The Ferryman Institute

by Colin Gigl

  Charlie took a step forward, which was instantly greeted with the forefront of the detention unit acting in kind. Time to play his last card. “I need to speak with the president. You can come with me, arrest me the second I’m done talking with him if you want. But he can vouch for me. We can get this all straightened out.” There was nothing he could do to keep the desperation out of his voice.

  Javrouche merely shook his head. “Request denied.”

  “This is your payback, isn’t it, Inspector? After all these years, you’re finally getting what you wanted. How does it feel? The man you once considered your idol brought down by your own hands, and for what? Revenge? Damning the Institute because you feel slighted?”

  The two men stood only meters apart, yet were separated by the ocean of mistakes in their past. Charlie’s words clearly struck a nerve, as undeniable truths long buried often did. The look of effusive superiority that Javrouche had been maintaining with relative ease fell off like a broken mask, revealing a face of pure contempt hiding just behind it.

  “You really can’t handle the fact that you’re finally being punished, can you? I’m simply doing my job, Mssr. Dawson. I wish I could say the same for you.”

  Charlie could feel the last tenuous grip on his composure slipping, each one of Javrouche’s digs having pushed it further away, until finally he was lost, screaming at the top of his lungs. “You want to know something, Javrouche?! I saved that girl today, and in two hundred and fifty years, it stands as one of the proudest things I’ve ever done! I saved her life! And if I have to be punished for that, then so fucking be it! But you can’t take that away from me! No one can take that away from me!”

  There was silence. And into that silence, painted on the face of Inspector Javrouche, bloomed one of the most horrible, shit-eating smirks Charlie had ever seen.

  “Au contraire, Mssr. Dawson. You’re right—as much as I’d like to, I cannot go back in time and change what you’ve done. But I can change the result. Just think . . . you can spend every moment of your sentence knowing that I’ll have stopped at absolutely nothing to ensure that the Institute’s secrecy is preserved. If that means the death of Alice Spiegel, then c’est la vie. At least then you, too, can finally feel what it’s like to have something you tried to save slip away.”

  Charlie reached into his pocket and fished out his phone, the instrument of his downfall, and hurled it at Javrouche’s simpering face. It whizzed through the air, spinning end over end like a touchscreen-enabled shuriken. Javrouche simply twisted his shoulders and the phone sailed past.

  “I thought I asked you to take care of that phone,” Javrouche said. He spoke with the unhurried cadence of a museum tour guide. “Maybe you’ll learn to follow directions better in Purgatory. Now then: Koroviev, if you’ll do me the honor, please arrest Mssr. Dawson.”

  The perimeter of armed guards began to move in; the lieutenant, after carefully laying down Melissa, leading the way. Two of them crouched down and took aim with their capture rifles.

  So this was the end. Charlie could see it all—his impending arrest, being hauled before a Judicator, subsequently convicted, and finally thrown into Purgatory indefinitely. There he would rot, not physically but mentally. Javrouche would see to that. What a shitty way to go.

  A flurry of movement raced toward him, but Charlie ignored it. He wanted his last free moments to be focused only on the Inspector.

  At least, that was the plan, until a pair of hands hit Charlie hard in the chest.

  The force knocked him off balance, causing him to stumble backward. Charlie lost his footing and landed on his back with a dull thump. The stark white walls of the connecting passageway—the one he’d used to return from Alice Spiegel’s bedroom—greeted him as Charlie found himself staring at the ceiling. He quickly sat up.

  There, standing above him, was Dirkley.

  Given Dirkley’s general demeanor, it wasn’t hard to see him going relatively unnoticed by the rest of the assemblage. In the ensuing commotion, he’d managed to rush over and shove Charlie back into the passageway. With an awkward wriggle, Dirkley removed Charlie’s key from the Ferryman Door, briefly holding it with an air of reverence. Charlie could see the guards racing toward them. Javrouche’s voice rang out in the background with righteous fury.

  A smile crossed Dirkley’s face. He met Charlie’s dumbfounded eyes, then slammed the door shut in Charlie’s face.

