Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan(85)

"He rolled off the assembly the day you died," says Carl, dumping the cover to one side. "Color's a custom job. So's the engine. There's a piece of the car you got run off the road in worked in there, and some mandrake root—some other things. He's a real special guy."

"She's beautiful," I whisper. Then I pause, realizing that one of us has the pronoun wrong. "Wait—did you just call this car 'he'?"

And then Carl fires up the crusher.

It's hard to describe the sound of a car that's been loved—really and truly loved—being murdered. Because that's what this is; murder, pure and simple, metal and rubber compacted into a single contiguous piece of lifeless slag. I shriek wordless dismay and run to the crusher's controls, like pushing the "stop" button might somehow undo what's just been done in front of me. "You can't do this! Why would you do this?!"

"Your boy asked me to," Carl replies, easily fending me off. I'm too small to shove him out of the way, and anyway, the smashing sounds are getting softer; all the major structural damage is already done, and what remains is simply reducing rubble into ash. "He said you'd come. I didn't quite believe him, even after I heard about you stirring things up on the Lady."

"Is this—is this some sort of punishment? He made you do this to punish me?" The sound of metal being torn continues, but the screaming is over. The car is dead, beautiful thing that it—that he—was.

To my surprise, Carl laughs. "Punish you? Punish you? You really are dense, aren't you? Does that come with the dead thing?" He produces a set of keys from his pocket, holding them up for me to see. Sunlight glints off the keychain, the grinning cartoon face of the Buckley High School Buccaneer leering at me from somewhere not quite the past, not quite the present. "You know, he really loved you. A man would have to really love a woman to do this just to be with her."

He tosses the keys, keychain and all, into the still-grinding teeth of the crusher. They vanish almost instantly, blending into the remains of the car. Carl turns and looks at me, expectantly.

"What?" I cross my arms and scowl at him, trying not to look as confused as I feel.

"Look in your pocket," says Carl, and I follow his orders before I stop to think about them, uncrossing my arms and sticking my right hand into the pocket of my borrowed coat. There's nothing there but lint and a crumpled toll receipt. "Your other pocket," says Carl.

Blinking, I stick my hand into the pocket of my jeans...and find a set of car keys. I pull them out and stare at them. The light glints off the face of the Buckley Buccaneer, just like it did before Carl threw him into the crusher.

"...how?" I ask.

Carl, meanwhile, grins like he's just won the lottery to end all lotteries. Clapping meaty hands against his knees, he all but shouts, "It worked! Damn if I'm not going to drink on this for the next ten years. Girl, you just saw a goddamn miracle, and I am the miracle worker."

"Okay, I'm confused. Can you please explain what the fuck is going on here?"

"Take off the coat," he suggests. His grin gentles, fading into something sadder and more sincere. "He really was a damn good man. I hope you deserved him."

"I tried to," I say, and slip out of my borrowed jacket. When a routewitch says to strip, it's generally best to do it. The junkyard jumps a bit as the fabric hits the ground, shadows turning sharper, bits of old metal lighting up around the edges with ghostlight memories. "Now what?" I ask, and my voice is as transparent as the rest of me.

"Drop down to the ghostroads, and say hello," says Carl. "It was nice meeting you."

"Nice meeting you, too," I say, still not sure whether I mean it, and let go of the daylight, falling down into the sweet dim dark of the twilight, and the ghostroads. The shadow of the junkyard remains, the parts of it that are old enough and enduring enough to have spirits of their own.

And parked in front of me, in the same place it sat when I saw it for the first time, is a cherry 1946 Ford Super De Luxe. Waiting.

***

I approach the car with something between curiosity and awe. I don't have a heartbeat, but it still feels like my heart is frozen in my chest. The paint job has changed colors, going from the green of my dress to a soft, misty gray, like a ghost seen from the corner of your eye and gone before it quite takes form.

"Gary?" I whisper.

The car doesn't answer, exactly—not with words, anyway. But the door is unlocked when I try the handle, and the upholstery is warm when I slide into the driver's seat. I rest my hands against the wheel, still trying to make sense of what I'm seeing, what Gary and Carl have somehow managed to do. Here, on the ghostroads, this car is as solid a thing as I am, a ghost among ghosts.