Chapter 21
Leave Your Body at the Door
I SCREAM AS THEY PULL ME DOWN. I don’t want to—it seems weak, and more, it seems like the sort of thing that might distract Laura from getting the hell out of here—but I can’t help it. Their fingers are digging into my arms, and their bodies are covering mine, smothering me in shadow. These aren’t any kind of ghost I’ve ever dealt with before, because these aren’t ghosts at all. Ghosts are for the land of the living. These are spirits, shades, dead people who have never left the dubious safety of the Underworld.
Some of them may have tried. There has to be a reason they’re here, on this road, interfering with a rescue. They pause as I strike at them, their featureless faces showing their confusion, and I realize they assumed I was dead. This is jealousy. This is bitterness over the idea that I might get something they were denied.
But I’m not dead. I’m a living teenager following an older—also living—woman toward the exit.
“Yeah, that’s right,” I snarl, punching another of them in the featureless face. “I’m not a good target. Fuck off.”
The shades draw back, still holding me down, but clumping together in confusion, unable to decide the appropriate way to deal with dragging a living girl off of the path. I punch a few more of them for good measure. There’s nothing there for my fists to hit, but they react as if I’ve made contact all the same. I can’t tell whether it’s instinct driving them to fall back and pull away from me or some prohibition against grabbing the living, but it’s working. It’s working.
“I swear to Saint Celia, I will tell Persephone on you,” I hiss, and while the first divinity I invoke may not be familiar to them, the second certainly is. They fall back further, and I’m finally able to scramble to my feet, fists up, feet braced, ready to punch the entire spirit world if that’s what it takes to get back on the path before Laura reaches the exit.
To set me free, she’s supposed to look back and see me. What happens if she looks back and I’m not there? I didn’t think to ask that question when I had the chance, but I’m direly afraid these shades already know.
I don’t want to be alive. Until this moment, I would have said it was the thing I wanted least in all the world. I’m ready to revise that. I would rather live than spend forever as a shadow on this road, terrorizing travelers, trying to keep others from finding their happy endings. So I punch and punch and when they fall back again, I spin on my heels and I run. I run like Cerberus is behind me, jaws slavering and serpents hissing with the desire for flesh. I run like Bobby Cross is at my heels, ready to finish what he began so many years ago.
I run like I want to keep running forever, like I want to keep being forever, and maybe that’s the truest thing of all, because I don’t want to end. I don’t want to be faceless and thoughtless and trapped. I want to be me, Rose Marshall, whatever form that takes, whether it’s the girl in the green silk gown or the time-displaced teenager squatting on Laura Moorhead’s couch. I want to continue.
The shades do not pursue me. They slither through the dark at the edges of the path, coming no closer, making no effort to grab me again.
But they talk.
“She’s going to betray you.”
“She’s already betrayed you.”
“He’s waiting.”
“Bobby’s waiting.”
“Waiting to catch you up and make you not.”
“Turn back. Turn back. Save yourself. Stay.”
I don’t respond. I don’t have my breath. My too-human lungs are laboring to keep pushing me forward, and there isn’t enough air in the world. There’s never going to be enough air in the world, ever again. At least the path isn’t marble anymore. I couldn’t run this fast on marble, not without slipping and falling and winding up even farther behind.
Then I come around a corner and there she is: Laura, still walking. In the distance, I can see a punched-out oval of light where the dark road through the Underworld terminates in the land of the living. It looks like every neon sign at every truck stop in the world, calling me, beckoning me home.
I slow. I stop running, and start walking again, even though my lungs and my legs are screaming protest, demanding that I stop altogether, that I lie down, that I rest. Oh, how I want to rest. I’ve never wanted it more. All those times I’ve wondered how anyone could decide to rest in peace when there’s so much world out there worth seeing, this is the answer. This is how they make that choice. They just get tired, and there’s so much road left between them and what they want that it seems better to lie down and sleep.
Sleep. I can sleep when I’m dead. My feet are lead, but I keep picking them up and putting them down, I keep moving, and soon enough I’m behind Laura again, ten feet back, enough that she’ll be able to see me easily when we get there. She’ll be able to see me.
“I’m with you,” I call, voice raspy from wheezing. “Keep going, and I’ll keep following.”
Her shoulders untense, just enough for me to see how tight they were before. “You’re back,” she says, relief painted broadly through her voice. “Where did you go?”
“Some of the locals decided to pull me off the path and teach me the error of my ways,” I say, trying to sound light, really sounding like I’m about to collapse where I stand. “I hit them. I hit them a lot, and they eventually realized that letting me go was better for their overall health, such as it is.”