  A moment of blank incomprehension slowly gave way to realization. Without his key, Charlie wouldn’t be able to enter the Ferryman Institute again. However, the passageway to an assignment—in this case, from the Institute to Alice’s bedroom—stayed open only as long as the Ferryman Key happened to be at the end of it. Now that the door on the Institute end had been closed with the opening key on the other side, the passage had essentially been sealed shut. No one would be able to chase him using it. But Dirkley . . .

  Charlie couldn’t remember how long he yelled at the door. He banged and screamed at it, pounding away with an animalistic determination. At some point, tears began to roll down his cheeks, striking the floor with as much usefulness as his fists. Finally, he gave up and let himself fall onto his back against the ground. The white floor of the passageway was solid, and had he been able to feel it, Charlie imagined, it would have been very cold. He closed his eyes, and tried to remember what cold felt like.

  He couldn’t.

  Obviously there had been a mistake. What else could it be? Just a small mix-up, a failure to communicate. Charlie would serve his punishment, but they’d clear everything else up for sure. All he had to do was leave, contact the Institute, arrange for a pickup, and sort out this mess. In due time, he could have his career back, his perfect record, his admiration. In the long run, it would probably only cost him Alice Spiegel’s life.

  He didn’t know how long he lay there. Eventually, Charlie picked himself up and began walking, shakily at first but with increasing determination, toward the door at the other side of the hall.

  Fuck it. He was going to save the girl.

  ALICE

  * * *

  FUGITIVE

  I’m crazy. I’ve gone crazy.

  Alice lay facedown on her bed. She’d spent the past thirty minutes considering every conceivable possibility and the one she kept returning to was insanity.

  Men didn’t magically show up out of thin air and talk about your dead mother, even if what they said made you all teary-eyed and nostalgic and sad and oddly . . . No, she didn’t even want to think about that part. There were only two possibilities: it was a dream—It has to have been a dream!—or she was officially crazy. Maybe she was crazy and dreaming? That was a new and exciting possibility to consider, actually.

  She lifted her head up slightly and looked at the palm of her hand. The spent bullet casing flashed in the light of her room. Next to it, slightly dull by comparison, was a fired nine-millimeter bullet.

  Alice pressed her face back down into the bedspread. I really, really should have just pulled the trigger the first time, she thought.

  The sound of a door opening immediately caught her attention. Her throat nearly closed when she realized that she hadn’t cleaned up her room at all since the incident—her gun was still out, the room reeked of gunpowder, and the crumpled suicide note lay casually on her desk. If her dad walked in the room right then, she was, in a word, fucked.

  Four years of creative writing practice at one of the finest English departments the United States college education system had to offer whirred into action.

  Raccoon came through the window. Happened to be cleaning my gun for kicks. Startled me and fired at it, but it escaped. Bullet must be somewhere in the backyard. Sorry, long day, wasn’t thinking. Play Mom card. Done and done. Flimsy, but not bad for two seconds’ notice. She turned toward her bedroom door.

  It was closed.

  The sound of a door slamming shut caused her to whirl around. Behind her, the clearly frazzled face of Charlie Dawson once ag
ain greeted her.

  She screamed.

  It lasted for a good five seconds, which Alice found impressive, given how easily she became winded these days. It was the little things in life.

  “I thought you left,” she hissed.

  “Surprise. Guess it’s your lucky day,” Charlie said with all the monotone enthusiasm of a root canal patient. “So, random question: You have a car, right?”

  The sheer randomness of his question completely threw Alice. What was originally self-righteous indignation sputtered into a confused “I mean, yeah, but—”

  “Good, I’ll drive. Also, do you have a cell phone? I’m going to need to make a call while we’re on the road.”

  “I’m sorry, but what are you—”

  He walked over to Alice and put his hands on her shoulders. There was a distinct look of urgency in his eyes. “I know how absurdly cliché this is going to sound, but I don’t have time to explain. That’s the cliché part—not having time to explain. Whatever, you’re smart, you know what I mean. True or false—you’re alone in the house right now? I’m assuming true based on what you were about to do half an hour ago, but maybe you’re indifferent about doing that sort of thing with people around.”

