Ferryman

by Claire McFall

  It was miserable. She couldn’t breathe, she was exhausted and every few seconds the wraiths dived for her again, trying to catch her out. She didn’t dare lift her head to see how far she had to go, but her legs were aching, her back sore from being bent over. Scared and in pain and spent, Dylan screwed up her face and started to cry. The wraiths cackled, as if they could sense how close she was to giving up, to succumbing, but she couldn’t seem to pull herself together. The tears blurred her vision, and her route up the hill became erratic.

  As the gravel finally gave way to the rocky floor that marked the beginning of the top of the hill, Dylan’s foot kicked a stone that refused to move, and she tripped. Throwing her arms out in front of her, she gasped, focusing her gaze to see the ground come rushing towards her.

  Her hands took the brunt of her fall. Then her chest hit the path, snapping her head up. She found herself eye to eye with a wraith. There was just time to see its tiny, puckered face curl into a leer, before it dived at her and she was cold all over, as if she’d been submerged in the icy lake.

  Once she’d seen one, it seemed impossible to avoid looking at the rest, and they attacked en masse, pulling and tugging, penetrating down into her bones. With Dylan on the ground, the wraiths had already won half the battle. She felt herself sinking, sliding downwards as if the hard, compacted dirt was quicksand.

  “No!” she choked. “No, no, no!”

  She hadn’t come this far to die now. Again, Tristan’s face danced in front of her eyes, the vivid blue of his stare a perfect remedy to this bloody hell. It was like a gulp of fresh air, galvanising Dylan. With monumental effort, she got her feet beneath her and exploded upwards, throwing off the wraiths clinging to her hands, her hair. Then she ran.

  Her legs burned, her lungs ached, and the claws of countless wraiths hooked deep into her sweat-saturated T-shirt and hair. Staring at the top of the hill, she fought against their hold. The wraiths howled and snarled, buzzing round her head like angry bees. But Dylan kept going. She reached the top and down, she knew, would be much, much easier.

  In fact, it was too easy. Too fast – far too fast. Her feet couldn’t keep up as gravity pulled her down the sheer slope. Unlike the wraiths, this was a battle she couldn’t win – and didn’t want to. Instead, she let herself free fall, careering forward, concentrating on nothing more than moving her legs as quickly as possible, on staying upright. If she fell over here, she’d had it. Toppling, flailing, she wouldn’t be able to think about where her eyes were focusing.

  Suddenly, the safe house appeared. It was there, just in front of her. The incline levelled out, made it easier to control her speed. She was so close; she was going to make it. The wraiths knew it too. They doubled their efforts, soaring so close to her face she felt the wisps of their wings sting at her cheeks, wrapping around her legs to try and trip her again. Too little, too late. Dylan had the safe house to gaze upon and nothing the wraiths could do would tear her eyes away.

  Dylan flung herself round the corner of the building and burst through the door. She knew she didn’t need to, but she slammed it behind her. Calm descended at once. She stood in the middle of the single room, hauling oxygen into her screaming lungs, shaking all over.

  “I made it,” she whispered. “I made it.”

  She felt as exhausted, as she had after her last crossing of the lake. For a while she burned, heated from within by the panic and adrenaline that was acid in her veins, but in the dim light of the cottage, the air cooled quickly. Soon she was shaking with the chill.

  Dylan rubbed her bare arms. It was more than just the cold that was making her tremble. Shadows swirled on the ground as the wraiths circled at the window. She tried to ignore them, but it wasn’t easy. The sound of their wailing cut right to the centre of her brain, and with nothing else but silence in the tiny stone house, there was little to distract her ears.

  She dropped down onto one of the chairs and lifted her legs to rest her feet on the seat, resting her chin on her knees, hugging herself for warmth. It wasn’t enough, though, and soon her teeth were chattering. Dylan heaved herself up and moved stiffly over to the hearth. There were no matches to get a fire going like there had been in the last safe house, but she remembered how she’d done it the last time, and how the oars had appeared in the boat. Using wood from a little basket to the side, she built a lopsided triangle and stared hard at the centre of it.