“They’ve been imitating your voice this whole time, trying to keep me from realizing you were gone.”
I frown. “How did you . . . if you never looked back, how did you know it wasn’t me?”
“They didn’t complain.” She sounds amused. That’s . . . good? Probably. “They encouraged me to keep going, they cajoled me to turn around, they said they were scared and asked if they could walk next to me instead of behind me, but they didn’t whine. Whereas you, Rose, are so bad at being alive that complaining is the majority of your conversation.”
“I feel like I should be offended,” I mutter.
“But you’re not.”
“But I’m not.”
“Good.” She keeps walking. She must have slowed down when she realized I wasn’t behind her; otherwise, she would have reached the exit by now. She’s still walking a little slowly, giving me the time to recover from my run.
That tightness is back in her shoulders. The proximity to the exit must be making her nervous. If something is going to go wrong, this is when and where it’s going to happen.
“We’re almost there,” I say. “We’re almost there.”
“Yes,” Laura quietly agrees. “We are.”
She walks, and I follow, and the exit draws closer step by step, the neon glow proving itself to be literal in more ways than one, because on the other side of that open arch is a parking lot, red carts scattered carelessly among the cars, the distant outline of a Target Superstore dominating the narrow slice of visible horizon. I want to laugh. I want to cry. It’s a liminal place, yes, but I never expected to find a big box store with its very own portal to the Underworld.
A wind is blowing through the door, a wind out of the land of the living, and it tastes like fall, like impending snow, like the distant grease of fast food restaurants and the exhaust rolling off the even more distant highway. All those little things will fade as soon as Laura looks back at me, covered up once again by the cotton veil of the dead. I’ll have them this brightly, this boldly, only when I’m wearing a borrowed coat and the borrowed flesh that goes with it.
I can’t wait. Being alive all the time is exhausting. I want the world to go back to the way it was, the way it’s supposed to be. I want the ghostroads to welcome me home.
Laura reaches the exit. She hesitates.
“I’m sorry, Rose,” she says, and keeps walking.
“Sorry? Sorry for what?” I try to stop.
I can’t.
Every step she takes past the exit jerks a matching step out of me, pulling me closer to the land of the living, like I’m tied to her with some unseen thread . . . and she’s not looking back.
“Laura!” I call, raising my voice to make sure she hears me. “You’re clear. You can’t be trapped. Look back!”
She keeps walking. She doesn’t look back.
“Laura!”
She stops. So do I, barely a foot from the exit. The light slanting through is too bright, and it almost touches my foot, almost illuminates me. I try to step backward. I can’t. My guide is in a different world now, and I am compelled to follow for as long as I can.
“I really am sorry,” she says. “This time with you . . . it hasn’t been like I thought it would be. I expected you to be colder, crueler. More selfish. You killed Tommy, and you never even looked back.”
“I didn’t kill Tommy,” I whisper.
“I know.” Her head sags forward, until her chin must be brushing against her chest, until her eyes must be fixed on the pavement beneath her feet. “I loved him, God how I loved him, but when he got an idea in his head, all the angels in the sky couldn’t get it out again. He wanted to race. He wanted to win us a future, and instead, he lost everything. I couldn’t stop him. You couldn’t stop him. I just needed someone I could blame.”
“Then why—”
“You weren’t the first person to call me.”
My heart stops in my chest. Literally stops, like it’s being clenched by an unseen hand. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. She can’t mean . . .
“I never made any secret of how much I hated you. How could I? You were my life’s work. Finding a way to unmake you was all I’d been working toward for so long. And then my phone rang, and the man on the other end offered to give me everything I’d ever wanted. He offered to make you pay.”
I find enough air to whisper, “What did you do?”
“What do you think I did?” Her laugh is thin and bitter. “I told Mr. Cross I’d be delighted to help him. I even told him the shape of the ritual that would block Persephone’s blessing from you. I said . . . I said it would take a lot of power to enact it. He said he’d take care of that part. I swear, Rose, he didn’t tell me he was going to kill anyone. He just said he’d handle things. All I had to do was give you a ride if you called me. All I had to do was get you here.”
“Killing me, though,” I say. “That was always the idea.”
“Yes.”
At least she isn’t trying to deny it. I’m not sure I could stand it if she lied to me again. “Turn around, Laura.”
“I’m sorry, Rose. I can’t. I told Bobby I’d deliver you to him, and I keep my word.”
“You told me that you would help me get home. What about your word to me? Doesn’t it count for anything?”
“You’re dead. Promises to you don’t count anymore.”
“I was alive when you told me you’d help,” I counter sharply. “I’m alive now. I’m more alive than Bobby Cross.”
