by Colin Gigl
It was easy to tell that the concern was genuine, even if Charlie found it strange that Dirkley was suddenly so talkative. “Don’t let me worry you. I’m fine. Just a bit distracted, that’s all. Glad to know you’ve got my back. I mean that.”
Dirkley gave an almost carefree, goofy smile at that. “Not a problem. It’s the least I cou—”
“DAWSON?! IS CHARLES DAWSON HERE?!”
Both Dirkley and Charlie looked in the direction of the commotion. Just over the heads of several groups of Ferryman employees, Charlie could see a young black man in a shabby gray suit running in their direction, a flow of dreadlocks trailing in his wake. “MR. DAWSON!” His voice rose above the general din of the room as he spotted Charlie. The man mouthed something into the headset he wore—what it was, Charlie couldn’t say—before picking up speed. He arrived at Charlie and Dirkley’s station looking like he had ten things to say and time for only one.
“Thank God you’re still here. Ms. Johnson told me you have an assignment coming up, but . . . well, just damn glad you’re still here. Agent Campbell,” he said, offering his hand. But any warmth in his facial expression was being smothered by the air of urgency surrounding him.
Charlie shook the agent’s hand. “Pleasure. No, we haven’t started on the next case yet, but we were about to.”
Campbell hesitated, but only for an instant. “I need your help, Mr. Dawson. It’s an emergency.”
The corners of Charlie’s mouth went flat. Bad things always followed that word. It was never an emergency surprise party, or emergency free cupcake day.
“Did you clear this with Melissa?” When Campbell’s face indicated he didn’t recall the name, Charlie added, “Melissa Johnson? You know, our manager?”
Campbell’s expression turned to one Charlie would have described as half sheepish, half devil-may-care. “I . . . haven’t,” Campbell said.
When Campbell offered nothing else, Dirkley chimed in. “You know there’s an established protocol for this, Agent Campbell. The request has to go—”
“I know, Mr. Dupine.” Though he’d interrupted Dirkley, Charlie noted it sounded more out of desperation than annoyance. “But my team is in a situation that’s . . . It’s bad.”
“How bad are we talking here?” Dirkley’s expression had turned stern.
“Bad. We’ve got practically no info—my navigator can’t make heads or tails of the memory feed and it’s just about washed out. We know it’s a young woman, and that’s only because our Ferryman on the ground mentioned it when she called in to ask for assistance.”
“That’s it?” Dirkley said. “Young woman is all you’ve got? No age, occupation, family members?” Agent Campbell said nothing. “Name?” Dirkley continued, bemusement creeping into his voice. The agent simply shook his head. “You’re joking! Did your Ferryman at least say what the cause of death was?”
“Car accident. An ugly one,” Campbell said as he pulled out a form from his jacket pocket. He turned to Charlie. “My Ferryman—her name is Jennifer Smalling—she’s a rookie, Mr. Dawson. I spoke to her on the phone and she’s in bad shape. She’s panicking and I think she’s barely keeping it together. If someone doesn’t go in there, we’re going to lose her and the assignment. We’ve got an ETD in five minutes and—”
“No,” Dirkley interrupted. “Absolutely not. No way. Get your Ferryman out of there, but please leave Charlie out of this. We’ve got assignments of our own to take care of. Someone dropped the ball somewhere, and shame on them, but there’s no way we can pull this one out of the hat. I’m sorry, but no.”
Charlie glanced over his shoulder in moderate shock. Five minutes ago, he would have classified Dirkley being curt to someone in the same realm of impossibility occupied by the Cubs winning the World Series and honest politicians, but now he’d done it twice.
Campbell frowned but gave a surprisingly even-tempered reply. “I understand what I’m doing is out of line. I’m not proud of this. But the Ferryman in there is my friend. Maybe slightly more than a friend. I convinced her she should take this case, and right now, the fact that she’s completely in the shit—that’s on me. But more importantly, there’s a spirit who’s about to be denied her chance at the afterlife unless someone does something. So with all due respect, Mr. Dupine, if you were in my shoes, wouldn’t you ask the only person in this entire Institute who’s never failed an assignment to try and rescue yours?”