  Alice had no idea what was going on. It was like her mind had simply said, Fuck this shit, and caught the last train to Clarksville. Honestly, she wasn’t sure she blamed it. Plus, who needed rational thought, anyway? Complete and utter mental fantasy was where things were at nowadays.

  When she failed to provide anything by way of answer, Charlie seemed to read between the lines. “I’m gonna go with true. In that case, we need to make sure no one comes back here. This is where they’ll come looking for me first.”

  Alice forcefully stomped her feet, which jogged some of her mental faculties. “Stop! Just . . . stop!” She was desperately trying to get a grip on things.

  “Hate to say it, but that’s not an option. I’ve already wasted too much time feeling sorry for myself. We need to get moving.”

  Alice looked at Charlie, his calm if slightly pensive face an undecipherable mix of emotions. “What do you mean, we? Why do you—”

  “Look, I promise you two things. One: I’ll explain everything in the car. Two: what’s happening right now is very, very real. Now, I need you to trust me.” He offered his hand to her while she was still sitting on her bed.

  This isn’t happening, she thought. Right? Might as well test the waters. “You’re not real,” she said. Now that she’d said it out loud, she felt a little stupid. What was he going to say back: Shucks, you caught me, then disappear? Well, a girl could hope.

  “I am the realest unkillable random stranger you will ever meet. The problem here is that the people who will be trying to find me—and, rather unfortunately, you—are just as real and unkillable. I don’t know how much time we have, but I know we’re wasting it.” He reached out his arm. “Come on. We need to go.”

  Alice sat perfectly still on her bed as Charlie stood there in front of her. With a haggard sigh, he looked around the room.

  “That your purse?” he asked. He pointed to the medium-sized beige Coach knockoff sitting next to her desk.

  “. . . No?” she ventured.

  Charlie walked over to it and scooped it up.

  “Hey! Put that down!” Alice yelled.

  He opened the main pouch and frenetically searched through it. Her car keys jangled as he pulled them out. He then found her cell phone hiding in plain sight on the corner of her desk, threw it unceremoniously inside the bag, and proceeded to zip the whole thing shut. Finally, he strode over to Alice and, with a smooth motion, hoisted her up on his shoulder.

  She felt the blood rush to her head as her world flipped upside down. “Oh my God! Put me down! Put me down!” She pounded on his back, tore at his hair, and scratched at any exposed skin she could find. Her captor didn’t so much as flinch.

  “I think you’re forgetting the magic word.” The purse looked ridiculous hanging from his shoulder, but maybe being wrong side up had something to do with that.

  “Please!” she begged.

  “Better, but still no,” he said serenely, and left the bedroom.

  Alice tried to break free, but she was already weak from another night without dinner (in her defense, no one ever said you couldn’t kill yourself on an empty stomach). The best she could do was wiggle about as he quickly carried her down the staircase. Her hair acted like a curtain and obstructed her vision, but she could tell they were headed to the front door. Just as they reached it, Charlie stopped. Alice continued to wrestle against being taken against her will, but her efforts were having little—okay, who was she kidding—no effect.

  “Let. Me. Go!” She pounded against his back with renewed vigor. “I am not that fucking girl from King Kong!”

  “Fay Wray?”

  “Do you honestly think I know who the hell Fay Wray is? And why do you know that?”

  “I saw it in theaters when it first came out. Great thing about being invisible all the time is that you never have to pay for a movie.” Since his return, Alice noticed, his voice hadn’t risen above being glibly sardonic. The true implications of his statement only occurred to her a few seconds later.

  “Wait . . . King Kong came out like a hundred years ago. How old are you, exactly?”

  He paused for a moment. “Old enough to wish I was only that old.”

  Her body was being jerked around as he examined the room for something. A bit of whiplash later and he’d apparently found what he’d been looking for. After three short beeps, Alice quickly realized it was the cordless phone next to the living room couch.

