Page 57 of Aftermarket Afterlife

A vast old farmhouse loomed to my left, one of those antediluvian pseudo-mansions that some of the logging families built during the early days of the state, the ones that were largely destroyed by “accidents” like fires and earthquakes when Oregon started trying to bury its racist origins. The state had been founded as a haven for white citizens fleeing the specter of reconstruction, and a daunting number of them had really believed they’d be able to close the gates and keep the world out forever. This architectural monument to the romantic idea of the American South broadcast its origins to anyone who cared to look, and I started walking just a little faster, not particularly wanting to meet the occupants.

Which is, of course, why the occupants came out to meet me. I was barely halfway past the property before the front door slammed and a man in coveralls emerged, a rake in one hand and a grim expression on his face. He started walking toward me, briskly, and the malleability of the twilight started working against me at the same time, as he was getting closer faster than I was getting down the road. I stopped where I was.

Might as well get this over with. Besides, I hadn’t done anything to offend the I-5 recently, and if she wasn’t mad at me, she wouldn’t let me be dragged off of her. She didn’t need to be a goddess to afford me that much protection.

“Stop where you are,” he shouted, as he got close enough to make himself heard.

“I already stopped?” I said, somewhat bewildered.

He came right up to the edge of the highway, eyeing me suspiciously. “What are you doing here? You some sort of runaway? Or vagrant?”

“Sir, I’m dead, just the same as you are,” I said. “As to what I’m doing, I’m walking the I-5 to the city. I have a right to do that. You don’t own the road.”

From the way his face puckered, like he’d just bitten into something sour, he knew he didn’t own the road, and he resented it. Men like him always wanted to own the world, dead or alive, and being reminded that he didn’t offended him. I eyed him and took a step backward, closer to the middle of the highway. Better to get hit by some phantom rider who wasn’t looking where they were going than to be grabbed by some old homesteader and dragged off into the fields to be part of some antiquated wicker man routine.

Ghosts in the daylight can be injured, can get hurt, but are very rarely in any actual danger. The twilight is another matter. This man was armed, even if only with a rake, and he could hurt me in ways it would take me time to recover from. Time I didn’t currently have.

“This is private property!”

“Maybe whereyou’restanding.I’mstanding on the I-5, the Rainbow Road from Mexico to Canada, and she’s never been private property. And I don’t have time for this.”

He took a step toward the edge of the road, almost hesitant, still scowling. I didn’t like that look.

I had four choices. I could flip myself back up to the daylight, without Jane, and hope I’d be able to find her again when I came back. I could drop down to the starlight, and really, that would be the same situation, moving between planes of reality without a guarantee of coming back here. I could run, and hope he wouldn’t be able to catch me.

Or I could flag down a ride.

I didn’t want to attract the attention of the road, but right now, that felt safer than staying where I was. I pulled my right hand out of my pocket, already balled into a fist, thumb jutting upward, and stuck it out in near-imitation of the family’s other resident ghost. Rose was made to hitchhike, shaped by the needs and requirements of the road. I wasn’t. I just had to hope, in that moment, that the I-5 was feeling generous and I’d been around the Healys for long enough that a little bit of their ridiculous luck would have rubbed off on me.

The man took another step toward me, onto the road itself. It held his weight, and he smiled, ever so slightly, as he advanced toward me.

I held my ground, fighting the urge to flee, whether on foot or to another level of the afterlife. I needed to be here, with Jane. I needed to figure out how I was keeping her body from being weaponized against her family. And I needed to do it without abandoning her in the woods to rot. I kept my hand firmly in position, thumb jutting toward the sky.

And in the distance—not the far distance, either—someone leaned on their horn. I glanced over my shoulder. A truck was bearing down on me, the driver honking to tell me I should get out of the way.

I looked back at the advancing homesteader and shrugged broadly, trying to look like I was sorry to have our unwanted conversation cut short. Then I backpedaled toward the other side of the road, waiting for the truck to pass between us, hoping against all hope that it would stop.

It stopped. The passenger side door swung open, and the driver beckoned for me to get inside. “Come on,” he called. “Jolene and me don’t have all day.”

I hesitated for barely an instant, then ran toward the truck, grabbing the bar above the door to swing myself up and into the seat. The door closed without my touching it, and the seatbelt slid across my shoulder and waist like a living thing, some sort of sleek, boneless serpent.

As this happened, the driver laughed, saying, “Not all day, but all eternity. Come on, old girl, let’s get this young girl where she’s trying to go.”

The truck’s engine revved, almost like it was answering him, and we went shooting off down the highway, leaving homestead and homesteader behind us. I relaxed, marginally. “Thank you, sir,” I said. “I really appreciate it.”

“Oh, he harasses all the dead who come along this way,” he said, easy as anything. “Man’s been gone a century, still thinks he owns the road just because it cuts through what used to be his land. Poor bastard doesn’t understand his kids sold off the acreage and moved to Seattle as soon as he was in the ground. They didn’t want anything to do with him or his poisoned roots.” He guffawed with sincere delight, seeming to think this was the funniest thing that had ever happened.

I squirmed in my oddly warm seat. Trucks this old don’t normally have heated seats, but this one felt like it did, almost like I was sitting on the back of a living creature. “Yeah, people move on,” I said. “I’m Mary. You are?”

“I’m Carl,” he said, and patted the dashboard like a pet. “This here’s Jolene. We’re right glad to meet you, Mary. A pretty little thing like you shouldn’t be tussling with nasty old ghosts like him. And before you start worrying that I’m being kind because I’ve got some sort of ulterior motive, don’t. I couldn’t do anything to you if I were inclined in that direction, which I’m not.” He gestured to his denim-clad thigh like it held the answer to the mysteries of the universe.

I looked a little closer, seeing the seam where his jeans melted into the truck’s upholstery, and maybe that did hold the answers. I glanced back up at his face. “Coachman?”

“Yup.”

“You don’t seem old enough to be a coachman.”

“Funny. That’s what everyone who knows that word says. But even the oldest types of ghost sometimes start a fresh haunting, and I guess I loved my girl enough that we’re really married now, on the other side of the grave.”

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