The Ferryman

by Christopher Golden

  Kindzierski grunted softly in surprise. “Now, what the hell is that about?”

  To Janine, stepping into the foyer of David’s house was always a little like stepping back in time. Despite the damage that had recently been done to it, the house was truly beautiful, and her memories of it were comforting. Though it had been violated, even worse than her apartment and Annette’s had, the house felt safe to her somehow.

  “It’s a lovely place, David,” Father Charles said as Annette closed and locked the door behind them.

  “Thank you, Father.Though I have to confess, most of the furnishings were picked by my parents years ago. I just sort of keep it up as best I can.”

  Father Charles peeked into both of the front parlors, then went to stand by the grand staircase. “You grew up here, I know. But doesn’t it ever seem too big for one person? I think I would get lonely in a place as big as this, by myself.”

  A twinge of sadness touched Janine and she glanced at David. He gazed back at her and a silent communication passed between them; he had never wanted to be alone in this house. More than anything, he had wanted to marry her. If she had not left him for Spencer, they might have been living here as a family even now, perhaps with children. None of this would have happened. She might never have lost her child.

  But there was no blame in their tacit acknowledgment of that hard truth. David was not accusing her of anything. It was simply that they both now wished things had been different.

  A small, ironic grin touched his features as he glanced back at the priest. “There have always been ghosts in the house, I guess. But up until now, they’ve been good company.”

  Father Charles did not seem to notice the awkwardness of that response, entranced as he was by his exploration of the house. He wandered off into the kitchen.

  “Dibs on the turret room,” Annette announced.

  “God, you’ll be freezing up there,” Janine said. “It’s not that warm yet.”

  David grabbed both their bags and moved toward the stairs. “Actually, Elf, I’m thinking maybe we should all stay on one floor.The closer the better.”

  Janine expected Annette to fire off a volley of innuendo in response, but she said nothing. Her silence was disturbing. They were all afraid. Janine knew that. But she wanted to pretend as best she could that they could face this thing without crumbling. It was important for her to fake it, at least to herself.

  After David had settled his guests in—Father Charles and Annette in the other bedrooms on the second floor and Janine in with him—they gathered in the dining room. The priest carried a stack of books he had retrieved from the rectory, as well as his small personal phone book. Among the books were Greek histories and mythologies, as well as several comparative theologies and a three-volume set on the belief in an afterlife.

  “What are we looking for, exactly? ” Annette asked.

  Father Charles paused thoughtfully, his brow furrowed.After a moment he shook his head. “I wish I could narrow it down for you, but, really, anything on Charon. If there’s a story or reference to him that indicates a weakness or how someone might avoid traveling across the Styx, that’s the kind of thing we want. Even if it sounds ridiculous, it might have a deeper meaning from which we can draw something.”

  He stood and watched as they began to pick through the books, and tried not to reveal his own fear and anxiety. More than that, though, he tried to hide from them the awe that he felt at what they were dealing with ... and what it meant.

  In some way he was still trying to fully grasp this horror, the vicious creature who had visited erotic dreams upon Janine and had raised revenants from dead souls to torment David. . . . In some way, it proved to him that there was indeed a God.

  As a priest, he had always had faith.

  But this was more than faith. This was truth. At first he had thought that it made a mockery of his priesthood, made all the Roman Catholic dogma he was supposed to preach into nothing more than a flight of fancy. But while they had driven around, gathering clothing and books, and then driven over to David’s house, something else had occurred to him. This meant not that what he had always been taught was bullshit, but that it was completely and totally true. And so was everything else.

  What it meant for him, for his vocation as a priest, his calling ... Father Charles could not say.

  Let’s live through this, and then I’ll figure it out, he thought as he watched them begin to page through the books he had brought.

  “I’m going to make those calls I mentioned,” he said. “If I can manage not to come off like a complete lunatic, I hope to learn something.”

  All three of them laughed politely, but they were already intent upon their research, driven by their fear. There had to be an answer, a way to escape or destroy this creature. And they knew they had no choice but to find it.The other option was unthinkable.

  Annette could hardly concentrate on the book in front of her. She kept having to reread paragraphs or even entire pages.The sting of the cuts on her skin was a distraction, but not because of the small pain they gave her. Rather, they were a reminder that created a constant undercurrent, a buzzing in her head like static on the radio, that brought her back to the shower.To Jill.

  Not Maggie, but Jill.

  She understood what was going on. Theoretically. But in her heart she knew that the woman ... the girl ... whatever this being was that had made love to her and tried to kill her and then transformed itself into water ... she knew that Jill felt something for her.That Maggie felt something. Charon had ordered her to kill Annette, and Maggie had refused.

  In her heart, Annette knew that was true, and it only made the pain worse. She ached more deeply than she had ever imagined possible, not because her love for this woman had been so profound—it hadn’t had time to become that—but because of the tragedy of it all. The dead girl’s pain, David’s pain, and Annette’s own. And Janine’s as well; she could not forget Janine. No matter what she herself had been through, Annette knew that Janine had suffered most of all.

