The Ferryman

by Christopher Golden

  The water was cold and soaked through his clothes as David grappled with his grandfather. He scrambled to get his feet beneath him, then hauled the old man up by his clothes. Edgar Bairstow’s eyes glistened ice blue and he smiled with jagged, yellowed teeth. So real, so nightmarishly true, this grinning ghoul forced David to feel again all the humiliation and self-loathing the old man had drummed into him as a child.

  He held on tight with his left hand and struck out with his right, the desire to shatter that smile so savage and primal in him that he had lost all control. But Grandpa Edgar’s face collapsed around his fist, flowed around it. David cried out and withdrew his hand and the old man’s face reformed, just as it had been.

  “You really are as stupid as I remember,” the old man croaked.

  Themeli shrugged Janine off, her arm sliding through the liquid of his throat, and she fell to her knees in the river.

  In the boat, Charon held up his lantern. The mist had always been thinner in the area around the boat, but now it dispersed almost completely, as though they were in the eye of a hurricane, the fog encircling them all around. A green light arced from the lantern and struck like lightning at Maggie’s chest. She stiffened a moment, and then she was only water again, splashing all across the boat as the emerald energy sizzled, then returned to the lantern. Spencer laughed.

  Suddenly David could hear Annette’s muffled cries more clearly, could make out her voice.

  “Jill?” she cried out. “Jill!”

  Grandpa Edgar hit him then, drove him down into the water so he was on his knees only a few feet away from Janine.

  Damn you, Hugh Charles, he thought desperately. Where are you?

  David nearly lost faith then. It would have been so easy. He had been responsible for cutting Maggie’s life short, and ever so briefly she had been given another chance at life. At love. Now she’d lost it all again.

  They could not destroy Charon. Hell, they could not even touch his creations if they did not allow it. Not here on the water. In their element. His place. And where was the priest, his friend, who had the power at least to deprive Charon of his servants?

  “David.” Janine coughed, spitting river water.

  He looked at her, saw in her eyes all that she felt for him.Though he loved her and knew she cared for him, David had always harbored doubts about the depth of her feelings. In an instant, that changed. He reached for her, and his grandfather kicked his arm away. David would not grant him the satisfaction of the merest grunt of pain.

  “That will do,” Charon said simply, his eerie voice now a rush of sound, as though the river itself were speaking.

  The Ferryman stepped out of his vessel and walked across the surface of the swirling water. The river held him up, solid beneath his stride. Janine moved closer to David, and this time the revenants did nothing to prevent it. Grandpa Edgar and Themeli moved aside as Charon arrived before them.The creature’s otherworldly gaze fell only upon Janine, and as David watched, she lifted her chin to stare back at him as though she could not resist his presence.

  “I know that you think me a monster. I would show you other worlds, magic things. I would prove otherwise,” the Ferryman promised, long robes whipping about him with the chill wind.

  The mist enveloped them all, then, closing in, creating an unwelcome intimacy.

  “No,” Janine said simply, softly.

  Yet the word rippled the mist around her.

  Charon touched the metal ring on his beard, twisted it as he considered that response. Bargaining. Yet what, David wondered, could a creature like this bargain with? The thought was harrowing. The wind and the mist and the river went on, but everything else seemed to pause in that moment. Then, at length, Charon inclined his head toward her and nodded.

  “Accompany me from this place,” the creature said, “and I will return your infant to you.You never held him in your arms. I can give him back to you.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Hugh Charles was a man of God. A man of faith. But he could not keep the doubt from rising within him as the Mystic River swept him up in its current. Though spring had arrived, the water was cold, and as it saturated his clothes, weighing him down, Father Charles felt sluggish and heavy and very, very old. He had removed his shoes on the shore before slipping into the water and swimming out away from the bank, but now he wished he had removed most of his clothing as well. It was not modesty, however, that made him stay dressed in his black garments, his white collar. Rather, it was that, clad in the vestments of the clergy, he felt like more than he was, like a soldier of his faith. It was a uniform, in its way, and it lent him a confidence he feared he might not otherwise possess.

  The clothes did not make the man. He knew that old adage well. But sometimes, he believed, the clothes might make the man something more.

  “Fool,” he muttered to himself, struggling to keep his face above the water. He was too old for this sort of thing, too out of shape.The water pulled at him, swirled around him. Father Charles could barely see the stars through the mist. The far shore of the river was blotted out entirely, but he could make out the dim outline of the bank from which he had pushed off. Somewhere, just up ahead, was the spot where he had left David and Janine alone.

  Abandoned them, he told himself.

  But he had not abandoned them. He had simply made a mental wager that the Ferryman’s affections for Janine would keep her alive, and that David’s wits would serve the same purpose for him. The moment Father Charles had seen the tainted green light of Charon’s lantern approaching through the mist, he had known that he must act. If they were to have any chance at all, not only of saving Annette but of surviving themselves, he had to get closer. Close enough to touch.

  So now he floated along with the current, expecting at any moment to come in sight of Charon’s ancient vessel.

  What are you doing, Hugh? What in God’s name are you doing?

