The Ferryman (22 page)

“I heard this morning about your accident,” Father Charles ventured.

David stiffened.

The priest gazed at him. “Sister Mary had heard about it from Lieutenant Garney. Though she said the word was you were none the worse for wear. Why do I have the feeling that might not be completely true?”

“Father, I ...” David shuffled his feet a bit.

“Sit down, please. You wanted to talk, David. I'm sorry if I've put you off track.”

A kind of sadness seemed to sweep through the teacher, but Father Charles thought there was more to it than that. Not just sadness, but anxiety, even fear, a kind of emotional static that resonated in the man like the sound of the ocean in a seashell.

“I got scratched up a lot, a few bruises, but I'm all right. The car isn't going to make it, though.” David smiled for just a moment, unconvincingly, then turned away.

Father Charles waited. In a way it was much like confession. Sometimes a gentle prodding was required, as though the other person needed permission somehow, but he never pressed.

After a moment, David sighed and sat up a little straighter in his chair. As though he had regained some lost determination, he gazed directly at Father Charles.

“Do you believe in ghosts, Father?”

The room was silent then, save for the crooning voice of Smokey Robinson on the radio and a few chirping birds outside his window. Father Charles stared at David and attempted not to allow his expression to change. It was the last question he would have expected.

He picked up a pen and tapped it on the desk as he studied David's expression, wondering what had prompted such an inquiry.

“Well, the Church believes—”

“I'm not asking what the Church believes,” David interrupted. “I'm asking what
you
believe.”

Father Charles leaned back in his chair and put his hands up under his chin, fingers steepled in an unconscious expression of prayer or concentration, or perhaps both.

“During my time in seminary, I saw several things that I would be hard-pressed to find a nonsupernatural explanation for. Do I believe in ghosts? Let's say I'm inclined to believe, but I'm still formulating an opinion.”

With a long sigh, as though something that had been dammed up within him had broken free, David shuddered and put a hand to his face. He nodded slowly. Then, though he spoke haltingly, pausing to find the right words every few moments, he told a most extraordinary story that began with the death of Ralph Weiss and concluded, at least for the moment, with his car accident two nights before.

Throughout David's story, Father Charles listened without comment, save for a nod now and again that he added only to encourage the man, in a sense to give permission for him to continue. Again he was reminded of confession. When David finished, he seemed tired, and yet somehow refreshed.

“You haven't talked to anyone about this?” the priest asked.

David shrugged. “Janine, a little, but not the ghost part. She thinks this Jill looking like she does is a coincidence. But last night I looked at the yearbook I dug out of the library, Father. It isn't a coincidence. Maggie Russell's been dead a long time, but this Jill? She's a dead ringer.”

The teacher uttered a little morbid laugh. “Bad choice of words, huh?”

Again the priest allowed his thoughts to drift, turning the story over in his head. It was far from the craziest thing he had ever heard. Though he had never witnessed an exorcism, he knew older priests at the seminary who had. Their tales were chilling. Ghosts, however—that was something else. He had been vague with David, but this was not the first time he had run across a ghost story. Some of them had even turned out to be true.

“You think I'm crazy?” David asked.

The words were not bitter, but sad and anxious. Father Charles looked into his eyes and saw the earnest faith and hope in them, and a sudden dread filled him.

Sometimes the stories were true.

“I don't think you're crazy,” the priest said. “But I do think we need to talk more about this. To investigate a little more, find out what's really happening. I'm a priest, David. No one needs to convince me of the existence of supernatural power. As a Catholic, I believe in one God, and yet historically that is a relatively young theory. I believe in angels and demons and in heaven and hell. That's what they teach you in the seminary. I had a proctor there, though, who had some other theories that he expressed outside the classroom from time to time. He suggested, more than once, that perhaps all of those things are just part of this being we call God.”

“Where do ghosts fit into that? Lost souls? Spirits revisiting Earth from heaven or before going on to their final rest?”

The priest laughed lightly. “You have a lot of faith in my ability to provide answers, David. The problem is, no one can. You know that. Those sound like reasonable possibilities given the other things we believe, but who can say for certain? What I will say is this: Ghosts, if they do exist, have never been known to drive cars. They're also not generally known to be corporeal enough to attend birthday parties where they eat and drink and bump shoulders with flesh-and-blood people. I'm troubled that this one ... manifestation ... appears to be Steve Themeli. If these things are real, we'll have to find out what they are, and why they're preying upon you.”

The grateful expression on David's face evaporated after a moment, and he frowned. “What about Mr. Weiss? I saw him at least twice, maybe three times. And he wasn't flesh and blood.”

Father Charles glanced out the window. On such a perfect day, with reality so tangible, it was odd to be having this conversation. And yet he knew well enough that humanity defined reality by its experience, by its five senses, and there was far more to the world than that.

“I've been wondering about that myself, ever since you mentioned it,” the priest said thoughtfully. “The ghost, if ghost he is and not some manifestation of your subconscious—always a possibility—has not tried to harm or even harass you in any way.”

“Then what's he doing?” David asked.

“Have you considered the idea that he may be attempting to warn you of danger? If there is a ghost in this, David, it sounds to me as if he's on your side.”

For several minutes, both men were lost in their thoughts, and the room was silent save for the Supremes on the radio.

 
Janine shifted uncomfortably on the sofa in her living room. Her gaze flickered downward a moment.The expression on Annette's face might have been comical if it had not been at her expense. It was Monday night. There were dirty dishes on the table from the dinner she had made for them, but neither woman moved.

“You've got to forgive me, okay? Just trying to wrap my head around all this,” Annette said. “I mean ... you're still taking the Zoloft, right?”

