The Ferryman

Justice was a small and secluded town in Texas, with a population of three hundred and seventy-five souls, and bordered by the expansive Pax Lake. Pax had an estimated depth of over one hundred feet, and shrouded in a perpetual mist, regardless of the season. Justice had been featured in various investigative articles and travel journals over the years, its mystery being the singular claim to fame. Tourists visited the enigmatic Justice now and again, and for a fee, the ferryman would take you out on his boat for a half hour, an excursion playfully dubbed 'the Ghost Dive' in Travel USA. Somehow the town had succeeded in putting a whimsical spin on its vanishing tourists and peculiar local residents, and as police investigations continued to yield no results, the rumors had become nothing more than local lore.

Adalynn sat hunched in the passenger seat of her boyfriend’s Toyota Camry, the wind blowing her hair about. Aaron was driving, singing along to a Beatles song while she studied the map they had purchased at the gas station five miles back. Aaron had suggested this trip a month ago, after reading about it’s location in the University archives. Aaron was in his third year, and fancied himself a budding journalist; The prospect of suspicious disappearances and botched police investigations had drawn his interest to the secluded little town. Adalynn had had some misgivings in the beginning, but when a few of their mutual friends hinted very strongly that Aaron was planning to pop the question, Ady acquiesced. Though the idea of making the twelve hour drive South to stay in some remote cabin was less than appealing, she and Aaron had both been under pressure at work and in school, and any vacation was a welcome reprieve.

“It looks like we’re almost there,” she advised, reaching over to turn down the music. Aaron smiled at her, gripping the wheel tighter.

“If this place looks like it did in the articles, Addy, you’re going to love it.”

‘This place’, it turned out, was a small cabin situated just feet from the water’s edge of Pax Lake. Complete with wrap-around deck and rickety chairs, the cabin was surrounded by trees on all sides. The water was still and quiet, obscured by thick mist. The air was crisp and clear, and Aaron drew in a deep, exaggerated breath, filling his lungs and extending his arms out. Adalynn was a city girl, herself, but Aaron loved the outdoors.

Inside, the cabin was an open concept with a tiny kitchenette, living area with two small armchairs flanking a stone hearth, and aged area rugs laid out over the knotted wood floors. The caretaker had stocked firewood, and Aaron started a fire in the hearth. The kitchenette was a modest one, with kitchen utensils and a stovetop and a little canned food. Adalynn made a mental note to scope out a grocery store, since they planned on staying there through the week.

“It says here that four missing person cases were reported here in Justice over the last six years, none of them locals,” Aaron said. He’d perched in one of the small wooden chairs belonging to the kitchen table, leafing through one of the old newspapers he’d found in a stack by the hearth, intended for burning.

“Every town has missing persons cases,” Adalynn mumbled, heating some water and tracking down a box of tea bags.

“True, but according to the old news articles I read back in Granger, these were all similar in fashion. All tourists, all between the ages of eighteen and thirty five, all vanishing around their third day.”

“Interesting,” she said, taking a seat opposite him. Adalynn did her best to oblige Aaron and his curiosities; Afterall, he obliged hers often enough. Nevertheless, it was clear that Aaron was thinking articles over nuptials.

“I’m going into town for food,” she announced, and Aaron looked up from his newspaper now, hearing the distinct edge to his voice.

“I’ll go with you.”

“No. I’d like to do some exploring myself. Take a few hours to yourself. Investigate,” she said with a little edge.

“Later I'll schedule that Ghost Dive,” he said, returning to his reading.

She agreed and extracted the wrinkled map from her purse, and with a kiss goodbye, she made her way toward Justice in search of dinner ingredients.

The Grocery Mart in Justice was just about what you would expect it to be, in a town with less than four hundred residents. Adalynn bought the ingredients for lasagna, Aaron’s favorite. The store had only a handful of patrons, whose eyes seemed to follow her wherever she went. The wordless cashier gave darting glances out of his peripheral, moving slowly. Behind him, a missing poster hung from the wall. The face was that of a young female, with short dark hair and sad brown eyes. According to the flyer, her last whereabouts had been here in Justice, exactly one year ago.

Adalynn was acutely aware of Aaron’s discomfort as she recounted the odd market experience and the poster of the missing woman over dinner.

“You don’t find it concerning that people have been disappearing from Justice for years, and the whole town profits from it? They’ve literally exploited these missing people by turning it into a tourist draw.”

Aaron cleared his throat, pushed back from his plate, and deliberated. Adalynn knew that expression, it was one that indicated bad news.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” he began. She waited.

