The Ferryman

by Christopher Golden

What are you doing here?

  The words echoed through Janine’s mind time and again during David and Annette’s visit, but she dared not speak them. As they ate, and later as they simply sat in the sun-drenched living room, the temperature just cool enough for steam to rise from the cappuccino she had made, she sneaked glances at him from time to time and just marveled that he had come at all.

  I hurt you, she wanted to say. Why are you here?

  The answer that kept coming back to her was a simple one: He was there because she was hurting, and he cared. Somehow she was managing to survive despite the huge, agonizing wound torn in her heart by the loss of her baby son, and yet David’s presence—and the forgiveness implied by it—was enough to bring her nearly to tears.

  In so many ways, she felt like an imposter there in that apartment. Smiling, participating in small talk, showing interest, and all of it a mask to cover the numb, frozen core of her where nothing mattered anymore. And yet, whether she could truly feel it or not, this did matter. These friends mattered, or she would not even have made the attempt at normalcy. The pull of anxiety and depression dragged at her, but with Annette and David there—and, she had to admit, with the drug her doctor had prescribed—she knew there was more to the world than mourning. It felt as though she were trapped in some impenetrable bubble with her grief, but now, at least, she could see what lay beyond it.

  For the most part, they talked about St. Matthew’s, and a little about Medford High. They talked about their students and about teaching, and though the subject of Ralph Weiss’s death came up, they spent only a few minutes on that subject, as though death were too nearby at the moment and might overhear them and be drawn down to listen more closely. And nobody wanted that.

  David seemed blissfully unaware of her complicated feelings about him, and Janine was glad. She had a lot to work through before she could focus on something so trivial as romance.

  Still, it was a comfort being around him. David seemed so relaxed within himself, and Janine envied that easy confidence. He sprawled in his chair in the living room in gray pants and a white shirt, the remnants of the suit he had worn to the funeral, and he focused on her. After the time she’d spent with Spencer Hahn, whose attention had always seemed to be turned inward, just a few hours with David was refreshing.

  Annette noticed, of course. Janine caught her smiling a few times as the conversation turned in lazy circles. It made her love Annette all the more. She did not think she had ever had a better friend.

  The afternoon rolled on and the sun shifted in the sky so that the windows threw bright silhouettes onto the floor that seemed to stretch out and warp like reflections in a funhouse mirror. Janine grew tired. She did her best to hide it, but Annette noticed.A little after four o’clock, she glanced over at David.

  “We should probably get going,” Annette said.

  Janine expected more, some comment about how tired she looked or how much she needed her rest. But Annette added nothing to her declaration. David did not need the situation clarified to him. He glanced once at Annette, once at Janine, then nodded in understanding and stood up.

  “We really should. I need my beauty rest.”

  The women both laughed and David gave them an injured look that Janine remembered well.

  Annette stood as well, and Janine walked them both to the door. She could feel the empty apartment behind her back, the silence that awaited her when they were gone, and a bit of melancholy settled in. Yet somehow she did not mind. If she could only take the time to become accustomed to her pain, on her own, Janine thought she would be all right.

  “Thanks so much for coming. Both of you.” She pulled Annette into a tight hug and whispered in her ear, “You’re the best.”

  “Someone’s gotta be.” Annette kissed her cheek before stepping out onto the second-floor landing.

  Janine took both of David’s hands in her own. They were warm and strong, and she squeezed tightly.

  “It means a lot, you coming to visit.There are so many things I—”

  “Hey,” David interrupted, his voice soft. “You don’t have to.”

  She raised her eyebrows, dropped his hands, and poked him in the chest.“No interrupting. It’s a guy thing, I know. But no interrupting.”

  With a thin smile, he raised his hands in surrender and nodded once for her to continue.

  “I did a lot of things wrong. Not just wrong, but stupid,” Janine said. She hugged herself a moment, then let her arms hang limp, her hands fluttering awkwardly, unsure what to do with them.

