Why did I do it, she thought. Why did I drive alone? George would have come, and we coulda had some fun along the way, or Sue and Tasha. We coulda made it a girls' night out. Now I'm stalled out on the exit ramp twenty miles outside of Gary, Indiana, ten miles from anything. I shouldn't have been so cheap. Jason told me to do something about that transmission, and he's always been a good, honest mechanic. I said this car was seventeen years old and I would run her into the ground. Well, I guess I did. I ran the old boat right into the ground at three thirty in the freaking morning on the way to Mom's house. If I was going to be this stupid, driving alone through the rust belt in the middle of the night with a car that a mechanic told me could stop dead at any time, I could have at least charged my cell phone first. Mom could come out here and get me or send her boyfriend to pick me up, but she's not going to know I need a ride and a wrecker unless I can find a phone. Francesca got out of her elderly Ford and headed down the shoulder into town. She almost walked into the sign.




As she went through the grass just off the shoulder, she heard a low moan. Francesca jumped. She stopped and looked around. A rusted, green highway sign missing a few bolts was swinging back and forth in the night breeze, its reflective lettering faded and peeling. The sign and the cold air blown across her back, right through her thin t-shirt, made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Francesca shuddered. She had to squint to make out the words. She thought it said “Welcome to Greersville.” She kept walking, faster than she had been before.


The ramp led down into what was probably a main street before they built a bypass. All the stores looked abandoned, their empty windows gaping like open mouths. Most of them were broken. A few were boarded. Some were burnt out, blackened. There was ash and broken glass all over the cracked sidewalk. Francesca was glad she had left her work boots on. The streetlights loomed like skeletal giraffes. None of them were lit. One was leaning at an improbable angle. Francesca wondered if anyone lived here anymore. No one left at this address, she thought. Just me and the ghosts.