Dirkley said nothing. Charlie, however, had already made up his mind. He knew who Jen Smalling was, had talked to her a bit about random things recently in one of his better moods—welcomed her to the Institute, gotten a sense of her past, that sort of thing. She was a pleasant girl, had only been a Ferryman for a year or two, which was almost nothing in Ferryman time. Not that it mattered. Even if she’d hated his guts, it wouldn’t have changed Charlie’s decision.
“Give me the form.”
Both Dirkley and Campbell immediately turned to Charlie. “I’m sorry?” the agent said, clearly not anticipating that request.
“The form, the form,” Charlie said, waving his hand toward himself. “That’s the form for the case, right? I need it.” As soon as Campbell offered it halfway, Charlie whisked it from his grasp. “Here’s what I need from you, Campbell. Call in the code and tell them I’ll be assisting. Get someone to cover my next assignment. Also, get medical on standby, particularly someone who can do a psych eval. Got that? Jen’s probably going to be shaken up when she comes back.”
“Hey, Charlie—” Dirkley began, rising out of his seat now.
“Call the code in, Campbell,” Charlie said. The agent scrambled to get his headset mic back over his mouth. Scurrying a few steps away from Team Dawson’s area, he began speaking at a rapid clip.
Dirkley, however, wasn’t having it. “Charlie. Charlie! Hey, stop!” People turned to look, and realizing that, Dirkley quickly lowered his voice. The sharp tone, however, remained. “What the hell are you doing? There are other Ferrymen here—ones certainly more than capable of taking this on, might I add.”
Charlie, meanwhile, was stuffing the form into his jacket. No time for a clipboard on this one. “He didn’t ask other Ferrymen, Dirkley—he asked me. It’s a little crazy, I know, but how could I say no to that?”
“Great, it’s crazy—glad we can agree on something. As for saying no, it’s easy: you just say no! Why are you doing this?” Dirkley demanded in the same hushed but increasingly strident voice.
“Any information you can get, I need it relayed to me. I know you’re working in a nearly nonexistent time frame, but anything at this point is better than nothing. A name would be great, for starters.” Charlie took a step away from the desk, but stopped. Dirkley looked completely helpless at the situation unfolding before him. Charlie, who had reached inside his jacket for his Ferryman Key, replaced it momentarily and turned to face his partner. “Look, I can’t help it, Dirkley. I know I can do this. I don’t know if someone else can. Does that make me an arrogant son of a bitch? Maybe. Probably. I don’t know. But tell me I’m wrong, Dirkley. Go ahead. Tell me.”
“This isn’t the time for sarcasm,” Dirkley replied. His face was a revolving door of expressions: horror, resolve, concern, horror, resolve, concern.
“It wasn’t,” Charlie said. He didn’t have time for this. He needed to get going, to see what he could salvage, if anything. But as he turned to walk toward the Ferryman Door, Dirkley spoke up.
“Is it that hard to see we’re worried about you, Charlie, or do you just not care?”
Charlie stopped walking.
“When you disappeared after the Bradley case last week, for the first time, me and Melissa weren’t sure you’d come back. Isn’t it obvious that’s why she was so hard on you earlier? I know you’ve already figured out that we’re giving you easy cases tonight. And yet here you are, ready to be the martyr again.” He sighed. “I’m just . . . I’m afraid if you keep this up, we’re going to lose you.” He’d been holding his hands out in
front of his body, like some protective ward shielding him from Charlie’s reply, but now they fell to his sides. “There. I said it.”
There was a disconcerting moment where Charlie realized he didn’t have anything to say. Maybe it was brought about by the realization that for all his feigned stoicism, this job—the constant dealing with death, with misery, with the pleadings of honest people who were genuinely afraid to die, all of it—was not only eating him alive, but that the people closest to him knew it, too.
Dirkley was exactly right. Charlie was playing the martyr, because that was who he felt he needed to be. It didn’t matter to him that he’d been at this for two hundred and fifty years—far longer than the thirty to fifty most Ferrymen tended to put in.