  Alice struggled some more, her thrashing growing desperate. She was getting increasingly light-headed, what with all the blood pooling in her cranium, but he was remarkably strong. Or she was remarkably weak. Tough to tell, really. She could hear the phone ringing faintly through the speaker in the phone before it clicked.

  The feminine voice that answered sounded tinny and distant, but it was instantly familiar. “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”

  This is it! This is my chance! “Help me!” she screamed as loudly as she could.

  “Listen,” Charlie calmly said in the receiver, but with the slightest hint of terror in his voice, “my friend Alice has been badly hurt—”

  “No! I’m fine! He’s lying! He’s kidnapping me!”

  “—to the point where I think she’s getting a little delusional. I’m rushing her to the hospital now. She’s bleeding profusely out of the side of her head. Also, I think there might be a gas leak here, so you should keep everyone away from this address. Could blow any second.”

  “Please! He’s taking me!”

  The voice on the other end of the phone sounded very startled, not that Alice blamed her. “Sir, can you please—”

  “No,” Charlie interrupted smoothly, “I can’t wait until help arrives. I’m leaving now, otherwise she might not make it. Please trace this address and send help as quickly as you can.” Alice heard another beep, and the call was gone. “Maybe it’s me, but if I didn’t know any better,” Charlie said, “I’d say it seems like you’re not very grateful that I’m trying to save your life.”

  “Grateful! Are you shitting me? You’re kidnapping me!” Alice yelled. Maybe there was a cop nearby and someone would be there soon. Her vision blurred slightly and the dizziness began to kick in. Just when her sight began to tunnel, Charlie plunked her down on the couch. He held both her arms tightly against her sides, preventing her from moving.

  “Listen to me.” His voice had taken on a slightly forceful edge. “Your life is in danger, all right? That may not mean anything to you right now, but it does to me. I’m being chased by other Ferrymen—people just like me—for all the wrong reasons. Well, some wrong reasons. Anyway, my team is going to be torn limb from limb for helping me. Until I can figure out how to clear this up, I need to get you someplace safe, because if I leave you here, they will hurt you
—that much I can promise. With the cops and other emergency personnel around, they won’t touch your family, but they still might go after you. If you’re gone, the police are more likely to keep everyone here under a protective watch. I don’t want anybody else getting involved in this, least of all your family. We’re taking your cell phone with us and I promise you can contact them as soon as it’s safe.

  “Now, as compelled as I feel to just take you for your own good, I’m not going to. I realize that I’m putting you in a ridiculous situation, but someone important to me recently told me something that’s suddenly starting to make sense. This is your choice, Alice: come with me or stay here. It’s your call.”

  God, it all felt so real . . . his expressions, the force of his hands against her arms, the warm breath that played across her face. The light in his emphatic jade eyes danced frantically as he searched for an answer in hers.

  He let go of her arms, but extended his hand again for her to take. “Care to take a chance on a complete stranger?”

  This was real. At least, it seemed that way. Was it, though? God, this was confusing.

  Without thinking, she nodded slightly.

  “Good enough.” He removed the purse from his shoulder and set it in Alice’s lap. She gingerly took hold of it, only to be whisked away as soon as she had a decent grip on the handle.

  Alice didn’t know what to do. She had to admit, his little impromptu speech sounded rational, albeit in a completely irrational sort of way, but when push came to shove, she was still letting herself be kidnapped. Even so, what could she do? He was certainly stronger than she was and apparently impervious to destruction. That limited her options for escape somewhat drastically.

  Yet even as she told herself all that, a voice whispered in the back of her head: But then why did you agree to go with him? Do you want to trust him?

  She ignored it.

  They shot through the front door and into the street. Alice’s two-door silver Jeep Wrangler (her mom had nicknamed it the Silver Surfer before passing away) was parked neatly next to the curb. Charlie began pressing buttons on the keyless entry, then almost ripped the driver-side door off as he yanked it open. Alice numbly settled in the passenger seat. Her mind was in a bit of a haze. Dream? Reality? Dream? Reality? Which was it?