The Ferryman

by Christopher Golden

  Father Jessup nodded grimly. “Teachers.Well, I guess we’ll find out what sort of teachers you are.”

  “How do you mean?” Janine asked, surprised to find herself speaking at all.

  But the old priest grinned. “Too many think once you can teach, you don’t have anything more to learn. I guess you’ve already learned how wrong that approach is, just by what Hugh here’s already told me.”

  With a tiny grimace at the pain in his lower back and legs, Father Jessup reached out to shake both their hands. “Well, sit, then, and tell me what it is you’ve come to tell me. Trust me when I say it can’t be any crazier than a lot of the things I’ve heard over the years.

  “Fortunately for you two, I’m about the craziest old coot in the place.” He winked at Father Charles as he said it, but there was a bitterness in his voice as well. “Ask anyone; they’ll tell you.”

  So the four of them sat at the long oak table in the back of the library, and Hugh Charles slipped his old teacher a few cigars that Father Jessup quickly hid inside his sweater with a conspiratorial glance. The two men bemoaned the lack of good whiskey in the place.

  And then Janine and David told their stories.

  Father Jessup listened intently throughout, and Janine noticed that Father Charles was also paying close attention, though he had heard it all before.

  When they were through, Cornelius Jessup leaned back in his uncomfortable wooden chair and rubbed his stiff back. His gaze drifted from Janine to David to Father Charles and then off to some distant point where only his eyes could see anything of importance. He reached inside his sweater and drew out one of the contraband cigars, peeled the crinkling plastic wrapper off it, and sniffed it exotically.

  Then he clenched the cigar between his teeth and rose with difficulty from his seat.

  “Give me a moment, would you?” he asked.

  Then he began to drift amongst the books. For more than twenty minutes, while the rest of them made lame efforts at small talk, the old man puttered amongst the books, reading titles and, from time to time, pulling a volume off the shelf to peruse a few pages.

  Then, abruptly, he abandoned the shelves and returned to the table. He slid in painful increments into the seat, cigar still jutting from his lips. Then he removed the cigar and placed it carefully on the table in front of him, lining it up as though he were a carpenter taking invaluable measurements.

  Finally, he regarded them again. His eyes were narrowed slightly, deepening the lines on his face as he adjusted the square glasses that sat on the bridge of his nose, his hands shaking slightly.

  “Let me first say that I believe you,” Father Jessup told them. “Everything that you’ve told me would be dismissed as ridiculous by the Church, of course, but that’s good for business, isn’t it? For us, I mean. The Church. In the fifty-seven years since I was first called to the service of God, I have seen a great many odd things. Sought them out, I should confess. It has earned me a reputation that is not entirely flattering.”

  Father Charles began to speak, but the old priest shot a finger out toward him.

  “Not a word from you,” Jessup commanded, and Father Charles obeyed.

  “I have given my life over to the study of faith, my young friends,” Father Jessup continued, his eyes flashing and alive now with a renewed spark. “To belief. To spirituality and what is often perceived as the supernatural. So, yes, I believe everything you have told me.

  “But there is one part of this story you’ve left out. It’s a vital part, I think, and before I can formulate a hypothesis, it’s a tale I should like to hear.”

  Janine raised her eyebrows. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed David watching her. She shrugged.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “The first time you saw him, Janine,” the priest said gently. “During labor, when you lost your baby.You haven’t talked about that at all.Tell me about that.Talk to me about what it was like to die.”

  CHAPTER 14

  On the way home from the school, Annette stopped to pick up a few things at the grocery store. She had subbed for one of David’s classes and had not been able to eat lunch as a result. It was never a good idea to go to the supermarket when she was hungry, so rather than just the milk, bread, and juice she had intended to buy, she also had a block of cheddar cheese, a bag of cookies, brownie mix, and a frozen pizza she knew she would regret buying.

