Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan(81)
Her name was Rose. She was the only girl I ever loved—the only girl I guess I could have ever loved, the only one that I was designed for loving. She wasn't perfect. Nobody's perfect. But she was close enough for a small town boy who dreamed of one day touching something greater. I guess she felt the same way about me. She came back to me, after all, even if it was only once, even if I didn't know that she was gone.
I've spent my whole life trying, but I never fell in love again—not the way I fell in love with her, when the world was young and innocent, and silly teenage boys believed their girlfriends were immortal.
Her name was Rose.
***
I'm making my way toward Ann Arbor when I feel the undeniable urge to turn south. It's like someone is tying strings around my wrists and ankles, trying to use them to pull me the way they think I ought to go. I stop where I am, feet sinking down into the dead dry grass by the side of the road, and try to tell myself that I'm not feeling what I'm feeling. I don't want this. I didn't want this the first time it happened, and I don't want it now.
The teasing, tugging sensation doesn't stop. If anything, it gets worse, small tugs turning quickly into outright pulling, like the whole world has decided that it has nothing better to do than get me to turn around. I close my eyes, trying to feel my way across the twilight to the source of the feeling. Whoever it is, they don't know what they're doing. This is a summons without a "return to sender" attached, which can only mean one thing: Someone tied to the few short years that I spent among the living is getting ready to join me among the dead, and the universe wants me to play psychopomp for their departure.
Thanks for that, universe. Thanks a lot.
The calls don't come as often as they used to. There was a time when I was making my way back to Buckley almost every year to pull some poor ghost away from the bodies they'd abandoned and help them find their way to the ghostroads. Irony is a bitter mistress: the fact that these people had me called to lead them to their afterlives didn't make them road ghosts, and none of them showed any inclination to stay for longer than it took to process the fact of their own death. One by one, I helped them deal with reality, and one by one, they left me. I was allowed to invite them to the party, but I wasn't allowed to go with them.
Sometimes death sucks. The parts of it that involve finding and losing the people I used to love all over again...those parts suck more than most.
The pull to the south is still growing in strength and urgency. I know from past experience that if I try to hitch a ride in this state, no cars will stop for me unless they're going the right way. Even if I can get my hands on a coat, I won't fully incarnate; not unless I give in and obey the strange, malleable rules of the road.
"It's not like I was doing anything with my night, right?" I mutter, and shove my hands into the pockets of my jeans, using the motion to shove myself down through reality's walls, moving smoothly from the daylight to the top of the twilight. The sky flickers, going bad-special-effect black, and the stars become frozen diamonds, not flickering, not doing anything but shining. There's no wind here to ruffle the corn. Just the fields, and the sky, and the black serpent highway sliding smoothly off into the distance.
I step out of the grass, back onto the road, and start walking. Giving in to the tugging this easily feels a little like defeat. Frankly, I don't care. The sooner I can get this over with, the sooner I can get on with my death.
Like it or not, I'm heading back to Buckley.
***
The nurses don't think I hear them talking outside my room. They would, if they thought twice about it—everything else about this old body may be breaking down on me, and me without a manufacturer's warranty to my name—but my hearing's as good as ever. They don't think I'm going to make it to Christmas. That's a bit of a relief, if you ask me; I've been here without my Rose for long enough now. I'm tired. I'm ready to be done.
There's just one more thing that needs to be done. I've observed the rituals as much as I can, here in this sterile place where old men go to wait out the last lonely hours of their existence. I've poured the glasses of wine, I've kept her picture close to me—I've even bribed a couple of the orderlies to burn incense outside the building, where the smell won't attract that busy-body of a nurse who keeps the ward. If I've missed a step, I don't know it. I guess I won't know it until I die.
I've never in my life been a gambler, Rose, but I'm gambling now. I'm gambling on you remembering me, and you caring enough to come. Please, Rose. Please.
Have mercy on a dying man. Remember that once, you loved me. Remember that once...
Once, I got you home.
***
Travel on the ghostroads is difficult to predict. Something that takes a day in the daylight can take a year in the twilight; something that takes a year in the daylight can be over in minutes in the twilight. It's all down to what the road thinks you need, and how capricious reality is feeling at any given moment.