  She allowed herself a tiny shrug. “I guess what I’m saying is, I’m glad you don’t hate me. I’m glad you came.”

  David gazed at her expectantly, as though making sure she was through speaking. He did not want to risk interrupting her, apparently. Then he nodded again.

  “Me too.” His wistful smile disappeared then, and a flicker of pain passed over his features.

  Janine stepped in to slip her arms around him. David held her close and she could feel the heat of his breath on her neck, the power of his hands on her back.

  “I’m sorry, Janine,” he said, his voice low. “For all of what happened to you, but especially for the baby. If you want to talk at all, or you want to just get a coffee or whatever, call me. Nothing complicated. I just want you to know I’m your friend.”

  They ended the embrace, but she held on to his hands again. “I know that, David. I really do.”

  Annette promised to call the next day, and a moment later Janine closed the door behind them.

  She took a long breath and leaned against the door.Tears began to slip down her cheeks. Janine wiped them away quickly. It had grown chilly as the afternoon waned, but her windows were still wide open. Goose bumps rose on her arms and she hugged herself tight.

  Nothing complicated, David had said.

  “Too late,” Janine told her empty apartment.

  That night, she dreamed of a river.

  The place is familiar. Janine has been here before.The air is heavy and damp and the ground beneath her feet is a wet, gritty mire.

  It is dark; so very dark.

  Her eyes adjust slowly, and she finds that there are stars in the sky. But they do not look like real stars. It is almost as though they are painted there, pinpricks in a sky ceiling that feels much lower than it appears. She can almost feel the weight of it pressing down on her, just as the oppressive feeling of the place itself seems to close in on her, suffocating her.

  Only the sound of the river can be heard as it whispers along its ever-changing route. How can something be both eternal and ephemeral? And yet it is. It stretches out before her as far as she can see, as far as she can imagine seeing. Wide as an ocean, yet it flows past her, rolling toward some unfathomable destination, or perhaps simply in a circle, ringing whatever lies across its breadth in a never-ending current.

  Janine does not want to be here. She wants to go home. She wants to wake up.

  Wake up, for she knows this is a dream.

  But the damp, and the mire between her toes, and the sound of the river are all so real. Behind her is a dark wood where the trees grow too close together, as though standing fast against intruders. Or anyone who might retreat from the river.

  Retreat.That’s what she had done.

  Janine had not crossed the river. She had run, and thrown the coins, and ...

  Somewhere, close by, a baby cried.The sound pierced her and she held her breath for long minutes until she felt as though she no longer even needed to breathe. Down here, on the bank of this river, perhaps that was true.

  The clanking of metal made her jump.

  She stumbled back, away from the riverbank, and the ground was more solid under her feet.Warm and dry. Janine stared out at the river at the lantern light that shone from the darkness like the single eye of some beast from the riverbed.

  But she knew. She knew because she had been here before, heard that clanking of metal before.

  Panicked, she r
eached into her pockets, but found no coins. Nothing to pay for her passage. She did not want to cross, and now she could not even if she did.

  The wailing of the infant seemed closer than before. The baby crying for its mother.Warm, salty tears cut paths down her cheeks and Janine could taste them.

  But this was a dream. She should not be able to taste her tears.

  The clanking of metal moved closer, and she saw the prow of the small boat now, illuminated by the sickly light from the lantern that thunked against its post.

  Slowly, the vessel glided up against the bank of the river and grounded with a hush against the grainy earth there.

  Janine backed up a few more steps, but she stared at the small boat, a dark pain rippling across her chest.

  The lantern stopped swaying.

  Abruptly, the baby stopped crying.

  The boat was empty.

  A sudden, unreasoning fear swept over her. Janine stumbled backward, lost her footing, and then scrambled to her feet to flee toward the trees.

  Where is he? she thought.

  This isn’t right.

  She glanced back at the boat, rocking ever so gently on the river’s edge.The lantern gleamed, the empty vessel haunted by the absence of its master.