  Tired and hungry, she lugged her groceries from the parking lot to her building and managed the acrobatic feat of fishing out her keys and opening the doors without bothering to put anything down. Upstairs, however, her arms began to weaken and she was finally forced to put the bags on the landing to unlock her apartment.

  Even as she swung the door open, the phone began to ring.

  She grabbed two of the bags and used her foot to slide the other over the threshold.With a flick of her wrist,Annette tossed her keys onto the table and then slammed the door shut behind her. The phone on the wall in the kitchen was on its third ring when she snatched it up.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, sexy.”

  Annette could not have said why she blushed. Under normal circumstances, she was a hard woman to fluster. But ever since she had met Jill, that had changed just a little. There was something about this amazing, passionate woman that had her constantly off-kilter, butterflies in her stomach, as though she were back in eighth grade about to go onstage in the school play.

  “Hi,” she replied, her voice almost unconsciously dropping to a low, feline rasp.

  “What are you up to?” Jill asked, her tone playful as always.

  “Right now?”

  “Right now.”

  “About to put some groceries away. Then ... it was kind of a long day, so I thought I’d jump in the shower.”

  “Want some company?”

  Annette leaned against the wall in the kitchen and crossed her legs. As though Jill were right there in the room with her, she smiled shyly and glanced at the floor. Her voice sounded so close, Annette could almost feel Jill’s hands on her.

  “I’ll wait for you,” she said.

  Talk to me about what it was like to die.

  Janine flinched and looked away. Though she certainly understood what had happened to her—what had almost happened—no one had ever stated it to her so plainly, so boldly, before. It brought her back to that time, to the lost, drifting sensation that had overwhelmed her when she had ... almost died.

  It was as though the memory enhanced her senses. All around her, the library seemed to come alive. Her hands touched the arms of the chair and found the wood hard and dry. A shiver ran through her.With amazing clarity, she glanced around at the wood and glass and leather-bound books in the room, so warm and masculine, and every line was visible to her, each a work of art. David gazed at her with love and concern, and she saw her own stricken reflection gleaming in his eyes. Father Charles had small crinkles at the edges of his eyes and mouth, and a spatter of white hair amongst the auburn at his temples. It was as though she could see each wrinkle, each strand of hair. He nodded for her to go on, as if to tell her it was all right to share this now, this pain of hers.

  Father Jessup reached out and laid a cold hand, soft and dry as tissue paper, over hers. “I’ve upset you,” he said with that smoker’s rasp. “I’m so sorry.”

  “No.” She held up a hand almost as though she were blind, and shook her head. “No, it’s okay. It’s just ... I felt strange, suddenly. When I think about what it felt like ... then. To be so lost, everything so unreal, not like a dream, but like, I don’t know, finding yourself part of a play, when you know it’s not real but you can’t seem to stop acting in it.”

  Janine shook her head. She looked to David for support. “I’m not making any sense.”

  “No, you are,” David insisted. “Okay, none of us has ever gone through what you did, but we all know what it’s like to have a dream. I’ve had dreams where I consciously knew I was dreaming,
and still didn’t wake up right away.”

  Somewhere far off a phone began to ring.

  “Yes,” Janine said, as she turned her attention back to Father Jessup. “It was a little like that. But I didn’t wake up at all. It seemed to last forever.”

  The old priest settled back in his chair and gazed at her expectantly. Father Charles watched her with almost paternal concern.

  Janine closed her eyes and remembered. A muscle in her shoulder twitched and started her shivering. Eyes closed, only the scents of the room and the silent knowledge of the presence of the three men to comfort her, she brought herself back to that horrible day.

  Lights above her. Doctors and nurses snapping at each other. Machines beeping angrily.

  But no crying. She was supposed to have a baby, but there was no crying. Her body had suffered so much trauma that by the time the baby was removed from her womb, it was dead.

  Though she sensed much of that, even while unconscious, she did not really know it until she finally came around. It was what happened during the procedure, while her baby was dying . . . while she was dying ... that Father Charles wanted to hear about.