  “Please?” she asked in a small voice. “Please, I need this.”

  Nothing happened. Dylan shut her eyes, and thought her pathetic plea again, holding her breath and crossing her fingers. There was a snap, swiftly followed by a spitting sound. When she opened her eyes again, there were flames.

  “Thank you,” she whispered automatically. It was uncomfortable kneeling on the cold stone floor, but she didn’t move. Though the fire showed no signs of going out, it was small and gave out little heat. She had to hold her fingers just above the tiny leaping flames to feel their delicious warmth. The light, too, held her there as the shadows thickened outside. She wished there were candles to light.

  As the fire grew, the chill gradually dissipated. Slowly, the shivers racking Dylan dissolved. She wrinkled her nose as she caught the putrid stench of the lake water rising from her clothes as the fabric warmed in the heat of the fire. She felt filthy, and she could only imagine how she looked. Glancing around, she saw the big Belfast sink, the dresser. This was the safe house where she’d managed to wash her clothes before. She’d used all the soap, she knew, but even if she could just rinse them out she’d feel better. Cleaner. And this time there would be no Tristan to see her clothed in the hodge-podge, too-big outfit he’d found stuffed into one of the drawers.

  She smiled to herself, remembering how embarrassed she’d been, wandering around half-clothed, her underwear slung over one of the chairs in full view.

  Without Tristan’s stories, it seemed to take a lot longer to fill the sink, and without the slither of soap she wasn’t sure how much difference she actually made to the foul black stains coating her clothes. Still, she pounded the dirt from them as best she could and hung them on the chair backs. She put on the massive clothes from the dresser, then, ignoring the bed where she’d snuggled up tight to Tristan’s warmth, she curled herself up on a scrap of faded carpet beside the fire. There was no point lying down anyway. Here, alone, with the endless howling of the wraiths outside, she was never going to sleep.

  The night dragged by. Dylan tried not to think, but let the flames lull her into a stupor, the way Tristan told her he did during the early days of the crossing when the souls still slept. It wasn’t easy – every noise made her jump, her head craning round to peer through the windows into the inky black – but the time passed slowly until a blood-red dawn roused her. She groaned as she rolled off the rug and stood up. She’d stiffened up overnight and her muscles were screaming in pain. Awkwardly, trying to move as little as possible, she shimmied out of her borrowed outfit and eased back into her torn, half-rigid clothes. They still looked horribly grubby, but they smelled a little better, she thought, lifting the hem of her T-shirt up to her nose and sniffing cautiously. She fussed for a while over the lie of her jeans, trying to reinstate her turn-ups, to stop the sulphurous mud soaking into them quite so quickly. Then she played with her hair, trying to fasten it up into a neat bun.

  What she was really doing, she knew, was procrastinating. It was beyond time to step back outside, and she was wasting valuable daylight. But today was going to be hard. She’d crossed the lake, yes, but now she had to try and navigate her way across the wasteland to find the next safe house. As she saw the wasteland now, without Tristan, it was almost featureless and totally alien with its red sandstone and blackened shrubs. And she had to journey without looking at any of the other souls, their guiding orbs, or the wraiths that cloistered round them. Oh, and somehow do all this whilst looking for her own orb that may or may not look like Tristan.

  Impossible. Totally impossible.

>   She gripped the chair in front of her, seized suddenly by an overwhelming sense of panic, and squeezed her eyes shut against tears. It was no use crying; she’d put herself in this position. Go forward or go back. That was the choice. The boat was still there, now nicely beached against the shore. She could row across the lake, take refuge in the final safe house and be back across the line tomorrow.

  And be totally, utterly, eternally, alone.

  Dylan took one deep breath, held it, and forced herself to exhale slowly. Swallowing hard, she pushed the fear and the uncertainty away. She imagined Tristan’s face when he saw her, saw that she’d come back for him. She imagined the feel of his arms around her as he hugged her close to his chest. The smell of him. Holding that image firmly in her mind, she marched across the narrow room and threw open the door. She was doing this.

