Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day by Seanan McGuire
By the time the ghosts and I reach the street, the theater is gone. Only the corn remains. There is no sign of Danny. Maybe it’s better that way.
“How are we getting home?” asks a ghost.
“Anyone know how to drive?” I reply, and laugh, filling my lungs with Mill Hollow air, watching the cornfield spread all the way to the ravine. A few people will be mighty surprised when they wake up in the morning. Or maybe not. It’s hard to say, in a place like this one, on a night when the moon is like a panther’s eye and the corn stretches out to the end of the world.
14: Make It Up Both Long and Narrow
A couple of the ghosts knew how to drive. It’s been five days, and we’re all home, and the world is exactly like it’s always been, and the world is totally new.
Delia and Avo were glad to have me back. The cats didn’t really notice. Delia has been in and out of my apartment since that night, feeding them, learning their little ways. She never asked if it was all right with me, and I’m grateful for that. She’s been around a long time. I think she has her ways of knowing things.
I think she might have known before I did.
It’s almost midnight, and I’ve been walking for hours, following the alleys, following the rustle of little rat feet on the concrete. It’s almost anticlimactic when I come around a bend and there she is, Sophie, tucked down between two trash cans with a nest of ratlings in her lap. She looks up at the sound of my footsteps. She relaxes when she sees who they belong to.
“Jenna,” she says. Her gaze sharpens, becoming puzzled, then sad. “That’s Brenda’s guitar.”
“Brenda had to go.” I offer the guitar to her. She takes it reverently, glancing at me to be sure it’s all right, that I truly mean it, that this isn’t some cruel joke. “I thought you might like this.”
“Yes, yes; thank you, yes,” she says. Then she frowns. “Did you want something in return?”
“I’d like to ask for something. It’s on you whether you give it.”
“What do you want?”
I take a breath. Am I really ready for this? I could stop now. I could wait a little longer. There’s always more time, if you’re willing to take it. That’s one of the beautiful things about being outside the normal flow of things. It’s easy to see that there’s always more time.
But I’m tired. I’ve gone home and I’ve seen that there’s nothing left to run from, and I’m done. This is right. This is how it finishes.
“I’ve earned it,” I say softly. “I’ve earned my last day. I want to take it from you.”
Sophie’s eyes widen. Then, wordlessly, she nods, and offers me her hand. Her fingers are smaller than mine, delicate and soft; it’s like holding hands with a child. The time flows out of her and into me, and I am a day older, I am a day closer to the grave, and there it is, finally, finally, after all this time, after all this running; I’ve reached the border of my dying day.
Sophie’s eyes widen further still, until I have to wonder what she’s seeing when she looks at me. Something has changed for her; I know that much. Something has changed for both of us.
“There you are.”
I turn and there’s Patty standing in the alley behind me, a smile on her face and a plastic flower barrette in her hair. I don’t think. I just run, yanking my hand away from Sophie and throwing my arms around my sister, burying my face against her skin. She smells of salt and peppermint soap. She caresses my hair, and everything is all right. Everything is going to be just fine.
“Took you long enough.”
I lift my head to look at her. The alley is gone. Sophie is gone. I’m a little sorry about that. I’d been meaning to say goodbye.
“Have you been waiting all this time?”
Patty shrugs, like it makes no difference to her; like forty years was the blink of an eye. “Not all this time. I had to show Ma and Pa where to go. Now I get to walk with you. All the way home.”
“You won’t leave me again, will you?”
“Never.” Patty’s hand slips into mine and holds me, holds me fast, the two Pace girls against the weight and width of the world. When she turns, I turn with her, and we walk, side by side, into the silvery light of something more than a mirror, something less than a moon. I don’t know where we’re going, but I know this:
It’s been a lot of years and a lot of miles, but I’m finally going home. And I am not afraid.
About the Author
Photograph by Beckett Gladney
SEANAN MCGUIRE is the author of the October Daye urban fantasy series, the InCryptid series, and several other works, both stand-alone and in trilogies. She also writes darker fiction as Mira Grant.
Seanan lives in a creaky old farmhouse in Northern California, which she shares with her cats, a vast collection of creepy dolls and horror movies, and sufficient books to qualify her as a fire hazard.
She was the winner of the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and in 2013 she became the first person ever to appear five times on the same Hugo ballot.
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Also by Seanan McGuire
Every Heart a Doorway
Sparrow Hill Road
THE OCTOBER DAY SERIES
Rosemary and Rue
A Local Habitation
An Artificial Night
Late Eclipses
One Salt Sea
Ashes of Honor
Chimes at Midnight
The Winter Long
A Red-Rose Chain
Once Broken Faith
THE INCRYPTID SERIES
Discount Armageddon
Midnight Blue-Light Special
Half-Off Ragnarok
Pocket Apocalypse
Chaos Choreography
THE INDEXING SERIES
Indexing
Indexing: Reflections
AS MIRA GRANT
THE NEWSFLESH SERIES
Feed
Deadline
Blackout
RISE: A Newsflesh Collection
THE PARASITOLOGY SERIES
Parasite
Symbiont
Chimera
Rolling in the Deep
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
1: Mill Hollow, 1972
2: Manhattan, 2015
3: Time Like a Ribbon
4: Bar No Ghost
5: Don’t Change Your Number
6: Fit the Living or Fit the Dead
7: Streetwise, Shadowfoolish
8: Sleepover in Manhattan
9: Home Again
10: Do What I Tell You To
11: Popcorn Dreams on a Silver Screen
12: By the Birchwood Bed
13: Mama, Mama, Make My Bed
14: Make It Up Both Long and Narrow
About the Author
Also by Seanan McGuire
Copyright Page
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novella are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
DUSK OR DARK OR DAWN OR DAY
Copyright © 2017 by Seanan McGuire
Widow by Martha Keller © 1940. Used by kind permission of the author.
Cover photographs by Emma Cox/Eye Em/Getty Images (corn), and Corey Weiner/Alamy Stock Phot
Cover design by Jamie Stafford-Hill
Edited by Lee Harris
All rights reserved.
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ISBN 978-0-7653-8388-4 (ebook)
ISBN 978-0-7653-9142-1 (trade paperback)
First Edition: January 2017
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Seanan McGuire, Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day