  “They lost me,” Janine whispered, her eyes still closed. Vaguely, she felt David’s hand cover her own, there on the arm of the chair. But she was lost in the past now, in the memory of something she had been trying so very hard to forget.

  “One minute I could sort of hear voices, and the machines, and I could smell that awful ammonia smell in hospitals, where it’s meant to be clean but it’s really just them trying to cover up the smell of sickness and dying.

  “Then I was awake. I ... I was in this place. A very dark place with trees all around. The ground was soft and damp and there was a river, and the sound of it was so loud in my ears. There were stars in the sky, but they were red, like blood, and the sky seemed too close to me, too low. That’s what I meant, I guess. It was like the sky was a prop and I was on some stage somewhere.

  “But the river ... the river was real. I knew I was lost. I wasn’t supposed to be there, but more than that, no one was supposed to stay on the riverbank. Like the water was magnetic, dragging me in. But I didn’t want to go. All I wanted was to find my way home, and I kept trying to get away from the river and I’d just come back to it.”

  Eyes still tightly closed, Janine paused a moment. She realized that her breathing had changed. Now her chest rose and fell with the dread that filled her. The picture was so clear in her mind it was almost as though she were there again in her mind.

  “I can almost smell the river, even now,” she whispered. “The water.”

  Clink-clank!

  At that sound, a jolt of fear shot through her and her eyes snapped open. Then she saw that it had been nothing but Father Jessup setting his glasses on the table, and she felt foolish.

  “Janine?” Father Charles ventured.

  “I’m all right. Just ... nothing. Never mind.” She closed her eyes again. It was as though she slid back into that death-dream, as though with her eyes closed, darkness inside her mind, she could paint on the canvas of her conscious mind the things she dredged up from her subconscious.

  Janine was cold all over. Her hands were damp. She could almost feel the weight of the silver coins in her pocket, the ones with which she was meant to pay the Ferryman.

  “Through the mist on the river, I could see the light from his lantern across the water. I heard it kind of banging against the wood as the current rocked the boat. The sound echoed. I fell in the water, or stepped out too deep from the riverbank—even though I was moving away from it.The water pulled at me, like it was trying to drag me in. I felt so heavy ... so cold ... and when I looked up, the boat was there. And so was he. He had a dark red robe on, with a hood, but then he took it down and he was just as I described him.Those eyes ...”

  Her voice failed her a moment. She felt small and afraid, a little girl again. It was a feeling she hated, a helplessness she had made up her mind she would escape.

  Janine cleared her throat. “He wanted the coins. I knew who he was. Somehow I just knew. He asked for the coins, the fare for me to cross. But I refused. I ... I took the coins out of my pocket and I threw them into the water.”

  David clutched her hand a bit more tightly, but she went on without responding.

  “I ran. It felt as though, having thrown those coins, I was free. I turned away from the river and took off. Then I tripped and fell facedown in mud and I couldn’t breathe. I thought for sure I was dead. And then, all of a sudden, I tasted air. It rushed into my lungs and it burned and my eyes hurt ’cause of the bright lights....

  “And I was in the hospital again. And they told me my baby was dead.”

  While she waited for Jill to arrive, Annette picked up in the living room and made her bed. Even as she did so, she knew it was a bit silly, given that the bed was likely to be a mess again shortly. But there was something about mussing a made bed that was alluring to her.

  With that little bit of neatening done she resisted the urge to continue onto a full-scale assault against her imperfect living space and drifted into the kitchen. Her anticipation of Jill’s arrival had taken the edge off her hunger, but she was still aware that she had eaten nothing since that morning, and her stomach rumbled the minute she opened the refrigerator. Since she was not sure how long it would take Jill to get there, she decided against making a sandwich and instead opted for a yogurt with granola sprinkled on top.

