The Ferryman (27 page)

Charon gazed at her. The suggestion of a smile appeared at the edges of his mouth and he tilted his head to one side.

“Janine,”
he said.
“Do not fear simply because you do not understand. You have welcomed me in your dreams. I know the essence of your being. I have dared much for you.”

Though she heard the words, she could not make sense of them. Bathed in that ethereal light, she found herself unable to move. Perhaps that was Charon's doing, or perhaps it was simply her fear, her terror that what she was seeing and hearing might be real.

Charon opened his robes and slipped the lantern inside. It disappeared there, though the Ferryman himself was suffused with its green glow. He crossed the room toward her with a swish of robes that sounded like the surf, a confident stride that bespoke his power, the arrogance of a king.

Janine tried to inch backward on her mattress. She tried to close her eyes to blot him out. She tried to open her mouth to scream. Tried, but failed. Instead, she sat paralyzed as the creature leaned toward her, long robes brushing her face. Skeletally thin fingers, long and sharp, reached out to caress her face.

They were cold and damp.

Her eyes were wide. They burned, as though tears would fall, but even that she seemed incapable of. Her heart thundered wildly in her chest. She could hear its manic rhythm inside her head.

The Ferryman's skin was like stone polished clean by the river, lined with blue veins and shadowed by his long mane and beard. He brushed her own dark locks away from her face, ran his fingers through her hair.

His breath was the breeze off the river. Those burning black eyes seemed to widen as though they might drink her in.

He leaned over her further, hair brushing her face, and cold lips touched her forehead. Charon kissed her above each eye. His talons slid down her face, her throat, her nightshirt, and skeletal fingers traced lines along the roundness of her breasts.

It was like the dream.

But not the dream. She did not yearn for him. The twisting in her stomach was fear, not desire.

Above her, so close, those blazing eclipse-eyes stared down into hers. A tear slipped from her right eye and ran, hot and salty, down the side of her face.

“No,” she whispered softly.

She could speak. She could cry. She could move.

Janine screamed as she thrust her hands out and shoved him away. Under her touch, his robes felt like damp, slick moss, and she shuddered with revulsion even as she tumbled out of bed and staggered backward, away from him.

“My God, what are you?” she rasped, her chest heaving with panic.

But she knew what he was. Impossible, but she knew.

Charon rose to his full height. For the first time, his huge black pupils diminished and the fiery corona around each one expanded. His body still glowed with the infernal light from his lantern, and the Ferryman extended one long finger to point at her in accusation.

The voice was like the cry of a drowning man.

Janine stood with her back to the bedroom wall, trapped.

The crackle of supernatural energy in the room, the surreal tension that connected them, was interrupted by a sudden buzzing in the room. Janine blinked several times before she could turn her gaze away from Charon. Her mind backtracked to that sound, tried to put it in a real-life context.

The door.

It was going on one o'clock in the morning, but someone was down at the first-floor landing, buzzing for her to let them up.

The buzz came again.

Charon snarled softly, then reached into his robes to retrieve the lantern. Its iron and glass cage barely contained the green flame within, which roared up as he retrieved it, as though it had been waiting to be free again.

The light flashed so brightly that Janine had to cover her eyes. When the light subsided and she looked around the room, the Ferryman was gone. Janine gasped for breath, certain that at any second he would appear again, his image still outlined against the backs of her eyelids.

It can't be,
she thought.
I'm losing it.
But she knew that was not the truth, that the truth was something she was incapable of confronting alone.

The buzzer sounded a third time.

Her fear remained upon her like a morning frost, and Janine tried to shake it off as she ran for the door.Anything to be out of that room, away from the moist echo of him that seemed to linger on the air. Her gaze flicked from side to side, searching for some sign that Charon was still in the apartment. In a frenzy, she brushed her hand through her hair ... and found it wet.

Charon had touched her there, and now her hair was damp as though from a shower. Disgusted, and frightened by this lingering evidence of his presence, she glanced down in the dim hall light and saw that the front of her shirt was also wet, where he had fondled her.

“Jesus,” she whispered.

At the door, she pressed the speaker button.

“Who ... who is it?” she asked, her voice cracking.

“Hey. Sorry to wake you. Can I come up?”

A hand flew to her mouth and she felt something crumble inside her.

“Oh, thank God,” she whispered, then flinched, startled by her own voice in the darkened apartment.

Janine had never been so happy to hear the voice of another human being in her life. Though the warnings and vague threats of the Ferryman echoed in the back of her head, she needed nothing so much at that moment as her lover's arms around her. Her true lover, not some nightmare suitor.

She did not even bother to reply. Instead she buzzed him in, then feverishly worked the locks. Without thought as to how little she was wearing, Janine threw the door open and rushed down the stairs.

David stopped short halfway up and stared at her. His hair and clothes were disheveled and his eyes were bloodshot. There was a frightened, lost expression on his features that she knew must be at least the match of her own.

“David,” she said again, voice barely above a whisper.

“Janine, I ... What happened?” he asked.