  The question reverberated in his mind, and the first answer that came back was a bitter, frightened one. Drowning, it said. But he was not drowning. Not yet. He had not wanted, not dared, to strip his clothes off, but he had put his wallet and watch and keys inside his shoes back on the riverbank, and he sure as hell planned to go back and get them later. So drowning was completely out of the question. But all his thoughts about the weight of his sodden clothing and how deplorably unfit he was physically, all of that was merely his own way to distract him from the business at hand.

  Then there was no more time for distraction.

  The Ferryman’s boat bobbed on the water just ahead, miraculously unaffected by the current. The mist thinned as Father Charles was swept closer, and he saw that Charon was not in the boat, but standing atop the water ten feet closer to the riverbank. David and Janine were at the monster’s mercy, on their knees in the water.Two of his lackeys were there as well.

  With a frown, Father Charles worked against the weight of his drenched clothes and began to swim nearer the shore. He glanced around for the third of Charon’s servants. An idea struck him, and he looked back at the boat.Through the mist, he had thought it empty at first glance. Now, as the water rushed him closer, Father Charles saw Spencer Hahn seated in the boat, one arm slung around a diminutive, hooded figure, as though the two were great friends.

  Annette, the priest thought.

  For a moment he allowed himself to continue to merely float. Father Charles wore a crucifix on a chain around his neck, and its familiar weight was a comfort to him as he summoned his strength. Then he began to swim, positioning himself in the river so that the current would sweep him right up to the side of the boat.

  He opened his mouth to intone the blessing and dipped under the surface a moment. When he emerged he was sputtering, choking a little on the river water, but he tried to be as quiet as possible. The boat, frozen there on the roiling surface, seemed to rush toward him, though of course it was the current that swept him toward it. He was running out of time. Chin up, out of the water, he spoke the Latin
rite that would transform ordinary water into holy water. The blessing gave the water over to God, made it His tool. Once before it had shaken the Ferryman’s power over his natural element. It had to work again, or they were lost.

  The river seemed to drag him faster. Anxious, Father Charles hurried and stumbled over some of the words as he gazed at the riverbank and prayed Charon would not harm his friends before he could help them.

  Then the boat loomed up in front of him. Silhouetted there against the mist, Spencer looked roguishly handsome, and for a moment it was impossible to believe the man was dead. Father Charles kicked his legs beneath the water and spread his arms out, swimming to the left to make sure he was precisely on target. If he missed the boat, he wasn’t likely to ever get another chance.

  Spencer frowned and cocked his head, as though he had heard something. The splashing the priest had made while swimming? Whatever caught his attention, it did not matter, for Spencer turned and looked down into the water, and he saw.

  A grin split his features and he said something, though the priest could not make out the words as he swam.The hooded figure perked up and Father Charles felt hope surge within him. It was Annette, he was sure now, and she was not only alive, but aware.

  Three times he repeated the last line of the Latin rite. He was a dozen feet away. Nine feet. Six.

  Spencer stood up shakily in the boat and began to unzip his pants. “Come for a swim, Father.”

  Three feet, and now the priest was close enough to understand every word. Spencer intended to piss on him. The boat rocked as he pulled his pants down just a bit, laughing.

  Father Charles lifted his hand from the water and made the sign of the cross in the air. Then he slammed into the side of the boat and grabbed hold. It rocked with the impact, and Spencer began to tumble over the side.

  Even as he fell, whatever power had held his body together was thrown off. The water that comprised Spencer Hahn’s form splashed down into the river with a slap, merged with the eddying current and had no more identity of its own. God had taken that water back from Charon, and taken back Spencer Hahn’s soul as well.

  Hugh Charles hung on the side of the boat for a long moment, panting, exhaustion creeping into his bones.Yet he no longer felt cold. A kind of warmth and light had filled him, for he had witnessed, first-hand, the power of faith.Though he had not always been certain of it, he believed now with all his heart that his faith would not fail him.

  A thin smile on his features, Father Charles hauled himself up over the side of the boat.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Annette snapped, her voice muffled beneath the hood.

  “Annette,” he said. “Just hold on.”

  He scrambled carefully across the ancient timber of the boat and drew the hood off of her. Father Charles flinched when he saw the deep purple bruise on her mouth and a long cut above one of her eyebrows, but Annette barely seemed to notice that she was hurt. Her green eyes were bright and alive.

  And angry.

  “Janine and David,” she said, glancing quickly around.

  “They need our help,” Father Charles told her.

  “Damn straight.”

  I can give him back to you.

  The words echoed in Janine’s mind. Her skin seemed to tingle with them. Her mouth was dry with the taste of them.The soft soil of the river was like quicksand beneath her knees, pulling at her just as the water did, just as her grief did. Janine had never felt so human, so physical, so of the flesh. Her bones felt heavy, her limbs and her breasts and the tight fist of confusion and pain in her gut all took on a ponderous weight that threatened to drag her under.

  Her mind reeled for several moments as she tried to put a name to that feeling, tried to understand this horrible, carnal weight.Yet somehow, deep within her soul, she knew precisely what it was.