  There in David’s dining room, with what remained unbroken of the crystal and china on display in beautiful cabinetry, a dark wooden table that gleamed with polish before them, lights sparkling in the chandelier above, they seemed an entire world away from the terrible events at her apartment. And yet somehow this, the normalcy of this room, seemed like the dream to her, and the terror and grief that echoed in her mind seemed like the waking world, the reality that they would be forced to return to all too soon.

  The thought made her shudder.

  “Hey,” Janine whispered.

  Annette looked up to find both of them, her best friends, watching her.

  “You doing all right?” David asked gently. “I mean, considering?”

  “Considering?” Annette replied with a grim chuckle. “All things considered, I think I’m doing fucking smashing, don’t you?”

  They all smiled tiredly at the dark humor in her voice. David shook his head, looked at her another moment, and went back to his book. Janine gazed at her a moment longer, and Annette could see the love in her eyes. The warmth of it was almost more than she could bear. There was no use wondering what the world would have been like if things were different, but still, nothing meant more to her than what she saw in Janine’s eyes just then.

  They had all lost far too much recently, and yet they had survived. She had an idea that the one thing none of them could survive the loss of was each other.

  A thought whispered across her mind and she glanced again at David. After a moment, he seemed to feel her gaze on him and looked up.

  “Annette?”

  “Sorry,” she said. “I was just thinking about Ralph, you know?”

  “What about him?”

  “Well, he came back for you, didn’t he?” Annette said. “I mean, think about it. I know you’re hurting, David, with all this shit. But Ralph was dead. Who knows how it happened, but somehow, over there, maybe when he was passing over or w
hatever ... somehow he knew what was going on.”

  “Maybe Charon approached him,” Janine suggested.

  Annette nodded.“I’ll bet he did. Everyone thought you two hated each other, David. Everyone except Father Charles, that is. So maybe Charon asked him, ‘Hey, Ralph, come help me fuck with David Bairstow and you can hang out on Earth a while longer.’ But the thing is, Ralph told him to screw, then found a way to come back as a ghost or phantom or whatever and warn you. I’ve just been thinking that ought to count for something, y’know? All these people are haunting you, but we all have relationships that turn bitter in our lives, we all fuck up, make enemies we never even understand how we made.

  “But Ralph Weiss came back for you.”

  David nodded slowly, a melancholy smile on his face. “Thanks, Annette. Thank you.”

  As Annette watched, Janine reached out and squeezed David’s hand. They locked eyes for a moment; then David sighed and they all drifted back to the books in front of them.

  After a time, Father Charles came in and cleared his throat.

  “Hey, padre, what’ve we got?” Annette asked.

  The priest swallowed, then shook his head slowly.

  “Nothing, I’m afraid. Father Jessup’s theories are merely that, theories, and he knows nothing more specific about Charon. The others I spoke to thought I needed time off. And I don’t suspect you’re going to find anything in those books, either. Needless to say, I waltzed around this subject as best I could, but nobody has ever heard of anything like it. I asked an old friend, a Greek Orthodox theologian who also knows his mythology, how you would stop a creature out of legend, like the Medusa or what have you, if it wanted to hurt you. I asked hypothetically, of course. He reminded me that Medusa was defeated by having her own power turned against her. Her own reflection turned her to stone. Somehow, though, I doubt we’re going to be able to drown Charon the Ferryman.”

  “Shit,” David said, his voice low.

  “That’s what I said,” Father Charles replied.

  “Wonderful. The priest is swearing. That’s a great fucking sign,” Annette muttered.

  They were all silent for several moments after that.At length, Janine rose from the table.

  “I’m going to check in with Larry, see if he’s heard anything from the police about my mother.”

  A now familiar dread had seeped into Janine as she had listened to Father Charles speak. Now she went upstairs to David’s bedroom and picked up the phone, barely aware of what she was doing.

  Escaping, she thought. It was not only that she wanted privacy to speak with her stepfather. It was that she was running away from the ominous truth the priest had revealed without actually speaking the words.

  They were fucked.

  Nothing, not even a clue how to deal with Charon. No way to defeat him. He could come for them at any time. In truth, she wondered why he had not done so already.

  Distraught, she wandered the second-floor corridor as she dialed the number of the Parker House.The front desk rang Larry’s room for her, and as she listened to it buzzing in her ear, her eyes chanced upon the stairs that led up to the third floor.

  Escaping, she thought again. And what better place than the one to which David had always retreated to think, or to be sad, or simply to relax or wax nostalgic.

  The first time they had made love, years earlier, had been in the turret room. David was not the only one who felt safe there. The urge to retreat there now was too much for her to resist.

  Janine went up the steps to the third floor.

  “Hello?”

  “Larry, hi.”

  “Janine. Have you—”

  “No, no. I just ... I wanted to check in with you. So you haven’t heard anything either?”

  A pause. In his silence she had her answer, and she could hear all the pain that he would never put words to.

  “Nothing. I talked to the police again, and they’re looking into it. I’ve got people putting flyers up. And I was on the news tonight. Channel five.”