  Janine ran, breathing again, but in ragged gasps. She was frantic with the terrible dread that seeped into her bones just as the damp of this place had done.

  She ran into him, nearly fell down as she struck his chest. He gripped her arms to hold her up, and she gazed into those black eclipse-eyes and knew she had to run from him.

  Yet she could not.

  Her body would not obey her, as though she had been frozen to the spot by the touch of those long, tapered fingers. His pale features seemed carved from marble, expressionless, inhuman. But then his mouth twitched and his lips parted, and it seemed he wanted to speak to her but hesitated.

  The Ferryman kissed her then. Lips rough and dry on her own, so cold that it hurt. His breath was like frost.

  Janine swayed, helpless a moment.Then the kiss ended and the Ferryman gazed down upon her.

  “Do not fear me, Janine,” he said, voice like the clanking of his lantern against wood. “I am here for you.

  “I am here.”

  A tiny sound escaped Janine’s lips as her eyes opened abruptly. There was no passage between sleeping and waking. Rather, she was instantly aware of the room around her, the streetlamps outside just enough to deepen the shadows and cast a sort of gloomy illumination upon the floor and the edge of the bed.

  Something rustled in the shadows by her door.

  Janine sat and stared, wide-eyed, around her room, unnerved by the dream, which did not dissipate the way most dreams do after waking. Her heart thumped loudly in her chest as she peered into the dark around her, gazing at every corner, convinced that she was not alone.

  It would be more than an hour before she would be able to sleep again.

  Her lips were so cold.

  CHAPTER 4

  On Sunday morning, little more than a week after she had come home from the hospital, the phone woke Janine from out of a dream in which she cradled her baby boy against her chest and sang a lullaby. A discordant ringing disrupted her song. At the third ring her eyes fluttered open and she glanced down at her empty arms with a sense of loss unrivaled by any she had felt thus far.

  The dream began to slip away but she could still feel the weight of her infant in her arms.

  A quick glance at her alarm clock revealed that it was after ten a.m. The sun had warmed her bedroom and the sweet smells of spring and growing things were carried in on the breezes that billowed the curtains.The day was moving along without her.

  Had she thought about it only a moment, she would have let the answering machine pick up. But Janine was angry—at herself for sleeping so late, and at the caller for taking her dream child away. After the fourth ring, even as the machine clicked on, she picked it up.

  “Hello?” she said, her voice raspier than she had expected.

  “Oh, Janine, did I wake you?”

  Her mother. Janine closed her eyes and pressed her head deeper into her pillow.

  “You did, actually, but I should be up anyway.”

  “Is everything all right? Why are you sleeping so late? It can’t be good for you to become some sort of recluse now. You should be out. Doing something. You know—”

  “Getting on with my life?” Janine suggested tiredly.

  “Exactly,” Ruth Vale replied.

  “Thank you for the advice, Mother. It never occurred to me.”

  Her mother was silent a moment on the other end of the line, and Janine could practically see the perfectly coiffed woman with her lips pursed in stern disapproval.

  “I don’t think sarcasm solves anything,” Ruth told her.

  Yet you fall back on it again and again, Janine thought.

  Idly scratching the back of her head, she sat up and stretched. A moment later she rose and went to the window, pushing aside the curtains with two fingers to gaze out at the sparklingly bright day.

  “You’re right,” Janine said, as she leaned against the wall and watched a pair of bluejays flitting from one tree to another. “I’m just not sleeping that well, Mother.”

  “Maybe it’s the medication,” her mother suggested quickly, their momentary conflict already forgotten. “You know you have to be careful what they prescribe for you.”

  “I’ll look into it.”

  Portable phone in hand, Janine opened the curtained French doors and went out into the living room. It was so bright she had to blink a few times and she felt energized by all that sun. Just as her plants seemed to lean toward the windows to soak up the rays, so was Janine drawn that way a moment.

