The Ferryman Institute

by Colin Gigl

  “It’s time to go, Maria,” he said.

  After she took another set of ungainly steps toward the door, she stopped and looked at Charlie, studying him. “Good-bye, Charlie. If you ever see my family, please tell them I’m waiting.” Then, she put one foot in front of the other and slowly, painfully, walked to the entrance of the door and beyond. The light enveloped her, and Maria was gone. The door closed soundlessly behind her.

  Charlie stood alone again as he placed his key back in his pocket, the only sound coming from the idling engine of Maria’s car. From inside his jacket, Charlie pulled out the Ferryman form he’d been given by Campbell. He stared at it, his eyes gravitating toward that one line—Assignment successfully ferried—the blank box next to it suddenly filling itself with Charlie Dawson’s customary checkmark.

  “Sure,” he said to no one, “I’ll tell them.” And maybe one day he would, when Maria’s husband or daughter drew their last breaths. Maybe it would be his assignment, and he’d be standing there, watching their final moments, key in hand, just waiting for them to die. Because that’s what he always did, and always would do. That was Charlie Dawson.

  He ripped the form into a hundred tiny pieces and tossed them to the sky. He watched as each fragment vanished almost instantly after leaving his hand, like the small cloud of paper was nothing more than a cheap trick of filtered moonlight.

  As he kept his face turned to the obscured sky, Charlie realized that, for once, Dirkley was wrong. Charlie wasn’t a martyr.

  Martyrs only had to sacrifice themselves once.

  With that thought firmly entrenched in his mind, Charlie’s palm found his key, and he headed back to the Institute.

  ALICE

  * * *

  LIFE DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

  Alice Spiegel wanted it all to end.

  A week had passed since the meatloaf incident, and her mental stability was only getting worse. She looked at the grim expression staring back at her in the mirror. Her eyes, swollen and puffy from crying, were encircled by rings that also betrayed a lack of sleep. Her skin seemed to be paler than ever (no surprise, really, given how infrequently she left the house these days).

  She was tired of it all.

  Alice looked away from the small vanity positioned on the edge of her desk and focused her attention on the sheet of paper in front of her. Write down how you think other people view you on the left side, and how you currently see yourself on the right, her therapist had said. If it weren’t for her respect and genuine fondness for the doctor, Alice would have patently ignored the idea outright. Still, she had nothing better to do—a recurring theme of late.

  She began to write. On the left: Bright, intelligent, witty, compassionate, funny. Miserable, depressed, demoralized, cowardly, broken on the right. Alice Spiegel in ten words, she thought glumly. Actually, I can probably cut that down to five. She summarily crossed off the entire left side of the paper. There, much better.

  Alice violently shook her head. With a grunt of disgust and frustration, she crumpled up the paper and stuck it in her mouth. She chewed on it gamely for a few seconds, then spit it out abruptly when she started tasting ink.

  My God, what is wrong with me?

  That was the worst part: she knew she was a functioning mess, but it was disturbingly evident how hard it was to uphold the functioning part of that equation. She couldn’t help it, though—her brain just wouldn’t turn off. It was such an easy thing to be told, Well, don’t think about it, but nobody ever told you what to do if that was impossible. What if she physically couldn’t stop thinking? What then? It was like her mind had become this horrific carousel where her thoughts spun in endless circles until their familiar melodies warped and distorted into some sort of Stephen King–inspired nightmare.

  She could feel it starting again as her brain began to twirl around with her strapped into the ride, helpless. It wasn’t one single thing that had so derailed the course of her life. Far from it. However, she had come to believe that the whole chain of events had been set in motion by a single error. That’s where the carousel ride picked up, as it usually did.

  It was an innocent enough mistake, really; a senior in college, aged twenty-two, Alice had made the tragic blunder of tempting Fate. Sitting at her desk, having just read an e-mail from her parents, she had looked over at Marc, her boyfriend of more than two years, with his sort of lopsided but still handsome smile, and said, “My life is perfect.”

