *** Hitchers are a weird little off-shoot of the ghost world: we mess up the rules, just by being what we are. We're dead and buried. We don't age, we don't sleep, we don't need to eat or drink when we're on the ghostroads, and we have the option?even if very few of us ever choose to take it?of moving on to whatever destination waits beyond the last freeway off-ramp. At the same time, give one of us a coat, and we're alive again, all the way through. A lot of ghosts turn solid on the anniversaries of their deaths, but only hitchers transition all the way back to the lands of the living. Combine that with a coat, and well... There's a reason that I'm not happy when I open my eyes to find myself tied to a chair, and it's not just because she didn't buy me dinner first. Just on the off chance that it's past midnight, I try letting go of the strings tying me to the wrap Bethany so "charitably" provided. Nothing happens. It's still prom night in Buckley, and that means I'm anchored here, whether or not I want to be. "Fuck," I mutter. "Language," says Bethany sweetly, stepping around the corner, into view. She's still wearing the T-shirt and jeans she had on when she picked me up. Why didn't that strike me as strange? Decorating committee or not, she should have at least had her foundation makeup on, should have done something with her hair. "This is a place of learning, Auntie Rose. Mind your tongue, or you'll wind up getting detention." "When I was a student here, we knew enough to mind our elders," I snap. "Untie me right now and I might be able to write this off as a funny, funny prank." "You're not my elder tonight, Aunt Rose. You were sixteen when you died, and I'm seventeen now. I'm an upperclassman." Her smile isn't nearly as chilling as the six girls who come walking up behind her, each of them carrying a candle in one hand, and a silver carving knife in the other. "I really thought you'd be more of a challenge than this." "Did someone contact all the crazy bitches of the world and say I was in the market for a good fucking-over?" I demand. "First Laura, now you?God! Can't you people just leave me the hell alone?" "To be fair, I got the idea when I heard what Miss Moorhead had managed to do. I mean, catching a hitcher? That's not easy, not even when you know the things that call them. Things like the story of their death...and the fact that they almost always have a thing for haunting family." Bethany reaches up and tugs one of the ribbons free of her hair. "You were so set on chasing the things that bind you that you didn't even notice that this wasn't a real dance." "Like anybody decorates the gym anymore?" asks one of the other students, wrinkling her nose. "Ew. That's what the community center is for." "Vicky?" says Bethany, in a voice like honey. "Yeah?" "Don't talk." Bethany keeps her eyes on me. "There's a bounty on your head, Auntie Rose, and the man who wants you?you have no idea how much he's willing to pay. I won't ever have to worry about anything ever again. Not me, not my mother, not even Grandpa. We'll be set for life." "And all you have to do is kill me," I say, bitterly. Maybe I didn't see that the prom was a decoy, but I was distracted, and I've never encountered anything like this before. "So what do the rest of them get out of the deal? Cash on the barrel? Bragging rights? What?" "Your terminology sucks. I can't kill you. You've been dead since before my father was born. All I'm doing is handing you over to someone who has a purpose for you. As for what my friends get...there's not much for any of us in this podunk little town. We're getting out." "By making deals with Bobby Cross?" There it is: there's the name, hanging out in air between us like roadkill, like something dead and rotten and stinking. "You should know better. Arthur should have taught you better." "How? He never knew what happened to you. No one ever knew, not until the night the asphalt up on Sparrow Hill started talking to me, started telling me all about it. I think I was supposed to sympathize with you. But Bobby..." Her eyes go distant, star-struck. "He knew what he wanted, and he found a way to get it. I respect that in a man." I stare at her, disgusted and aghast. "Please tell me you're not hot for Bobby Cross." When she doesn't answer, I gag, only exaggerating a little. "He's a monster! He sold his soul!" "But he got what he wanted, didn't he?" She smiles again, brightly. "And so will I. Bobby's on his way here now. He's coming to collect his payment, and then he'll take us all to the crossroads, and show us how to make his bargain." "You can't. You need..." Apple said the King of the Routewitches went with Bobby to make his first bargain. If I'm what they stuff into the gas tank, and Bethany is in the car?blood of my blood, a powerful charm on the ghostroads?they might just make it. "You can't. Your Queen gave me Persephone's blessing." "I heard about that." She reaches into her pocket, produces a Swiss army knife. It looks very sharp when she clicks it open. "Funny thing: Persephone's blessing can only protect you against people who are sworn to the dead. Living routewitches, and high school students who haven't had a chance to make their bargains yet? We don't count." She takes a step forward, raising the knife in her hand. The other students move to follow