  As soon as she stepped outside the protective confines of the cottage, the waiting wraiths began their cruel dance; circling and diving and trying to make her look at them. She ignored them, keeping her gaze fixed on the horizon, focusing on seeing but not looking. Like staring through the windscreen of a car whilst a million raindrops were splattering on the glass. It was hard, not allowing her eyes to focus, and it hurt her head, but it was easier than staring straight down all the time. A mixture of smoking grey and burgundy, the blood-red sun had yet to fully rise. Her glazed eyes swept across the peaks and valleys, trying to pick out something she recognised – a path, a landmark, anything.

  Nothing. She was almost positive she had never been in this place before. Terror gripped her once again and she was very nearly undone, unsettled by a demon whistling perilously close to her ear, hissing menacingly at her. Though she flinched, she managed to fight the urge to turn towards it. Think, she told herself. There must be something.

  But there wasn’t. Nothing but the unfriendly jagged rocks and the bleeding ground. That, and the first wisps of souls floating towards her, way out in the distance.

  “Where are you coming from?” she wondered aloud.

  A safe house. They must have spent the night at a safe house. And they all seemed to be drifting from the same direction. The only sensible thing to do, she reasoned, was to head for them and hope their trail would lead her to where she needed to be.

  Pleased that she had at last made a decision, Dylan strode forward purposefully. She tried not to think about the fact that she was leaving the only safe house whose location she was certain of. That only let the fear creep back in, and then it was harder to fight the wraiths.

  Tristan. She might find Tristan today. That thought she repeated over and over again, a silent mantra. It gave her strength. Strength to plough her way forward when the ground tilted up in front of her, and strength to battle on when the sun reached its zenith, burning down mercilessly. Strength to ignore the darting shadows playing constantly in the corner of her eye.

  When the sun was at its highest in the sky, raining down fire on her, she began to pass the first of the souls walking wearily in the other direction. They were hard to look at; many were wailing and weeping, and every flickering being that she saw, whose face was unlined or whose shadow rippled too short across the ground, was a soul lost too soon. A child, not ready to die. They made her think of the little cancer boy that Tristan had ferried, although she had to remind herself that that tragic soul had been lost to the greedy wraiths and might now be one of the wretched shadows.

  She made herself glance at each one, however. She had to. Because any one of them might be being guided by her orb, her ferryman. None of the pulsing balls of light called to her, though, and as soul after soul after soul passed by, her hopes began to sink. She truly was looking for a needle in a haystack. If she made it all the way back to the train and she still hadn’t found him, she didn’t know what she was going to do.

  It was a shock to Dylan when she came upon the safe house. She hadn’t expected to be close yet, if, in fact, she was even going in the right direction. The sun was far from setting and was still searing its wrath into her brow. She was still scanning souls, but they were much less frequent now. Most were well on their way to their next refuge. The small stone cottage was almost hidden by the great shadows of two mountainous peaks that towered over it. If Dylan had been paying attention, she would have seen the deep basin beyond, and realised where she was. As Tristan had said, the valley was always there.

  Instead, the building crept up on her. Dylan cried out with relief when she saw its crumbling walls, its cracked and rotten windows. It was as unappealing as it was welcoming, and she accelerated to a jerky run, despite her aching limbs, to close the final few metres. Spent, Dylan all but fell into the door and stumbled over to the bed. Resting her elbows on her knees, she propped her chin in her hands and stared around.

  As glad as she was to have made it, she didn’t like being back here. This was the safe house where she’d spent a day and two nights alone, waiting desperately for Tristan to come back. Just seeing the wrought-iron fireplace, the single chair that she’d sat on for a whole day, watching the true wasteland go by – the first time she’d ever really seen it – brought a flood of memories and emotions rushing back. Panic. Fear. Isolation.