“I’m sorry.” Laura takes a step forward. I’m jerked along in her wake. The light is on the toes of my shoes now. I’m so close to the land of the living, I’m so close—
“Wait!” It’s a scream, it’s a howl, it’s everything I have, and it’s enough. Laura stops again. I slump forward, hands on my knees, panting.
“He’ll be here soon,” she says softly. “Shouldn’t we get this over with?”
“What did he promise you?” I demand. “He said he’d help you destroy me, but what else? Did he say he could bring Tommy to life the same way?”
Silence. He did.
“It barely worked with me, Laura, and it’s not going to work with Tommy. He has no blessing to bind. If he did go to the fields on Halloween, it wouldn’t be with the Barrowman family, because Apple isn’t going to support them anymore. Bobby stole their daughter, you know. Their innocent, oblivious, living teenager. He stole her and he threatened to kill her if they didn’t help him resurrect me. What he did should have been impossible. This took him years to put together. Even if it hadn’t, even if it was easy, what makes you think Tommy would come back to you after you’d killed one of his only friends?”
“He loves me,” she whispers.
“And? He’s a teenage boy. You’re a grown woman. There’s nothing for the two of you in the land of the living. I can take you back to him once you’re dead. I can give you another chance to be together. All Bobby can do is make empty promises and break your heart.”
That, and shove me into the gas tank of his cursed car, breaking me down and burning me away, so that there’s nothing left but the rumor of an urban legend. I shudder, trying to stay focused on Laura.
“Please,” I say. “I thought we were friends. Please.”
“God, Rose, I’m—”
She starts to turn.
The bumper of Bobby’s car slams into her, knocking her out of sight. I scream. That’s all I have time for before my connection to her jerks me hard to the side, slamming me into the wall. Something snaps inside me, bright pain shooting through me in a wave, and I collapse to the ground, choking on my own blood.
When I lift my head, Bobby is standing just outside the cave.
“Hello, Rosie girl,” he purrs. “Naughty, naughty. Mustn’t try to convince my helpers to desert me. Now why don’t you come on out of there and let me teach you how a bad girl is punished?”
Breathing hurts. I spit at him. It comes out bright with blood, red and white as a peppermint stick. The sight of it makes my stomach churn. Whatever that wall broke inside of me, it was important. I need help, or I need Laura to come and look at me, to release me from this prison, which I can feel dying all around me.
“Come get me, you bastard,” I hiss.
“Now you know I can’t do that. This isn’t the way in to the Underworld, it’s the way out. So come on out and let me finish this. You’ve lost, Rosie. There’s no need in stretching it any further than it needs to go.”
I spit again, more weakly this time. I can’t go back. Laura is somewhere out of sight, and I still can’t move any farther away from her than I already am.
He can’t come in. I don’t dare come out.
Painfully, I start to laugh. Bobby scowls.
“What’s so funny? You stop that. Don’t you laugh at me.”
“You can’t come in,” I wheeze. The pain in my side is getting worse. “I’m going to die in here, Bobby. I’m going to die in the Underworld, and you can’t come in. That means I win. You can’t touch me.”
His eyes widen in alarm. “You don’t want that. An eternity in there, in the dark? You don’t want that.”
“Sure.” I wince and spit again, bright blood on the floor. “Persephone likes me. Maybe she’ll let me walk the dog. It’s a good dog. More dogs should come with extra heads.”
Bobby is clearly becoming frantic. He starts to pace outside the cave. “No. No! This isn’t how it ends, this isn’t—you wait right there, you little bitch. I’ll show you who wins. I’ll show you who the star is.”
He darts out of sight. I slump, hand pressed to my side, and struggle to breathe.
It wasn’t like this the first time I died. That was fast, fast enough to be virtually painless, for all that it hurt like hell. That isn’t as much of a contradiction as it may seem. When something happens fast enough, it doesn’t always make as much of an impression. This time I’m dying by inches. It’s getting harder to breathe. That’s my lungs filling up with blood. That’s my broken rib—or ribs, it’s hard to tell—digging deeper every time I inhale.
Then Bobby lunges back into view, dragging Laura by the arm. Her head is down. She looks unconscious.
“Where she goes, you follow!” he crows triumphantly, and twists as if to hurl her away.
He doesn’t see her fingers twitch. He doesn’t see her start to raise her head. But I do, and when she finally manages to raise her eyes, she looks right at me. Her lip is split. Blood runs down from both nostrils, caking the lower half of her face. She looks like a nightmare. She looks like my salvation.
“Oops,” she breathes. “Guess I’m early.”
Bobby howls fury and frustration. I barely hear him.
I’m too busy dying.