  To be fair, it certainly seemed that way at the time. A steady guy, plans for a trip to Disney World in the works, a successful college career nearing completion in just a few short weeks, a couple screenplays in the works. After much deliberation, Alice had decided to move home after graduation, with her parents’ blessing, to pursue her dream of writing for the silver screen (though, worst come to worst, she’d also settle for a few prime-time comedies). It was admittedly a long shot, but her professors universally admired her work, and in the microcosm that was her small liberal-arts-fueled bubble, that was more than enough validation for her. It would also provide her an opportunity to reunite with her mother and two younger sisters, Carolyn and Kaitlin, whom Alice had seen far too little of during her college years. From there, the sky was the limit. A family with Marc, sunny California, the world of movies and celebrities, puking from the edge of the Hollywood sign after one too many appletinis with Jennifer Lawrence—it would be perfect.

  What Alice had failed to realize in that truly wonderful moment was that Fate happened to be a grumpy and vindictive old bastard. Now, that’s not to be confused with fate as a collective, which is a somewhat neutral thing—a little good here, a sprinkling of bad there, and off you go. Fate, though—the one with an ominous capitalization that generally bespoke terrible and nasty things . . . now it was one nasty motherfucker.

  Having heard the overflowing contentment in Alice’s voice as she spoke those four accursed words—My life is perfect—Fate realized it had to act quickly before too many good things happened. And so, just a few weeks later, after graduation, the cracks of Alice’s undoing began to open.

  It was Memorial Day, just after dinner. Alice’s parents told her and her siblings that they had something important to talk about, maybe it would be best if they all sat in the den. Seated on the family couch that Alice had gravitated to since they bought it twenty years ago, they broke the news of the divorce. It had been in the works for a while, apparently; it was a testament to her mother and father that they had revealed nothing of it to their children the whole time. It was the first blow to Alice’s perfect little world—the parents she so adored, whom she was so proud of, the people she held up to the world and said, This is the example of love and marriage I aspire to achieve in my life! . . . gone.

  But Alice wasn’t averse to a bit of adversity. It took her a few days, but she adjusted. Heck, she even began taking the new reality in stride. It was difficult, but she tried to help both her mom and dad as best she could. Everything will be fine, she told herself, so much so that it became her mantra: Everything will be fine, everything will be fine. Over and over, ad infinitum.

  Though Alice was doing rather well given her somewhat introverted sense of personal responsibility, Marc provided support when she needed a bit of propping up. He seemed permanently affable and easygoing, even at the worst of times, and had an innate sense for when Alice needed someone to pry a little bit, forcing her to open up about things she would otherwise bury inside. It was a fairly symbiotic thing—Alice occasionally venting about the frustrations that built up around the edges of her family life, Marc listening and playing the role of pseudo psychologist that he so enjoyed. But when August rolled around, he was off again to school, settling in for the second and final year of his master’s in mathematics at the University of Connecticut.

  Since she’d spent the past four years going to school in Connecticut herself, it took her a while to adjust to not living in the same state as Marc anymore. Thankfully, her writing schedule at least
allowed her the ability to visit for a short stretch of time once every so often. Sure, the drive from New Jersey was a little pricey on gas, and sure, Connecticut drivers on I-84 drove like half-blind grandmothers in a blizzard, but it was worth it. It was an escape for Alice, as her parents were starting to openly display the vitriol that had apparently been flying behind the facade of their perfect marriage. Alice and Marc played house together, in a sense, using Marc’s tidy apartment as a sandbox to test what a future life together would be like. She would bring her laptop and write while he was gone, either at class or TA-ing. They would cook and clean together, watch Jeopardy!, spend inordinate amounts of time snuggled on the couch. Lord, did it feel good.

  Fate, however, had apparently been biding its time, waiting for that opportune moment to reintroduce itself into Alice’s life with a bang. After Christmas, in late February, just when Alice was beginning to think things really were going to be all right, it snuck in the dagger blow.

