Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan(72)

"Like what?"

"A spoiler. Spoiling things. This is the right road. Why won't you just let it be the right road?"

"Because maybe it's the wrong road. Maybe it's the road that leads to the road that leads to the right road, which doesn't mean this is the right road. Maybe I'm walking through a cornfield in the middle of the night with the niece who tried to hand me to my personal devil, and maybe that's not the sort of thing that puts me in a good mood. Maybe being dead for the better part of a century has made me a realist. Or maybe I just don't like you. Did you consider that?" I look steadfastly ahead, and keep on walking. "Next time, try asking one of the other routewitches."

"I did. They all turned me down." There's a wistful edge to Bethany's voice that makes me stop and turn to look at her. "They said...they said I got what I deserved. That I shouldn't have been messing around with things I didn't understand. That I shouldn't have been messing around with you."

"Routewitches and road ghosts have an arrangement. You don't mess with us, we don't mess with you." I start walking again. Bethany follows. "Most routewitches wind up road ghosts when they die. I guess they view treating us with respect as an investment in their own afterlife."

"Were you a routewitch?"

The question floors me for a moment. I think about it as I walk, and finally answer, "I think I might have been. Maybe. But I never had the opportunity to travel, and it's supposed to be travel that makes a routewitch understand what the roads are saying." I'd wanted to travel. Gary and I used to talk about it all the time. That didn't mean it ever happened, and then I was dead, and travel became a fact of--for lack of a better word—life.

"You could ask for that. At the crossroad."

"Ask for what?"

"The chance to be a routewitch."

I wheel around, walking backward as I demand, "You mean the chance to be alive again? Is that it? I could go to the crossroad and ask whatever...whatever fucked-up horror movie version of a fairy godmother it is that makes bargains there to bring me back from the dead?" I can tell from her face that she means exactly that. She's trying to make me want to go to the crossroad, like that will somehow transform this from a chore into the world's most bizarre family outing. "I should leave you. I should leave you right here and let you find your way without me."

Bethany's eyes widen in alarm. "Don't do that! I just...I just thought..."

"You thought I'd want to be alive again. Right. See, there was a time when I wanted to be alive again. There was a time when I would have sold my soul for the chance to be alive again. But that time passed. My world got old and moved on, and I kept on being sixteen years old. The phantom prom date. The girl who never grew up. My parents died. My brothers got married. My classmates graduated and got lives, and I was still sixteen, and I was still on the road. If you'd explained the crossroad to me when I was a year, five years, even ten years dead, I would have jumped at the chance to get my world back. My world isn't there anymore. It's never going to be there again. So asking me if I want to be alive again isn't just insulting. Isn't just superficial. It's mean. Now shut the fuck up and just keep walking."

"I'm sorry," Bethany whispers.

"Yeah. So am I."

The cornfields and the smell of the green surround us on all sides. And we just keep on walking.

***

The cornfield road gives way to a slightly larger road. This one comes with bonus haystacks, and the unending magnetic pull of the crossroad somewhere in the distance ahead. It knows we're coming. It's waiting for us. I just hope it understands that only one of us is actually coming to deal.

Bethany's having trouble keeping up. The walk is taking its toll on her, but I don't dare slow down. There's only so much distance between here and midnight at the crossroad, and if we miss the deadline...Bethany's going to have a lot more nights of achy joints and trouble breathing ahead of her. She's stupid. She's stupid, and short-sighted, and stubborn, and most of all, she's young. She's the kind of young I never had the chance to be. And yet a part of me understands her. She got into this mess because she wanted to get out of Buckley so badly she was willing to ransom her soul in order to do it. There was a time when I wanted out of Buckley just as bad. Admittedly, I was going to do it by marrying Gary and moving someplace big and exotic, like Ann Arbor, but hell. Who understands kids these days?

"Are we almost there?" she asks, wheezing.

"Maybe. Probably not. I have no idea. It's a beautiful night. Enjoy it."

"Easy for you to say. You're never going to get old."

"I'm also never going to get married, have children, or go to Europe. Think of this as a preview."