  “So what’s going on, Mother?”

  Janine spun on one heel and strode into the kitchen, where she began to put water on for tea as her mother hesitated on the phone.

  “Well, I’ve talked to Larry about it, and we both think it’s time you had a fresh start. I wonder if you’ve considered that. It might be just what you need, Nina. You could move back here, even work at the agency.”

  Stunned, Janine tightened her grip on the phone. She held a box of tea bags in the other hand and stared at it stupidly, as though she had forgotten why she had taken it out.

  “And do what?” she asked.

  “There’s no need for that tone,” her mother said with a sniff. “I’m only offering to help. Not everyone has the chance to start fresh, you know. I’d think you’d be grateful.”

  Janine swallowed hard, took a deep breath to compose herself, then set the box of tea bags down and opened the cabinet to reach for a cup.

  “I am grateful, Mother. It’s very kind of you to suggest it. But I like it here. I don’t know what I’d do at the agency. I’m a teacher, you know? It’s what I do.”

  “Now, Janine, it isn’t as though teaching has made you happy. It may be what you do, but it isn’t who you are.”

  The kettle began to whistle on the stove. Janine only glared at it for a moment. Her right hand fluttered a bit in the air and she shook her head before plucking the kettle off the burner.

  It isn’t who you are. So who am I? Janine bit her lip. Mommy, that’s who I was supposed to be. Her mother was right, in a way. She had never defined herself by her status as a teacher the way David and Annette both did. It was much more important to them than it was to her. So what was she?

  Shallow as it seemed to her, she had felt that the baby she carried would have given her a certain identity, at least in her own mind. But that was not to be.

  “You know what, Mother? I can’t do this right now. I’m not ready to have this conversation.”

  Ruth paused a moment. The empty, hollow sound on the phone seemed to Janine to speak volumes about the real distance between them.

  “If you change your mind, we’re always here for you, Janine,” her mother said.

  “I appreciate that.”

 
“So you’ll be returning to work soon?”

  “One more week out, then I’m back,” Janine replied, though it was a decision she had made only as the words came out of her mouth. It felt right to her, though.

  “Have you given any more thought to a memorial service for the baby?”

  Janine poured water for her tea. Her hand wavered only a little. “Not really.”

  “We all need—”

  “Closure, Mother, yes, I know,” Janine snapped. She hauled open the refrigerator door and snatched a yogurt from a shelf. With her hip, she bumped the door closed.

  Then she stood, frozen, in the middle of the kitchen, phone in one hand and yogurt in the other, with her eyes squeezed shut. When she spoke again, her voice was almost a whisper.

  “Has it occurred to you that maybe I don’t want closure on this?”

  Ruth began to respond.

  “Good-bye, Mother,” Janine said.

  She hung up and left the phone on the counter while she stirred granola into her yogurt. At her kitchen table, she ate her meager breakfast and pretended to herself that the conversation had never happened at all. When she was through, Janine walked into the living room.

  The violin case stood against the wall, lonely and accusatory. She had not played since before ... since before. With a wan smile, she drifted as though hypnotized across the sun-drenched room and lifted her instrument from its case.

  It nestled, so smoothly textured, so familiar, under her chin. In her right hand, she held the bow out like a wand.Then she began to pluck at the strings, and then to tune, and finally to play.

  For just a little while, the music took her somewhere else, far away.

  Winchester, Massachusetts, was an old-money town with tree-shaded streets lined with brick Colonials, driveways populated by BMWs and Benzes, and the best public schools in New England. It might rub shoulders with Medford, but Winchester was never going to take its neighboring town home to the parents.

  On Sunday, just after noon, David drove his modest Volkswagen out past the Winchester Country Club for the birthday party of six-year-old Lucas Kenton. The boy’s parents, Geoff and Lily, had been high school sweethearts all the way back in St. Matthew’s, and had rediscovered each other after college graduation brought them home again.