Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan(21)

"I know you killed the only man I ever loved." The accusation is casual, almost off-handed; there's no heat behind it. She's just reciting a fact. I still freeze, rooted to the spot as she continues, "For a while, I thought I was chasing a myth, looking for you, but once I had a name, you got a lot easier to follow. Legends and ghost stories scattered across a country--you've been a busy little girl, Rose. How many innocent men have you killed? How many have died for your vanity, all because you couldn't bear to be the one left standing home alone?"

I've heard this accusation before. It doesn't get any easier. "I've never killed anyone. You have the wrong girl."

Candlelight glints off her glasses as she lifts her head and looks at me, smile fading into memory, replaced by terrifying emptiness. "His name was Tommy," she says, in a voice like a crypt door slamming shut. "His name was Tommy, and he was going to marry me, and you killed him. And now I'm going to kill you."

***

Tommy is bleeding out fast, red blood mingling with the black oil that drips from the car's shattered engine. At least they're not both suffering. She loved him enough to wait for him on the ghostroads, and that's better than many men will have. Still, I keep my hand against his cheek, feeling my solidity waver a little more with every breath he struggles to take, and I wonder when, if ever, the moments like this will stop hurting so damn bad.

"I can't see."

"It's all right, Tommy. Just keep on breathing. Help's on the way." That's a lie, that's a goddamn lie--help isn't coming, help won't get here for hours, not until the raceway is a road again and there's nothing left of Tommy but an empty shell cradled in a steel and chrome coffin. I don't regret lying to him. Sometimes lies are the only thing I have to give them.

"Will you find my girl?" His voice is fading, losing strength. He'll find it again on the other side, when he doesn't have to fight against failing lungs and a broken spine. Somehow, that's cold comfort, even to me.

"Yeah, Tommy, yeah. I'll find her." More lies, but they're the lies he needs to hear. How could I find her, dead man's living lover? I'd have no way to even start the search. "What do you want me to tell her?"

The question seems to puzzle him for a moment, leave him fumbling for words. Only the fact that the gravel still digs into my knees tells me that he's still holding onto life; I'm slipping, but I haven't slipped, not all the way, not yet. Finally, he says, "Tell her I love her. Tell her I did this because I love her." A smile twists his lips upward, heartbreaking snapshot of a lover on his way out the door. "I was going to marry her."

"I know."

"Just tell Laura..." His voice falters and fades in the middle of the sentence, leaving him silent. One more hitching breath, two, three, and then no more; his chest is still, his struggling heart finally finishing its fight.

His blood falls through my fingers, leaving them clean and pale as I rise. His jacket likewise falls, hitting the concrete with a soft, anti-climactic rustle. I turn to face the racers still standing clustered behind me. The ones who let me through before--the ones who've touched the twilight, or been touched by it--take a step backward, faces going pale. They know what they're seeing, they know what the fall of the jacket has to mean. The rest only look at me, puzzled and afraid, boys mixed with men in almost equal numbers.

"This race is over," I say, my tone leaving no room for argument. "If you must race, do it somewhere else. No more stupid kids who don't know the risks. Understand? If you let this happen again, I'll know, and I'll find you." Empty threat. But they don't know that.

"Yeah?" asks one of the ones who doesn't look frightened enough to understand who I am, what I am, what he's seen. "Who the fuck are you?"

The living are difficult to convince and easy to impress. I fix him with a stare, smile, and say, "I'm Rose." Then I release my hold on the daylight, and the racers are gone, left in another America, while I step onto the ghostroads where I belong.

Tommy is there, unbroken, unbloodied, standing next to his car and staring blankly up into a sky the color of ink. There are no stars. Not here; not in the midnight. We're on the deepest level now, the one where ghosts are the natives, and the living are the strange invasions. He looks toward the sound of my feet scuffling on the surface of the road, eyes wide in his young man's face. "Rose? What's going on?"

"You died, Tommy." I step forward, offer him my hand, offer him a smile that almost balances the sorrow in my eyes. I could never have saved him. I have to keep telling myself that until I start believing. "Now come on.""Where?""That's up to you." I cast a glance toward his car, which has never looked this good, and never could have, not in the daylight, where metal is constrained by the limits of construction, and not the limits of love. "But I can make a few suggestions."