  “I didn’t see it,” Janine told him as she reached the third floor.“But that’s great, Larry. If anyone saw her, they’ll call.”

  It sounded hollow even to her, and Larry didn’t respond.

  “Anyway, look, I just wanted to tell you I’m at David’s. Do you have a pen?”

  As he searched for something to write with, she wandered around the third floor. It was chilly up there, and the rooms were little more than storage space, which she thought was a shame. In the back of her mind, Janine could not look into those rooms without seeing children’s bedrooms, even a study room, or a sort of rec room for the kids she hoped to one day have with her lover.

  She squeezed her eyes closed as she thought of the child she had carried in her belly, the one who had died. The one she had wanted to name David. Janine bit her lip and pretended that the numb, dead space inside her was only temporary, that it would go away.

  “Okay,” Larry said.

  She gripped the phone a little tighter as she gave him David’s phone number. There was an awkward moment before they hung up, as though each of them knew there was something missing, some endearment they ought to trade before signing off, but their relationship had never included that, and so eventually they said only good-bye.

  With a sigh, Janine turned and walked up the few steps to the turret room, with its windows all around, its view of the night and the moon and the stars.

  Her mother’s corpse lay sprawled in a chair, positioned in a grotesquely lifelike fashion. Ruth Vale’s eyes were wide and staring, almost completely white, and her mouth was slightly open as though in shock. Her flesh was blue and bloated, her skin the texture of raw dough, as though she had drowned and then been dredged up days later.

  “Mom,” Janine whispered, her throat burning with the word.“Oh, God, Mom.”

  As if to make certain it was not a ghost before her, or some abhorrent hallucination, she reached out to touch her mother’s arm. At that gentle prodding, the corpse’s head sagged to one side and stagnant water poured out of her mouth.

  Someone screamed.

  It took a moment for Janine to realize that the voice was her own.

  CHAPTER 16

  Kindzierski jerked awake, banged his knee on the underside of the Toyota’s dashboard, and swore loudly. Then he frowned deeply, blinked a few times, and listened to an echo that lingered only inside his head. He had turned off the radio so as not to drain the battery, and the street outside was quiet, almost eerily so.

  Silence.

  But a moment before, there had been a scream. It had cut through the veil of half sleep behind which he had retreated. Even while dozing, his mind was attuned, listening for something out of the ordinary.

  A scream fit the bill.

  “What the fuck was that?” Kindzierski muttered, rubbing his sore knee.

  He bent forward to peer through the windshield at David Bairstow’s house just up the street. Some of the lights were on, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. In the windows of the turret room at the peak of the house, shadows moved in partial darkness, a zoetrope of flickering motion, but he could not make out any more than that.

  Still, the sleep-memory of the scream was fresh in his mind, and it had not been a dream. Of that he was certain.

  Even as he mentally cataloged the various excuses he might use for dropping in on Bairstow unannounced, Kindzierski grabbed the keys from the ignition and stepped out of the Toyota. He craned his neck, trying to get a better view of the turret room, but could not. It was simply too high.

  Reluctant to reveal to the subjects of his surveillance that he had been observing them, he knew that he had no choice but to investigate that scream. It was possible that it might have come from another house, but every instinct he had honed during his years on the job told him that was just whistling in the dark. His scalp tingled as though an illicit lover had been running her fingers through his hair, and his stomach felt as though he’d swallowed h
alf a dozen live goldfish.

  Something was going on.

  Kindzierski bounced on his feet several times before finally making up his mind. Then he strode across the street and began to walk along the sidewalk toward Bairstow’s place.

  Two houses away, he halted and shook his head, disgusted by his own foolishness. Whatever lame excuse he might make up to explain his sudden appearance at the door, it wasn’t likely to be convincing if he left his car parked down the street. Somehow his error seemed to increase his anxiety, for he hurried now as he jogged across the road toward his car, a big man in a dark leather jacket who was obviously a stranger to the neighborhood.Too conspicuous, yet somehow he was no longer worried about attracting unwanted attention.

  The door was locked.

  Kindzierski cursed himself in a low voice and fished his keys out again. He had programmed himself to always lock the car. Usually it wasn’t a big deal, but more and more, a dark urgency filled him.

  He slipped the key into the driver’s door and unlocked it.

  Then he froze. A shudder scurried up and down his spine. Kindzierksi frowned, wondering where the sensation came from. It did not go away, either. Instead it lingered like skunk scent, carried to him on some malevolent wind. But it wasn’t an odor. It was a feeling. And there was no wind. In that moment there was no breeze, no rustling of leaves in the trees, not even the distant barking of dogs.

  Headlights washed over him where he stood by the driver’s door of the Toyota, but Kindzierski had heard no engine. Though he knew he ought to pretend he was leaving, get in the car and watch the other car pass from inside, something stopped him. Drew him with as much magnetic pull as a strikingly beautiful woman or the wreckage on the side of the highway after a car accident.

  He turned, blinking away the brightness of the lights as the car slowed soundlessly to a stop in front of David Bairstow’s house. It was only when the headlights snapped off that something else occurred to him: The engine had made no noise at all.