her. I'm sure they expect me to scream, to beg them to spare me. It's almost a shame to disappoint them. I can barely hold back my laughter as I say, "No, you don't count. And you can't count, either." "What are you talking about?" she demands. She leans down to grab my shoulder, probably intending some small, ritual cut to begin the blood-letting. Her hand goes cleanly through what should have been solid flesh. She's still staring at me, surprise written large across her face, when I cast a glance toward the silk wrap?now lying on the floor, having fallen right through me--and offer her a smile. "You needed to keep track of time, Bethany. It's midnight. That means you can't hold me here." And, still smiling, I vanish. *** I don't go far, just from the little room where they had me tied?the old weight room, I realize now, the equipment put away, out of sight?to the hallway outside. I want to know what they'll do, how many of her companions will panic at the first sign of something that's truly unexplained. Talking about ghosts and selling souls is all well and good, but what do you do when the Devil actually comes to collect his dues? Voices drift down the hall, some raised in panic, some in simple confusion. "?was right here, so where did she?" "?oh, God, you mean she was really a ghost? We really caught a ghost? I thought?" "?was the Phantom Prom Date, Bethany, I mean, that was the real thing. What if she comes back for us? What if?" Bethany's voice cuts across the others, cold as ice and filled with commanding anger: "All of you, hush up. I can't hear myself think. She won't have gone far. Tom, Minda, you get the salt and seal the edges of the gym. Keep her here. Everybody else, stay alert. She's probably pissed." "At least she's smart enough to get that far," I mutter, and vanish, moving through the space between me and the gym door faster than my niece's minions can hope to travel. Salt can bind a ghost, that's true, but it takes a special kind to catch a hitcher, and I doubt she has the skill to do it. I almost have to respect her, in a way. Sure, she's probably insane, but I understand what it is to want out of Buckley so badly that you ache with it, so badly that you're willing to do just about anything if that's what gets you an exit. The night air is cool, and tastes like minutes wasted in doctor's waiting rooms, precious seconds that you'll never get back again. One more prom night, come and gone. It doesn't really matter that I spent it at a decoy prom, tied to a chair by my grand-niece. A prom night is a prom night, and this one is slipping into memory. The ghostroads will open soon, and then I can get the hell out of here. "Leaving so soon, Auntie Rose?" asks Bethany behind me. I turn toward the sound of her voice, reflex as much as anything, and flinch back as the dried flower corsage she throws at me bounces off the center of my chest, long-dead flowers filling the air with sour-sweet perfume. Bethany's expression is triumphant. That worries me. Not as much as it worries me that the flowers actually made contact. "Prom night's over, Bethany," I say, tried to keep the shock from showing on my face. How the hell did she hit me with that thing? I'm not wearing a coat. I don't have a body to be hit. "Give it up." "Prom night's never over for you, Auntie Rose. That's why they call you the 'phantom prom date,' isn't it?" She smiles, pointing to the corsage that lies between us like a roadkilled squirrel. "Gary Daniels bought this for you on what should have been the night of your senior prom. 'Course, you were long dead by then, and they'd barely stopped blaming him for being the one who killed you, so you never got it. It's yours. And that means you're not going anywhere." My breath catches in my throat; until that moment, I hadn't really realized that I was breathing. I've heard of things like this, ghost-catchers, tokens that the living have held onto for too long, imbued with too many memories, but I've never seen one. It just figures that if there was going to be a ghost-catcher tuned to me, it would be in the hands of my crazy grand-niece with the Bobby Cross fixation. I put my hands up, palms turned toward her. "Come on, Bethany. Let's think about this, all right? You don't want to deal with Bobby Cross. He's..." A bastard, a madman, a murderer. "...he's not a nice man, and he's not going to play fair just because you hold up your end of the bargain. I'm family. Doesn't that mean something?" "Family didn't mean anything to you when you decided to go off and get yourself turned into road kill. Grandpa's been mourning you as long as I've been alive. He even wanted to name me 'Rose.' Don't you think it's time to rest?" Bethany starts toward me, the bug-zappers that spark and flash around the edges of the school roof sending glints of blue light off the knife in her left hand. "It doesn't have to be this hard. You've had so many years, and I'm sorry, Auntie Rose, but I have to do what I have to do. You, of all people, should understand. You remember what it's like to be trapped here." The corsage smells like lilies and ashes, or maybe the smell of lilies and ashes is rising from the parking lot around us, routewitch facing off with road-ghost fifteen minutes after midnight on prom night. This is the sort of thing that's rare enough to have