Exasperated, Janine nodded.

“Don't get upset,” Annette chided her.“What do you expect me to say? You had this ... near-death experience, or whatever, then nightmares, and now, what? Hallucinations? Too strong a word, maybe, but maybe not. Janine, don't you think you should talk to someone?”

“You mean a psychiatrist.” She pursed her lips and sighed a bit.

“Well, someone. I mean, there are things that can cause hallucinations, you know? Medical conditions. Chronic insomnia, for one.”

“Brain tumors for another.”

Annette blanched. “Hey. That's not what I'm saying. I just think that for your own sake you should make sure that this is just your imagination and not something actually
wrong
with you. If you don't want to see a psychiatrist, though, you should at least talk to David about it. I can't believe you haven't mentioned any of this to him.”

Horrified, Janine stared at her. “How can I? God, Annette, we're just getting things going again. What am I supposed to say? ‘Hey, I know I broke your heart, and you've kind of forgiven me, we're working on rebuilding love and trust and, okay, having completely rocking sex, but by the way, I'm either a delusional, paranoid freak or I'm being stalked by some bogeyman from the afterlife'?”

Annette shrugged, doing her best not to laugh. “That'd be a start. All I'm saying is, it can't be helping things if you have all this shit in your head and you can't even talk to him. He loves you, Janine. He always has. And for a guy, he's pretty perceptive. Maybe he can help.”

“Maybe,” she grudgingly allowed.

It felt absurd to Janine to even talk about it, as though she were watching a film of someone else's life. Yet this thing that had been haunting her dreams—and then appeared at the river's edge—inspired a dread in her she could not escape. Thoughts of it, images of the Ferryman in her head, had begun to eclipse things that ought to have been far more important.

The dreams she had been able to rationalize away, and she could ignore the chill feeling of being watched that came over her from time to time. But on Sunday morning, she had
seen
him. Spectral, in some way, but still substantial. Whatever it was, she refused to believe it was some sort of mirage.

With a shuddering sigh, Janine smiled. “You know what? It would be a relief, to be honest, to find out it was all in my head. I just ... I haven't been able to shake this feeling that someone's watching me.”

Annette leaned toward her, putting a comforting hand on her leg. “Janine. Listen to me. Someone
was
watching you. When he was killed, Spencer was across the street from my party, sitting in a parked car facing the door. You think that was some sort of coincidence?”

“Maybe not,” Janine allowed. A chill ran through her again and she hugged herself. “But Spencer's dead, Annette. He was a fucking bastard, but I thought I loved him, once upon a time. It's just awful and creepy that someone murdered him with me so close by. So he was following me, all right. I thought I saw someone out in the yard the other night, and I've been kind of assuming it was him.

“But what if it wasn't?”

Janine reached down and took Annette's hand in hers as though she could somehow share in her friend's warmth and strength. The world continued to roll on without any notice of her anxiety. Reality was inflexible. That ought to have comforted her, knowing that despite her eerie dreams, bizarre thoughts, and the fright she'd had on Sunday, everything around her remained mundane and painfully normal. David loved her, and though she still felt terrible guilt for having hurt him in the first place, she had begun to allow herself to love him again as well.

There was comfort in his arms, and in his bed. There was shelter in her work and the faces of her students.

But at home, at night, she was frightened.

“Janine.”

She did not respond at first, her gaze drifting, lost, to the darkness outside her window.

“Hey,” Annette said, and gave her hand a squeeze.

Janine finally looked at her, and in her friend's loving eyes she found the refuge she sought.

“Spencer probably was stalking you. But he isn't anymore.You've had a lot of bad things happen to you in the last year, but good things are happening now. You can put it all behind you. It may take a while, but you can. And I'll be here to help you every step of the way.”

Janine smiled softly, sadly. “I don't think I could do it without you,” she said, her voice hitching with emotion.

With a sigh of relief, she leaned in and Annette opened her arms. Janine laid her head upon her friend's chest, her mind awhirl with images from her dreams and the lone figure on the riverbank the day before. Annette held her gently and kissed the top of her head, and they fell silent for several minutes.

Janine had hoped that having Annette there would somehow help her clear her mind, drive away the ghosts in her head. But the fear did not leave her.

“It's going to be okay. You'll see,” Annette told her.

“See, the thing is, that feeling, like someone's watching?” Janine said softly. “Spencer's gone, but that feeling's still there. I can feel his eyes on me. He's waiting for me, Elf. And he's not going away.”

 
Annette lived in a two-bedroom apartment above a hair and nail place in Medford Square.They had changed the name four times in the two years she had lived in that particular apartment, and she had a hard time remembering what it was called. Part of that was probably also because she had never actually gone inside.

That night, her concern for Janine still lingering with her, she parked as usual in the municipal lot two blocks away and walked to her building. A sliver moon hung in the sky and stars shone brightly above. The night was clear and warm enough that it was possible for her to believe that spring was really here. No more freezing rain, no more reminders of winter.

Her jacket was slung over her arm as she walked to the door that led upstairs to her apartment. The salon was long since closed, but someone waited in the shadows under the store's awning.

She hesitated, more deeply affected than she had realized by Janine's fear, and what had happened to David.

Then a smile blossomed on her face.

It was Jill. She looked extraordinary, her long hair falling in a blond cascade across her shoulders and back. With her full lips and wide eyes, she looked like a porcelain doll. She was breathtaking. Part of that, Annette knew, was that though she was twenty-two, she barely looked that, and there was a part of her that felt wanton and indecent when she thought about the things she had done with this girl.

Wanted to do, even now.

“Hey,” Annette said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Fancy meeting you here.”