  Her mother, now living with Alice and her two sisters after Dad had moved to a condo of his own, came home from a routine physical that she’d been putting off for months. Too busy taking care of her girls, she’d said. She felt fine, she’d said.

  Cancer, the doctor had said.

  Caught a month earlier and her chances would have been great. Unfortunately, it was not a month earlier. The cancer had rapidly metastasized, the word aggressive repeated with a frequency Alice didn’t care for. The twist of the knife, however, was the X-ray of her mother’s chest: Christine Spiegel’s lungs, once the pivotal organs of a five-time New York City Marathon finisher, were littered with bright spots, like a brisk New England snowfall. That, Alice learned quickly, was bad. Very bad.

  Still, Alice plugged on. She had a completed screenplay and was actively revising it. She immersed herself in it, trying to block out the real world with one of her own devising. Marc read through the script several times, offering good advice and notes along the way. But every time he read it, he seemed to finish a little less interested. Alice kept revising, adhering to a wholly unrealistic level of perfectionism. When Marc suggested Alice shop it around, she flinched, and began revising the script again, from the top.

  Marc, meanwhile, was making moves of his own. Several weeks prior to his graduation, he accepted a position at the IRS just outside of Washington, DC. It wasn’t anything particularly glorious, but it was money—a fact he pointed out to Alice, who wasn’t exactly swimming in cash—and a start to a career. She was excited for him, but when he made the not-so-subtle suggestion that she come join him, even offering her a potential place of employment at a family friend’s small law firm as an office assistant, she reluctantly refused. No, the time wasn’t right yet. She just needed a few more months, just a bit more time to help out her mom, her sisters, her dad. That was all it would be, she promised, a few months. They’d talk again in September. It was May, and she watched proudly as he graduated, thinking, He’ll make a great father one day, and believing it wholeheartedly.

  Two weeks later, just before Memorial Day, Marc started the move down to DC. He was oddly radio silent most of the time as he got set up down there, but Alice chalked it up to the move. He finally texted on Thursday and asked to see her the next day. She already knew what was going to happen—it was burning in the back of her mind when she went to bed that night.

  Fate wouldn’t have it any other way.

  When he showed up at Alice’s house, she climbed into the passenger seat of his hybrid SUV, but he made no effort to drive anywhere. He looked at her, his eyes no longer affable and friendly, but sad and perhaps a touch spiteful, and confirmed her worst fears.

  We’re just heading in two different directions, he’d said.

  The brave smile she had grown accustomed to lugging out over the past year was adopted again, frayed at the seams though it was. She understood; she was upset, but she’d manage. Busy with Mom and helping out her sisters and all that. Good luck, God bless. And then, he was completely gone from her life, almost exactly one year to the day of her parents’ divorce announcement. Fate loved coincidences like that.

  It became evident almost instantly that Marc had been not only her boyfriend, but also her best friend and primary confidant. Alice was, for better or worse, the receiver of grief from most of her admittedly small circle of friends. Now that Alice was single, she found that she felt remarkably uncomfortable sharing her own feelings of anger and sadness to anyone who wasn’t Marc. To make matters worse, she certainly couldn’t vent to her mother, the only other possibility. Despite Mrs. Spiegel’s brave face and apparent optimism, the woman was an absolute wreck between chemo sessions, physically and mentally. Alice’s dad was there for support, but her mom rarely let him come around, despite his wishes to the contrary, and Alice was too wrapped up in herself to go over there, either. There were Carolyn and Kaitlin, but they were both struggling with the crumbling of their collective family life, with varying degrees of success. In that sense, Alice couldn’t burden them with even more baggage courtesy of her own problems. Her father urged her to see a therapist, but that was another idea she rejected out of hand. I’m tough, she told herself, and that’s what my family needs right now. I’ll be the rock. Everything will be fine. I’ll be the rock. Over and over again in her head.