  No. She shook herself free of the despair that threatened to strangle her. It was different this time. She was different. She forced herself to her feet, then grabbed the chair and pulled it over towards the door. Swinging it open, she plonked herself down just inside the threshold, and stared outside, at the wraiths, at the blood-red valley.

  In the morning, she was going to go out and search for Tristan. This time, she swore to herself, she would not be held captive by her fear. This time she was going to find him.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  “We’re going to have to move a little faster.”

  Tristan made a face as he looked back towards the woman, then up at the darkening sky. They had taken a long time to cross the mudflats. Too long. There wasn’t much light left and they still had the full length of the valley to travel across. It wasn’t her fault; she’d found it hard, wading through the thick mud, weaving a path around the high grasses. She’d needed help, but Tristan hadn’t wanted to touch her.

  He wished he had now, though. The air around them was full of howling. They were out of sight still, but they were there. The light was different, too. A thick layer of cloud hovered over them, and because of it the daylight would be much shorter. He supposed that was only to be expected. It was too much to hope the woman would retain her calm, contented frame of mind. Not when she knew she was dead.

  She hadn’t said much about it. There had been tears, but quiet ones. As if she hadn’t wanted to bother him. Another thing to be grateful for. This soul really had made things as easy as possible for him. He felt bad that he had been so cold, so aloof towards her. But it had been the only way he could keep going. They would not even have made it this far otherwise.

  “Please, Marie,” Tristan winced. He hated using her name. “We need to move.”

  “I’m sorry,” she apologised meekly. “I’m sorry, Tristan.”

  Tristan grimaced. Stupidly, he’d given Marie the same name. He had been too suffocated by grief to come up with a new one and it suited the form he seemed stuck in. He hated it, though. Every time she said it, he heard Dylan’s voice.

  She started to walk forward with more purpose this time, but one glance at the long shadows pooling ominously in front of them told Tristan it wasn’t enough.

  He sighed, gritted his teeth. “Come on,” he said, gripping her elbow as he pushed past, forcing her to go faster until she broke into a choppy jog. He jogged too, and because it was easier, he dropped her elbow to reach down and grab her hand, pulling her along. The howling intensified and the air stirred as the wraiths started to descend, freed by the encroaching dark, the thickening shadows. The woman heard the change and her fingers squeezed Tristan’s more tightly. He could feel her fear, her total reliance on him. Each breath was punctuated by a tiny sob that pierced
through his shoulder blades into his chest. It was painful. He had to fight the urge to drop her hand and run, although not from the wraiths; from her.

  “It’s not far, Marie,” he encouraged. “The safe house is just between these hills. We’re going to make it.”

  She didn’t answer, but he heard her footsteps speed up and the strain where his arm tugged at hers slackened as she moved from a jog into a full-out run. Relieved, he pushed himself faster.

  “Tristan!” The word was almost snatched away on the wind before it reached his ears, but he caught the echo of it and snapped his head up. “Tristan!”

  Was his mind playing tricks on him? Or was this some new torture the demons had devised, to distract him, to make him lose focus? Because there was no other way that voice could exist in the wasteland. It was gone. She was gone.

  “Tristan!”

  “It’s not her, it’s not her,” he hissed, tightening his grip on the woman. Dylan was gone, and he had a job to do. He had to get the woman to the safe house. Almost there. Almost there. He lifted his head and fixed his eyes on the cottage. The door was open.

  “Tristan!”

  There was a figure standing in the entryway, waving at him. Just a silhouette, nothing more than that, but he knew who it was. It couldn’t be; it couldn’t possibly be. But it was.

  Astonished, Tristan let go of the woman’s hand.

  Dylan clapped her hand over her mouth, realising, a second too late, what she’d done.

  She’d seen him from across the valley. An orb, much brighter than all the rest. It had caught her eye, drawn her attention like a moth to a flame. As she’d focused on it, strange things had happened. The riotous red of the barren landscape, the deep burgundies and purples of dusk, had flickered, the colour zapping in and out like a badly tuned television. Blood red turned to the muted greens and browns and dull mauves of her Scottish wasteland.