“I told you that the disappearances were tourists visiting the town, and that wasn’t entirely true,” he continued reasonably. Adalynn narrowed her eyes, now, the muscles in her stomach tightening.

“The disappearances- most of them- were people staying here, in this cabin. The news articles referred to it as a ‘haunted cabin’, which is utterly ridiculous,” he rushed on. “No evidence of any crimes was ever uncovered, and many of these folks had histories of depression or personal troubles. It is a reasonable assumption that they simply left on their own accord.”

Adalynn could feel the tears welling in her own eyes, angry, hot, stinging tears. She had hoped, in some corner of her heart, that her friends had been right that Aaron was bringing her up here to ask her to marry him. But no, it was just another damn witch hunt.

"The bottom line, Ady, is that this is a golden opportunity for us. The Presley Syndicate is collaborating with the University for editorial pieces for their journal, and this is my chance to do a little follow up article, really get my name out there. If I can get my foot in the door, get established, we can start thinking about moving in together-”

Adalynn held up her hand in the universal ‘stop’ gesture and left the table. She didn’t trust herself to speak just then. She needed a walk to clear her own head, a chance to re-evaluate her emotions.

The air outside had cooled by several degrees, and the sun was making its descent below the horizon. She wondered how many miles of uninhabited forest sprawled between here and the town, and wondered about its wildlife. She did not feel confident enough to venture into the thick trees alone at dusk, but a walk along the water line would do fine. The water lapped now, despite the absence of wind. The fog had dissipated slightly, revealing very dark, murky depths. She wandered alone, tracing its shoreline with her eyes, tossing a rock or a pine cone sporadically. On one hand, she knew that she was being completely irrational. It was no one’s fault but her own that she had conjured up these grand expectations of a proposal, and Aaron had never promised her anything. On the other hand, tomorrow was their three year dating anniversary, which he'd apparently forgotten, and he’d misrepresented the trip to her entirely, leading her to believe it was a romantic excursion for the two of them. Instead, he’d subjected her to a ‘haunted’ and potentially dangerous locale for the sake of his non-existent journalism career.

“Selfish”, she cursed, scrubbing the last of the tears from her cheeks.

Suddenly, a sweet smell permeated the air around her, a lovely mixture of floral and rain. It reminded her of a candle she’d loved at her late cousins’ shop, Sweet Scentsations. The smell grew stronger and more apparent, and she stood still, inhaling it, filling her lungs with it. Then, a chill danced up her spine, lightly at first, and stronger as it crested her shoulders. It was enough to make her shudder. She heard the voice then, a familiar voice- her cousin’s voice, calling out to her from a distance, melancholy and hollow all at once.

“Hadley?” She whispered, sure by now that she was losing her senses. Hadley was dead. The voice called her again, more discernible this time, and coming from the water. Ady crept closer, the toes of her sneakers sinking into it, the mud below her feet caving, sucking her in slowly. The water felt like home, like she belonged there. The voice grew louder now, the smell more overwhelming, and she felt cold all over. She wanted to go into the water, let it swallow her up for good; they were all waiting there for her, to welcome her home, where she belonged. She waded in further, up past her hips, and the water and the mud did the rest, accepting her into its cold depths, embracing her like family.

“Ady!”

She was suddenly and fully awake now, screaming as she fought her way back toward the shore, away from the cold hands that grabbed at her ankles, from the mud that sucked her in. Aaron sprinted toward her, leaping into the cold water himself, extricating her back to dry land. Adalynn shivered as she settled back into reality, and into the cold. She was soaking wet up to her waist, her legs pale with cold. She wasn’t sure what she had just experienced, something clear and obscure at the same time. The voice, the smell, they were both gone, replaced by the rustling of the pine trees and the smell of dry bark. Hadley- Hadley was gone.

“What the hell were you doing?” Aaron chided, walking them both back toward the cabin. She was shivering now, and so was he.

“I-I’m not sure,” she said stupidly. He wore an incredulous expression, and his fingers dug into her shoulders as he propelled her through the cabin door and in the direction of the fireplace. The fire roared now, though it had been nearly extinguished minutes ago- had it just been minutes? It was dark outside, she realized belatedly. Aaron stoked the fire and wrapped a plaid coverlet over her shoulders, arranging her on one of the small armchairs flanking the hearth. He removed her shoes wordlessly, slid her pants down her legs and dried them, working the heat and circulation back into her toes. Minutes later, after shucking his own wet shoes, they sat side by side by the fire, layered in blankets.

“What did you see out there?” he finally asked her.