  It was life.The burden of living. Once upon a time Janine had been young and happy and not too modest to admit that she was beautiful, at least to some. Now she saw that woman she had been through the haze of her grief. The world around her had been reduced to little more than a fading façade, a collection of pitiful stage props. Her baby had been a miracle, a spark of something true and good within her, but the baby had died. Now her mother was dead as well.

  And Janine knew that death would come for her as well. If not today, well, it was only a matter of time.The days and years in between consisted of little more than treading water until the day. And if that were true, then what was the point of it all, really? Once upon a time she had believed that death was the end, that only oblivion awaited beyond the world she knew. Now that she knew—knew absolutely for certain in a way that most people never would—that there was an afterlife, another world where the souls of her son and both her parents now resided ... why live?

  Tears began to stream down Janine’s face. She tasted the salt on her lips and savored it, for with the mist all around and the river soaking her pants and rushing past her legs, her tears were the only water not under the control of the Ferryman. Of death.

  Her knees were weak and yet somehow she managed to stand. The water came halfway up her calves, but instead of backing toward the shore, Janine moved deeper, wading in until she was nearly waist-deep. In the starlight, she could see that the edges of Charon’s robe hung right down to the surface of the river, floated and swirled with the current around his legs, and yet never seemed to become wet.

  She gazed at Charon then. A tiny smile played at the edges of the creature’s cold, white lips. His black eyes followed her as she drew within a few feet of him.

  Janine closed her eyes.

  “No,” David cried, off to her left. “Janine, don’t do it! Don’t go with him! I love you. He can’t take you if you don’t want to go, don’t you see? Just like when you almost died. You wouldn’t go with him and he couldn’t take you. Don’t go!”

  Her heart ached with love for David, but Janine did not open her eyes. She inhaled deeply, had the scent of the river in her nostrils, and she focused on the feeling of the water rushing around her waist, pulling on her, urging her to follow the path of the river.To give in to it.

  In her mind’s eye, she saw again myriad images from the erotic dreams visited upon her by Charon, felt his hands upon her again and the yearning within her as she arched her back, her body reaching toward his touch like flowers to the sun. His cold lips upon her breasts.

  “The coins,” Charon whispered now, his voice the river itself.

  Sure enough, Janine could feel the sudden weight in her pocket of a handful of silver coins. Her eyes fluttered open. The breeze ruffled her hair as she stared up at the Ferryman. The metal ring in his beard gleamed. He held his lantern aloft with one hand and held the other down to her and there was a hunger in his eyes now. A hunger for her, passionate and dark. A hunger to taste and feel her, as if she were life itself.

  To him, perhaps she was.

  “Janine!” David cried again.

  She glanced over at him, where he knelt in the water, flanked by his grandfather and Steve Themeli. David’s brown eyes were desperate, filled with fear and love. There was beard stubble on his chin, and she could imagine it, could practically feel it, scratching her face when they kissed. His sodden sweater dragged off him. David looked drowned, beaten, but in that very same moment he forced himself to stand and rushed toward her, too fast for Grandpa Edgar or Themeli to grab him.

  With a flick of Charon’s wrist, a jet of water shot up from the river and drove David back toward the ghosts, the dead men who had tormented him. His grandfather struck him in the face and David cried out. Themeli punched him in the kidneys and David bent over, tried to stumble away from them.

  He shouted her name again.

  Janine could not bear to see them hurt him anymore. With the exception of the love of this man and of her best friend, Annette, all the world had given her in the past year had been pain and sorrow. Her hand slipped into the water and, with some difficulty, snaked into the pocket of
her jeans. Despite the chill of the river, the coins felt warm as she withdrew them.

  Charon gazed longingly at her.

  “Yes, Janine,” the Ferryman said, his voice a silken whisper. “Come into the river with me.”

  She rubbed her thumb over the coins in her palm and gazed at the twin eclipses of his eyes. “Eternity with you, not alive or dead, drifting on the river between this world and the next?”

  Janine threw the coins into the river.

  She could hear the Ferryman gasp. It was almost comical.

  “You dare?” he roared furiously.

  Her tears still flowed, but now she took strength from them. Janine brought a hand to her cheeks and wiped them, licked the salt from her fingers. This was her life. Her power.

  The Ferryman’s creations gripped David on either side and stared at her in astonishment. Even David seemed stunned.

  “Sometimes living hurts too much,” Janine said, her voice ringing clear over the water, echoing back from the encircling shroud of mist. “But my heart beats and my blood flows, and it’s warm. And your river is never that. You’ve taken so much from me, but I still feel love. The sun will still rise. It’s life. Something you could never understand.”

  The blue veins in Charon’s face seemed almost to sink into his flesh, somehow pulled taut beneath that pale skin. He raised his lantern above his head and tendrils of emerald flame shot from it, dancing in the air around the Ferryman’s head. He sneered and for the first time she saw that his teeth were the silver of the coins, yet stained with brackish green, like the bottom of the river.

  He meant to kill her, she was sure. If she would not accompany him, he no longer needed to hide his presence in this world. And if punishment resulted, so be it.

  Janine saw all of that in his polished black eyes.

  Off to her left, the long-dead Edgar Bairstow was the only one who spoke. A single word.