  Jill had not arrived by the time she tossed the empty yogurt cup into the garbage, so she grazed about the kitchen.A handful of Cheerios. A banana. Lipton chicken noodle Cup-a-Soup.

  As she sipped from the mug full of soup, the doorbell rang.

  From the moment she had hung up the phone, Annette’s skin had prickled with excitement. A cynical thought about Pavlov’s dog went through her head as the buzz from the door echoed and died, for that crackle of sexual energy that seemed to course through her immediately increased in intensity.A delicious thrill made her quiver a bit, and as a wanton smile creased her lips, she uttered a tiny chirp of pleasure.

  Then she laughed at herself. “Jesus, Elf,” she whispered aloud. “Rein it in.”

  But, though the words registered in her mind, her body did not heed them. No one had ever had this effect on her before. Quickly, almost shivering, she went to the door and pressed the buzzer next to the intercom.Then she opened the door and waited.

  Annette heard Jill’s footsteps on the stairs. She knew that she was getting carried away, both physically and emotionally. The long-term prospects of a relationship with a twenty-two-year-old were dim.With that in mind, Annette was at last able to rein herself in.

  This isn’t love, she told herself.

  Then Jill crested the landing, and Annette’s throat went dry. Jill wore soft, black, calves’-leather pants and a matching jacket that hung to her thighs, her blond hair fanning out over her shoulders in a cascade of silk. Beneath it she wore a blue T-shirt with Superman’s trademark S stretched across her breasts.The shirt was cut off above her newly pierced belly button. A mischievous smile played at the edges of her lips.

  Annette stepped out onto the landing and grabbed for her. She pulled Jill into her arms and kissed her long and deep. Jill responded hungrily, and their hands roamed over one another. When the kiss ended, Jill giggled softly.

  “You ready to get wet?” she asked, a bit breathless.

  A small chuckle escaped Annette’s lips and she smiled shyly. “I’ve been wet since I hung up the phone.”

  Jill gently pushed her back into the apartment and closed the door.

  Janine kept her eyes closed. Her lips were dry and she darted her tongue out to dampen them, and only when she tasted salt did she realize that she was crying. Her eyes fluttered open and she wiped warm tears from her cold cheeks.

  Beside her, David crouched and held on to her hand. He had moved closer while her eyes were closed. Father Charles leaned over in his chair and regarded her closely
. Father Jessup studied her, an expression of fascination on his face, as though she were some sort of laboratory experiment. Then the old priest blew out a long breath and reached out to pat her other hand.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss, Janine. I know the wound is still very fresh for you.”

  She nodded.

  “Please, Father,” David said, almost curtly. “I know it all sounds insane, but if there’s anything you can tell us, we’d be grateful.”

  There was something strange in David’s voice, Janine thought. Something other than just his sympathy for her and the stress and fear that had been building in both of them. Janine turned to him, but David’s eyes were on the two priests who sat across the table.

  “Father Jessup has already said he believes you,” Father Charles said. “So do I.”

  David’s hands flew into the air. “I don’t get it, Hugh. I really don’t. I’ve seen this stuff, and so has Janine. But you’re both just taking our word for it. How can you do that?”

  Father Charles raised an eyebrow at the outburst.

  “Sorry,” David muttered. “I just don’t get it. I mean, you said you saw a ghost one time, and Father Jessup saw some other things, but—”

  “I saw an angel,” the priest said abruptly.

  Janine blinked. “I’m sorry, what?”

  Father Charles laughed. “With what you’re telling me, you find that hard to believe? It’s true, though. When I was twelve years old, I saw an angel, standing right in front of me, no farther away than you are now. I’ve always hoped to see another one, but never have. It’s why I became a priest, to be perfectly honest.”

  Fascinated, and filled with hope, Janine stared at him. “Would you tell us about it?”

  “Sometime, I will,” Father Charles replied. “When this is over.” He smiled as though recalling some distant memory. “Back to the business at hand, though. Father Jessup?”