power all its own, and in the far distance, I can hear the sound of an engine, screaming. Bobby Cross is coming to collect what he's been promised. I'm running out of time. *** Bethany's friends?minions, whatever they are to her?are still inside the high school, probably sealing the exits with salt and watching through the windows, smart enough not to get involved now that the odds aren't in their favor. The ash-and-lily smell is getting choking, Bobby burning road between him and Buckley. "Come on, Bethany," I urge. "The doors are closed. You haven't taken anything from him, you don't owe him anything. Go inside, and don't look back. This doesn't have to happen." "This always had to happen," she says, and takes another step forward. She's taller than I am, more solidly built. She's probably on the track team, a sport where she doesn't have to count on anyone else to support her. Routewitches like things that let them cover distance. She looks utterly confident as she closes on me, and she should look confident, because I'm a slip of a girl in a confining silk dress, doe-eyed and breakable. It's too bad she isn't really thinking this through. I'm a slip of a girl who's spent the last fifty years in and out of truck stops, riding with bikers and arguing with fry cooks on exactly how much they get to slap me around before I start slapping back. And I don't have to worry about getting hurt for keeps. She goes for my ribs, sharp stabbing motion, all her momentum behind it. I go for her eyes, nails hooked into claws, and the fight is on. There's nothing sexy about two girls really going at it, especially not when they're in a parking lot in the middle of a summer night. Bethany shrieks when I scratch her and starts swinging wildly; the knife misses, but her elbow doesn't, and sends me rocking back a few feet. The gravel underfoot makes it hard to keep my balance. I scramble to get upright and charge forward, burying my shoulder in the pit of her stomach. The air goes out of her in a hard gust, and she lands on the pavement on her ass, gasping. "Stay down," I snap, already half-winded. Bethany snarls, sounding more animal than human, and scrabbles to her feet, lunging for me again. I'm not prepared. Her hand catches my hair, and then she's whipping me around, sending me flying away from her. I land hard on the pavement, skidding to a stop at least six feet away. I'm barely back to my feet when I hear the sound of two hands, clapping slowly. For the first time, I realize that I'm tasting wormwood, and I turn toward the sound, already sure of what I'll see. Bobby Cross meets my eyes, and smirks. "Nothing like a good chick fight to start a night off the right way, is there, Rosie-girl?" he drawls. Bethany is struggling to get her breath back, raking fingers through her hair, making herself presentable. The irony of Bobby Cross being her dream date hasn't escaped me. "You're a sight for sore eyes. Or maybe just a sight to make eyes sore. Tired of playing hard to get?" "Come get me, and find out," I suggest. I'm not breathing hard. I look down, and see the shredded petals littering the pavement around me, like the leavings of a flower girl at a funeral. It would have bound me here, kept me flesh and blood, but Bethany left it on the ground when we started fighting. One or both of us must have stepped on it, shredding it and destroying its power over me. Amateur mistake for an amateur routewitch. It's the last one she's going to make. Bobby takes a step forward, one hand half-raised in my direction. Then he stops, and snarls. "You were supposed to cut it off her," he says, finally turning toward Bethany. "I came here because you promised she'd be meat when I arrived. That you'd cut that warding off her body. You trying to welsh on me, girl?" "No!" protests Bethany, eyes widening. For the first time, she seems to know that she's in danger...and it's too late for me to do a thing about it. "She fought back. I didn't expect she'd be able to fight back." "Fifty years, you didn't think she'd have a trick or two?" His boot heels click as he closes the distance between them, fast, so fast it's like he barely moved at all. Bethany screams when he grabs her wrist, and screams again when he jerks her against him. "You're going to learn, girly. You can't break a deal with me." "Aunt Rose!" She twists to look at me over Bobby's shoulder, and her eyes are the pleading eyes of a trapped animal. "Please, help me! Don't let him?" "You're the one that said family didn't mean anything, Bethany," I say. Her eyes widen, hope draining out of them. I feel like I'm going to be sick. But I can't save her from Bobby, not here, not now, not when she made the bargain of her own free will. The only thing I can do is offer myself in her place... And she's not worth it. Bethany screams as I walk out of the parking lot, out of Buckley, down into the twilight, where the ghostroads hold no surprises anymore. Even as the daylight fades around me, taking the smell of ashes and lilies with it, I think that I can still hear Bethany, screaming. I'll be hearing her for a while, I suppose. And I walk on.
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| Last updated on 7/14/2010 12:48:28 PM by Jennifer Brozek |
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Do you want to dance and hold my hand