  But, like a cat who’s found the end of the ball of yarn and run away with it, things were already unraveling. She couldn’t work on the screenplay anymore—it reminded her too much of Marc. There were days that fact drove her to a near-frenzied rage, and others where it simply sapped the life from her. Her eating habits deteriorated, and she found solace in food. Her mom wasn’t cooking anymore, too tired from extended trips to the hospital. Alice imagined having poison pumped through your body was one way to quickly ruin a day. To compensate, McDonald’s and Ben & Jerry’s were often nearby and, in addition to a new lethargy that was invading her lifestyle, it began to show. Her once toned soccer body stopped fitting so nicely into dresses, then jeans, then even sweatpants. Size two became four, then eight. She watched with a detached dismay as her rear ballooned out behind her, her hips widened, her muscular thighs atrophied and began to touch, her arms jiggled ever so slightly when she found the willpower to actually write, her newfound potbelly occasionally poking her desk.

  There was money, too, to be aware of. Agents weren’t exactly knocking down her door to read her script, partially because she refused to show it to anyone, and typing out words didn’t translate to money in the bank. To compensate, she coached soccer in her free time, then supplemented that with some freelance copywriting for websites. It was enough to live off of, even if her parents were still paying the majority of her bills.

  Four months later, though, and her parents were no longer paying her bills. Just her parent, singular.

  Her mother had fought to the bitter end, all the doctors had assured her. They had done everything they could. She had given it her very best, they had given it their very best—everybody under the sun had given it their very circle-jerking best, apparently. If only they’d caught it sooner. If only, if only . . .

  In the end, Fate won. Alice was a wreck. She moved in with her dad to his cramped three-bedroom condo in the middle of New Jersey. Her appetite disappeared, slowly but surely, as did the pounds she’d put on, until she weighed less than she ever had in her adult life. She finally agreed to start seeing a psychiatrist at her father’s behest and was diagnosed in short order with situational depression. A prescription for Seroquel followed—a small dose, just to even her out and help with her newfound insomnia—but after a few weeks, Alice began flushing the pills down the toilet. Sure, they took the edge off her lows, but they took the edge off everything—she felt emotionally inferior to their toaster when she was on her meds. The talking helped, which was nice, but it only acted like an emotional Advil—it would dull the pain for a while, maybe a day or two, but the emptiness always came back.

  Such was her desperation that she briefly tried confiding in h
er father, but it was a short-lived experiment. Jonathan Spiegel was a kind man—Alice would never suggest otherwise—but he was aloof to a fault. There was bread to be won, especially as a single parent, a fact Alice sometimes suspected served as a convenient excuse for him to stay away. Who could argue with a few late nights at the office? Not that she blamed him—her mother had always been the one truly immersed in the lives of her girls. For her father to suddenly have to inherit that . . . well, talk about a stranger in a strange land.

  Yet even if his emotional contributions were lacking, financially he continued to support Alice and her sisters, just to differing degrees. Kaitlin, the youngest, was still in college, but putting herself through with scholarships (naturally, Alice had opted to attend the ridiculously expensive private liberal arts college that offered little in the way of financial aid), while Carolyn had just accepted a job as a sales associate at a small ad tech firm in Manhattan. It wasn’t much by way of money, but it was a salary and benefits—enough to provide her with, aside from living arrangements, self-sufficiency.

  Alice, on the other hand, was the true leech, relying on her dad to pay her bills, her insurance, her rent. She felt like a failure, and every day that her writing fell short of earning her a living felt like one more pound of weight placed on her weakening shoulders. It was crushing her, try as she might to hold on. The happiness, the laughter, the optimism she showed the outside world was all empty bravado, a ruse to fool the masses and perhaps even herself.

  Fate had won, all right, a cruel and uncompromising victory. She felt like a defenseless boxer being pummeled against the ropes, and despite the resounding, sickening blows that Fate continued to deal her, the ref refused to stop the fight.