With abandon, she threw herself into his arms, nearly knocking him back down the stairs. He used the railing to steady himself, and then he held her as she wept in great, heaving sobs, her face buried in the wonderful warmth of his shirt. It had the smell of him, and that was an enormous comfort to her.

That was
real
. David, and what she felt for him.That was real.

“Janine?” His voice was gentle, but there was a quaver to it as well.

She pulled back and gazed into his red-rimmed eyes. Though she wanted to ask what had happened, why he was there in the dead of night, why he seemed so distraught, she could not even begin. Her own fears were too fresh, nearly spilling over with the urgency she felt.

Dreams. She had fooled herself into thinking they were just dreams. And that day by the river, she had
seen
him. It was not in her mind. She knew that now.

“I had ... an intruder,” she ventured.

Immediately he tensed, muscles flexing. David was not an inordinately large man, but he was powerful and quick. Absurdly, it made her feel immediately safer, though what he could do against the nightmare that had visited her she had no idea.

“Is he still—”

“He's gone,” she said, unsure how to begin. “I ... I think he's gone.”

Together they went back up the stairs. David led the way, alert for any sign of an intruder. One by one, they turned on all the lights. Soon they were both satisfied that the apartment was empty save for the two of them.

At last, David seemed to deflate. They sat down together on the couch in the living room. He ran a hand through his hair and she saw a bit of gray there she had not really noticed before.

“Did you get a good look at him?” David asked.

She bit her lip and nodded.

“You need to call the police.”

“There's nothing they can do,” she said.

Perhaps it was something in her tone, but he looked up sharply and a kind of shock spread across his features, as though he had just realized a horrible truth.

“Tell me,” David demanded.

So she did.

When she was through, she was shaking all over. He slid closer to her and held her, but she shook her head.

“I know you probably think it's all in my head—”

“No. No, I don't,” he assured her.

Stunned, she gazed up at him. “I don't understand.”

“I've seen him, too,” David explained. He glanced away, the memory causing him to flinch. “But there's more. A lot more to this than you realize.”

The things he told her, about ghosts and walking dead men, cultivated a new terror that blossomed even colder in her heart. But when he told her that one of the intruders in his own house had been his grandfather, that his Grandpa Edgar had tried to kill him, a deep, abiding sadness settled into her bones with an ache she doubted would ever go away.

“And Jill?”

“It's Maggie,” David said firmly. “I was sure last night, but how could I have said anything? You would just have thought—”

“You should have,” she told him.

“We both should have,” David replied softly.

“So what do we do now? These ... the people he's sent after you. They may be trying to kill you, but he hasn't tried. You're still in danger.”

“You spurned him,” David reminded her. “I'd say we're both in danger.” He leaned back a bit, almost collapsing into the sofa. Then his eyes roved around the room. “We should get out of here. Go to a hotel. He could come back at any time. Hell, we don't even know if he's really gone. In the morning, we'll go see Father Charles.”

“Do you think he'll believe us?” she asked.

Something flickered across his eyes then, a sort of curiosity, maybe. “Yes. I really think he will. I get the idea from talking to the padre that he's heard his share of weird stories.”

“All right. Let me pack some things,” she said.

Janine got up and went toward the bedroom. Outside the door she paused and stared into the room. A moment later David came up behind her and she breathed a sigh of relief as he followed her in. She did not want to be in there alone.

When she had thrown some overnight things into a bag, Janine went to the phone.

“Let me just call Larry and let him know where I'll be,” she said.

“Why call Larry? It's only for a few hours.”

“Just in case he hears anything about my mother.”

Silence. Slowly Janine turned to find David staring at her. It hit her, then, that in all their conversation, their shared fears and the nightmarish spectacle they had each been through that night, she had not mentioned the call she had received earlier, not told him about her mother.

“What about her?” David asked.

Janine swallowed hard, pieces of a puzzle beginning to click together in her head.

“She's missing,” Janine said, her voice catching in her throat.

They stared at one another, both chilled by those words.

T
he morning ought to have brought solace, but the world still seemed off-kilter, as if the sunlight were filtered through a dusty curtain.

David stood just inside the front door of his home, stared around with eyes wide, and wondered why he was not crying. The house remained intact, true, but
his
things, the parts of this house that were him, had been destroyed. Paintings and plants, knickknacks and books; some of the furniture had been shattered, scattered across the floor, broken and torn and even pissed on. The smell of urine was strong in the foyer.

Underneath it, though, was another smell, not unlike the ocean at low tide.

“David. I'm so sorry.”

With a deep breath, he collected himself and then glanced back at Janine, who had come in behind him. Though the night had passed, they had agreed that neither of them was going to stay at home until they found some answers, but David had wanted to at least get some clothes.They recognized that there was risk involved in returning here, but the coming of the dawn had mitigated their fright. Now, though, it seemed foolish to have assumed that the arrival of morning would have chased away the darker shadows of the night.

They had been cautious as they entered, and ready to flee.

Now this.

“Stay with me,” he said, his voice numb.

Then he started up the stairs. The second floor was not in quite as much of a shambles, but it still pained him. Soon, when he was able to return here again, he would put things in order.