“I smelled something familiar,” she whispered. “A smell I’ve smelled before, in Hadley’s candle shop. Then I heard her voice- I swear it was coming from the water,” she said, her voice shaking now. She sounded crazy, she knew she did. Any reasonable person would believe that she’d suffered some sort of psychiatric break- it ran in her family, afterall. They would call it grief, give it a logical label.

Aaron said nothing, and somehow that was worse.

“I’m not crazy,” she said fiercely.

“I don’t think you’re crazy, Ad,” he said. “I think there’s something to this. I felt it, too,” he admitted. Their expressions met equal parts of fear and surprise.

“You felt it?”

He nodded gravely.

“The water, it was- it-”

“It wants us”, she finished, emboldened now by his own admission. She felt drunk, conscious and uninhibited with words.

“Yes.”

They slept in fits that night. After making several circuits around the cabin, checking and rechecking the locks on the doors and windows, he pulled his gun from his suitcase, tucking it in the bedside table. The wind had grown in its intensity, and the trees nearby scraped against the house, producing an eerie and unsettling sound throughout the night. Aaron held her while they slept, and promised her that they would find another place to stay tomorrow.

“We can stay in Justice, there are a few bed and breakfasts there, real ones,” he qualified. “Or, we can even stay in the next town over. If you’re really scared,” he said, kissing her hand, “I’ll take you home. I can write about something else.”

After breakfast they would find another form of lodging, away from the lake.

The next morning was bright and warm. They ate pancakes at the scarred kitchen table while they contemplated their next steps. Somehow in the bright sunlight and the birds singing outside, the whole thing felt ridiculous, like a bad dream.

“I was thinking we might try that ferry ride,” Ady said.

“You really want to go back out on the water?”

“Yes,” she said simply. “I feel foolish. It must have been a combination of sleep deprivation and seclusion. I want you to get this story, Aaron. I want us to make the most of this trip, and to go back to Granger with something more than pinecones and wet socks,” she said, smiling now.

Aaron considered for a minute, then nodded in assent, and late that day they went into town and asked after the Ferryman.

Les, the ferryman, was a slight man in his mid sixties with weathered skin and hostile blue eyes. He wore overalls and a faded plaid shirt in blue and green tones, and scuffed, weathered work boots. The ferry, it turned out, was no more than a small boat with a weathered deck and faded canopy. Les was a man of few words, but he was cheap and available on short notice. Les welcomed them to the ghost dive, and recited a few historical tidbits as they steered away from the shore.

“What can you tell me about the rumors of disappearances, Les?” Aaron had produced a small notebook and pen and waited for a response.

The boat coasted along the calm water, its base obscured by the fog layer below. Les darted a glance at Aaron now, suspicion and hostility in one look.He cut off the engine abruptly.

“Are you one of them private detectives?” he asked.

“No,” Aaron stammered, realizing too late that he’d been too direct in his line of questioning. It was evident that Les was not going to be as cooperative as he'd hoped.

“You two staying out at that cabin over yonder?” he asked, switching gears, and they nodded, disinclined to explain that they’d planned to leave today. Les grinned now, his face void of all good humor, and replaced by malice.

“You know they say it’s haunted, don’t you?”

“Yes, we’d heard that,” Aaron added impatiently. “What can you tell me about it?”

“I don’t expect I can tell you very much of anything’”, Les said, surveying the lake around them.

“People go missing in all parts of the world, mister. Foolish folks, who come from the cities, throwing their money around, asking too many damned questions. Folks around here, we like our privacy. There’s no telling what might have become of those poor idiots,” he concluded.

Adalynn felt the chill again, the one from yesterday, and the smell had returned, too. The mist seemed to dance with it, like smoke from a small fire, and she wanted to reach down into it and fill her palms with it. Les kept the boat where it was, even after Aaron suggested they return before sunset. Adalynn refrained from reaching out, touching the water, and Aaron grew increasingly agitated. Whatever this was, it was affecting the both of them. Bemused, Les started the engine again, and they turned back toward the shoreline, watching them intently.

Aaron and Adalynn had agreed to remain at the cabin another night- it was late, and they still hadn’t found a vacant room in town. After a quiet dinner and some reading, they’d gone to bed, feeling the exhaustion from last night’s wakefulness.

The following morning, the sun rose over the treetops, and the mist hovered over the water as usual, the birds singing from their branches. The cabin sat empty in its spot by the lake, the water still as death, save for the ferryman, who had taken a morning ride on his own boat, another Ghost Dive, all alone.