He did it because of one word. One they used in situations like this, one that was far more dangerous than prodigy or genius, because it was the one word he actually cared for, the one that he secretly wanted everyone to whisper in hushed tones when he walked by.
Hero.
To Dirkley’s point, there was no argument for Charlie to make, no brilliant repartee stored away in the back of his head. Charlie knew what he was going to do because this wasn’t up for discussion.
“I’ve got a clear head right now, Dirkley, and it’s best that we make use of it. I’ll be back in one piece. I promise.” He looked at Dirkley with an earnestness that he hoped his partner could understand without asking—one that he tried to express as I hear you. You’re right. But not now. Please, not now. “I need to go. Did Campbell get the code in?”
Dirkley hesitated, weighing the options Charlie had left on the table. To be honest, Charlie wasn’t jealous of the position he’d put his navigator in. After an eternal moment, Dirkley quickly but awkwardly sat down at his desk and banged on his keyboard a bit. “Yeah, the code’s in.”
The key that felt so familiar in Charlie’s hand was out again, nestled in his palm. He was already twisting it in midair. “Good. When Melissa asks, please tell her this was all your idea.”
“Not a chance in hell,” Dirkley replied. His entire attention was locked on his computer screen, his fingers flying around the keys in front of him. “Be careful out there, all right?”
The Ferryman Door was already swinging closed.
* * *
THE FIRST SOUND Charlie heard on the other side was the unmistakable wail of someone in an extraordinary amount of pain. The second was the soft whimpering of a woman who seemed to be on the edge of absolutely losing it. The words came in one long string: “OhGodohdearGod,” muttered over and over again.
A dark stretch of dreary country road snaked out before Charlie as he exited the Ferryman Door. Above, the treetops formed a twisted web of scraggly branches, obscuring any light from the moon. The only meaningful illumination came from the car up ahead. Its interior lights were on, along with the taillights and one of its headlights. It looked like a sedan, but it was tough to say, given that it was currently wrapped around a very sturdy oak tree about ten feet off the road. The car was miraculously still running, though how, Charlie didn’t know. The whole left side of the car was a hodgepodge of crumpled plastic and crushed metal. If there were airbags in the car, they had very clearly failed to deploy; the deep scarlet bloodstains splattered across the beige dashboard gave little doubt of that. A long set of tire marks showed a dramatic swerve that led up to the scene of the accident, but Charlie could only see where they ended.
Through the shattered windshield of the car, her body now a mangled wreck all its own, was the as-of-yet-unnamed young woman of the assignment. The amount of visible blood on display was nigh incomprehensible. Charlie was no doctor, but he’d been around blood enough to know it was unbelievable she was still conscious. He couldn’t see her face clearly from where he stood, given the angle and lack of light, but he wouldn’t bet there was much of it left. Her left arm was nearly gone at the shoulder, probably only being held in place by what was left of her blouse sleeve. Her body convulsed in a short spasm before erupting in another agonizing cry.
Fucking hell, Charlie thought. Gruesome didn’t even begin to do this justice.
Off to the side of the car, more than a few steps back from the accident, was a petite young woman who looked on the verge of bursting into tears. Her black skirt and unremarkable heels were covered in dirt. She hesitantly took a step toward the car, but withdrew immediately when a fresh howl of agony ripped through the night.
“Jennifer!” Charlie yelled as he ran over to her.
The bewildered Ferryman turned to Charlie. “Mr. . . . Dawson?” She moved a few steps away from the accident, her eyes darting between him and the screaming woman. “I . . . I . . . I don’t— She, she was just . . . ! And then . . . the screaming, and, and . . . I mean, look at her!” She shook her head and took a moment to compose herself, but she was well beyond that point now. He could see the tears welling up in her eyes, her lips a thin, hard line as she fought to hold them back.
Charlie didn’t want to be a callous jerk, given Jen’s emotional state, but he knew he needed to move quickly if he was going to make this work. “Are you okay?” he asked.
She nodded profusely and attempted to say something, but the words refused to come out. After a couple deep breaths, she eventually collected herself. “Yes,” she managed to croak out.
Not much, but it was a start.
Charlie placed his hands firmly on both her shoulders so he could look at her squarely. “Listen to me. You have to leave. That’s not a suggestion—grab your key and get out of here. Go straight to Agent Campbell when you get back to the Institute. Do you understand? Go to Campbell.”
The empty look Smalling returned answered that question rather quickly. “I—I can’t, though. This is my case. I have to stay. Those are the rules.”
He squeezed her shoulders gently. “This is going to sound harsh, and it’s not meant to be, but you can’t help me right now. Jen, you need to leave—just go back before we lose any more time. Yes or no, do you understand?”
Standing helplessly rooted to the ground, her eyes darting back and forth between the accident victim and Charlie, Jennifer Smalling said, “No, I can’t. Protocol says I have to remain on the scene until the end. Besides, I can help you. I’m here, let me—”
Charlie resented what he was about to do. With a small jolt, he yanked her close and looked directly into her face. “Jen, seriously, so help me, you will get the fuck out of here right now!” His voice, a pale whisper when he started to speak, rose to a demanding shout as he finished. He hated the yelling, and hoped that Jen wouldn’t hate him in kind, but at that point, he needed action.
To Charlie’s disgust and relief, Jen cringed back from the outburst, then immediately began searching for her key, eventually succeeding in pulling it out. The loud click of her newly opened Ferryman Door echoed among the trees. She pushed it open, and with one last look over her shoulder, said, “I’m really sorry I fucked this one up,” and nothing more.
As her door soundlessly closed behind her, one singular thought crossed Charlie’s mind: This assignment was meant for me. He’d seen the sense of failure in her eyes, as obvious as the tears that had marked their corners. He could tell she wanted to say more before she left, maybe something to atone for what she believed was her fault. The truth, however, was that Jen should have never been here.
No, she should have been the one soothing Ethel the cat lady, and Charlie should have been here, not the other way around. Whatever way he looked at it, he didn’t see a way in which he wasn’t to blame. If he’d just managed to hold himself together longer or, failing that, at least not make it so stupidly obvious that he couldn’t, then this would have never happened. No Ferryman to save, no spirit on the brink of missing out on the afterlife. None of it.
But the damage was already done.
He shot a burst of air through his nostrils while he shook his own shoulders loose. Much as he wanted to, he didn’t have time to dwell on it, especially as now came th
e tricky part. He dove into his jacket pocket and yanked out Campbell’s form. He needed something, anything, to connect with this woman.
Charlie stole a glance at his watch. Two minutes until ETD.
Brutal, shocking deaths (e.g., the woman in front of him) had a tendency to create abnormally confused and uncooperative spirits. If his unnamed assignment died and he had nothing for her, Charlie was almost certain he’d lose her. He said a quick prayer to whatever gods, goddesses, or benevolent flying spaghetti monsters were listening, and opened up the sheet, hoping that Dirkley’s familiar Apple II font might be waiting for him on the page.
It was blank.
Charlie’s heart dropped. Without any information, he was dancing in the dark to music he couldn’t hear. It would be no mean feat to reason with a spirit Charlie knew nothing about, especially in the state he was imagining her arriving in. Possible, but about as far from ideal as he could get.
He started to fold the paper back up when he noticed it wasn’t actually blank; he’d missed something in the gloom. There in the upper right corner—small letters that he could barely make out. With a quick snap, the Ferryman pulled out his cell phone, using it as a makeshift flashlight to illuminate the form. They were words, and in Dirkley’s barely legible handwriting, no less. If ever there was a sign that Dirkley was operating completely under the gun, it was that.
Melissa Marissa Martha Matilda
All women’s names. More continued to fill the page before his eyes.
Media Matia Mary Marie Maria MARIA
Suddenly, the writing stopped. Then, in the middle of the page, where Dirkley usually provided a wealth of information, a word was quickly scrawled out in huge letters: MARIA. Underlined twice, then circled.